photo by fotodawg

I don’t remember who I first borrowed the idea from, but I really love reviewing my top 20 tweets each month. My approach to twitter is as editor/curator: I look for posts I think will appeal to those who follow me in the areas of marketing, communications, social media, journalism and related subjects, especially as they relate to nonprofits and small business. I of course liberally tweet my own posts since those happen to be the subjects I tend to write about.

What is particularly interesting is what my highest-performing tweets tell me about my followers on Twitter: they’re a fairly discerning bunch interested in real substance, not fluff. I can always tell when I’ve missed the mark, and it helps me quite a bit when considering what to blog about.

Here’s what was most popular in October. I encourage you to check out any you may have missed when first we tweeted. It’s all good stuff. Even my stuff (I think).

No More Excuses for Crap Communications

If Marketers Today Created the Stop Sign

Social Media and the Paradox of Choice

Why Every Communicator Should Blog

The Dangers of No Content Strategy

Your Communications Plan: What It’s Really For

Small Business: Get in the Social Media Pool

Why Nonprofits Are So Good at Social Media

All You Need is the Story

Results of the Fourth Annoying PowerPoint Survey

Build a Social Network for Your Business

Why Uncensored Blogging is the Future of Corporate Communications

Blogging is Dead, Long LIve Journalism

A Tagline is a Terrible Thing to Waste

Is Philanthropy Ready for the New Consumer?

Five Reasons Corporations are Failing at Social Media

My Five-Year-Old’s Future in Marketing

Hyatt: Managing the Boston Aftermath

Debating Seth Godin’s “Non” Slam

Small Business, Social Media Not Mixing

photo by sukanto debnath

When does too much of a good thing become a bad thing? Specifically, I’m talking about the ongoing proliferation of new social networking opportunities. What got me thinking about this was word of the pending launch of SocialMediopolis, which promises to be “a central resource for anyone concerned with learning about social media, online communities and how to market successfully in this new medium. We will provide not only the latest news and technology updates, but also informative and original articles, interviews with industry leaders, an open exchange amongst members, a free newsletter and other benefits.”

Oookay. So my question is … why?

Seriously, do we not have enough places to learn about social media? Where we can be part of the social media community? Get the latest news and info? Or maybe it’s the free newsletter.

Let’s see, there’s Social Media Today, inSocialMedia, countless Google and Yahoo groups and Twibes and, for that matter Twitter itself, where there’s a very rich dialogue and knowledge-sharing thing going on around social media issues.

Instead of creating more and more sites that cover the same territory, maybe what we need are more people willing to invest their time and energy into making what’s already out there richer and more robust. Being part of a community requires more than signing up and filling out a profile. It takes active participation. Engagement. Conversation. Sharing. If you “belong” to a community but never show up and never contribute, then you’re really not part of the community. I know I’ve got a few profiles floating around out there in communities I’ve never had time to revisit. That’s a mistake on my part.

One of the mantras of successful social networking is to be in lots of places, participate in lots of conversations, etc. But rather than offering many communities watered-down versions of our best efforts, maybe we should focus a little more on sharing our best selves in just a few places where it makes the most sense given our individual goals and objectives.

Just a thought. What do you think?

photo by rengber

Hi. My name is Dan and I’m a partially reformed twitterholic. No, it doesn’t mean that I’ve cut back on Twitter. It’s still a healthy part of my daily social media diet. What I mean is that I’ve come to terms with the probability that I will never have the tens of thousands of followers that everyone seems to be lusting after.

In fact, I’m happier for it. Twitter as a numbers game never really made sense to me. I’ve strolled through the crowds of followers attracted to some of the big names on Twitter, and frankly it’s not a crowd I’m interested in hanging with. There are lots of bots, lots of people selling their automated follower generation tools, lots of people who really haven’t anything interesting to say to me.

I suppose that’s fine if you see Twitter primarily as a sales tool … the more the merrier, I guess. But if it’s a tool for engagement and relationship-building, for collaboration and resoure-sharing or even just as a metaphorical cocktail party, then the quality of the people you invite to your party is more important than the number who show up.

I work in marketing and communications. I work primarily with nonprofits. I also have a strong entrepreneurial itch that I’ve attempted to satisfy with a couple of dips into business ownership. And as a former journalist I have a strong interest in the future of news and how news-gathering organizations are evolving to survive and perhaps even thrive in our shiny happy digital future.

Knowing all this, it shouldn’t comes as a big shock that I tend to follow fellow marcomm pros and social media folk, people who work in the nonprofit trenches, social entrepreneurs, disgruntled (and gruntled) journos, academics who prognosticate on the future of newspapers, and others of a similar bent. All in all a pretty interesting group if you share my interests.

Once you get over the boozy promiscuity of following anyone who will follow you, then building a network on Twitter gets to be a bit more enjoyable.

People with big Twitter followings who suddenly follow me out of the blue remind me of baleen whales. They’re the ones that, when feeding, swim around with their mouths open wide, taking in vast quantities of plankton that are filtered through baleen plates, comblike structures that capture food like a miner’s sieve. Anything not big enough to feed on passes through back into the ocean.

I prefer fly fishing to the open-maw method. I wade out into the stream and cast a line for those who share my professional interests. I use WeFollow, Mr. Tweet, Twellow and even Twitter Search through hashtags to identify potential followers. I’ll follow the most interesting prospects who seem to share my interests for awhile and see if they bite by following me back. If they seem follow-worthy despite not following me back, I’ll continue to follow them; if not, I’ll throw them back.

My own Twitter stream is full of links to great articles and resources related to social media, marketing, communications, journalism and related subjects. Occasionally I’ll hook someone because they find value in what I’m sharing. Sometimes others visit my blog, like what they see and decide to follow me on Twitter for more of the same.

I frequently go fishing in other people’s streams as well. You may have been more successful than me in finding others worth following. Or I’ll find great people among your followers. I have no problem with poaching and encourage you to do the same in my stream.

OK, I don’t want to beat a dead trout. I think you get the picture. In my opinion the quality of your Twitter experience is directly related to the quality of the people you follow and who follow you back.  Turning it into a numbers game is a hollow practice and ultimately not where the true value of social media lies.

photo by wildxplorer

Time once again for a quick roundup of the 10 most popular links I tweeted last month. Twitter continues to be a fixation for many of us, but there also was lots of interest in storytelling, internal communication and social media in general. In order of popularity:

Advice From the Pros: Telling It Like It Is courtesy of Brain Traffic, noted content strategist Kristina Halvorson‘s firm, preaches the gospel of short, sweet and simple (my kind of sermon).

Content Creation Strategy for Nonprofits is a slide deck from Kivi Leroux Miller on how you can effectively manage all the content you create in support of your marketing and communication efforts.

Peter Shankman, the man behind HARO, asks the eternal question, Is Your Social Media Expert Really an Expert?

Time for a Twitter Reality Check, courtesy of yours truly, takes a look at the reality behind the hype that is Twitter (and I’ll be reviewing some of the feedback I received in my next post).

6 Lessons From the Best Marketing Campaign Ever looks at how an unlikely underdog stunned the marketing world at the Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival.

Wild Apricot did us all a real service in compiling Social Media for Nonprofits: 26 Presentations. Now there’s no excuse for not being ready to explain this stuff to your organization.

Kevin Spacey Explains Twitter to Letterman pretty much sums it up. Watch it. It’s funny stuff.

Use of Social Networking Tools Growing in Nursing, Medical Schools looks at a new study that finds growing popularity of Web 2.0 tools in health curricula.

How to Tell Your Story in 100 Words or Less is my take on the value we all can derive from having an elevator pitch.

Internal Communications and Twitter is me again on how Twitter might be used to support an effective internal communications program.

That’s it for July’s tweets. I’m out there every day in search of useful info on communications, marketing, social media and more, so be sure to follow me on Twitter so you don’t miss the good stuff.