Do you practice what you preach?
A few days ago, I was cruising Twitter and a fairly well-known person posed a question. It was open-ended and not directed at anyone in particular. I gave the question some thought (I can’t remember what it was now) and tweeted out an answer. I got no response. Well, that’s alright. That happens, still, probably about 75-80% of the time.
A little later in the day, I saw a tweet by the same person. “If you ask an open-ended question on Twitter, it’s a good idea to engage with the people who answer.”
“What am I?” I thought to myself, as I am wont to do. “Chopped livah?”
The issue has been rolling around in my head quite a bit ever since. It has made me kind of look at how people act on Social Media sites. And I wonder if we all practice what we preach.
You’ve got the biggest stage ever for as long as you want it
See, the thing about Social Media is that you can literally blast people with information all day about whatever you want. I’ve noticed that when I talk to people on the phone now, they’ll often say, “Are you there,” when I am quiet and listening. In real life, we’re not used to someone just being quiet and listening. But ah, on Social Media sites, it’s just you and your trusty fingers typing away. If you’ve always wanted to explain to people why tarantulas make great pets, you can go ahead and do that now. If you want to tweet every day about how candy actually is really good for you – go ahead!
The weird thing about this phenomenon is that it brings out the teacher in a lot of people. Teacher or preacher or maybe some combination of the two. There are lots of people who go out there and tweet best practices, advice, counsel, and you can almost sense their index finger wagging at you. If someone like that starts getting positive reinforcement, well, that’s like becoming principal! You are all powerful! You’ve won the race!
Do as I say, not as I do
Because it’s really easy to preach out tips, I think it’s really easy to fall into the trap of spitting out information without thinking about what it really means. This has a lot of potential ramifications. If you are always tweeting out best practices and then you break them the other half of your time online, you might look kind of silly. Even more interesting is the idea that if you gain a fair number of followers or fans or what have you, people might just start emulating you rather than listening particularly to your words. I’ve seen people out there who will retweet anything certain folks say. It’s uncanny. How many times have you been on Twitter, checked the retweets tab, and seen that 100+ people retweeted something like, “Ah, today the sky is above the ground.”
Here are some things that I “preach” that I worry about practicing well. Maybe you have some of these too.
Thanking people for tweets, retweets, listings, etc – great idea, gets hard to keep up with sometimes
Engaging with your community – if I’m rushed or if I need to get some info out, I may not live up to this
Throwing everything you can into what you do – Sometimes I know that I’m not giving my best effort. I get tired.
Neither a mute nor a flagellator be
I’m not saying that you should avoid tweeting out best practices or good ideas. I’m also not saying that you need to be or can be perfect all of the time. Social Media is 24/7. It’s demanding if you do it right. It’s hard to always feel the pressure of providing value. How do you know what everyone considers valuable, anyway?
I’m just saying that if there is a major disconnect between what you say and what you actually do, you could create some bad feelings without realizing it. Here are some things I might avoid saying if I were you.
I answer every comment on every post, so please leave a comment (if someone leaves a comment and you don’t respond to it, that person might feel kind of shafted)
I always follow back: I never have made that promise. If you’re a spam bot, you can get your feelings hurt. But there are people who I just don’t want to follow. I’m ready to be proven wrong if they prove to be more than what I see at first glance, but I’m never going to promise to follow everyone who follows me. I promise.
I will always thank people for following me: This is a great idea, but if you get bombarded after a chat, for example, it just takes too much time, especially if you’re also filtering out people you don’t want to follow. Again, if you say, “I always thank people” and then there’s a person you don’t thank, how will that person feel?
Looking to the future
I am seeing how maintaining a community in the world of Social Media could easily become a full-time job. I take that responsibility very seriously, but that doesn’t mean that I’m going to deprive myself of sleep, meals, or my actual real-life job. There may come a time when I won’t be able to respond back to everyone who responds to me. I will try my best to keep in touch with everyone I’m in touch with now. I will try my best to make every chat that I’ve committed to. But you know what? I can’t promise those things. So I’m just not going to.
Take a moment and look at your Social Media output. Are you talking a good talk but not walking it as well as you could? Does the balance need to shift a little? Even in Social Media, actions can speak louder than words.
Image by Harrison Keely. http://www.sxc.hu/profile/harrykeely
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Great Post!!
I agree with every point that you have mentioned. The same has happened to me, with well known social media guru types, not responding – yet they preach that responding to comments is imperative to your success. I suppose I am ‘chopped livah’ as well, and to tell you the truth – my feelings get hurt š
I also do not follow all. As for thanking all – I get busy with life, and stuff some days and just cannot keep up to twitter. I make an effort though to respond to comments as best I can, which is usually instant – but if not, please do not get your feelings hurt, as we all hopefully have a life an family.
Thanks for your delightful approach.
Well thanks Darleen. I quite appreciate that.
I don’t think it’s worth having hurt feelings over, but I know the sensation you talk about. It’s hard sometimes to imagine why you weren’t in the crowd of 27 people who got a response. Then sometimes there are people who volley back and forth and get into a huge conversation, and you think, “OK, now I’m REALLY chopped livah!” š But, it’s just a matter of volume, I think, and folks just might not be cognizant of these things.
Capital post Margie, capital!
This is precisely the trap social media could fall into, a load of sheep bleating the same phrases they’ve heard over and over again.
Listening and engaging is all well and good but once you engage with someone you’re in danger of showing yourself up, probably why people revert to meaningless platitudes or catchphrases du jour.
I’m all for shared knowledge but it would be nice for people to show original thought too.
As for are people practising what they preach, of course not, there’s plenty examples of this in any network – people talk the talk but rarely walk the walk. Doesn’t matter if they’re high or low profile, there’s a lot of people talking about social media but not putting best practice out there or even worse, telling people what is best practice.
Strangely, I can probably name who it was because I saw the question, saw your answer and saw no reply to it.
As social media becomes more popular, so more people are attracted to it. There’s people saying you need a mix of personal/business updates that only update personally on their business. Thanks for the huge borefest, you come across as one gigantic ego.
This is why snark will never die. I leave you now fellow social media observers. Hasta la victoria siempre. /me puts on North Korean marching music, heads out the door, sleeps.
haha š Well that’s one heckuva response š
When I first started on Twitter, I thought that my content had to be business only. It didn’t get me very far, strangely enough š
Sleep well!
Marjorie
I read this and thought about it and had to come back to comment as I had so many thoughts about it. I have many thoughts but in the spirit of not writing a novel, I shall try and be brief.
Social media is about building relationships and those relationships lead to something. That something is unique for each person and each connection. If I say I always X then I better put my money where my mouth is. But there is a flip side to that. If I say I always thank everyone that retweets me (which I do try and do), there is a time that I may not be able to and then they get lost in my twitter stream. I think when set out to do things yes we use words that are unrealistic absolutes and those absolutes are judged. Always and never are to me so many times unrealistic. I never lie (really?) I always put my right shoe on first (ok so what if I find the left one first do I hold it and not put it on until I find the right one?)
In social media, I agree that there are people that are saying I will do this and that or giving advice to do this or that and they do not do themselves. They may have at some point (I hope so if they are giving advice) I do not think that they are intentionally not living up to what they said (unless they totally suck) but there is the other part where yes they have said it and do all that they can to live up to it but that they set a standard that the community is wanting them to keep. Things happen, life happens. This may be a bit more than what this post about but then again if we say something do it for a while do we then have to come out and say I cannot do this anymore b/c of this, this and this? I do not know. I am an honest one that wears my heart on my sleeve (so I have been told) and when I see where I am not living up to my expectations or someone elses I fell an explanation is deserved.
I agree that some spew out and never take in. They do not practice what they preach and it only takes one to notice (the power of one is so incredible). One of the greatest aspects of social media is the opportunity to decide. We can decide if we want to include someone in our network. If someone is saying I always and after a few days you see a never, then they are not someone to focus on. If you see someone who always but yet for a day or so does not, then you have to take a minute and wonder why.
Just my thoughts. Great article and well thought out and one of those that you go and see did I do that?
@SuzanneVara
thanks Suzanne. Actually you hit the nail on the head. As my follower list grows, there just isn’t the time (sadly) to do everything I believe we should do. I just can’t do it. So I don’t want to say, “I always do this.” I might not be able to.
I think some people don’t realize that their situation has changed so dramatically – they are still in teaching mode and they aren’t looking around and saying, “Woah, by the sheer volume I’ve got going here, I can’t really do what I’m saying.”
I think a little qualification could make a big difference to people who feel like some of these folks are being a bit malicious. I seriously doubt that they are.
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Nice post Marjorie,
I liked the part where you talked about following people who follow you. I know some people handle it differently. Some people think it is common courtesy to follow back. I do not. I’ll tell you why I think that. If I follow everyone back who follows me, then it pretty much makes my home feed useless. The reason I care about that is because if I am watching tweets live, then monitoring the home feed can be useful, otherwise I generally follow lists.
Also I don’t necessarily care if some people are following me or care for them to continue to do some. I am not collecting pokemon or baseball cards, I am interacting with real people. That generally means I want to interact with colleagues or Businesses from my state of Connecticut since I help people with marketing in that state. That doesn’t mean I won’t follow people from other states or industries, but I take it by a case by case basis and decide carefully.
Basically it comes down to a decision. When someone follows you, stop and think, how would I feel if this person stopped following me and will following this person be beneficial to my goals? If not, don’t clog up your feeds anymore than they already are.
Thanks for inspiring me to share some thoughts on this topic.
I would love to know how you feel about some of the points I bring up.
– Christopher Adams Marketing & Business Consultant
you’re on the exact same page I am, Christopher. I can understand the logic behind people saying that it’s a common courtesy to follow back. The problem is that it’s not always real people who are following you (spam bots are a huge problem on Twitter), and a lot of people just follow you so that you follow THEM back. It’s about their numbers more than a human connection. So, even if you are the most engaging, courteous person in the world, you might not find a fertile relationship there.
Thanks so much for stopping by and commenting!
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