Guy Kawasaki Twitter Nazi’s and Debunking Social Media

Great point, most salespeople and experienced marketers know about
building relationships.

Great commentary Chris ! It is very important to checkout the record of actual business ownership by anyone teaching Social Media . I very much appreciate your straightforward , no nonsense approach .

Interesting take on who to listen to. Personally speaking I like reading the spammy tweets that tell me who a person is over the whiter teeth tweets, but then I prefer people over bots. Social media is a tool but Twitter is a lab, and the product is the ability to create massive action. Students in Tehran knew this and so did 8yr old Natalie's parents when they successfully found a bone marrow donor match. Those things don't just happen from pure information push, they happen when the corner is turned and people are engaged.

Sales has always been about Fluff?

Ehmmm… “Sell yourself, and i might just buy your product if its competitively priced and i need it…” that's the kind of fluff it's always been about, you know relationship fluff!!!!

But then Sales & Marketing Professionals always knew that.

Unfortunately, with the advent of the web, non professionals, who are lacking sales skills, think it can be done some other way? Hence the “Don't want to sell” brigade.

Wake up… until something is sold… nothing happens!! That's the whole basis of our consumerist society.

Sorry I didn't make it clear that the fluff i am refering to is Pork fluff Cash,Price, etc. I can find out enough about you and if I want to have a relationship with you by the way you represent yourself on a vidieo and by the comments you make on blogs, twitter etc.

Personally, I wan't to buy from somebody that has similar values. I don't want to buy a product from someone who goes to the same church Obamma did. Im not descriminating here, I just would rather buy from someone who has a little less radical point of view. The money I spend goes somewhere and I want it to go to somewhere with a similar spirit or mentalty.

Wake up, why should I buy from you? Not because you took me out and payed for a round of golf and bought a couple of beers and created this”guilt trip” purchace from me or your ungratfull mentality. I don't need to be stroked, the truth is what people these days are lookin for.

Don't worry though, there still are alot of people that like free drinks and golf.

I think this is interesting. I don't subscribe to it 100% but I too have struggled with the idea of social media being a whole new thing. A lot of the information that the 'gurus' are putting out is rehashed versions of what we were saying in the late 90s.

Aside from the shiny new technology, the buzz and chatter are uncannily similar. The idea that all information should be free is rehashed. I remember the idea that the world would suddenly run on something other than money being a big one just over a decade ago. Didn't happen. I wonder how many people will go bankrupt this time round.

I think a lot of the ideas we put forward a decade ago were put too soon. People 'get' it now and that's the change. People are breaking down barriers between their professional and personal selves and between the work place/home, customers/businesses etc. It is potentially a more 'comfortable' marketplace. In that way, it is very old fashioned. You find this at a farmers' market: people who know each other, trust each other and trade information, products and gossip. That's Twitter et al in a nutshell.

Rebecca
http://rebeccawoodhead.com

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Somehow the post appeared on Twitter, but not on your blog or on @disqus. #fail

I agree with you up to a point, although I know that me posting my location to twitter with @brightkite or @4sq is selling me, based on the reposts to my streams on twitter and facebook people come over to look me up when they are in the neighbourhood, my location based tweets are valuable to some. I, like many others, went a little overboard in the beginning when I started using my first geolocation/-tagging service – brightkite – and that's ok.

You say I should “make people's lives better,” and I do irl and online, and part of that is being in the group of early adopters who try out new functionality and fuck up sometimes. I alienate some followers, post some dumb stuff, post multiple tweets and facebook messages due to mistakes and some lack of control in my Social Media Aggregation Network (see my twitter background). I do this so my customers don't have to. And anybody who doesn't like it doesn't have to follow me. When you subscribe to me, you can say I'm spamming you, and that may be true, but you subscribed to me and ask to be spammed by me. That your choice. And the question you should ask is am I dumb for posting crap, or are you dumb for choosing to listen to me.

In the end my rules are:
1. produce only if I would want to consume it
2. use the mute button (liberally) when producing and consuming
3. learn from the mistakes I make

Sure, gladly. I think I am adding value by posting, so I'll repost.

Actually Chielie, go back and read the post. The point is we are ALL selling ourselves, our ideas and wants. All the time which is the point you seemed to echo in your comment, so we are agreed.

Hi Chris
I came up with your name form my Twitter. I have to agree with you far to many people portrait that they know what it's all about but have never been at the coal-face, I am now going t sign up for some more from you. I'm retired because of ill health but giving more information to business people than I did when I was in business.
Regards GuruGeoffrey

I'm selling on Twitter… but to say that everyone is selling…, well that can't possibly be true.

There are people on Twitter for the sole purpose of hearing what Jane Blow is doing in her garden right now. Or how many beers Bob Dud is having with dinner.

In my opinion, when Jane tells me about her garden, that is my opportunity to start a relationship with her. And the next day when Bob tells me about his hangover, I see that as an opportunity to start a more personal conversation with him.

I think that we as business people on Twitter should recognize that unless we want to spend our time and resources selling to other sellers – we need Jane and Bob.

Yes but they are selling themselves their ideas and interests. The fact
that you think you are interesting enough to push your activities on people,
means your selling yourself. We also dont air our dirty laundry most times.
Many times people are positioning and making their lives look probably less
boring than it really is. We are all selling.

If you really sit back and think about it, it's those “Twitter Nazi's” that are killing communities. Case in point and I see this time and time again, when people feel threatened by the occasional blog post link, or whatever self promotion is presented, instead of doing the courteous thing and “unfollow” that person (it's all about choice after all) they freaking “block” them instead. This is insane, because the way most (not all but most) system administrators create their services ie: Twitter, Facebook, etc they do it in such a way that they treat a block request as a negative action.

This means when you block someone, you are sending some sort of alert to the system and thus the system administrators that hey “userxyz123″ did something offensive and you need to take action against them, and yet all that person did
was share something to you that you had to opt in to get to begin with.

What is the dire effect? Well, many services don't have a huge work force to help investigate each and every request (look at Twitter a work force well under 500 people for a service that caters to now over 100 million accounts worldwide), so
they (the service and the administrators) take the path of least resistance, and workload and if they get “x” amount of “block” request they just can the account
that is being accused.

This diminishes the community as a whole, and you could be directly affecting me because who isn't to say that I enjoy (and I am going to pick on Chris here in fun of course) Chris Voss and what he puts in my time line. Because a few people are ignorant of how to efficiently use Twitter, I have to run the risk of not being able to read what he publishes that I have personally opted in for, how idiotic is this?

But this happens each and every day, and it's actions like that gives social media a real bad name, because people want to take control of every little thing. Social media is the epitome of “democracy” in it's purest form. I not anyone else chooses what content I allow myself to be subjected to, and when someone does something to disrupt that (speaking sorely for myself) freedom, I tend to get a little frustrated if not borderline outraged.

If you don't want to be sold to on the Internet, do your and myself a favor and just unplug from the Internet and be done with it.

The more visible you become the bigger the target you are for naysayers. What ever the business model there will be people throwing stones.

Some one recently reminded mel If you are a leader and No One is following you, you are merely out for a walk.

We need to embrace change in technology and try to make it fit our own business model and direction. Love the New Google Search Presentation Tools http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4kjsnJqdjGo

David Pylyp
Living in Toronto

Thank you for explaining this. I have always wondered if there were negative effects from 'blocking' someone.

I liked this blog.Thanks

I liked this blog.Thanks

Agreed on all points. But, when I block, I do so knowingly that there may be a negative impact associated. It happens very infrequently but there are accounts I am not following who are spamming hashtag events, being abusive etc. that I will block.

I liked this blog.Thanks

What I love about you Chris is you get cranked up, actually “my man,” it’s “everybody is selling all the time, and everyone is also buying all the time, the only point of material difference is, what? You are either buying or selling, which is it?” I’ll give you that one for…FREE, why, cause your the man! Go for it big guy! You got it goin’ on. NOW- on the serious side, where’s the social media ROI jump off and break even and where is the measurable at…;-) It is time to buy into it …;-) And one of the real beauties of social media is, you are actually selling this to me in March…;-) Talk about time management to the max…;-)

All so obvious, kay? Why 11 minute so to say what could be said in one tweet?

I agree with quite a few points you made in a video, and don’t for a moment think or am shown that anyone is ”engaged” with me as a person, in one month on Twitter.
Sure we can call it a tool, and I love selling, but dropping all links on me did not make my life much better either. It’s a good change to read occasional tweet on something people think, or do. At least it’s fun if they have sense of humor. Otherwise it’s all links, links and more links of what I don’t want to buy or even see, a big spamming tool in my case so far.
I share your feelings about business consultants and management consultants who never produced any results and call themselves an expert/consultant. I would be tempted to say. ”No results? No consulting!”

Man this is what I call SPAM. Sending 100,000 messages is the same as sending 100,000 unsolicited emails. You shouldn’t be very proud of making 9 sales out of 100,000 tweets you sent this is 0.009% of success. You know why you got that little percentage because you are spamming people and because those following you don’t give a damn of what you say.I don’t think Chris is saying that Twitter is a new tool to spam, Twitter is not a replacement of email spamming, Twitter is another tool to build relationships and make sales.

Chris – well said. I agree, we’re all selling. Biz is about selling. What people need to remember is that social media and biz are not separate. The only way biz’s will see long term (or short term in reality) benefit (aka ROI) is to integrate into the DNA of their biz.

We are working with a couple big brand clients who it has taken them close to a year to even begin to accept the training of social media. Their sales folks are fighting tooth and nail. Why? Because we are getting in their biz. We’re uncovering biz and sales skeletons in the closet and maybe, yes maybe Mr. Sales person those 100 networking event you go to a week that you charge your company thousands for as an expense are NOT producing an ROI.

I have always liked your focus on biz and not just marketing. I am one to push relationships but it is not without a smart conversation with objectives. Relationships first but with a focus on driving biz or at least connecting with folks who bring us joy personally and professionally.

Thanks for the deep thought today. Needed that