Are you co-signing on crap?
So something interesting happened just now. I was skimming through Google Plus, trying to figure out the value – trying to convince myself that there was more than broadcasting going on. So, let’s see. Cat rave. Cat with hat on. Cats hugging. Cats with hats on hugging and raving. And then a Gary Vaynerchuk video. Huh. Well that’s interesting. The particular person who shared this video previewed it by saying, “Why marketers are destroying social media.” That got me riled up. I was already writing my hate mail to Gary Vee, but I thought I would listen to his argument first.
Now, I didn’t play the video backwards, and maybe that was my mistake, but I didn’t hear the word “marketing” or “marketers” at all.
There is something deliciously ironic about this. It’s that kind of irony that you just long for in life  – not the kind of irony that Alanis Morisette sang about in the 90s. Because, see, one of the things Gary Vee *does* talk about is that a lot of people in the online world are tweeting stuff out cuz they want to sound important or smart (or both). They’re not really paying attention to what they are saying or retweeting. They just want to get attention, and they end up looking like idiots (except picture this in not-safe-for-work Gary Vee language). So here we have this person saying, “Oh, listen to Gary Vee talk about how marketers are ruining social media,” and really, the kind of shenanigans the sharer is up to – that’s what the speech is really about. Kind of a V8 moment, right? Bonk on the head!
But really, are you co-signing on crap?
When you are trying to get an apartment as a young, totally broke college student, most places require you to have a co-signer. When my parents co-signed for me, they made it pretty clear that while they would be my support net, they didn’t want to serve that purpose because I chose to live irresponsibly. Their signatures meant that they really believed I was responsible. They were willing to put their money where their mouths and hearts were.
If you retweet something or promote something, you are co-signing on that. You’re saying, “Yep, I think this is so great I want it to also be affiliated with me.” So, for example, if you choose to share a video that a pretty  big name in the online world did, that video may be associated with you as other people share your share. However, if you opt to do a false preview or promo of that content, that’s also a co-signing. And it makes you look like you didn’t pay attention, didn’t read or listen, or just didn’t get it.
By the way
There’s a lot of stuff in the speech Gary gave in this video that I disagree with strongly. I don’t agree with the “throw the spaghetti against the wall” mentality, and I don’t really believe in the “failure is good for you” mentality. Not all of us have enough expendable income to try things until something works. Just facin’ facts here. I might not even have made mention of this video because there’s so much I disagree with. But the fact that one of the strongest points – don’t co-sign crap, was completely contrasted with how the video was previewed – well, that was just too delicious to pass up. Like that yummy, rich, homemade fudge. Mm mm.
Read what you retweet. Check out that post before you promote it. Do a little research before writing a post for or against a person. Don’t be a co-signer on crap. It just makes you look (wait for it)…poopy. And unaware.
Right?
Image by barun patro. http://www.sxc.hu/profile/barunpatro
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Hey Margie, great topic. I haven’t seen that post but I have noticed (and I think it might be the case here) that people will share content like that (with popular people, etc) just to get more attention. It is like RTing Mashable or Copyblogger or sharing Marry S. on Facebook, if that makes sense.
Isn’t that what everyone is telling us to do… share the authorities from your niche to become a source of good info and people will follow you. But it just doesn’t work all the time, especially if you are attracting attention with the wrong title 🙂
@Brankica That’s funny because most of the time I intentionally don’t retweet the big names because I figure if anyone is interested in the topic, they already KNOW those people. Guess I’m doing it all wrong. 🙂
@mantywebdesigns Oh I DON’T do it as well. Imagine this – someone follows me and it is probably a beginner blogger (example). He/she follows all the bloggers that my blog is similar to. Guess how many Mashable RTs will he/she see in their stream!
That is why I don’t RT them unless it is something very useful I don’t want my follower to miss, but that is probably like one Mashable RT a month and 2 Copyblogger RTs a month.
Your logic is good in my book LOL
@Brankica Hi Brankica! You’re entirely right. We’re told to pass on the great content to our followers. The assumption is that if someone is a big name, everyone will appreciate the work you’re passing on. But everyone has an off-day. Chris Brogan admits to phoning it in at times. I mean, even you and I, once a year, may have an off-day, right? And we wouldn’t want that to become representative of our work. So, maybe take the advice but in a measured fashion!
That’s my biggest peeve about Twitter! Guess we can’t protect G+ from it, either.
@Angelique Probably can’t protect any part of life. People are in a hurry, to their detriment.
Margie, I think it is funny that so many people merely look at a title before retweeting or liking a post. I never really thought about co-signing but see your point. Good post. Miriam
@mim.gomberg Thanks my friend!
Margie, I agree but, I also believe that a force way larger than Twitter is at work. Many of us co-sign a whole bunch of stuff – sight unseen, research unread:
1. Political views
2. Religious views
3. Cultural views
4. Health issues
5. Wealth issues
6. Wisdom
I”m not being cute with the healthy, wealthy and wise. I’m really trying to point out that so much of our daily lives are wrapped in dubious promissory notes that, if there were a run on the belief bank, many of us would go broke.
Heck, I use Twitterfeed – probably the equivalent of giving a burglar my house keys and telling him, “It’s okay to use the laptop, just turn it off when you’re done, m’kay?” Am I co-signing on crap? I sure hope not! I only use a handful of Twitterers for that purpose. I’m not doing it to get attention – I just want to reciprocate their kindness in retweeting my stuff.
See that force? Reciprocity, blending in, conformity – whatever you call it – shapes a lot decisions. I could go on: Klout, CommentLuv, getting a livefyre account so I can chat with you, getting a Google Plus account, even though I have to fire up Chrome to use it (I usually use Firefox). Hmmm, browsers leads to toolbars like Alexa, StumbleUpon, Amplify…
I believe it is pervasive. Unavoidable. And totally survivable. 🙂
Cheers,
Mitch
@Mitchell Allen Yep, as Karima-Catherine said, it gets complicated when you’re in situations where reciprocity (perceived or real) is involved. But that’s where the “give to get” thing can become a negative instead of a positive. I assume that you’re tweeting out my post because you really liked it. If you’re tweeting it out because you just wrote a post you want me to tweet out, we should be honest about that, right?
@margieclayman I have a small following whose tweets mean something to me. One of them, Brankica, tweeted your post. From the title, I just knew it was related to curating {finger quotes, LOL}.
The added weight of seeing your name piqued my curiosity. (I first met you on G+, I forget the topic, though). Anyway, I definitely retweeted, but only after I left a comment.
The thing is, except for the slightly uncomfortable relationship I have with Twitterfeed, I am very selective about what I retweet. It’s never about my followers – I don’t buy that theory, either. (Whole ‘nother topic) Instead, it’s a cheerleader thing, sharing what I like and hoping others will check it out.
As for agendas, I use CommentLuv to do what you asked about.Twitter already has a retweet thingy, so I wouldn’t need to hit you with the reciprocity stick 😉
Cheers,
Mitch
Margie, once again I learn from your post! I don’t like to retweet big names, but do sometimes… But read content first. Thank You!
@dabarlow you got it – big name or little name, that’s the big moral here!
Sister. Amen. Never have I heard such a rant against no-one and everyone that made people feel good to pull others down! I’m impressed Gary gets so much great shares on such bad arguments. Blown away. Really.
@taariqlewis Like I said on G+, this post was not really intended to be an anti-Gary quote. In fact, my subject line is a paraphrased version of something in his talk. But what could have happened is I could have railed against Gary talking smack about marketers when in fact he didn’t do that. Because I took the time to listen to the presentation, I was able to write this post instead 🙂
I also feel the same way about quotes; while some are inspirational, people who only tweet quotes all the time means they probably don’t have a lot of interesting, original thoughts and are riding on someone else’s coattails. Now, I occassionally will tweet a quote, but not 10 in a row, even when I attend a conference or blogchat, I want to make that perfectly clear. Do you find there are too many “quoters” out there?
@smmanley When I see quotes on auto-pilot, I reach for the unfollow button. See also, some auto brain dump feed of random, pithy thoughts that may look like clever, pithy advice but really, it’s a blob of words w/ out much thought or idea behind them.. getting over that too.
@smmanley I used to get SO frustrated about the quotes thing when I first started on Twitter. I was out there trying to converse – I was doing all of the steps…asking questions, saying hi. Couldn’t buy a response. And then this person comes along with a quote from Oscar Wilde and looky, 17 retweets. I mean, that’s just bizarre.
I meant, no, I had never noticed 🙂
Because I hate co-signing I end up pissing people off because I don’t affiliate myself with anything that I don’t believe in.
A few days ago I ended up getting a request to vote for someone I respect on a nomination by an organization which does a lot of harm. When I rejected I am more than sure that the person is really not too happy with my reply.
He might respect my decision but he also wanted my support on the nomination. If I voted I would clearly affiliate myself with these shady organization.
@rj_c : What you point at is very interesting. I guess, signing or not actually depends greatly of ones values.
@rj_c I’m with you there, Raul my friend. It’s like that famous line from The Crucible..it’s my NAME! There is value inherent in your name and the use of your reputation and your community. That stuff is valuable. You don’t want to lose it just because you slipped up once.
Read before you RT. There is the lesson. If I know the content, I send it off with great praise. I also check through their stream or page to be sure I’m going not have an “uh-oh” moment to come back to haunt me. Too many folks just blindly RT and never really read what they post…..it’s your “cred” that’s at stake. Why do people just blindly give in to following the crowd? I’m so happy that you pointed out this Margie….thank you.
@gingerconsult Well thanks Ms. Jen. Very early on in my Twitter career, a guy in my stream had to make a big apology. He had normally taken a lot of time to check links before promoting them, but at this particular time he had been traveling and really under the weather, so he forwarded two links that turned out to be spam. A lot of his followers were affected by it. It was a good thing for me because I saw super early how damaging that kind of mistake could be. I have done my best to avoid such things ever since 🙂
Agreed, Margie.
Not enough people actually read through the posts, or watch the entire video, or understand the quote before they want to pass it on. Kind of a “pay-it-backward” 🙂 mantality if you are doing this for a big name in the hopes that you will be seen as an expert as well.
And, yes, it does make you look foolish, especially when the next thing you promote has a totally different spin. You ruin your credibility and people stop taking you serioulsy. You stand to lose you cred and your clout.
Personally, I like the Jethro Gibbs smack on the back of the head reather tham V8 …
@martinamcgowan
@Doc_1@martinamcgowan Well, so long as we’re smacking heads, I think we’ll be okay 🙂
Yes, that was another thing about Triberr that disturbed me. If you are in a tribe and people are set to tweet anything you write, you could do a series of posts totally contradicting each other, and all of them would get promoted. Not only would people get frustrated with you, they’d also be pretty darned confused in regards to those other folks, right?
Margie, I totally agree.
And, as your other readers have confirmed, it goes even further. We must “own” what we put out in the cyberworld – especially social media. As you said, many people just re-tweet before they read! And, how many of them auto-follow, and don’t know have a clue who is in their circle. And then how many follow and then immediately un-follow, openly giving away that they are just about the numbers. And then there’s the biggest one of all: How many people will post a personal opinion without thinking about the universe into which it will fall? If we took responsibility for (“owned”) all our communications, that wouldn’t happen.
JOSEPH
@jolewitz Nothing much to add there, Joseph. When your face and name show up beside content in a very public platform, you should be ready for any assumptions or connections people might make about why you’re tying yourself to that person or content. That’s just common sense, right?
This is an interesting one Margie.
I can only talk about my experience here. I have totally signed on crap on occasions because I value loyalty more than skills (90% of the times). One thing I rarely do is signing without reading the small prints. I will co-sign crap but I know why I do and I fully own it.
This being said, it will depend with who and what the circumstances are.
@karimacatherine It does get to be a moral conundrum sometimes, right? But whereas you stay with loyalty, I stay with trying to keep a standard for what I’ll co-sign on. I don’t think either way is bad or good, and I probably tick a lot of people off because I won’t promote a post rife with grammatical errors, no matter how nice they are. Content, to me, is not about a person’s soul, per se. It’s also about quality. Not everyone who sees this content will know me. Does the content stand up on its own? That’s the guiding standard for me.
I appreciate it and knowing you, I am very comfortable with your response. As far as standard of quality, I will nuance a little bit because as a French native speaker, my posts/updates/tweet are far from grammatically perfect. Many brilliant people are not native english speakers and still want to share their content. Really, it is not an issue for me. As @Loic (from Seesmic) said, he grew to be ok with the mistakes he makes in English. It is about transparency and authenticity.
I could have my posts reviewed but since blogging is not how I earn my money, I am happy with the level of quality I produce.
We live in an place where everyone writes, whether or not they are professionally trained. I will look at the message more than the format (including mistakes, typos,..) . As you said, neither of the two approach are wrong, they just depend on your experience. Mine is coming from an international background where english is a second language that we try to master. (btw, I totally admire your writing style. I learn lots of expressions)
Many people RT or share stuff they never read. They share it based on the provider and their name. Some do it for good will with “A-Listers”, some do it just because they feel the need to pas something on.
Many co-sign on crap just for the notoriety. They want to challenge a big gun just for the attention that draws. Often that comes by picking something trivial and easy to misinterpret so as not to be challenged.
It completely waters down and dilutes the quality of their reputation and shares. Eventually that comes around.
@Chris_Eh_Young you hit on what Gary’s point was in that part of the speech, 100%. The “ruining social media” part was that people are retweeting stuff or promoting stuff just because a well-known person said it, or a person who claims to be well-known said it. In fact, in his own self-deprecating way, Gary indicated that you probably shouldn’t retweet most of what he says. It’s an interesting phenomenon to think about, non?
RIGHT! This is why I’m not part of any commenting pyramid scheme or RT club – implicit, opt-in, automated or otherwise. If I share something, it’s b/c 1) I’ve READ it and 2) I think and hope that at least SOME of my followers (I know I won’t hit everyone) will find of value, interest or entertainment. As I cheer my LSU Tigers, it lets people know more about me: that I like sports, am from LSU and mostly, that I’m not ‘all biz and marketing’ all the time.
I hadn’t seen this particular video, but am familiar w/ a few of Gary V’s rants on marketing/social media.. so I’ll just give you both a big WORD to NOT co-signing on crap. FWIW.
@3HatsComm I’m with you:)
@3HatsComm Hey Davina. I hear ya. Didint know when I joined a tribe it would RT automatically. I do like everyone in there. But. Anyway, let’s get to the important stuff. Where have u been ? It’s time to start talking Bama vs LSU ! Woo Hoo ! Roll Tide. I really wish i was going. Hey, score some tickets and i would be glad to meet u in Tuscaloosa. Ha !
Will be in touch. Take CARE. Go BAMA !
Al
@Al Smith I’ve got my ‘tribe’ if you will: it’s a wide range of various social and Twitter friends. When I have time, I read; if I’m so motivated I comment and/or RT (and they, on my stuff). No obligation, no quid pro quo, no fuss; just me and my approach to a so-called social strategy.
Now you do need to work on your spelling sir. It’s GEAUX, as in G-E-A-U-X Tigers! Seriously, Christmas has come early and the National Championship game will be Nov. 5th… be a total blast but you can bet that game sold out a long time ago. 🙂
@Al Smith@3HatsComm Go Buckeyes?
@margieclayman@Al Smith@3HatsComm Go Leafs? Yeah…I.am.Canadian:)
@KDillabough@margieclayman@Al Smith@3HatsComm BULLDAWGS!!!!
@margieclayman@Al Smith Well, they did finally win a bowl game vs. the SEC last year but uh, no.. SEC all the way. 🙂
@Brankica@KDillabough@margieclayman@Al Smith Sorry Bran, only nice think I can say about the Dawgs is at least they’re in the right conference, SEC! 😉
@3HatsComm@KDillabough@margieclayman@Al Smith Oh I am not even going to get into it…cause no one can persuade me I am wrong.Bulldawgs
Braves
Falcons
#thatisall
@3HatsComm Thanks Davina. Yeah, as I mentioned, that was a huge problem I had with Triberr. I knew for certain that people were tweeting out my posts without reading them, and that’s just not what I’m after here. I’m glad I’m in good company!
Oh margieclayman …you have such a way with words…co-signing on crap is so perfect. I was just on a wonderful Google+ Hangout with four awesome people who would probably love this post ( lorigosselin pasmithjr kdillabough and liveurlove ) and we touched on this very subject…how important organic (is that word okay, BTW?) is in the promoting of blogs,tweets, posts etc. If I believe in someones dream, idea, website and I really “get” it, then my promotion of it is going to be valid and credible. If I re-post or re-tweet just for the sake of re-posting or re-tweeting, I may have, indeed, just co-signed on a bunch of embarrassing crap and, as a result, I have just lost major credibility points. I really try to be sincere in the promoting of other people’s content…friends and otherwise. Thanks @margieclayman …you are definitely the epitome of NON-crap in my book 😉
Claudia
@SocialMediaDDSmargieclaymanlorigosselinpasmithjrliveurlove@margieclayman Ditto everything Claudia just said! LOVE this post Margie, and I vow not to co-sign on crap:)
@KDillabough@SocialMediaDDSmargieclaymanlorigosselinpasmithjrliveurlove@margieclayman Yep – you’ve got a lot of people agreeing with you Margie! (Good thing THIS post is not about daring to disagree!) We need to know what we put our names behind or at least WHO we are backing with our promotional tools. I’m not co-signing on crap either. 😮
Lori
@Lori I know, right? It’s so humdrum when y’all agree with me 😉 Nah, not really. You all don’t *just* agree. You add something wonderful to the conversation. Which is why you all rock my socks.
@margieclayman@Lori I disagree 🙂
@KDillabough Yay! Thank you 🙂
@SocialMediaDDSlorigosselinpasmithjrkdillaboughliveurlove Oooh, non-crap. Well, I never went out of my way to aspire to that, but I’ll take it! Thanks 🙂
This is exactly why I dont like Triberr. I got a tweet from someone the other day asking why I retweeted something about a tool and told me they thought it was crap. Huh? I had no clue what they were talking about. Turns out that someone in my ‘tribe’ posting a blog that evaluated a tool. UGH. My tweets are no longer in my control and I appear as though – as you state – I am co-signing this content. I sincerely hope my followers know me well enough that if the tweet is canned with the title of the blog, then most likely it’s some automation tool working against me. But what’s a girl to do? Abandon her tribe?
@C_Pappas I know you want to support those who support you (as do we all), I just think taking control of your tweets, what you cosign does just that. Maybe you could switch to manual mode, then read everything from your tribe before it goes out, tweet only what you approve? It’s my problem w/ any tool like this: ‘automated curation’ is an oxymoron IMO, and if the tool can’t save me time, can’t do the work for me vs. what I’m already doing, it’s not much help to me. FWIW.
[…] Margie Clayman, who’s got a great, hopeful perspective on this social experiment and is NOT down with sharing and co-signing on crap. […]
[…] to pull the ReTweet or Share triggers without truly and honestly assessing the content. Are we co-signing on crap? (as Margie Clayman says. If you’re not reading Margie’s blog, you should […]