Twitter Trouble

I love Twitter, I'm always excited when I log on to see what the hot topic has fingers flying over keys each day. I also love social media - I'm one of the few people who think this is an amazing technology with years of development and new innovations ahead of us. While I'm fairly young (as in retirement is over 30 years away) I firmly believe that once I get back to work (stinkin' economy) I can ride out the rest of my career focusing on social media and the progression of thought generation from it. That being said - there is a content overload on Twitter.

Since Twitter is so new, there are a number of thought leaders that help ring in the next great things for social media. Boston has a number of people that have embraced this technology and have been such a great resource for me - some are other Bentley Alum - CC Chapman, Mike Lewis and Dan Schawbel. (In lieu of the standard twitter links, I pulled up their blogs - these men all have such great info to share and you're only getting part of the message through following them on Twitter.) I'm feeling an extra boost of Bentley pride today so I'm going to limit my name dropping to these three men (Sorry C.B. - I'm a big fan, but you went to the wrong school buddy!) Following these thought leaders on Twitter and through their companies or personal blogs will give you a great picture of the amazing and effective uses of social media especially Twitter.

Then there are the people that follow the thought leaders, secondary thought leaders and tertiary thought leaders then regurgitate it all over twitter. There's one in particular that is clogging up my twitterfeed and I'm thinking of clicking the "unfollow" button. He puts out good content, but he does it rapid fire, a few times a day and I can't dig through the bottom of his feeds to get to other people's content. As a result, I find ways to work around him. Part of the problem I have with him is that the content is mostly stuff I've seen and know about - sometimes things I've seen before. There are a few nuggets of great content that gets through to me, but his incessant (and automated) posting is driving me nuts.

Social Media has one of the fastest churns out there. The information is flying around constantly, so getting noticed can be very difficult. One thing about social media - that is a given - is that people want to get noticed, ahem, it IS called Social. So when I see this individual clogging up my feed - and I know some of my followers are also following him, it gives me pause. I have good content too - some may even think it's great content. So if I have the misfortune of trying to publish my content in the middle of one of his barrages, I'm likely going to get lost. I'm only one person, but when I post my content, it's actually me. I believe part of the power behind social media is the people driving it. So when I'm up against an autobot, I'm frustated.

Interesting (probably only to me) but as I started this post, I didn't know what I was going to do about this content cranker. But now that I've written it out, I've found my answer - I will be unfollowing him as soon as this is published. The thing is, he stands out, much like my Bentley trio mentioned above, but he does not give me that personal interaction that I get from the people writing actual posts on the other side of their @. And that is another way I will further refine my social media presence - by keeping it real...because we all know that's what it's all about!