Dear Future Twitter Follower…

DJ Smith / Mar 23rd / Comments

Dear Future Twitter Follower,

I’m so thankful that you have found me and feel that I am someone you would like to follow and keep up-to-date with. I promise that I will try to provide you with what knowledge I have to offer and will try to make my tweets meaningful. I do request a few things in return.

1. Please don’t auto-direct message me back when I follow you. You see, that really reeks of being fake and disingenuous. I don’t like getting form letters in the mail and your auto-dm will remind me those. If you want to direct message me through Twitter with something that really feels like it’s coming from you then that would be great.

2. Please don’t use the words “guru, diva, maven, or expert” in your bio. I’ve already got hundreds of these “experts” following me. They’re so excited about their plans to make me rich with no work on my part. I’m fairly certain I can’t get to your plans for quite a while so you might want to find someone else who isn’t so expertly connected.

3. Speaking of bio descriptions, please don’t cleverly spell the aforementioned words. Your status of “guru” is diminished a great deal when you choose to spell it “goo-roo.” I know the dictionary uses that spelling to help us pronounce the word correctly but using it as a real word does nothing for your expert status.

4. Please read and understand my bio before thinking we’re a good match. I’m “principal of healthcare marketing firm-Talstone Group” and my “interests include healthcare, marketing, social media, and design strategy.” I wanted to use my name for my Twitter account but unfortunately it was already taken so I had to go with “TalstoneDJ.” Contrary to popular belief, having DJ in my name doesn’t mean I rap, produce songs, get jiggy with it, or host a radio show that could sing your songs. I do sing in a band that you can check out at www.tennesseefour.com.

5. I would really appreciate it if you would be concise in your tweets. I know that 140-character limit in Twitter is tough to work with but with so many other tweets coming through to me I simply lose track of your thoughts when you try to type out paragraphs in Twitter. If you feel the need to expound so much to me ask for my e-mail address and, if we can have a meaningful dialogue there, I’ll try and keep the pit bull named the delete button away from your e-mails.

6. I know that technically you’re supposed to use the 140 characters to tell me what you’re doing, but could you avoid sending me twitterrhea? I don’t have to know that your cat just coughed up a hairball that is the spitting image of Jay Leno. Tell me know something worthwhile. Educate, enlighten, inspire, and share with me what you know as a person. Give me a reason to care.

7. Please act like a human in your tweets. Nothing is more boring or thoughtless than to have someone whose tweets are all alike. I’ll stop reading and listening to you if you can’t be someone who is creative and real. While I don’t have to know every part of your mind, it’s nice to know that you can think past your last tweet.

8. Engage in a two-way dialogue with me. Twitter is a micro-blogging platform that affords us the great opportunity to learn from each other. If the conversation is one-sided then I won’t care to listen to you. For a meaningful exchange to happen you need to open the communication channels. I know you’re the “expert” in whatever you’re talking about, but I doubt you know it all – at least you won’t convince me you do if you never shut up long enough for me to ask you a question.

9. Please don’t be a used car salesman. I’m sure you’ve really spent a lot of time thinking through that get-rich-quick scheme, but I’m not interested in making you wealthy. I’m interested in making marketing more effective, healthcare better, and being smarter than I was the day before. I don’t care if your idea really could make me rich. Spamming me with your tweets about how brilliant your plan is just makes you look sad … oh, so very sad.

10. Make an effort to expand the conversation beyond Twitter. If our conversations means anything to you then press on to expand the conversation to other communication outlets such as e-mail, phone or an actual face-to-face meeting. The beauty of social media is that it is meant to foster a more social community. It makes this big world smaller.

Again, I’m thankful you want to follow me. I hope these requests won’t be too difficult for you. If they are, then I might not be the person for you to follow. I know that together we can make ourselves better and our worlds a little brighter. I look forward to tweeting with you.

Take care,

D.J. Smith
Partner/Creative Director

Talstone Group
783 Old Hickory Blvd.
Suite 335
Brentwood, TN 37027

Phone: (615) 507-1490
Twitter: http://twitter.com/TalstoneDJ
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/talstonedj
Blog: http://blog.talstone.com/

Please visit our website located at:
http://www.talstone.com