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25 Traits Of Twitter Folks I Admire and 25 Folks Who Have Them

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Conversation, Relationship, Then Transaction

Those of us who’ve read the Cluetrain Manifesto and experience community working together have no desire to go back to a transaction-based business model ever. We see the value of working with people we know, like, and trust. And as we learn how to use the tools, we don’t lack people to connect with to get our business done.

Certain signs and characteristics seem to show in the folks who live the social media culture. Certain value and actions make people who care about having relationships and conversation before transactions easy to spot. I’ve listed 25 traits of Twitter Folks I admire.

These social media folks …

  1. don’t seek to be the center of any universe.
  2. find great conversations and get to know the people there.
  3. realize that every venue has it’s own culture and rules.
  4. do their own talking and their own listening.
  5. talk mostly about the accomplishments of others.
  6. ask intriguing questions that invite others to join the conversation.
  7. don’t worry when folks don’t respond to something they say.
  8. have time for new friends, talk to them, listen to them, read their sites and bios, ask them questions — avoid assumptions.
  9. have a different conversation with every individual and every business.
  10. take embarrassing or private conversations offline.
  11. are inclusive and encourage folks who exclude people to exclude themselves.
  12. shout out good news, help in emergencies, and celebrate with everyone.
  13. say please, thank you, and you’re welcome, and mean them.
  14. are incredibly curious about what works, what doesn’t work, seek feedback often, and look to improve what they do.
  15. study the industry and trends, watch how things occur, share information about those freely, but never break a trust.
  16. offer advice when people ask. Help whenever they can.
  17. aren’t “shameless.” Ask for help in ways that folks are proud to pitch in.
  18. are constantly connecting people and ideas in business conversations that are helpful, not hypeful.
  19. get paid to strategize business, build tactical plans, but won’t “monetize” relationships.
  20. ignore the trolls.
  21. keep their promises.
  22. can be transparent without being naked … most of us look and behave best in public with our clothes ON.
  23. listen to the hive mind, but think their own thoughts.
  24. send back channel “hellos” to friends when there’s no time to talk.
  25. understand that the Internet is public and has no eraser.

The relationships with people — social in social media — is what is changing things. It makes a business experience worth looking forward to and turns a transaction into a relationship. It’s different online because I can’t see you. When I meet folks who make that distance and darkness disappear, I respect and admire them.

Updated slightly for to replace those who’ve gone.

Of course, I admire @@chrisbrogan, @guykawasaki, @problogger and the others you already have read on every other list. I’d like to add some great social stars that you might not know yet. Here are 25 more great conversationalists I admire and learn from every day.
@LucretiaPruitt
@BethHarte
@MackCollier
@AmberCadabra
@ShannonPaul
@mark_hayward
@zaneology
@Tojosan
@AaronStrout
@nanpalmero
@hdbbstephen
@rainesmaker
@SheilaS
@DanielleSmithTV
@caroljsroth
@remarkablogger
@melissapierce
@BeckyMcCray
@jnswanson
@BawldGuy
@inspiremetoday
@jasonfalls
@northernchick
@ernohannink
@jonathanfields
@joannapaterson

I suspect you’ll enjoy their conversation as much as I do.
Feel free to add your own 25 to the list or make a list of your and link it back to here.
Great folks are worth celebrating.

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz!!

Social Networking: 10 Reasons Why Twitter Folks Unfriend You

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relationships button

Hello friends, well people I know, I have something to tell you. We friended each other on a social site a few months ago. Last weekend, I might have unfriended you or unsubscribed to your list. I’ve been talking to people who’ve been doing the same thing.

The blogosphere has grown bigger and more social than most of us have time. It’s a fact. As much as we’d like to stay friends with everyone, we all have a threshold of noise. When waves of information and conversation pour over our threshold, we need to raise the wall and reasses where we’re spending our social time.

In my conversations with social networking people I find more like me than ones who are not. I’ve asked them what leads them to “unfriend,” or “unsubscribe.” It seems that we have the same reasons for quietly bowing out of your informational stream.

It’s time we let you know what they are.

10 Reasons Why We Unsubscribe or Unfriend You

We all approach to online conversations differently, and we all have different thresholds for noise. Unfriending people from your social stream can feel like breaking up. It’s good to keep in mind that a slew of variables can mitigate the choice of who stays on our “following” list.

This list couldn’t be all of the reasons someone might want to stop seeing you their stream. It’s only 10 reasons I’ve heard over and over again.

  1. I don’t know you. ahem. Maybe we met in passing and added each other. But we haven’t said a word since.

  2. You don’t @folks who tweet you. Your tweets are clever remarks @yourcircle of twitterbuds. Following you seems like being a fangirl.
  3. You talk @everyone about anything!! I’m jumping over you to see what other people are saying.

  4. You like to argue. I don’t.

  5. You talk about things I’m not interested in. We get along great, but the subjects you tweet aren’t my life’s passion.

  6. You tweet as if you don’t know people are listening, as if your life is a stage and your thoughts are high drama.

  7. You only plug your blog posts. That’s not conversation. That’s twitterfeed.

  8. You talk . . . ahem (whine) . . . about all of the work you have to do, but you twitter all day.

  9. I’m only hearing half of your conversations, because I don’t follow your 1000 other friends. .

  10. You constantly discuss your social media clients, but haven’t used the @ sign ever.

  11. You only talk about yourself. I’ve been gone for eleven months and you just noticed yesterday.

When the list we follow is small and focused the direction that we are, the conversation we attract is rich and compelling. It’s filled with opportunities for connection and collaboration. The more we know about who we follow and why we follow them, the more we can build a supportive network of friends and colleagues.

How do you decide who you’ll follow? Is it time to slim down your list?

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz!!

Watching the River . . .

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They Were Just Watching

The taxi driver had left me off two blocks away from where I was going. No matter. I had the luck of a beautiful day and the good fortune of being early. The walk gave me a chance to take random pictures of a neighborhood I never visit. My destination was a blogger meetup at a small restaurant on the north river.

I got some sweet pictures of flowers that brought me back to gardens I tended. I took a few shots of skies and fences, and one or two of the river through the iron railing.

When I checked at the restaurant, no one was there yet. Minutes later I got a text message saying the group would be late — by about an hour. Time for more pictures.

The light was soft. The nearby fountain was showy. The gray day meant the riverwalk was peacefully free of too many people. I stopped to sit on a stone walk while I checked my email and my blog.

When I looked up I saw a couple at the rail watching the river. They weren’t talking. They had the companionable sweet silence of two people who know each other well.

Watching_the_river_go_by–by_Liz_Strauss

At the time, I didn’t find that particularly worth noting.

I didn’t compare their moment with where I was going.

They were watching a slow-moving river in complete relaxation — I was about to meet up with folks from the rapid river of online conversation.

Watching the rivers is as important as swimming.

Doesn’t seem we can find sweet companionable silence online.

Remember to find some time to just let the river go by.

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz!!

Why Write When You Can Twitter?

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Passion Hasn’t Left the Building

The Living Web

Every morning I fire up Twitter. Sometimes I participate. Sometimes I only listen in.

Few messages of importance can’t be delivered in 140 characters.

I’ve heard folks say that they have found Twitter so efficient, that they’ve lost their reason for writing. I thought I might suggest a few reasons to keep writing while we still Twitter.

    1. Writing helps us develop a natural, confident voice in text that communicates and is attuned to readers. My voice on Twitter is different than my voice when I write here. I like them both.
    1. Writing challenges us to organize our thoughts. We get practice at building a meaningful message that goes deeper. Big ideas and new thoughts need room and time to be explored.
    1. Writing gives readers a complete idea with facts and details to consider. A more complex conversation results. Fun and fast happens in 140 characters. Thoughtful takes more.
    1. Writing gives us practice at accessing our deeper thoughts and insights. We get familiar with how we most efficiently work with and filter ideas. We can choose a variety of genre to express a viewpoint.
    1. Writing teaches us not to be frivolous about the ideas we put in text. We take time to edit so that the message we send is the one that is received by a reasonable reader.

Some ideas can’t be explained or supported in a small character set. Twitter works for fast, efficient one liners. But writing about passion or problem solving will always need something longer. A quick conversation on Twitter cannot replace a written piece well-considered.

Twitter can inspire us, provide the research of a crowd, or be the seed of a piece we write. But we cannot tweet a big idea with justice, heart, and in a totally accurate fashion.

How do you use Twitter?

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz!!
Check out Models and Masterminds too

Time for Everything: Letting Go to Find Flow

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A Time for Everything

To everything there is a season,
A time to drive, a time to eat,
A time to type, a time to hear,
A time to connect, a time to reflect,
A time for phones, a time for elevators.
To everything, there is a season — paraphrased from Ecclesiastes 3

A few days ago, Kathy Sierra at Creating Passionate Users wrote about a product called Twitter.

For those of you who don’t know about Twitter, it has one purpose in life–to be (in its own words)–A global community of friends and strangers answering one simple question: What are you doing? And people answer it. And answer it. And answer it. Over and over and over again, every moment of every hour, people type in a word, fragment, or sentence about what they’re doing right then. (Let’s overlook the fact that there can be only one true answer to the question: “I’m typing to tell twitter what I’m doing right now… which is typing to tell twitter what I’m doing right now.” Or something else that makes my head hurt.)

Click the title to see the product page

twitter

Why would anyone want to do that?

Twitter also a tool for

  • Social Networking System
  • Chatroom
  • Microblogging
  • Multiplexer
  • Group Communicator
  • RSS Feed
  • Salon
  • Meme
  • MLM

For me, that makes it worse. I had seen Twitter, and frankly I hoped that it would just go away. I see it as one of the weird worm holes of an overly plugged-in culture that I’m trying fiercely to avoid.

Kathy Sierra makes fun of twitter for the same reason that I avoided it. We both see it as one more way to fragment our attention in a world that already does a great job of doing so.

Finding focus is impossible when we live in a state of constant interruption. Call me cold and unfeeling, but I don’t care about some stranger’s cat named Fluffy — and it irritates me when that stranger makes a call in an elevator to find out about Fluffy, invading my space, my thoughts, making me virtually invisible — practically screaming that I don’t exist. Exactly how rude is that?

I’m all about finding Flow.
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