Thursday, February 04, 2010
Social Media Pet Peeves

I like social media. I think especially Facebook and Twitter is the way to go and for individuals and businesses, it is as important to establish a meaningful presence on these sites as it was in 1998 to have a web site. I also like other social media outlets such as Xbox Live. I have tons of friends and I care about what they do. I am also interested in tons of businesses and products and want to be connected with them, but I’d never have the time to go out of my way to visit their web sites all the time.

There are some things people do on these sites however, that drive me nuts. Here is a list of my top gripes:

• Pick a name I can recognize! If you friend me and I can’t tell who you are, I am not going to friend you back. And even if I can find out who’s behind a silly name initially, I will probably forget it and not recognize you when you post a status update. Besides, many social networks will make it very hard for me to search for you if you use a silly name!
• Upload a real picture of yours! This is very similar to the name issue. I (as many people) are not all that good with names. I meet tons of people at various events and other occasions. I make an effort to remember names, but I still have a much easier time to recognize faces. So use a photo that allows me to recognize you!
• Put up a short and concise bio (especially on Twitter). If you friend me, I will follow you too in all likelihood. But I go through lists of people fast. Just today, I weeded through 200 followers and I have probably less than 1 second for each of them to decide whether I want to follow them back. So I glance at the bio and make an on the spot decision. If I do not find anything that interests me, I will never follow you. This is a one-chance deal.
• Before you friend a lot of people, add some substance. If someone follows me on Twitter I will look at their page, and if there is nothing there for me to look at tweet-wise, then I will not follow you back as I have no idea what kind of stuff you post online.
• If you are a business, you need to change the way you present yourself. Post a single stupid marketing message and I will unfriend you. Post something that has substance.
• Don’t protect your tweets. If you do not want your tweets to be seen, then Twitter is not the place for you. I will never go out of my way to follow you if I have to request the follow. You can always block someone you don’t want to see your tweets.
• DON’T SHOUT AT ME! If you write in all upper case, you are annoying a lot of people.

Well, that’s the short list anyway. I could go on and on. What are your social media pet peeves?