There’s been so much virtual ink spilled on building relationships on social media sites that one needs to be blind not to run across one article giving a few tips on the matter. Yet some still try their own obnoxious techniques that don’t work anyway.

One trend that I’ve recently notices and got an “oh, really?” from me was the following: add a friend, wait a bit for them to follow back and if they don’t, send them a message saying you’ll unfriend them if you’re unwilling to return the favor. Now how does that threat work? Simply put, it doesn’t.

The reason to friend or follow anyone is that you somehow find them interesting enough. If you want to get their attention, start a conversation with them, ask the right questions to get their attention and make them feel valued and interesting. They then might return the favor.

But if you act like and impatient, self-absorbed nuisance,  they will at best ignore you. Or choose to block you all together or report you. Why risk that when you can spend 5 minutes forgetting about what you want and think of what other people need. They will definitely respond in a much more pleasant manner than they would in the case of virtual blackmail!

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I’m sure you’ve all heard quite a lot lately about VIPs joining the Twittersphere. I’m also sure a lot of you (out of curiosity or expecting to see something different) also started following some of said stars. It’s fun if you’re already on Twitter and you want something of a different flavor than your usual. But did any of you like what you saw? I for one read the articles, saw the profiles and drew my own conclusion.

Want to hear it? Then get closer! I’ll share a major secret with you. Stars and VIPs are the worst teachers you could ever get if you want to learn some valuable social media skills. And here’s why!

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I love reading SEOBook and from the SEO perspective, I think Aaron Wall is quite the guru. I also think he’s got very cool marketing and business development insight to share. But it seems Twitter is where our opinions start to differ. According to his post on Twitter, this microblogging platform is a big page rank waster, mostly because of the no follow links. True. He also seem to think there’s little to gain from using Twitter. Aaron also quotes Seth Godin on the fact that, just like the phone, Twitter is only a connecting medium, not a marketing medium.

My question to you is: if you could (legally ) listen to people’s conversations on the phone, hear them when they mention your product or service, if you could start your own conversation with them, wouldn’t you be all over the phone? I know I would!

Twitter might be nothing more than a connection between many dots, but it’s an extremely transparent one. You can literally watch thoughts spread through word of mouth. Tweets and retweets and the circle keeps growing. Continue reading

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I can still perfectly remember the first comment on my blog. It’s not about what the commentator said, it’s not about the fact that I was a great fan of the first person commenting, it was about receiving the first comment to something I had written and sparking a conversation. I was so thrilled!

Writing was a daily habit for me at the time. Be it novels, stories, essays, articles and projects for school, I have always enjoyed putting my thoughts on (real or electronic) paper. And I have always enjoyed having people read it and give me their feedback. So the part about having an outlet for my thoughts was not what hooked me to blogging. It was the comments, the conversation and the almost instant feedback. What kept the addiction going was the great number of friendships that resulted from my casual chat with fellow bloggers. Continue reading

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What I think you shouldn’t have missed last week…

Welcome to a new edition of our Monday link list, showing you articles you should definitely read.

Last week brought me across one of the best post for new bloggers: a collection of categorized tips and resources from Joanna Young. Any young blood in the blogosphere should read this.

Networking is far more than exchanging business cards and it rarely happens on events only. Barbara Gibson of Connecting the I’s has done a great job at presenting networking as a way of life .

Being a guru is not always about dominating a room, a conversation, a group. It’s mostly about having the knowledge and graciously sharing it with other, while being modest. An entry on the value of modesty from PR Squared aimed at making us think about what’s really valuable.

Karen Swim makes it her business to have the humanity and relationships build through the internet stand out. As she says, business done over the internet needs not be impersonal, on the contrary!

Ivana Taylor of Small Business Trends identified the top ten SMB marketing trends for 2009. The first three are authenticity, do it yourself marketing and tech driven word of mouth marketing.

That’s all for today. Feel free to add your recommendations in the comment box and see you all next week with a fresh list of interesting reads.

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