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Online Communities

7 Ways To Prevent #FF from Jumping The Shark

by Eric Miltsch on 05/16/2009 · View Comments

Every Friday on twitter, you’ll find an a endless supply of recommended people to follow. If you’ve ever seen a tweet begin with #FF or #FollowFriday – that’s what its all about. Its a brilliant idea and a very unique way to use twitter; @micah is the bright guy who came up with the concept.

An idea that’s about to jump the shark.

#FollowFriday recommendations begin to flood the screen at the stroke of midnight on Thursday. People even like to sneak some in before midnight; some like to brag about being the person who delivered the first tip.

For the next 24 hours, you’ll see carefully crafted messages containing profile names like a shopping list. Oprah? Really?

The Queen of Spades buy

Afro Samurai: Resurrection movies Recommending quality followers is a great thing. I’d hate to see it turn into an exercise in futility. I enjoy being recommended just as much as the next person. Thing is, I don’t see a noticeable increase in Friday followers when compared to any other day. Probably because everyone else on twitter is busy making lists of people to follow.

Here’s the guidelines I follow to make it effective and reduce noise – adopt as you wish:

When recommending someone, at least be sure you’re following them; why would I follow them if you’re not?
Don’t re-tweet someone else’s tweet recommending you. Tacky.
Don’t send individual, public thank-you’s to every person who gave you a #FF bump. Send a DM.
Send out a couple individual #FF rec’s; include a meaningful reason for the recommendation.
Help deserving people with less followers than you; they’ll appreciate it and it’ll help build your presence even more.
If you can’t fight the urge to create a list of names, group them together others within a market segment.
Don’t brag about how many #FF rec’s you received that day. Yay. You’re popular.

Sam Kinison: Breaking the Rules divx

My Bloody Valentine video

How do you effectively use #FollowFriday?

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13 Ways To Get Quality Followers on Twitter

by Eric Miltsch on 04/23/2009 · View Comments

Let’s define quality twitter followers – everyone wants them. A quality follower for me:

Follows back
Has a full bios with link(s)
Engages and participates
Has a nice balance of self-promotion & re-tweeting
Has positive energy

Keep in mind, my activities center around providing valuable automotive content, among other things, to help consumers. I’m always trying new stuff, always measuring things and just making sure our hits outweigh our misses. Here’s a random list of my activities for @AuctionDirect.

Address people by their names in direct messages
No automatic direct messages
Try to get to know people – I ask everyone to take my twitter interview
End Game full
Promote others when possible; Re-tweets are good, FollowFridays are cool and links to other people’s sites are awesome!
Provide informative, relevant links
Humor which doesn’t attack or offend. (Especially when tweeting from a business account)
Help people and answer quick questions
Acknowledge other people’s awesomeness
Meeting people face-to-face; get out from behind your screen and talk to some of your followers – Meet-ups really help
Don’t RT content from people with say, 350k followers. Odds are a ton of people have already seen it
Don’t to talk about money, sex or religion. (I try not to at least…)
Follow people my followers follow. Birds of a feather…
Don’t complain

Thankfully, most of the people I know do these things very nicely. @JasonFalls is a great example of someone who applies tactful, real-life common-sense to his twitter stream.

Sometimes, people just aren’t interested in automotive content and I can appreciate that. I’m not there to sell to anyone a car; just trying to educate and inform consumers. Its another place I can help change the way people buy used cars.

What are you doing to get and maintain quality twitter followers?

13: Game of Death movie Rocky IV the movie

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How To Use Social Tools Effectively

by Eric Miltsch on 03/19/2009 · View Comments

The ways in which social networking tools are used continues to expand. As usage changes, the opportunities and benefits to the members within these communities also grows.

Perfect example. Michael Banovsky hatched an awesome idea which brought together an instant community of car consumers, fanatics and professionals. Some people even fell into all three categories; myself included – its just another easy way to get Auction Direct involved with the community.

Michael became the pied-piper of a popular twitter conversation known as #carchat. (the hashtag is the icon used to easily identify popular search terms within twitter search.)

For two hours, he lobbed thought provoking, automotive-related, open-ended questions to the community.

The questions, comments and re-tweets flowed. Very quickly.

Michael had the group firing on all 12-cylinders – how did he do it and what were the lessons learned?

Honey movies

Leverage your passion to engage others.
Put others before yourself and any motives.
Spread the word among your closest connections; when they believe in you, they’ll tell others. Knowing other power users is key.
Invest time. Michael blocked out two hours of his time for this. He also invested his time leading up to this point – enabling him to put this event into motion.
Know when to reach out. It would have been impossible to pull this off with only 47 followers. Having a couple thousand followers helps.

The final result?

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Automotive consumers and professionals participating and sharing – putting the group on cruise control; only subtle nudges of the wheel needed by Michael.
Participants within #carchat building their networks.
Michael’s personal stock gets a boost – all done so unselfishly.
The opportunity to interact with a diverse group – including long time familiar faces like @ScottMonty and newer faces such as @HermanP
A ton of good karma.

Stop by next week’s #carchat. And of course, be sure to follow @michaelbanovsky

In Search of a Midnight Kiss rip Check out Michael’s #carchat article on vLane.com as well.

How effectively are you providing opportunities to engage and discover?