PR 101 – Weekly Rant #9 – Enough With The Invitations Already
Jeff Cole | February 16, 2010
I am one of the most active social media users I know. I have more than 5,000 LinkedIn connections, more than 8,000 Twitter followers, about 500 Facebook followers and over 100 on YouTube. I blog twice a week. I also use Plaxo, FriendFeed and some other sites. I should be doing this – it’s my business. I run a social media marketing agency. Would you hire someone to do social media if they didn’t use it?
I have some problems with social media though – or more accurately, the people who are now using it. So, they are:
- The people who invite me to join a site to which I already belong. Every site has a search function that allows you to check members’ name. Do that before you invite someone to join Facebook or LinkedIn.
- The constant creation of new sites. I have yet to see one that could replace LinkedIn, Twitter, YouTube or Facebook. Look, this ground has been plowed already. I think those sites are here to stay. Maybe one of those four will be “AOL – The Sequel,” but I doubt it. That is not to say there are not some good sites, but enough already with the constant creation.
- The constant invitations I get to join those new sites. If I don’t respond, it means I do not want to join. Don’t keep sending invitations. It is annoying and a breach of social media etiquette. After three invitations, you go into my spam file, never to return.
- The growing number of multi-level marketing people appearing on social media. To paraphrase Shakespeare: spam by another name still smells as bad. Just because you are sending the information via a new medium doesn’t make it anymore believable.
- As long we are on the subject, no one works five hours a week and gets rich. Steve Jobs, George Soros, Warren Buffett and all those other self-made billionaires worked really hard to get where they hard. I suspect they are still putting in 15-hour days. The only people who make money off those schemes are those selling them.
- And one more point on that subject, you do not have to spend money on search engine optimization to get your webpage to the top of Google rankings. This blog is rated a top website by Google. It is consistently is on the front page of Google searches. I spent a lot of time achieving that, but no money. It just takes work.
Now that I have gotten that off my chest, I am curious what your social media pet peeves are. Let me know.
I have to say, it is almost a relief to read what you have written. I am exhausted trying to stay on top of all of the new social media sites / tools, etc.
Let’s stick to four and lay down some good ground rules on using them effectively.
And your comment about checking your list twice before sending out an invitation is best practice direct marketing list management…just new vehicles.
Scott
Jeff: You’re my new Social Media hero! I’ve Tweeted/FB’d/LinkedIn/YouTubed and leaped across terabytes and through virtual detritus in order to engage, inform and run with the wolves of ROI. Yet as one who is forever seeking the relevance and the nature of human communication and connection, “The obscure we see eventually. The completely obvious, it seems, takes longer”. You can thank a pre-Internet guy by the name of Edward R. Murrow for that one. And thank you for what you do, Jeff. I feel less ADD now.
Jeff
The fact that a whole lot of people plainly don’t know what they heck to do with social media is great news for those of us who do.
We get to be experts by default
Hurrah
Lorne
My pet peeve: people who criticize a bunch of ongoing negative practices but don’t actually tell us what the positive rules/groundrules/acceptable actions would be.
Please help us all out and either point us to, or send us, some Rules of Social Media Etiquette.
Thanks,
Robert
P.S. Actually, this isn’t one of my pet peeves, but that was an irresistible segue from your post into what I wanted to ask for from you. Thanks for your tolerance.
Robert,
Actually, that is the next blog – social media etiquette. I did have to segueway into it.