Last week, Ian M. Rountree and I started Read It All Week, a challenge to read everything we were subscribed to — especially all the blogs we so easily subscribe to, but never actually absorb.  We did this for two reasons:

• To reconsider why we subscribe to certain kinds of media, and
• To learn how long it would take to actually read everything we’re committed to.

What I Started With

My goal was to read every post published to the 63 blogs I subscribe to in Google Reader.

I wasn’t sure how long it would take, but my guess was around 15 hours.

So, What Happened… and How Long DID It Take?

Here’s how it worked out for me:

• Total # of items read (or, when uninteresting, skimmed) in Google Reader: 560
• Total # of those 560 items that had been shared by others: 235
• Total # of those 560 items I then felt compelled to share: 32
• Total time invested reading items in Google Reader: 496 minutes (or 8+ hours)

In other words, I spent more than one entire workday reading.

About 2/5 of that reading load were items suggested to me by others.

And yet, in that time, I only felt compelled to share 1/18th of what I found.

Sounds like my incoming signal-to-noise ratio is a bit excessive…

What Else Did I Learn?

Well, in no particular order, I came to the following conclusions:

1. I read more deeply when I break my reading time up into smaller sessions.

On days when I made time to check Reader two or three times, I felt more able to really read each post.

On days when I only checked Reader once, I felt more compelled to just get through it.  This led to much more skimming and much less sharing, since I’d invested less time emotionally in what I was reading.

On the days when I felt pressed for time, I also found myself resenting longer posts and highly prolific publishers, which seemed like obstacles between me and “done,” rather than the valuable sources of information I recognized them as during my more leisurely reads.

2.  Most of the information people share is useless to me.

But it’s not the information you (or I) might suspect.

Initially, I presumed that the social media-specific posts shared by the people I follow on Reader would be enriching.  Since I was subscribed to only a dozen social media blogs, I knew I had to be missing something interesting.

Not really.

It turns out most people in the social media field read the same major news sources and share the same information, or variations thereof.  Plus, anything relevant or popular from these channels is usually retweeted endlessly throughout the week.  (For example, I learned about Flipboard from a shared item in Reader, but I would have also learned about it from any of the 2 dozen tweets I noticed about that same article.)

The other thing I realized?  Most social media-related articles are crap.  Some are rehashes of things I already know (which, obviously, is not what you already know, and I get that).  Others are so niche-specific that I’d never make use of the information.  And still others are such common sense sub-101 blather that reading them wastes my time.

So… what information did matter to me?

3.  I need to subscribe to more interesting blogs.

Again, “interesting” in this sense means “interesting to me.”

In my case, I’m drawn to posts about art, literature, culture, science and history.  These are the areas I want to learn more about, as opposed to social media, a field in which I regularly feel overwhelmed by sameness.

Which means I need to adjust my subscriptions.

4.  Consistency is key.

Writing one good blog post is easy; writing good blog posts regularly is rare.

Often, I’ll read one or two good posts by an author and then subscribe to his / her blog.  And then, over the ensuing weeks, I’ll realize one or two good posts may be all they have to offer.

If so, I can’t wait around forever for their next great idea.  My time is precious, and I’d rather not step through a minefield of oysters in order to find your few buried pearls.

(This also explains why some of the blogs I consider most indispensable — like The Rumpus — are group blogs curated magazine-style from the contributions of many.)

Although writing good blog posts is hard, finding good blog posts to share shouldn’t be.

And yet…

5.  I’m confused by people’s motivations when sharing items.

I follow some potentially interesting people on Reader, because I presume they’ll find (and share) articles I won’t.  But again, the social media field is crushed by redundancy.  For example, I follow Chris Brogan, Chris Penn, C.C. Chapman and Steve Garfield (among others) which means I often see the same information shared several times.

In addition, some people seem to share everything they read, which makes me wonder if they’re confusing the act of sharing with the act of glorifying.  It’s as though they can’t separate what they personally consider “useful” or “interesting” from what they feel obliged to help promote because of their relatively impressive reach and influence.

However…

6.  You can learn a lot about people from what they share.

Chris Brogan is a social media maven, but what he shares in Google Reader reminds me he’s also deeply interested in theology and spirituality.  Mike Sorg is a veteran podcaster, but his shared items are a snapshot of comic books & general geekery.  And Mary Hartney is a journalist by trade, but her shared items lean heavily toward art, culture and food.

As such…

7.  I learned to share information more consciously.

On one hand, I want to share information I’m personally interested in.  And because my aforementioned interests exceed the limits of *just* social media, that means people who follow me on Reader are likely to see a lot of shared information about books, racism, economics and underwater sculpture.

On the other hand, Read It All Week made me highly conscious of the way each shared item encroaches on a reader’s available time.  It made me more reluctant to share items, because I didn’t want to sabotage the time & attention of the people who follow me.

Ultimately, I still did share items (because I would have whether it was Read It All Week or not), but fewer than I would have if I hadn’t been thinking about my time and yours.

8.  Believe it or not, I actually learned things.

My Reader, like yours, is full of information both great and pointless.  The trick, I learned, is to skim past the duds and invest in the quality — and, very often, that quality tends to bottleneck in a few sources.

For example, Atlantic Monthly columnist Ta-Nehisi Coates was on vacation during Read It All Week, so he asked three of his most trusted commenters (Brendan I. Koerner, Hua Hsu and Cynic) to fill in for him.  The result was the most compulsively readable blog of the week, covering ground from Shirley Sherrod to LeBron James, what happens when “fringe” cultures are assimilated into America’s mainstream and whether Jack London’s racism should mar his literary genius.

Had I ignored Reader (as I so often do), I would have missed these and dozens of other enlightening and captivating essays (like Kathleen Alcott’s masterpiece from The Rumpus), all because I was “too busy” doing… whatever it is I usually do.

Speaking of which…

9.  I did not go broke while reading.

On the contrary, last week was quite fruitful, business-wise.  I pitched a potential client, spoke at a live event and conducted a social media workshop, knocked out a guest post for Jim Kukral (peppered with knowledge I gleaned from blogs I rediscovered in Reader), and locked down two more business meetings for next week, all while executing the tasks I’m already contracted to do for my existing clients (and having a real life).

So if I can do all that while spending 8 hours reading blogs — which is only half the time I’d originally expected to invest — what am I usually doing that prevents me from staying up to date on the media I’ve subscribed to?

Probably tweeting.  In fact…

10.  What did I miss on Twitter?

During those 8 hours I was reading blogs, I kept a Twitter window open so I could chart how many tweets whizzed past me.  Turns out I missed over 2200 tweets.

That’s more than 2200 conversations I could have weighed in on, but didn’t.

Would engaging in some of those conversations have left me any better informed, connected or enriched than my time spent reading?  Possibly.  But I’ll never know.

And I’m okay with that.

What Happens Now?

Now I clean up my feeds.  (As opposed to Amber Naslund, who prefers to blow hers apart.)

I’ve already dropped from 63 blog subscriptions to 44 — that’s a 30% reduction.  However, most of those were blogs that hadn’t been recently updated.  (Imagine if they had…)

I’ll also reconsider how I follow people on Reader.  Since 2/5 of my time was expended on their recommendations, I need to ensure that their expertise is worth my time and attention.  But the quality and relevance of the items people choose to share is wildly unpredictable, so I can’t judge too quickly.

And, like Bryan Person, I may ultimately subdivide my subscriptions into two camps: what I should read, and what I could read (time permitting).

Because not everything I subscribe to is worth reading, but there are always pearls among the oysters.

The trick is to find them without losing my time… or my mind.

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On Sunday nights, Mack Collier runs a Twitter-based group chat called #blogchat, which I highly recommend to anyone who wants to learn more about blogging while hobnobbing with their peers.

But, based on the defensive reaction to some of my comments from several of the #blogchat participants, I’ve realized that #blogchat is strictly a place for sunshine and puppies, and I rarely come armed with either.  So I thought I’d take the time to do some much-needed bubble-bursting here, rather than continuing to ruin the #blogchat vibe.

NOTE: If you cry at the sight of anything other than unicorns, hugs and kittens, please close this window now.  You’ll only depress yourself, and you’ll spend the next hour telling me why I’m wrong, when I don’t really care.

Still here?  Great.  Because…

1. There’s no rule that says you have to be nice in social media.

I know, all the important people are.  But I’m not important, so I don’t have to be.  And even if I was important, I’d probably still be an asshole.

(In fact, most people become assholes after they’re important, so the fact that I’m an asshole before becoming important means my assholishness is actually authentic.  And isn’t authenticity one of the social media cornerstones?)

2. All social media is not created equal.

Yes, the tools are “democratic,” inasmuch as anyone with an Internet connection can use Twitter.  But you are not Chris Brogan, nor are you Sara Schaefer.  You are you.  And you matter exactly as much as you matter, to whomever is counting.

To say that there’s “no social media hierarchy” or “no social media pecking order” is ludicrous.  Just because there isn’t an officially accredited list of A, B, C and Z-list bloggers doesn’t mean we don’t all know who they are, give or take a rung.

(And yes, you can be a Z-list blogger and still produce A-list work, and vice versa.  Quality and reach are two separate factors.  In the end, we’re judged according to other people’s criteria, not our own.)

3. I am not required to help you for free.

Granted, some people do it really badly, but yes, social media is a business.  Not for everyone, but for some people.  And no, they don’t have to help you, or give you free advice, or even be nice to you (see above).  Some of the nicest ones do; others don’t.  (Hell, I charge $200 for a lunch.)

Being nice is wonderful, but to anyone for whom social media is a business, what matters to them is paying the bills.  If they have time to be nice, or if being nice is part of their brand — and, therefore, their business — they’ll do it.  And, in general, social media people tend to be overly nice, almost to a fault (usually because they want you to talk about them).

But if you’re waiting for Seth Godin to write a guest post on your Blogger blog that has 2 subscribers because “helping people is the right thing to do,” don’t hold your breath.

Your two readers will be heartbroken if you asphyxiate.

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What if our newspapers were filled with articles on how to write for newspapers?

What if the only books we printed were books about how to sell books?

What if TV shows consisted solely of monologues about TV?

I doubt we’d have much use for them at all.

So why do we accept it in social media?

The Three Pillars of Social Media Content

If you blog, podcast or otherwise create media for web-based distribution, you probably talk ad nauseam about one of three topics:

• How to create web content
• How to monetize web content
• Yourself

Notice that you probably don’t talk about the subject matter of your content, because your content is its own subject matter.

Crazy, isn’t it?

We blog about blogging.  We market about marketing.  And, when we’re not selling our expertise, we sell ourselves.  It’s the equivalent of painters forever painting portraits of themselves painting their own self-portraits.  I can’t imagine another medium that would exist solely to justify and perpetuate its own existence, and yet that’s precisely what we do here.

It’s ugly.  It’s desperate.  It’s solipsistic.  (Look it up.)  And it makes for one anemic defense of an industry.

It’s almost like social media labors under the suspicion that if it stops talking about itself, it’ll cease to exist.

Which begs the question: does social media exist?  Or are we making the whole thing up?

If a Tree Falls in the Woods and No One Retweets It…

The social side of social media revolves around techniques meant to get others talking about you.  The media side of the equation is less about the form of the content and more about its distribution.  Mobile, web-based, downloadable, subscribable…  These aren’t media forms.  These are means of distribution.

What we have is people using multiple channels to convince you of their own merit, mostly so you’ll talk about them — and, specifically, so you’ll talk about their vast array of expertise, in subjects like…

• creating content,
• monetizing content, and
• themselves

Is it any wonder that people believe Twitter is a wasteland of people discussing airports and breakfast cereal?

Are you shocked when the level of social media discourse reported by CNN or Nightline amounts to the same uninformed, knee-jerk reactions we already ignore when we scan through blog comments, but which the mainstream media somehow thinks represents America’s profound and timely wisdom?

Of course, it aggravates those of us who believe in the potential of social media, and it motivates us to prove the naysayers wrong.

But here’s the catch:

What if they’re right?

Does a Computer Know It’s a Computer?

If our entire medium did exist solely to justify its own existence, surely we’d recognize that lunacy and abandon it for something legitimately meaningful.  Right?

Only if we can diagnose our own insanity.

Look at the blogs you subscribe to, the tweeters you follow and the podcasts you download.  What percentage of those sources focus on something other than social media itself?

Look at your own output.  What do you write or speak about most often?  Is it a topic that has to be explained to anybody who hasn’t heard of Chris Brogan?

Odds are, those odds aren’t good.

So why do we do this?

And what would happen if we didn’t?

I Wrote a Play About This Playwright Who Writes Plays About Playwrights Who…

What if you spent more time writing and reading about a topic other than the web itself?

Who’s creating dynamic media that happens to be online, rather than media that only matters online?

How can you use social media to teach others about a subject besides social media?

(You do have other interests, don’t you?)

Wouldn’t it be great if you didn’t have to perpetually explain what you did to people (and why), because the value of what you do would be obvious even to people who don’t own smartphones and who think Amber Naslund was the bassist in Jem?

I know, it’s a scary idea.  The first rule of Fight Club was “don’t talk about Fight Club,” because if you did talk about Fight Club, then Fight Club might cease to exist.

With us, it’s the opposite: if we stop talking about social media, then we cease to exist.

Or, more specifically, we cease to exist in our own little fishbowl.

But if we’re only special to each other, we’re not really special at all, are we?

We’re just people with make-believe jobs and titles, who invent our own conferences and pay to hear each other speak about speaking about talking about blogging about ourselves.

And call me a cynic, but I think we can do better.

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Admit it: deep down, you’ve always known that the world works differently for The Important People.

You just hate it when the world proves you right.

Take Conan O’Brien, for example.  The guy sends out a single tweet and he changes this girl’s life.  Meanwhile, you desperately retweet your own blog posts 14 times a day in the empty hope that Chris Brogan will accidentally click the retweet button while his cursor is hovering over your name, thereby unintentionally beaming your essay about hashtag etiquette to his thousands of rabid followers.

And sure, you have a few close friends who seem to listen when you talk, but some of these people on the Internet — people who are just like you — are listened to (and trusted by) by tens of thousands!

How much cooler are their lives than yours?

Well, as it turns out… not that much cooler at all.  But possibly more productive.  And that might be the real dividing line between you and Them:

While you’re just trying to get people to notice you, they’re trying to get you to notice other people.

So… How Do the Cool Kids Use Twitter?

In order to learn a bit more about this perceived difference between the social media “influencers” and those of us being influenced by them, I contacted 40 Twitter users with followings over 10,000.  Of those 40, fifteen responded, and thirteen of them had the time to take my six question survey.

[DISCLOSURE: Of the 15 respondents, I've met 6 personally.  Of the 25 non-respondents, I've met 7 personally.  Conclusion: knowing me is irrelevant.]

The respondents (in alphabetical order):

• C. C. Chapman (@cc_chapman) / Podcaster and Campfire Creative Director
• Mack Collier (@MackCollier) / Social media consultant and strategist
• L. P. “NEENZ” Faleafine (@NEENZ) / Chief Evangelist for Alltop
• Jason Falls (@jasonfalls) / Social Media Explorer
• Steve Garfield (@stevegarfield) / The godfather of videoblogging
• Beth Harte (@BethHarte) / Serengeti Communications
• Doug Haslam (@DougH) / Social media gadabout
• Mitch Joel (@mitchjoel) / Six Pixels of Separation
• Beth Kanter (@kanter) / Social media advisor specializing in non-profits
• Calvin Lee (@mayhemstudios) / Mayhem Studios
• Jim Long (@newmediajim) / Web content creator & NBC news cameraman
• Amber Naslund (@ambercadabra) / Blogger & Dir. of Community @ Radian6
• and one marketer who preferred to remain anonymous

What follows are the most pertinent responses to my 6 questions, along with my own summaries based on their composite experiences.

Q1: “Did you make a conscious effort to grow your Twitter account?”

Since so many people do invest time in growing their Twitter following, whether organically or by nefarious means, I was curious about the degree to which my respondents had “worked” for their authority.  The results ranged from the conscious…

I joined Twitter in July 2007 with the goal of marketing and networking.  Initially, it was important for me to grow my following, especially since there were very few people from my home state of Hawaii and zero from my existing network on Twitter at the time.  I watched the conversations on Twitter, and I followed those [whom] I was following on their blogs, in forums, webinars, livestreams, etc.  I engaged in conversations as often as I could, outside of Twitter.

A few months after joining, I had my first tweetup (before they were called tweetups) with Guy Kawasaki. It was very brief, but it led to a lifetime opportunity to work with him on Truemors, and I continue to do so on Alltop.
@NEENZ

… to the incidental…

God no. I’ve always had the same approach to Twitter: I say whatever comes to mind, share links that I find interesting and RT anything that catches my eye that I think others will like.

I’ve never paid attention to the numbers, and when they started going up, it was very strange.  A couple of times, I asked why people followed me and I always got a variety of answers.  Most of them come from listening, reading or watching a piece of content I produced somewhere else, and they want to stay up to date on what I’m doing.
@cc_chapman

… to the accidental.

No.  I had 30,000 followers built one relationship at a time and [through] word of mouth.  In Oct 2009, I got on Twitter’s SUL [Suggested User List] and grew.
@kanter

Conclusion?  There’s no “guaranteed” way to grow a massive following, but most respondents do share two common traits: providing information that others consider valuable, and being authentically interested in meeting new people.

In other words, they caught their flies with honey, not with endless claims about how wonderful their own work is.  On Twitter, finding the right mix of humility and hubris is key.

Q2: “How has your experience as a Twitter user changed due to the growth of your followers?”

If you’ve never had 10,000 people on speed dial, you might have a romantic idea of what that experience would be like.

Alas, my respondents claim you’d be disappointed…

It is MUCH harder to have conversations and track what is going on in the marketing, communications and PR communities. I miss a lot of news, updates, blog posts, etc.
@BethHarte

… and aggravated:

I’ve also had to accept that I just can’t respond to everything, and deal with the sometimes snarky fallout that ensues, like folks claiming I’m a “twitter snob” or “not engaging”.
@AmberCadabra

… or even nostalgic:

I’ve lost track of my original crew, but I’ve met very interesting, cool people along the way. That, coupled with working harder than ever at my job, means [I have] much less time for longer discussions on Twitter.
@newmediajim

… except for those times when it’s freaking wonderful.

b/c I have so many followers and [so much] influence, I get invited to events, freebies, projects, etc. It’s a lot of fun being treated like a celeb, but also weird.
@MayhemStudios

As expected, the volume of incoming information makes meaningful conversations harder to come by.  But there are solutions.

It’s made me focus on the people that actually interact with me. They stand out from the crowd, and I try to follow anyone that interacts with me.
@MackCollier

Conclusion?  Sean Combs was right: mo’ money (or mo’ followers) creates mo’ problems… but also mo’ opportunities.

Q3: “Do you receive more meaningful feedback as a result of having your tweets circulated to more people?“

All but two of the respondents said “yes” to this question, including:

I am very grateful for my Twittersphere.  They’ve often been able to provide me with solutions during times when I’m traveling [or] different tools to use to improve my business.  One time someone from MN sent me the number to a locksmith in Hawaii when I locked myself out of my home!
@NEENZ

… and:

For sure. I’ve had a lot of doors open for conference, clients and opportunities from more people retweeting or sharing my tweets with other people.
@cc_chapman

… although not everyone is convinced that increased reach is a good thing.

I get a lot more criticism now than I ever did when I say something off-color.  Is that meaningful feedback?  Maybe.  I do see a lot of re-tweets of my posts and shares these days, but that’s just a matter of scale, I think.  It’s nice, but I pay as much attention to flowery compliments as I do the haters.
@JasonFalls

I suspected this answer might be self-evident, and I was (mostly) correct.  Therefore, I owe myself a Coke.

Q4: “How has a larger Twitter following changed other people’s perception of you?“

Refreshingly, nearly everyone reported a healthy dose of skepticism associated with their own public perception:

I’m not sure. Perhaps some people think I’m some sort of social media “whatever” because of a larger following, but it took over three years to get here.
@DougH

People think I’m more important than I am.  I’m still just a dumb guy with a blog.  Sort of.
@JasonFalls

I have no idea if it has, and it really shouldn’t since anyone can have a larger Twitter following; just follow more people!
@MackCollier

Some were even skeptical of the “influence” metrics themselves:

To the plus (and not necessarily accurate), I’m looked at as some kind of a “model” for what to do, and how to use Twitter well — and therefore one of those dreaded social media experts…  I also think it tends to falsely inflate my “influence”, with things like Twitter lists, rankings, and the like.
@AmberCadabra

Jim Long may have summed up our misplaced Twitter valuations best:

It’s funny.  More and more people that I meet, whether online or in real life, will say things like: “Oh, newmediajim, you’re great!”  I find myself pretty unremarkable.   [But] I think what I do for a living allows me to share pretty remarkable experiences.
@newmediajim

… unless you happen to be in the business of managing other people’s perceptions, like our anonymous respondent, who may have offered the shrewdest response:

My clients see it as a selling point. The more followers I have, the more important I am to them. Why? Because they don’t know any better, yet.
[Anonymous]

Q5: “What are you able to accomplish today that you could not have accomplished with a significantly smaller Twitter following?“

And here’s where the answers get really interesting.  (NOTE: I’ve emphasized the elements of their responses that I find most compelling.)

Hmmmm…..informal research is the only thing that comes to mind specifically for Twitter.

What I mean is that because of my large number of followers, I can throw out a question for a client, for curiosity, or any other reason and be sure that I’m going to get back a handful of really solid answers.  That isn’t possible without such a big pool to fish in.
@cc_chapman

… or:

Driving a fair amount of traffic to other people’s great content. I had a spirits blogger email me one day in a stupor because he’d gotten the single largest traffic day in his blog’s history, all because I shared his post on Twitter and Facebook.
@JasonFalls

… or:

Today I can ask for the answer to a question, or a contact at a company, and have several answers within seconds. That obviously didn’t happen when I had a much smaller network.
@MackCollier

… or:

It gives you much more influence. Makes it easier to help with charities, getting work, people / companies listening & reach out to you. I’ve even done some design work for Guy Kawasaki b/c of Twitter.
@MayhemStudios (and yes, if you’re counting, that’s 2 respondents who’ve obtained work with best-selling author Guy Kawasaki because of Twitter)

… and:

I have a larger base of intelligence and insight upon which to draw. I can get faster and broader exposure for an idea, [whether it's] mine or other people’s. I can help truly have an impact on other people’s work, and point more eyeballs to people doing significant things. And I can solicit broader and deeper input and feedback from broader audiences across many industries and disciplines that I couldn’t before.
@AmberCadabra

See a pattern?

The people with large audiences are most interested in using their audiences to aid and empower other people.  Twitter analysts like Dan Zarrella have noted that talking about yourself is a less-successful Twitter strategy than talking about others; now you see this truism remains ingrained in users’ behavior (and personalities) even after their popularity has been confirmed.

Conclusion?  You can buy followers, but you can’t buy humanity.

Also, there can even be hidden benefits to having such a large following, like…

Support when I get attacked by a detractor. I’ve had folks defend me without me even asking them to, or knowing that they had. That can’t be bought or gamed…it needs to be earned.

I also think having a large follower count allows me to NOT be on Twitter as much as I was a year or two ago.
@BethHarte

On the other hand, there were also respondents who reported no significant changes whatsoever, like:

I’m not sure that there is anything that I’ve been able to accomplish today that you could not have accomplished with a significantly smaller Twitter following.
@newmediajim

… and Beth Kanter, who — despite being followed by over 300,000 people as I type this — simply answered: “Nothing. Except been offered some review copies of books.”  (Admittedly, in Beth’s case, it’s entirely possible that her exposure via the Twitter Suggested Users List bloated her network with people who don’t demonstrably add value to her efforts in the non-profit world.)

Which brings us to the unasked question: is quantity more important than quality?  Mitch Joel, for one, doubts it.

I’m not sure size/amount has anything to do with anything.  It’s about “who” I’m connected to.
@mitchjoel

Ah, but who would Mitch Joel be connected to if he weren’t Mitch Joel?  Chicken, meet egg…

Q6: “Any observations, insights or opinions about Twitter that weren’t appropriate for the questions above?”

Several respondents added some food for thought, including:

My only thoughts around Twitter are, what other plans do people or organizations have for the day when Twitter ceases to exist (if that day ever comes)? Meaning, I see a lot of eggs in one basket and Twitter being used as an end-all channel.
@BethHarte

After the first 300-700 followers, it doesn’t really matter. The only thing that increases is the potential “touches” – which is great, but you get decent breadth for most uses from that number.
@DougH

I just wish people would stop trying to set the “rules” for Twitter. It’s like trying to set the rules for the city park. People can use it however they like. If you don’t like the way they do, don’t follow them.
@JasonFalls

The way I use Twitter continues to evolve and change. It’s always been a state of constant flux, what works for me today could be completely wrong next week. So it’s a state of constant learning. Damn, so much for being a Twitter expert.
@MackCollier

And, echoing his disbelief at his own popularity, Jim Long ends on a philosophical note:

Despite having as many followers as I do, I sometimes feel like I’m by myself out there.
@newmediajim

And there you have it, folks — authoritative proof that at the end of the day, no matter how many people you have hanging on your every tweet, we all take our pants off one leg at a time.

Unless your legions of Twitter groupies have stalked your every move on FourSquare and are tearing them off for you.  But that’s a popularity problem I can’t possibly help you solve.

And I doubt you’d want me to.

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Last year, I mentioned five “mistakes” I was making in my use of social media.  Astute readers noticed I was being somewhat sarcastic, since I normally adhere to the adage that there’s no such thing as “doing it wrong” (unless you’re doing this sort of thing).

But there is such a thing as “doing it well,” and if certain tools or tasks don’t immediately make my life easier or improve the quality of my workflow, I’m reluctant to adopt them.  This confuses the people who believe you need to be everywhere in order to be “taken seriously.”

As someone who’s only taken seriously by accident, I rarely have that problem.

But I do have other problems.  And sometimes, I really do make mistakes in social media.  So, with a bit less sarcasm than you might otherwise expect, here are…

5 Recent Mistakes I’ve Made in Social Media (and How I Fixed Them)

1.  Reach Out and Touch Me… Somewhere.

Despite operating this site regularly since July 2009, it wasn’t until last week when a confused Twitter acquaintance asked me how she could email me directly that I realized I had never included my contact info on my homepage. (Yes, sure, it was on my Contact page, where I presumed most people would look.  But as aggravated as I get when I can’t easily find someone’s email on their homepage, it never dawned on me that I’d committed the same sin.)

Whoops.

Now, if you’re reading this post on my homepage, you’ll notice a quartet of “Contact Me” icons atop the righthand sidebar.  Let’s not repeat that confusion again, shall we?…

2.  Confusing Conversation with Growth

I love to talk.  Those who’ve seen me (or who’ve witnessed the verbosity of my tweets) know I’m a hard man to quiet once my neurons start firing.

But conversing for the sake of conversing isn’t necessarily growing.  Expanding my awareness requires exposure to new stimuli.  Expanding other people’s awareness of my brand / abilities / reliably sardonic wit requires an increase in the quantity and quality of the places where I can be found.

By limiting my Twitter interactions to a smaller sampling group than many of my peers, I may have maintained a useful (to me) level of conversation, but I’m still missing out on a wide array of insights and opportunities.

To fix that, I’ve started…

3.  Making Use of Twitter Lists for Something More Than Blog Post Fodder

When I was “only” following 700-ish Twitter users, I was able to keep a handle on what I considered to be “important” or “relevant” information.  I knew I was still missing large chunks, but I doubted I could keep up with many more input streams, and I’ve never enjoyed the functionality of “better” Twitter management tools like TweetDeck.  (I still use Twitter’s web interface; how’s that for retro?)

But as I’ve begun to expand the number of people I’m following, I’m doing so with a safety valve in place: if I ever feel like I’m missing too many “important” updates again, I can just subdivide my sources into various lists.  That way, I can keep up with the people I want to stay in touch with, while giving the new (to me) conversants the benefit of the doubt.

And if the whole thing turns out to be a headache?  I’ll just shrink my following back to a more manageable number.  Like our own attention spans, Twitter is indiscriminately fluid.

4.  Who… Am I?

Have you ever signed up to test-drive a service using your personal email account as the login, only to realize you should have done so using your business email?  I have.  Repeatedly.  And while some services allow you to change the email account associated with that profile, others don’t — which means I’m locked into several instances of overlapping accounts and muddy workflows.

I have yet to find a simple solution for this, so if anyone has any suggestions, be my guest.

5.  Your Nubile Temptations No Longer Excite Me

I do a lot of the same tasks, in the same exact way, day after day after day.  If a system works, I stick with it because doing so saves me time and hassle.  Test-driving new tools and techniques is at the bottom of my to-do list, and if you’ve seen my to-do list, you know the bottom of it is subterranean.

It’s not that I don’t have options.  Mashable spotlights more seemingly-useful services in one day than I could reasonably evaluate in a month.  Instead of cherry-picking the ones I might actually benefit from employing, I tend to ignore them all until other, more eager dabblers have sussed out the winners from the also-rans.

And yet… how can I stay ahead of the curve if I don’t even keep the curve in sight?

So I’m tweaking my workflow.  Not in terms of adding new services to test, because I still don’t have time for that.  Rather, in terms of finding more time in my day.  And once I get that squared away, I’ll be happy to squeeze the occasional beta test into my otherwise breathless 24 hours.

But I still probably won’t use Facebook.

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Last night, while I was conducting a Social Media 101 workshop at Baltimore’s Creative Alliance, my Twitter account was hijacked… by my girlfriend.

I’d logged in on her laptop before the workshop began, and then I forgot to logout.  Since she’d accompanied me to the workshop, she suddenly found herself with two free hours to masquerade as me, and I’d be none the wiser.

Fortunately, Ann has no reason to dent my reputation by making offensive or controversial statements in my name.  Instead, she has a wicked sense of humor, and she started offering play-by-play commentary on my presentation style.

After awhile, she switched gears and started offering “fun facts about Justin,” which then morphed into a #funfactsaboutjustin hashtag.

And while anyone who didn’t see Ann’s original tweet probably thought it was bizarre that “I” would be tweeting about myself in the third person, my friends and my familiar Twitter conversationalists got a huge kick out of it because they were suddenly privy to a side of me that they wouldn’t otherwise see: me, as explained by someone who knows me a little too well.

Then, in order to illustrate a point, I pulled up my Twitter account during the presentation.  Ann’s cover was blown.  And the audience (and I) got a handy reminder that you should always log out of your personal accounts when you’ve accessed them from a public computer.

Afterward, I finally had time to read back through what “I’d” said, and see what others said in response.  It was entertaining.  And (mostly) true.  And surprising, because I never would have expected so many people to be so interested in the arbitrary details or commentary about my life…

… and yet, that’s what I already share with the world on a daily basis.

It took me awhile to realize that what Ann had been saying in my name isn’t all that different from what I already say myself.  But she was able to offer a slightly different viewpoint that I wouldn’t (or couldn’t) have provided because… I’m me.  And because she channeled her commentary as me, the people who follow me got to be in on the joke in a way that wouldn’t have happened if Ann had tweeted from her own account (which she doesn’t have).

I’m happy to have my own account back, but I’m also thankful for my out-of-twitterbody-experience.  Not many people get to attend their own funeral, but hearing what they have to say about you (or as you) is priceless.

Now all we need to do is convince Ann to rejoin Twitter (which she quit years ago), and then I can patiently await the day when she leaves her account logged in on my laptop…

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‘Tis the season for charitable requests on Twitter, Facebook, etc.  Over the next few weeks, everyone you know will be asking everyone they know to donate $$$ to Charity X.  But there’s a fine line between a feel-good wave of DIY philanthropy and the kind of manipulative pandering that pollutes the very idea of charity.

Let’s call that line semantics.

Sometimes, your tweet about a charity is perfectly timed, expertly worded and will motivate the people who follow you to take action.  And sometimes that request comes across as a shallow, self-indulgent exercise that draws more attention to you than to the people in need — and that’s a recipe for inaction.

If you’d like to avoid looking like a callous opportunist, here are three tips to avoid aggravating the very people you’re trying to inspire.

1. Make it about the charity, not about you. Tweets like “help me raise $$$ for X” don’t call attention to X; they call attention to how much work you’re doing for X.  And that makes you look like a glory hound.
2. Don’t tether your cause to a hashtag. Yes, using a hashtag like #NameOfCharity can be useful in helping to spread awareness of your charitable endeavors.  But stunts like “If our hashtag gets retweeted 1,000 times, we’ll donate $$$ to Y” invites cynicism from the populace, who’ll wonder why your quest to save the world is conditional upon us first inflating your ego.
3. Celebrities: don’t make us beg. When you make decrees like “If I reach 1 million followers, I’ll donate $$$ to Z,”  it not only ensures that the focus is on you, but it makes everyone else wonder why you don’t just donate that money in the first place. Seriously, if more kids die of malaria because your inability to crest 1 million followers causes you to bitterly withhold your malaria net money, that’s just pathetic.

Charity: it’s supposed to feel good.  So stop making us feel so bad for helping.

Last week, I tweeted a link to a blog post I wrote called Deconstructing an MLM Pitch, which detailed one of the asinine ways multi-level marketers pitch their “opportunities.”  That link was retweeted by a few of my Twitter followers, and each of us then experienced what can only be referred to as “Tweeter’s regret.”

Why?

Because we were immediately followed, en masse, by MLM Twitter accounts.

I personally attracted 30 MLM followers in about half an hour, and every time I included the word “multi-level marketer” or “MLM” in a tweet, the process repeated itself.  While these numbers aren’t overwhelming, they are telling — and they obviously cheapen the usefulness of the “followers” metric when gauging a Twitter user’s “influence.”

The process itself makes sense: run a script that’s automated to follow anyone who mentions a key phrase on Twitter, and you’re guaranteed to bloat your numbers, because they’re doing the same thing.  It’s like an endlessly self-perpetuating cycle.  Therefore, if I can gain 30 “followers” without even wanting them, no wonder so many actual MLM Twitter accounts have followings in the 10,000+ range.

But what are all those followers good for?  Not much.  Considering most of them are robotic scripts, and considering most of those eventually get reported as spam and summarily deleted — at least half of my “new followers” were erased by Twitter the same day they were added — they don’t necessarily impact anyone’s Twitter experience.

They just clutter the tubes.

Which begs the question: if a million robotic followers are deleted from the system and nobody wants them around in the first place… how do they ever make any money for the multi-level marketers?

When Twitter rolled out list functionality this month, the predictable happened:

• The early adopters experimented with their shiny new toy.
• The users who didn’t initially have access to it ached and pouted.
• Mashable wrote a how-to guide.
• The easily-distracted got bored.

But since technology only stays in the headlines when it’s new, polarizing or from Apple, something had to stoke the flames, and that something turned out to be a polarizing post from Chris Brogan.

In it, Chris argues that lists are just another form of exclusion — that by adding Person X to my list but not Person Y, I’m inferring that Person Y is less interesting or less valuable than Person X, and that’s mean.  And since social media is primarily the domain of easily wounded narcissists, excluding them can’t possibly be good for the team.  Fellow gurus like Mack Collier concurred.

This argument was then eviscerated with pulse-pounding fervor by Robert Scoble, who — armed with a litany of narrative tricks that make his post read like a gradeschool taunting — made Chris look like a girly-man for wanting everyone to feel loved.  In Scoble’s world, people are judged by their merit; simply wanting to be included is not enough to get you invited to his party.

And since this contentious issue’s SEO juice had now been percolated, hundreds of comments and companion posts popped up from people with equally valid opinions.

None of which is the actual point.

Nor is the actual point this, though it bears explaining: Twitter lists are a tool which, like Twitter itself, can be used any damn way you please.  You want to make a list of Thought Leaders?  Be my guest.  If I’m not on it, I’ll survive.  I’m not you, and I don’t use Twitter the same way you do, so I can’t judge the way you use it.  (Except for those times when I do.)  I may disagree with you, but I grant you the freedom to be horribly wrong.

No, the actual point is that social media misunderstands itself.

Why We Can’t All Just Get Along

This most recent debate over merit vs. popularity was born from Chris’s concern that some very talented but underrated bloggers and social media innovators will be left off other people’s Twitter lists, and that — like a teen, whose suddenly obvious unpopularity fuels her weekly trips to Hot Topic — this exclusion would somehow discourage them from participating further.  This concern is similar to the conclusion of The Incredibles, in which young Dash is urged by his father to “come in second” so as to not crush the hopes and dreams of his fellow racers — who, because they’re trying so hard, are equally deserving of success.  Chris’s argument presumes that failure is a catalyst for giving up, and that runaway success is to be avoided at all costs so as to not demoralize one’s peers.

But Chris and Scoble’s debate wouldn’t be as contentious as it is if he and Scoble weren’t as popular as they are.  Ironically, the very merit bestowed upon Chris by thousands of discerning readers who’ve judged him “worthy” over the years has provided him with the immense platform from which he can now summarily declare that all tweets are created equal.

Except they’re not.

Social Media Is Functionally Unable to Be a Meritocracy

As much as everyone in social media claims they’d like their work to be judged on its actual merit, the metrics we use to measure that merit — followers, readers, page views, reach — are really measurements of popularity.  Our system of separating the worthy (Brogan, Scoble) from the non (everyone who’s writing about Brogan and Scoble) isn’t based on the relative value of the worthy people’s statements, but on the likelihood that those statements will be read, considered and adopted by the fishbowl at large.

What’s ironic is that Twitter lists represent a departure from that norm, in which users are free to form lists based on their own criteria, rather than the obvious power numbers.  And just like everyone has different favorites on YouTube, Flickr or Digg, everyone who builds his own Twitter lists will have different criteria to help determine who he thinks is “worthy” of inclusion.  In turn, this increased exposure may help those underrated and undervalued gems that Chris was originally concerned about slowly gain the type of exposure that passes for validation in this fishbowl, thanks to increased awareness by the people who are searching for just such an underdog.

Social media is a lot of things, but thick-skinned isn’t one of them.  It’s a medium of instant validation (or lack thereof), and seeing others succeed while you continue to tread water can be disheartening in real time.  But there’s a converse to that mentality: if the next guy has more blog subscribers than you do, consider it a benchmark to aspire to, rather than a reason to quit.  (Or realize that you’re each trafficking in different audiences, and be content to grow yours organically.)

We may not all be equal, but we’re all individuals.  And that realization will carry us much farther as a whole than any insistence that we all be invited to the same party.

Yesterday, someone started a Twitter game called #uncertainmovies, in which people alter the titles of films to make them sound more vague or less definitive.  (Examples: “Some Like It Lukewarm” or “Split Decision at Nuremberg“.)  Since I’m both a film buff and a compulsive personality, this is the kind of meme that can simultaneously eat up my whole afternoon while alienating most of my followers, who become alarmed when I get too prolific.

Considering I came up with nearly 30 of these yesterday, followed by another 20 while I was out running errands, I figure it’s better to spare my followers the hassle and just post the ones I still find personally amusing here:

• The Mediocre Life Coach of Oz
• The Bourne Ultimatum… Unless You Want to Talk About It
• The Good, the Bad and the Ones With Great Personalities
• The Last of the Mohicans Who Bothered to Fill Out a Census
• Disinterestedly Seeking Susan While This File Uploads
• Any Given Sunday That We Aren’t Having Dinner at Your Mother’s
• Not In the Hallway, Lola, Not In the Hallway
• That Thing You Occasionally Do
• A River Runs Through It on Some Maps That Have Yet to Be Cached by Google
• It’s Not a Bad Life, Although “Wonderful” Might Be Pushing It
• Star Trek 2: The Heretofore Unseen Peevishness of Khan
• The Lion, the Witch & the Family Heirloom Most Likely to Be Undervalued on Antiques Roadshow
• The Greatest Story Ever Told, If You’re Into That Sort of Thing
• She’d Like to Have It But, Honestly, She’ll Take What She Can Get
• Yeller, Who’s Getting Up in Years But Still Has an Occasional Burst of Speed
• A Clockwork Fruit Genetically Engineered by Monsanto
• Gone with the Slight Breeze That’s Unavoidable Because the Fucking Yankees Burned the Whole Goddamn House Down
• Moderately Attractive Woman (If You Like Horses)
• Hang ‘Em High, But Not So High That Joe Can’t See ‘Em Because He Forgot His Glaucoma Medication
• Boyz N That Section of Town We Usually Try to Drive Around
• Willy Wonka and the Gluten-Free Carob Factory That Meets LEED Standards
• The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas That Doesn’t Involve Toll Roads
• Arthritic Tiger, Hidden Gecko

Ahem.

Now, here’s hoping I’m not gripped by another spurt of arbitrary inspiration until my real-life deadlines have passed.