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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This week, Jeff Pulver noticed that everyone at SXSWi was keeping in touch via Foursquare or Gowalla, rather than the old standbys of Twitter and Facebook.  This shift makes sense within the context of a live event, because Foursquare and Gowalla are mobile apps, best employed in a situation where everybody’s on the move.

But Jeff goes a step further, suggesting that Twitter may have just become “less relevant.”

This leads me to two questions:

How is the relevance of a tool established?

and

When is the right time to try out a new tool?

I Never Leave Home Without My Salad Shooter

A tool is only useful if it solves a problem.  And that means a certain number of people must share the same problem before a tool can become relevant, much less sustainable.

Facebook solved a lot of the design and interface problems that MySpace suffered from… but people didn’t NEED Facebook until they realized MySpace sucked.

Twitter replaced instant messages (and even blogs) for some people… and then, over time, a lot of users worked those “old” tools back into their workflow because they realized Twitter didn’t do everything; just some things (and not always reliably).

Our increasing reliance on mobile apps means services like Foursquare or Gowalla will become increasingly relevant as their userbase (and features) increase and improve… but until there’s a critical mass of users, those services will still feel like “optional” apps to the people who can live without them.

Does the shift Pulver cites mean that Twitter really is less relevant today than it was last month?  Only if the general needs of Twitter’s userbase shift collectively toward a need that Twitter can’t fulfill — and that’s dependent on user habit and on the number of Gowalla-ing users themselves.

No One Thinks an Empty Room Is Relevant

Remember Jaiku?

Like Plurk, Ping and a dozen other apps, Jaiku was supposed to be a “Twitter-killer.”

Jaiku had a better interface, better functionality, and it even solved one of the problems Twitter created: it threaded conversations in a way that Twitter never bothered doing (and still hasn’t, even today).

But despite being purchased by Google, Jaiku still lives on the fringe of the social media conversation while Twitter thrives.

Why?

Because nobody used it.

The target users of a Twitter-like tool were already using Twitter, and unless the people THEY considered relevant all moved to Jaiku en masse, they were staying where everyone else already was.

Lesson?  Communities value interactions over functionality.

Thus, Twitter overcame its own sub-par design simply by being the first and most widely-adopted tool.

To supplant Twitter in terms of overall relevance, Foursquare or Gowalla would need to do (at least some of) what Twitter already does, plus add new features that Twitter can’t replicate and which people decide they can’t live without.

Biding My Time Until the Singularity

So, when’s the right time for someone who’s never used Foursquare or Gowalla to start exploring them?

What makes any tool alluring enough for you to slip it into your workflow?

Do the users drive a tool’s relevance, or do the creators?

Time… and our own choices… will tell.

Meanwhile, I guess I should download Foursquare and Gowalla on my new Droid Eris and decide just how relevant they are for me. And while your mileage may vary, if you do something amazing with either app, you might make them more relevant to me.

See how that works?

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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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There was a small tsunami on Twitter yesterday that had nothing to do with Chilean earthquakes and everything to do with Chris Brogan‘s wallet.  In a nutshell, Brogan stated (somewhat quietly) that he charges $22,000 for a day of his time, and THE INTERNET EXPLODED IN A BALL OF SPITE.

Responses from the Twitterverse ranged from awe to derision.

Some people were mystified that one man could charge so much for what they consider to be so little work.  Others immediately began scheming to calculate how they could escalate their own rates into the $20K per day range, because if there’s one thing social media loves, it’s imitation.

Personally, I see the public’s collective recoil as proof that no one truly believes anybody can make money online without first selling their soul to an affiliate program.  Any evidence to the contrary simply blows our synapses.

But lost in this mix of sticker shock and vitriol were some key truths, which Chris touched on in a follow-up blog post, including:

• Chris doesn’t always work for a full day, so he doesn’t always bill for a full day.
• Chris gives away huge amounts of his own knowledge for free on a daily basis.
• Chris purposely prices himself in a range that discourages half-assed clients.

In short, Chris doesn’t always expect to make $22,000 a day, but he certainly doesn’t turn it down either.

And why should he?

Chris knows a thing or two about the Internet.  He speaks and writes in a manner that people enjoy.  And he brings a unique mix of personality, experience and analysis to the table, which enables him to price his services as a luxury rather than a commodity.

If a company were to pay Chris $22K, and then they turned around and invested his insights to the tune of $22M in profit, we’d all agree that the company had made a shrewd investment.

So why are we so aghast at the fact that these numbers exist?

Because none of us thought they were plausible — at least, not for us.

Fear and Loathing in Social Media

Let’s face it: you have no idea what you actually know about social media, and you certainly don’t know if you know more than the next girl.  The only thing you’re sure of is that you know something, and you never really know what that something is actually worth.

Then Chris Brogan comes along and tells you what he believes he’s worth, and you panic because you never would have assigned that kind of value to yourself.

Why not?

Probably because you don’t believe your insights are worth $22,000 to anybody, much less for a single day of your time.  Hell, you barely have any practical social media (or marketing, or business) experience to begin with.  You have 400 Twitter followers and you wet yourself every time you get retweeted; $22,000 is like space money in your world.

So here’s a tip: stop hating Chris, stop hating yourself, and stop hating the newly-distinguished class separation between you.  It is what it is, and resenting the successes of others sure as hell doesn’t vindicate your own lack thereof.

Yes, when it comes to the group hug that is social media, we’re “all in this together.”   But some of us are waaaaaaaaaay more “in this” than others.  Some of us really are worth a few hundred dollars a day, or a few thousand, or a day rate that far exceeds whatever you spent on your five years (and counting) of community college.  So relax.

But this doesn’t mean that you’re worth nothing, either.

So how do you find the happy medium?

Here are 6 tips to help you stomach the reality of determining your own self-worth.

1.  Admit what you do and don’t actually know.

This is the hardest part because human beings are horrible at honest self-evaluations.  But, what the hell: try.

Sure, you don’t know everything about social media (or whatever field you’re in), but you do know something.  Identify your areas of expertise.  Are you strong on the social side but weak on the tech?  Can you manage an existing strategy but not implement one from scratch?  Are you a LinkedIn wizard and a Facebook rube?

Summarize your strengths and weaknesses.  That way, when someone asks, “So, what do you have to offer?” you’ll have an answer that doesn’t involve lies, borrowed anecdotes and desperate obfuscations.

2.  How much experience do you have… and with whom?

If you just started tweeting yesterday, your insights are not worth $22, much less $22,000.  We’re all in competition with each other, and since our competing knowledge is always The Great Unknown, our work experience becomes a concrete qualifier that separates the know-hows from the guess-hows.

Who have you worked with?  What did you do for them?  How successful were you?  What did you learn in the process?

What proof of your ability to make someone else’s business more profitable and efficient can you provide?

(Hint: If you’re stretching the truth to answer this question, cut your rates in half and remove the word “thought leader” from your Twitter bio.)

3.  How hard are you willing to work?

You may not have astounding insights or jaw-dropping work experience, but there’s one intangible that can’t be ignored: you’ll work your ass off in order to get the job done.  Any job.  Multiple jobs, if necessary.  You’re dedicated to success and you’ll work day and night to achieve the desired results.

When you put it like that, I can see why your rates may be higher than your contemporaries: because your clients know they can rely on you.  Or take advantage of you.  Or both.  But however it shakes out, you’ll know you did your best — and you’ll charge for it.

4.  How hard do you want to work?

We could all be busting our asses for 60 hours a week and changing the world left and right, but life is short and we’re tired, selfish, American Idol-addicted individuals.  We’re fragile; we need breaks.

So we price ourselves higher than we need to because we want to work less than we have to.

Chris Brogan doesn’t want to work 60 hour weeks.  At his rates, he doesn’t need to; he just needs 2 or 3 clients a month to meet him halfway and he’d be living quite comfortably.

5.  Price yourself into the ballpark of the clientele you can best serve.

Chris Brogan’s rates mean his clients are self-selecting.  He doesn’t want to spin his wheels with companies who aren’t capable of asking $22,000 questions, because he can’t provide those companies with the kinds of answers that will send his CV into the stratosphere.

But there’s a catch: at those rates, people expect results.  They’re hiring a miracle worker, or renting time with an exotic shaman.  If you can’t provide the kinds of insights that make your client’s competitors envious of your relationship, you have no business pricing yourself in that range.

All the same, if you price yourself too low, no one will hire you.  People pay for the illusion of success, and if your rates say “will work for food,” you’ll starve to death.  It’s fine to work for charity, but don’t price yourself like one or you’ll need their help to feed your family.

6.  Everything you do is worth something; charge accordingly.

Stepping away from Chris Brogan for a moment, there’s another social media guru you can compare your rates to: Mack Collier.

Here’s a guy who unabashedly lists his price range for a wide array of services, from original content creation to audits of your existing social media strategy.  Notice that his prices truly are a range, in both his actual rates and in the type of work he does.  No matter what kinds of client Mack attracts, he offers “something for everyone” — which means he’s also likely to remain consistently employed.

What types of services can you offer?  Can those services be bundled?  Is there a sliding scale based on time constraints and degree of difficulty?

Even the priciest retailers have a bargain bin, because they don’t want anyone to leave without buying something.

A Final Word on Not Crying Yourself to Sleep in the Corner

No, you’re not Chris Brogan.  Nor are you a person who earns even more than Chris Brogan does.  (Yes, they’re out there, and if you knew what they charged, your bladder would never recover.)

Valuing yourself according to other people’s self-estimations is the easiest way to drive yourself crazy.  But valuing yourself according to your own self-estimation is the easiest way to go hungry, because you never truly understand what your assets are actually worth to the people who don’t know what you know.

You wouldn’t pay somebody $5 to change your oil because you know how to do it yourself; I don’t, so I’m willing to pay $30 if it gets done fast and well.

Is your knowledge worth $30 to someone who doesn’t know what you know?

Is it worth $300?  $3,000?  $30,000?

The sky’s the limit, as long as you bring your own plane.

But if someone ends up paying you $30,000 to do nothing, they’re going to have to pay Chris Brogan a hell of a lot more than $30,000 to fix it — and then we’ll really start feeling some sticker shock.

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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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Ever since Comcast “changed the game” of online customer service, companies have been scouring Twitter, Facebook and the rest of the web, eager to ferret out bad customer experiences and turn those consumerist frowns upside down.

But why?

Not that good customer service shouldn’t be the cornerstone of every company’s philosophy.  (Try building your business without it and see how far you go.)  But why does a pithy rant on Twitter send CSR reps scrambling, while a well-reasoned complaint from a phone-in customer barely causes a ripple?

One word: perception.

If a Minimum Wage Employee Ignores You in the Middle of an Outlet Mall, Does Your Blog Make a Sound?

When Chris Brogan had a miserable time buying a pair of shoes, he made his experience public.  I’m sure part of his goal was to draw attention to just how lousy most retail customer service is, and to foster a dialogue intended to weed out some of those problems.  But, like any human being, he was also pissed about having his time wasted by uncaring salesclerks and poor management, and he simply wanted to vent.

And when people like Brogan (or Jeff Jarvis) have a lousy time at the market, the market notices.  Why?  Because a complaint from Brogan or Jarvis is the equivalent of a complaint from TV Guide or Entertainment Weekly.  Different medium, same (relative) circulation, and same capacity to (theoretically) create a PR headache for whoever those companies actually do pay to care.

The problem?  Companies who don’t understand the Internet also don’t understand that you aren’t Chris Brogan.  When you complain about a company’s endless hold time on Twitter, that tweet looks the same to their PR intern as when Michael Arrington complains about the exact same thing.  And while each of your concerns may be equally meritorious, in the real world, Arrington’s would be taken seriously because he’s Newsweek while yours would be ignored because you’re Vintage Doilies Quarterly.  But online, you all look the same, and that means everything is worth panicking over.

Which leads to the next problem: fear.

Online, Everyone’s an Axe Murderer

In April, I went to Seattle and Portland on vacation.  While I was there, I met a friend I’d known on Twitter but whom I’d never actually met in person.  When I mentioned this to my parents during my recap of the trip, they were aghast.  My dad actually said: “And you’re not worried that this person’s an axe murderer?”

Nope.  But that’s because I’m either incredibly naive or incredibly capable of understanding how the Internet works.  I pride myself on being able to tell the humans from the bots, the heroes from the douchebags and the axe murderers from the people I can trust enough to meet over brunch.

Part of corporate culture’s overreaction to web complaints stem from the related myth that everything online has the capacity to destroy you.  Just like the Baby Boomer generation has an illogical (in the eyes of their kids) fear of oversharing online, the businesses built by these mindsets are suddenly alarmed by the idea that one word from an online bogeyman can detonate their life’s work, so they take the pre-emptive step of treating every public complaint like it’s being delivered by a horde of barbarians, eager to rape and pillage.

Wrong.

People have had negative customer experiences for centuries, and they’ve been talking about those experiences with anybody who’s willing to listen.  If the frustrations experienced by my own friends and family haven’t caused me to completely write off the possibility of doing business with those same retailers or service providers, why would a rant from a complete stranger have more of an impact on my decision-making process?

Sure, we can see more customer complaints online.  But those are the same complaints people were already having in the first place.  That companies (and fellow consumers) can now tabulate them in no way makes them more (or less) valid than they were when we couldn’t.  It’s the merit of the complaint that matters, not the medium used to express it.

But from the way we whinge all over the tubes, you’d never know it.

140 Characters of Hate Does Not Entitle You to a Pony

Consumers of the world, listen up: complaining on Twitter is not an invitation for the company to hear you, much less care about your plight.  Everyone with a keyboard has the capacity to flail for attention, and most of us do.  And while your aggravations may be real, typing them “out here, where everyone can see just how badly I was treated” doesn’t make you a martyr.  It makes you whining attention whore.  (Especially when you type about those petty transgressions IN ALL CAPS.)

If you stood outside Nokia’s corporate headquarters screaming “the interface on my new phone sucks!” they wouldn’t take that as an invitation to walk outside and teach you how to use your new phone; they’d see it as a reason to call security.  So why should you bitching about them on Twitter be seen any differently?

There’s a difference between constructive criticism and self-centered complaining.  It’s easy to write off the latter as the product of an entitled society, but it’s difficult to ignore the kind of criticism that seeks to address and improve a perceived problem.  And yet valid criticism also requires thoughtful analysis on the part of the customer, who’s usually only invested enough of themselves in the experience to say: “This sucks.  Fix it.”

And they may be right.

But they were right before Twitter, and they’ll be right after we’re all bitching telepathically.

So can we all just calm down?

‘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.