Are your Twitter posts only and always about you?

30 Sep

Posted by: BryanPerson in: Microblogging, Recommendations

Interesting recommendation by Chris Brogan yesterday on the right way to limit the number of Twitter posts that link to your own content:

Post the occasional tweet about a particularly good blog post to Twitter. Do this at a rate of about 1:12, meaning one post about your stuff to any 12 tweets about other people’s stuff. This will keep people a bit more interested in your stream as something of value, versus a “mememememe” type of Twitter user.

Classifying my 100 recent tweets
To get a sense of how well I’m contributing to Twitter discussions without necessarily injecting “me” in the process, I decided to run the numbers. I took a quick count of 100 recent Twitter posts, covering messages from September 27-29 and September 18 (there’s an inexplicable week-long gap in the Google Reader history of all my tweets).

Here are my categories:
Posts about me: Includes posts about me taking walks, working on projects, etc.; sharing news of my son’s newest words
Posts not about me: Includes @ messsages, links to general web content, and links to others’ posts that catch my eye
My marketing links: Includes links to content written by me, about my employer (LiveWorld), or about the Social Media Breakfast, another project I’m proud to have started

And here’s the breakdown of the 100 tweets, broken out by those three categories:
Posts about me: 41
Posts not about me: 47
My marketing links: 12

Share your results with #MeNotMe hashtag
How do you fare when classifying 100 of your recent Tweets? Why not participate in this exercise yourself? Report your results — in the comments section, on your own blog, on Twitter, on FriendFeed, etc. — by using the #MeNotMe hashtag .

14 Responses

JennTex
30|Sep|2008 1

I think this is a good exercise… especially for us who maintain company or organizational twitter accounts. For me it is part laziness. It takes a little more work to go out there and find things to share that are not produced by competitors.

I am sure I would do much worse if I analyzed my last 100 tweets. But in order to provide more interesting content will try harder
Beth Kanter
30|Sep|2008 2

You need an egotist scale –http://www.thefreedictionary.com/egotist and linked to the numbers ..
Scott Hepburn
30|Sep|2008 3

Thanks Bryan (and Chris) for addressing this topic. I think we all tend to get a little “me-centric” on Twitter and other social media platforms.

Sales people have ABC: “Always Be Closing.” I think a good mantra for social media users is ABV: “Always Be Valuable.”
Scott Hepburn
30|Sep|2008 4

@JennTex At the risk of sounding nuts, why not share content created by a competitor? Sure, it defies conventional wisdom, but defiance of convention fits the social media M.O. Your followers may even admire your willingness to take a risk like that.
Chris Christensen
30|Sep|2008 5

That’s an interesting experiment but I have just been trying to figure out why all your posts aren’t about me
BryanPerson
30|Sep|2008 6

@Beth: Like the idea! That’ll have to be a subsequent post, though — and when I have some more time.

@Scott: Good point on sharing content of the competition. It still goes against the nature of most organizations, but you’re right that social media offers us an opportunity to support each other. Consider “coopetition” as a way to raise up your industry as a whole.
Amanda Shiga
30|Sep|2008 7

Good post! wondering if the “posts not about me” should distinguish between @ messages and newsbites, heads-up messages or links to content.

I agree with Scott -”always be valuable” is a great mantra. On twitter, too many @ messages that only carry meaning for their recipients lowers the value to all other followers.
BryanPerson
30|Sep|2008 8

Amanda: Liking these proposed variations of my categories. Would you consider trying that for your own own posts? I see you’re at 98, so it’s perfect timing!
Gina Kay Landis
30|Sep|2008 9

This is a great idea. After all one of the cornerstones of social media is that as a social vehicle, there are all sorts of different social things that happen - and some of those, inevitably, will be when people focus on their own lives or needs. Too much of that can, of course, be an irritant or can be seen as something that maybe isn’t actually true about the person, particuarly new adopters who don’t understand the unwrittern “rules” if you were that develop in any social context.

Kudos to Chris and Bryan for alerting us!
@ginakay
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Kyle
30|Sep|2008 12

Bryan (and Chris), great stuff.

I put myself to the test and then took it a bit further with what I’m calling the “Twitter Engagement Score”…basically how do you rate in terms of engagement with the community through Twitter (@’s, DMs, etc).

Can’t wait to continue honing these metrics and having someone much smarter than me put it into a handy-dandy web app that is a bit more helpful that Twitter Grade.

/kff
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