Every small, medium sized, or large business in the area should have some kind of presence on the social web, whether it be Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, or having a corporate blog. And this means more than just setting up a profile and hoping for instant solutions. Social Media is all about a business’ relationship with their customers – an extension of customer service, offering value added offers and promotions, or simply keeping in touch. And in this new Web 2.0 social online world, this is something you need to be keeping track of on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis.

That is what CNY Media Solutions is ready to do. For clients that would rather have a company that is skilled in web design services, search engine optimization (helping search engines like Google, Bing, and Yahoo find you), blog creation, social profile creation and monitoring, competition monitoring on the social networks, online reputation management (listening to what is being said about your company and taking action if needed) – just to name a few of the services we will be offering – we will be glad to take this on for you after meeting with you and going over an online social media strategy that works for your company.

But the question is, should it bother you that people suddenly do this? The simple answer is no. While it’s true that there are some scammers out there that deliberately do this to appear noteworthy, there are many others who simply want to start again. They miss the time when their twitter stream didn’t fly by like a flash. When they could actually read through what others said, and not be pages behind after only reading a few tweets.

Was it their fault in the beginning for not following a small amount to begin with? No. We all do it. We all have probably stumbled into the “I’ll follow you if you follow me” attitude at one point. But Twitter shouldn’t be about who is following you. It should be about who YOU follow. And you should be able to answer WHY you follow someone. “I like her humor”, “He posts interesting graphic design links”, “I’d like to know when they are having their next big sale.”

When others can value what you put in to Twitter, the followers will come by themselves without any force. And when they follow you, don’t feel compelled to follow in a knee-jerk reaction. Take the time to look at their tweets and see if they offer something valuable. Hopefully, they are following you on the merits of your own posts. If not, they know where the door is.

Don’t get caught up in the hoopla of the follow-me-follow-you game. I did, and I wasted a lot of time. Unfollow the distractions. Follow what you value and care about. In the end, that is what will make Twitter more valuable to you.

As I loaded it up and took a look at it, I noticed something real quick. It was almost as if I was starting with Twitter all over again – I was in a huge empty room. As with most social apps, if you don’t have friends in your circle who are using the same thing, things can get lonely fast.

I navigated away and came back to it a few days later and saw a few posts sent to me by the Google Wave team. They had given me 8 invites to send out to friends to try it out as well. I sent most of them this evening and hopefully someone tries this with me – otherwise it’s going to remain one big empty room.

Have you tried Google Wave yet? And if your friends aren’t on it yet with you, have you found any uses for it for yourself?

• In American Idol, the contestant wants to win and have a large number of adoring fans.
  In Twitter, the user wants a large number of adoring fans.




• In American Idol, the contestant is judged on how they perform and either kept in or voted out.
  In Twitter, the user is judged on the quality of their tweets, and is either followed or unfollowed.




• In American Idol, the contestant’s back-story brings the fans closer to them.
  In Twitter, the user’s web page and bio tell a story to their followers to help them decide to follow or not.




• In American Idol, several non-winners have gone on to make top billboard hits.
  In Twitter, I would dare say there are several non-Twitterati (50k+ followers) that are very successful.




• In American Idol, there’s always a few crazy contestants that you can’t stand (Tatiana anyone?).
  In Twitter, there are more than just a few – but the good thing is, you don’t have to follow them!

And Finally…


• In American Idol, millions of fans call in to vote for their favorite contestant.
  In Twitter, millions of users promote other users by retweeting and #followfriday’ing them. Hint Hint!

That’s a run-down of a few similarities that I found. Are there other similarities that I may have missed between the two? Does Twitter remind you of another show or event inside or outside the online realm?

And just a side note – I think Adam is walking away with it this year!

Now I know you have probably read a dozen other articles as to why someone will or will not follow someone, but I thought I would throw some ideas out there too. I will say this right now – If you use Firefox, Flock, or another Mozilla brand browser that will accept Greasemonkey scripts, get yourself the Twitter User Classify script. I recommend using this as a touch-stone rather than an absolute game breaker for following someone.

The Spammer
When you see a user that follows 1,997 people and has only 15 people following them, and their “joined Twitter” date was 4 days ago – red flags should be flying. There is no one in their right mind that would use twitter “the right way” with this follow/follower ratio.

Where’s Waldo?
This person has only posted a few tweets advertising their affiliate product, MLM program, or some other ad-laden site and hasn’t been seen since 2007.

The Hot Chick
I am sure that girl who I have seen used in 20 different avatars is just having the darnedest time promoting her web site through so many names, such as Jenny, Jessica, Sarah, Jackie, Camille, Laura…the list goes on. (note: this doesn’t refer to actual twitter @usernames – only to their bio name). Mosey the Owl will be coming for you dear!

The Twitter Quitter
Yep – this is a new one that I am sure has got past me a few times. It’s good to be subscribed to a service that tracks who unfollows you, such as Qwitter or SocialToo for this one. This spammer follows you, and they may have an impressive following and show up as a Social Climber or even Socially Healthy. But not too long after, they drop you like a hot potato. Their avatar picture will most likely be displayed in your Twitter homepage for awhile – giving them free face time on your site, while keeping their follower count low.

You Want to be Friends? Really?
This group of followers does not fit into your interest category at all. You might like classical but they are hardcore acid rock fans. You like Obama, but they worship Bush. You say tomato and they say to-MAH-to. I am not really sure why this happens. They might like your feed for some particular reason. Or quite possibly, Mr. Tweet made a horrendous mistake at picking similar interested users! In this case, it’s your call whether or not to follow, but most likely, you’ll leave well enough alone and pass on the follow-back.

Summary
I will probably come across more twitter-types out there later on, but for right now, this is a list of a few of the types that I will not be following. The important thing is to follow someone (in one way or the other) who inspires you, makes you laugh, or care about and you will be well on your way to developing a solid twitter following.

This has happened to me more than a couple of times – and both times, it took me by surprise. The first time this happened (it’s quite funny looking back on it – but at the time, I put my foot in my mouth!) I was pointing out the irony that a certain video company was using another company’s video tool for a demo of the product on their site. Turns out, both tools are made by the same company – as they tweeted back to me to point this out. (I’m not going to mention what companies, but you could easily find out who I am talking about from my Twitter stream) So, yes, I was humbled, apologized, and hopefully I am not on anyone’s black-list.

The second time was with 12seconds.tv. I mentioned that my browser was having a particular hard time with their site and kept crashing when I was trying to record a video. I believe not less than an hour went by and the co-founder, Sol Lipman (@thesolster) tweeted me back to ask me more about what was wrong and how he could help. I started realizing how great Twitter can be as a customer service tool for businesses.

While installing the Tweetube application on my Mac, I ran into a small installation problem. Nothing big, but it was probably a simple issue that was easily fixable. I threw out to Twitter the problem I was having installing the app and again, for a THIRD time, received a kind reply from the makers asking how they could help. “Wow,” I thought to myself. “This is incredible!”

The fourth time I did this, I did it more on purpose to see if this platform really worked. Firefox 3’s StumbleUpon add-on has, for awhile now, supported saving ‘favorited’ pages to your own bookmarks. I like Firefox 3, but I enjoy Flock a little better – and so far it has supported just about every add-on that’s made for Firefox 3. However, I pointed out that Flock’s StumbleUpon add-on didn’t have the same functions as the Firefox 3 StumbleUpon add-on. An online buddy of mine also retweeted my tweet and sure enough, a few hours later and Flock was asking how they could help. As of this post, I believe they are looking into why the Firefox 3 add-on is not working the same in Flock.

So that, my Twitter friends, is customer service – Twitter style! Don’t get me wrong, I have sent emails to companies from their contact/feedback pages in the past. Sometimes I get a response, sometimes I don’t (an automated response doesn’t count as a real response, by the way!). But so far, 4 out of 4 companies from my examples are listening on Twitter – as they should be. And I guess that’s the point that I am getting to – if you are a business, whatever size that you are – get on Twitter, and keep your ear on the tweets!