experience matters

Companies are much like people. They like to talk about themselves. Also like people, they sometimes forget to praise the brilliance of others. There are two observations that the Critical Mass twitter profile receives quite a bit: 1) A lot of great links are shared. 2) Most of those links are to other people’s work. Those two comments prompted a thought which resulted in a sizable response:

This concept doesn’t just apply to Twitter, it easily translates to various content-producing social networks, but for the sake of this short case study, let’s keep it to just one.

Participation: Twitter requires a certain frequency of communication to be considered an “active member.” Even if it’s 4-5 a day, you’re hitting enough people to make your presence known. A single entity (outside of media outlets) generally doesn’t produce enough content everyday in order to have 4-5 things worth mentioning to promote itself. The subsequent reality? If you want to tweet, you need to tweet something created by someone else.

Reciprocation: People who share content with others, generally want those others to also share that content with another set of people. It can come in the form of a “retweet” or a link to a blog post. Whatever the method, when we distribute information, we want that information to snowball among the rest of a given audience. In order for that to take place you need a community of people who are willing to share your content. That community of sharers grows exponentially if you are also actively sharing their content in reciprocation. If you’re not, then you need to be an absolute leader in your field to blindly receive praise and pass-along.

Modesty: Stemming from the above, even if you ARE the absolute leader in your field, by not sharing the thoughts of others you are indirectly making the implication that your thoughts/products/services are better than everyone else’s. That could very well be true, but arrogance can cost you the attention of those who genuinely would want to hear what you have to say. Share information. It sends the message that you value other’s time as much as they should value yours.

Originality: After you’ve established yourself as an entity that contributes to the community you’re having a conversation in, remember to balance goodwill with originality. Sharing other’s links too much can be detrimental to a twitter brand as well since it may lead some to think you lack originality. Make sure that your reciprocation always has a nice share of your own original thoughts.

Thanks to @jasondrohn @Stuartcfoster @jamiecalder @KWhite16131 @louiebaur @sarahkatharine@PaigeCalvert @mthinker @mattDavidson @NicoledeB @TimMoore for passing along this thought.