As we explained in that post, MyWedding.com is moving its corporate headquarters to Castle Rock, Colorado. These days, that’s not such a big deal because Internet companies are global, not local.

However, even the good folks at an online Internet company aren’t virtual – they’re real people. And, they will be hiring real people in the area. They’ll also be interested in developing some close-by businesses relationships with those both inside and outside the wedding industry.

Did we forget customers?! MyWedding’s customer base may well be global, but the nearby customers they can actually rub shoulders with may become their most ardent advocates.

Search Locally, Think Globally

And that’s why they will want to search Twitter locally. In order to do that, they’ll want to go to the “Advanced Search” tab of Search.Twitter.com:

Here, they can search for any terms they might find useful in order to connect to Twitter members near Castle Rock. (they’ll want to search within 100 miles of Castle Rock, what is called “The Front Range” around here – all the nearby burbs, including Denver, Ft. Collins and Colorado Springs).

Using “Advanced Search,” we’ll do a search for the words “wedding” and “planning” within 100 miles of Castle Rock. You can see the result in the picture at the beginning of this article (you should do the search yourself just to get warmed up), but here’s the fill-in the blanks part that got us there:

Certainly, the gurus at MyWedding know their business and their needs much better than Sheryl and I ever could. But, even by using the most rudimentary search terms, we can turn up some surprisingly interesting contacts who might turn into new customers, vendors, partners or employees.

Nearby Wedding Planner

One of the tweets from someone who lives near Castle Rock (and includes both of our search terms) was from @DebbieOrwat. She is the owner and lead wedding consultant at savetheDate! Events.

Debbie’s got over a thousand followers, offers a profile, web link and her real name. That kind of transparency is crucial to evaluating a potential Twitter contact. As we’ve said, there are a lot of shady characters out there, but she and her company look pretty good.

She also happens to write a blog, so the folks at MyWedding.com might convince her to blog about them or partner with them in some other way. Regardless, she’s a legitimate wedding-related contact who lives near their new offices.

Potential Customer

Another Twitter member who mentioned both the words “wedding” and “planning” in a recent tweet is @kaneil. She doesn’t work for a wedding related company, but she has been mentioning (quite charmingly) her upcoming wedding and what it’s doing to her!

This is the kind of search that companies of all kinds are using to generate qualified leads. In this case, @kaneil might be interested in using MyWedding.com – especially those parts of the site that will help her organize and plan her wedding.

What About Keyshia Cole and Ryan Seacrest?

At first, it looked like our search was going to lead to a couple of celebrity weddings. Nope, because no matter what search terms you use, you’re gonna’ haul in some pretty shady stuff.

It looked like someone was re-tweeting Ryan Seacrest talking about his upcoming wedding. But, the newbie who “re-tweeted” that message seems to have invented it herself. Or, perhaps she has a thing for Ryan.

And, even though Ms. Cole has announced her upcoming wedding, there is no way to tell which, if any, of the many Keyshia Coles on Twitter are the real Keyshia Cole (a common problem on Twitter, only sometimes solved by their “Verified Account” insignia).

Keep it Complicated, Stupid

All this just means that MyWedding.com can find some great connections, but it is going to have to be pretty savvy to avoid the junk.

One way to do that is for them to target their search terms with very specific phrases or combinations of words that fit their needs and industry.

The other way, as we have seen here, is to search a much smaller geographic area. A search for the word “wedding” in Twitter would overwhelm. But, a search for the phrase “my wedding” within 100 miles of their new home office, well, now that’s another story.

There’s More to the Story

Even better? Any of these searches (even the radius location ones) can be turned into alerts that can land in your RSS reader, email or Google desktop.

(But, that’s another article – so, stay tuned).

Let’s take a recent example of some Colorado business news that might have caught your attention. The Castle Rock (Colorado) Economic Development Council just announced that MyWedding.com, a Seattle and Portland based business, will locate its corporate headquarters in their fair city.

Pretty cool news if you live in Colorado, operate a wedding oriented business, or even if you’re just looking for some positive news about the economy.

And, let’s say you’d like to see if Twitter could help you network with some of the folks related to this business story. Perhaps you’re a job hunter, a wedding vendor, or, heck, simply wanna’-be-journalists like us.

Search Twitter Like a Pro

By now, if you read this blog (Just the Guy We Need, Going Next Door for a Drink), you know you have to start your search, not on Twitter, but at their sister-search site, Search.Twitter.com. And, you likely know that you should search for:

mywedding.com colorado

That way, you’ll find anyone who has tweeted a message that includes both the words, “mywedding.com” and “colorado.”

But, here’s the problem. If you do this search, you’ll quickly see that the Twitter River is now a polluted stream, indeed. Many of the people who tweeted or re-tweeted this story are either wannabes, fruitcakes or auto-tweeters. Yes, it’s true, they now offer automatic re-tweeting programs. Ugh.

So, Look Elsewhere

The amazing thing is, you’ll find better connections by simply targeting your search terms more specifically to something like:

mywedding.com “castle rock”

Isn’t that amazing? By adding more specific terms, your results turn up no pollution and offer you five potentially cool people, companies or organizations:

Design Works – a floral supply company, specializing in weddings.

Mike Reid – a designer at the Colorado Springs Business Journal

Christian Eppers – an economic gardening expert in Highlands Ranch

Nicole McGee – of the very intriguing Colorado Stem Network

The Metro Denver Economic Development Commission

Twitter Really Can Handle That

Finally, isn’t it remarkable that while Twitter experts abound, almost none of them teach you even a smidgeon of proper etiquette?

When you refer to someone in a Twitter message, it’s best to refer to them by their Twitter handle. That provides a link and it alerts them to the fact that they were mentioned (which gives them a chance to thank you back).

In the case of MyWedding.com, their Twitter handle is “@myweddingdotcom.”

So, try your search terms combined with their handle, instead of their company name. In this case:

@myweddingdotcom colorado

@myweddingdotcom “castle rock”

@myweddingdotcom jobs

The results will show fewer goofballs and more savvy and experienced Twitter users, like the Oxford and Curtis hotels in the example below. We’re thinking these hotels host a few weddings on occasion, huh?

Yes, it’s still possible to fish for important contacts in “Twitter River” with your ole search fishing pole. But, it does take a little more work. Give it a try with better bait and let us know what your next catch looks like.

Yes, we just found yet another social media “expert” pitching the idea of an “Auto-Follow” program. These programs let you automatically follow anyone who follows you on Twitter

Not a good idea. If the latest round of Twitter spam attacks proved anything, it was that you MUST NOT do that.

And, Now Your Computer Can Be Hacked

It’s bad enough that otherwise smart people have all bragged to us, “I have 2,000 followers on Twitter and I’ve never even used it much.”

No they don’t! If they have 2,000 followers on Twitter, they have 1,800 porn linkers, swindlers, multi-level marketing goofballs, foreign gangsters and outright spammers.

The numbers are so high that people who are paying attention are leaving Twitter in droves. Why? Because Twitter can’t even oust the accounts that are stealing legitimate brands, like Wordpress.

Pictured below are some of the followers of one of the top speakers in the country. She’s been sold a bill of goods because she thinks she is following people of some worth. But, she’s now following:

Don’t laugh. If you use any sort of auto-follow system, you’ll find that you are now following the same kinds of bozos. Just take a look.

The sad fact is that these days 9 out of 10 people who join Twitter are unsavory types of one kind or another – pornographers, swindlers, used car salesmen types and outright spammers.

Go ahead and keep playing around, if you like. Keep thinking that Twitter is some sort of way to make professional connections.

Nope. It’s become simply a way for so-called “Twitter Experts” to deprive you of something even more important than your money. Your time.

Oh, By the Way

Of course, staying away from auto-follow programs only protects you from following bozos. It doesn’t do anything about the folks who follow you. Here are our latest 3 followers on Twitter:

Oh gosh, I sure as heck can’t wait to follow them back!

The fact is, if you like being cornered by veggie pill marketers, used car salesmen or escaped convicts, you’re gonna’ love Twitter.

As we said in our last post about shortened URL’s -”Twitter Spam: the Long and the Short.ly of It,” – that’s not the worst of it when it comes to your safety.

Nope, it’s your friends you have to watch out for. But, it’s not their fault at all. Take a look:

We’ve followed Gene Leganza (@gleganza) for some time now. He just happens to be a mucky-muck analyst over at Forrester Research – not exactly the type of guy you’d think would send you an unsolicited invitation to his Mafia Wars family.

But, as you can see from the screen shot above, he did send me just such a private “Direct Message” message, asking me to click and join.

Not a Good Idea to Click

Just one small point. Gene never sent the message. Some sort of auto-bot did. And, there are scads of other such messages, inspiring a torrent of complaints and anger on Twitter itself (just do a search for “twitter spam” on seach.twitter.com if you doubt us).

Here’s another example of the kind that may be filling your Twitter private messages. Again, looks can be deceiving:

The Worst Thing About It

Here’s what really hurts. What do the most of the folks conclude who get these types of private messages from their followers? Yup, they blame the messenger. That’s what Twitter expert Laura Fitton  thought, before she took a second look, (screen shot at the beginning of this article).

But, Gene never did send it. And, Kim never did send it. Gene doesn’t play Mafia Wars. Kim works for the Four Seasons, not some sort of online money making scheme. But, both links will infect your computer and start sending out similar messages to your followers, without your knowledge.

Gene and Kim (and thousands of others) have had to re-jigger their Twitter accounts and send out apologies to their followers. Gene says he took the time to connect to each one privately. He told us:

What really bugs me about it is that it made me an unwitting agent of spam. It impacted my followers’ trust in me.

Complicity and Duplicity

It’s clearly time for Twitter to get serious about these sorts of scams. Thankfully, more and more conscientious and brave folks are bringing up the topic. Michael Arrington’s series of articles about the complicity of the gaming industry and social media sites should make your hair stand on end.

And a simple search on any major search engine will return thousands of results for things like “twitter spam” and “mafia wars spam.” The same searches in the News sections of those search engines will give you the latest stories – and there are many.

The same searches in the “News” sections of those search engines will give you the latest stories – and there are many.

What’s to be Done?

Wish to heck we knew. But, it’s frightening. And, it’s keeping us from clicking on most anything anymore.

Do your own research. Write your own blog posts. Become part of the discussion. This sort of nonsense has the power to bring down not just Twitter, but our entire trust in the online world.

Those fake followers are almost more of a nuisance than anything, taking up your time as you evaluate whether they’re worth it.

Diving Off the Diving Board

While those idiots and swindlers are doing their best to ruin your Twitter experience, perhaps the bigger threat to you and your computer comes in the form of those shortened URL’s.

Think about it. Does it really make sense that the bad guys know how to send spam on email but don’t know how to send it out on Twitter? In fact, the URL shortening company Bit.ly flags 2 to 3 million untrustworthy messages of its own per week!

Clicking on one of these shortened links is like diving into a swimming pool without checking first to see if it has any water.

The Future Looks Dim

Twitter says that it’s going to start testing those shortened URL’s to make sure they are safe. If they do as good a job at that as they do at getting rid of pornographers, swindlers and multi-level marketers, things sure don’t look good for the home team.

Sure, there are technical additions available that offer some extent of protection. Firefox and other browsers offer add-on’s and plug-in’s that will give you a preview of the longer links. However, those don’t assure the link is not malicious.

One of the best overviews of this topic is from Brian Krebs’ Security Fix blog in the Washington Post, “Spammers, Virus Writers Abusing URL Shortening Services.”

What it comes down to is this – Twitter has the potential to be a true national resource, acting as an ingenious social meeting place and an invaluable public square.

But, the assault on it by the by the online version of drug dealers, pimps and criminals is simply not being taken seriously enough. Right now, as I write this, you can follow the carnage by doing your own search for “twitter spam” on search.twitter.com.

With Friends Like That

But, hang on to your hats, folks, because that’s not the worst of it. It’s actually your friends you need to watch out for on Twitter – not just the spammers and the URL sleaze balls.

More about that in our next post.

When you get done with it, you’ll just want to start over again – to catch up on the 90% that escaped you on the first read.

I’m not going to summarize it or write much about it, because Joshua Cooper Ramo does it better:

This book is the story of a new way of thinking. It is one that takes complexity and unpredictability as its first consideration and produces, as a result, a different and useful way of seeing our world. It explains why unthinkable disasters are blossoming all around us and — as important — what we can do about them. The main argument of the book is not particularly complicated: it is that in a revolutionary era of surprise and innovation, you need to learn to think and act like a revolutionary.

Reading this book will not only make you tremble, it will also make you think more deeply about the forces at work in your own world. What “unthinkable” events might you be heading toward in the next few years?

Out on a Limb

Of course, that got us thinking. From the viewpoint of our speaking and training world, here are four concrete, “unspeakable” predictions about how that world will change.

As you read our predictions, you may think, “I get your point, but it won’t happen that fast.” Think again, along with Mr. Cooper Ramo:

All of these trends follow what Internet watchers like to call a “hockey stick” curve: they start slowly and then rapidly accelerate.

So here are four capsule summaries – with links to other resources and some of our longer articles on each topic:

Bye-Bye Email

We subscribe to lots of email newsletters. We’ve given out our email address trusting it will be used appropriately. However, here’s the kind of thing that’s been happening lately:

*One sender decided we’d like his newsletter every single day of the week.
*One pleaded that we vote for her social web page contest.
*One asked us to join his Mafia Wars cabal.

None of them asked our permission for these changes. They figured we’d be tickled pink. We weren’t. And, those are just a few of the email infractions that are family friendly enough for us to write about.

When email spam now constitutes 94% of your inbox – and the other 6% of senders are making decisions like those mentioned above – email itself will surely “hockey stick” its way to its final coffin by the year 2012.

So Long, Frank Lloyd Long-Page

We’ve called him “Long Page Larry” in a recent blog post and renamed him here to “Frank Lloyd Long-Page.” He’s the man with the “Squeeze Page” (which are Internet come-on pages designed to gather email addresses), and he’s heading into oblivion.

With so much free information available on the Internet, your customers will quickly learn to insist on good free content that proves your expertise before they will ever plunk down their precious email address, or open up their wallet.

In fact, the message above will soon have to change to:
“If you’re not providing your customers with inventive, valuable and free content on your web site… Then there’s no doubt you’ll be watching your customers leave your egregious little
come-on’s with a quick, resounding click.”

The squeeze page mavens and super-slick online sales types say, “Trust Me,” or “Buy My System.” Within the next couple of years, we’ll all stop donating our email addresses, and we’ll all stop buying their bunk.

What a Pain You Are, Mr. Salesman

One of the bedrock approaches of the sales world is that you get further by making your customer feel pain, than you do by helping them understand their gain.

In other words, they know you buy things because you feel inadequate. When it comes to technology they’re masters at exploiting your insecurity about things like “Can I really become #1 on Google?”

As Carolyn Myss has said, “Americans have managed to make lack of self-esteem a national malady.” But, better access to information will help all of us build our confidence. And more confidence will keep us from succumbing to the pain messages those salesmen are pitching.

Some companies, like Dove soap, are already catching on. We wrote about their Campaign for Real Beauty in “It’s Time to Build the Customer’s Self-Esteem.”

Your New Best Friend – The Competition

Here’s what’s about to happen. Your increasing access to information (and your customer’s access to that same information) will revolutionize your relationships with your competitors. We’ve written more about this in “You Can Kiss Your Competitors Goodbye,”

If you’ve seen the television ads for “Injury Lawyers who Ride” you’ve already gotten a taste for how business competition is changing. Instead of competing with each other, “Donor-cycle” lawyers across the country have banded together to create this national network.

Take a good look at your competitors and ask them over for a cup of coffee, because “somethin’s happenin’ here” – and what it is will become very clear in just a few short years.

Your Own Predictions?

Agree, disagree, ticked off, beguiled? Don’t just sit there. Tell us what you think. And, send us links to the unthinkable, unspeakable predictions you’re making for your own industry or market niche.

We think that many current ideas and solutions (no matter what the discipline, market niche or public forum) are like those described in The Age of the Unthinkable:

“These ideas fail both tests of good science: they neither predict nor explain our world. But too many of our leaders are incapable of confronting this disconnect. They lack the language, creativity, and revolutionary spirit our moment demands. In many cases, they have been badly corrupted by power, position, and prestige. We’ve left our future, in other words, largely in the hands of people whose single greatest characteristic is that they are bewildered by the present.”

What do you think?

Want to find out how to keep up with what’s being said about you? Head straight to a cool new Internet resource called Filtrbox.com. But first, we’d like to tell you the story behind the Filtrbox story, and why you should care.

Broadcast News

The Internet has brought vast change at lightning speed to the business world. But, perhaps the biggest and least understood is the change from “broadcast” to “conversation.”

Without going all philosophical on you, whether you like it or not, you and your business are now part of an ongoing conversation. This conversation is multifaceted and it’s happening in a multitude of online locations.

The conversation is about the changes in your industry and the latest developments in the kinds of products you sell. But, it’s more than that. Now, folks are “conversing” about you, your brand and even your own (and your employees’) performance.

This new conversation also has a dark side. Whether you are famous for your inventions, ideas, products or services more and more people want to steal them from you – or just “borrow” them for a while without your knowledge. People want your trademark, your newest product release and even your turn of phrase. Increasingly, they don’t even think of it as stealing.

Location, Location, Location

Where is all of this going on? They’re writing web articles and blogs that use your own thoughts, ideas and exact words. They’re selling rip-offs of your stuff on their web sites and copying your good ideas on their blogs. And, they’re often slamming and damning your customer service on Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook.

How can you keep track of all this? And do you even need to? For an answer to that, just ask any company who has ignored the bloggers and Twitterers. As they can testify, conversations can grow, get out of hand and turn into firestorms.

Are the Solutions Worse than the Problem?

But, how can you keep up? How can you tune in to the first whispers of discontent? How can you know that someone is using your trademarked phrase? How can you track your competitor so closely you’ll know when they burp? Will you see them hawking your products on their web site?

Well, let’s see, you could cobble together some Google News alerts,  a sprinkling of RSS feeds, dozens of blog subscriptions, a few web site change alarms, and top it off with a smattering of newsletters. If you do this, however, you’ll have a control panel about as complex as a fighter jet. And, you’ll spend more time manning the controls than you will evaluating the information you gather.

But, what if there was one solution? And, what if the controls for all of this were simple and accessible?

1 if by Air, 2 if by Land, 3 if by Sea

The place to try out that “one-stop Internet information shop” is at Filtrbox.com. What these guys can do with their Internet listening devices should make the FBI and the CIA a little green with envy.

Unlike a lot of other forms of web and news alerts, Filtrbox covers virtually all the bases AND acts as both a search resource and an alert tool.

You can receive Filtrbox alerts in your favorite RSS reader or in your email. Or, you can ignore these types of constant notifications, go on vacation for a month, and then fiddle with the Filtrbox controls so that you quickly catch up on only the most important stuff you missed.

Tracking your company name and intellectual property? You’ll probably want to monitor all sources – mainstream news, the blog world and Twitter. Tracking a topic in your industry? You may just want to keep up with the mainstream news sources.

At the Controls

So, why is Filtrbox different? Because in one place, you can view and adjust your different topics, time frames, sources and the relative importance of those conversations in one place.

Here’s what I mean. When it comes to your company name, your own name and your trademarked phrases, I’m sure you’d like to know whenever someone says anything – both good and bad.

When it comes to keeping up on your industry’s hot topics and issues, you likely might want to know only when more important or trusted sources have something to say. In the screen shot below we’re only picking up mainstream press articles for a very, very popular term, “information overload“:

And, for all of your terms and phrases you can adjust the amount of time you’re looking at – longer for obscure topics and shorter for popular ones:

Here’s the thing, though. You’ve got to try this. There’s a free version and a free trial – giving you a chance to kick the tires and look under the hood of this remarkable tool.

Why do you even need to try? Because, as the Rolling Stones sang way back in 1965, people really are “talkin’ about you.”

Editors Note: We do not accept referral fees or payments for any sites mentioned in our blogs, speeches or workshops. We do accept “review copies” and “press passes” in order to be able to demonstrate resources and sites.

Who is Dominic? Is he one of your LinkedIn connections? Nope. In fact, Dominic has the sum total of four (yes, count them, 1, 2, 3, 4) connections. Poor souls.

But, even though he has few friends (no wonder), he has joined something like 40 LinkedIn Groups. And, yes, he happened to join one of the groups you belong to – which is how he got entrée to your inbox.

So, you say, no problem. There must be a privacy setting on LinkedIn that would keep Dominic out of your life. You know “privacy settings.” Those are the adjustments social networking sites don’t publicize at all and that you never have time to fiddle with even if you do discover them.

But, this is a problem. The only privacy setting that would keep Mr. Spam out of your inbox would also keep the legitimate members of that group from communicating with you.

There Goes the Neighborhood

And, that’s the problem. I do want to “Allow members of this group to send me messages via LinkedIn.” I just don’t want zeroes like this guy to have access to me.

In fact, I want LinkedIn to throw his sorry behind out the door – now. If they don’t, their once verdant social networking neighborhood will turn into a slum of social nitwits. And, that’s when we’ll all leave. I’m just leading the way, leaving now unless LinkedIn begins to eject Dominic Spam and his ilk swiftly and summarily.

Tell LinkedIn you feel the same way, or Dominic and his friends will soon be cramming your inbox with a ton of this kind of garbage, too.

Chris has recently gotten himself embroiled in a rather embarrassing little plagiarism scandal (good grief Chris, copy something a little headier than Wikipedia, if you can’t resist the urge). Unfortunately, that scandal has obscured one of the prime benefits of his book.

Released officially today, Free will rocket to the top of the bestseller lists. Which means a lot more people will realize how much free stuff there really is on the Internet (you know, like, for free). And, walking his talk, he’s liberally spreading free versions across the globe. Here’s the one we like from the incredible Audible.com.

It’s Your Information, Stupid

Amidst all the free stuff that’s available on the Internet, and perhaps most importantly, is a huge treasure trove of good, solid, free information and ideas. All this free stuff will be the end of the yahoos who promise you "Internet Copyrighting Secrets," "Instant Road to Internet Millions" and scads of other hype-driven entrapment offers like them.

Take, for instance, the guy who’s been hawking his "Copywriting Secrets" every day for the past umpteen months on various LinkedIn Group "discussions." Every link returns the reader to his "long page pitch." He provides no free content, he’s simply puffing his own stuff.

You’ll find "Long Page Larry" and a zillion bozos like him all over the Internet – just do a few searches for phrases like "Internet Copyrighting Secrets" and "Online Millionaire." You’ll usually find them pictured in front of a luxury car that costs more than the gross national product of Finland. You know the type.

The problem with their strategies is that what they’re selling is already available for free. Which is why you have to read Chris Anderson’s new book.

The Real Free Copywriting Secrets

Here’s an example. Why pay for copywriting secrets when there are sites like Brian Clark’s amazing blog, CopyBlogger? Clark gives away more solid and useful information about Internet copyrighting than you’ll ever have time to read.

Which is one of Mr. Anderson’s points – and one we’ll all be adopting in the coming years. Brian Clark gives away tons of free tips and strategies because it establishes his authority in his field. He can then sell his highest level of expertise at a very decent price, thank you very much (we all have to eat).

The Lady and the Outlaws

Alison Lunde (also known as @snipeyhead on Twitter) has "Long Page Larry" (and the free strategy) figured out in her hilarious "The Complete Social Media Guru." (Note: Allison did allow us to slightly alter the screen-shot and title to keep this a family friendly-friendly site – so be forewarned if you click the link).

It’s true. These guy’s days are numbered. Alison has them nailed and Brian has them covered. So, here’s the lesson for the day – and an oversimplified explanation of Chris’ book:

Read folks like Brian Clark, Chris Anderson and Alison Lunde. They get it. They establish their credibility by giving away free ideas. They are the people we all want to hire because, when we do, we know what we’ll get.

Here’s what happened, and it’s happening all over Twitter, all the time.

If you viewed just one of the Tweets touting this article, you wouldn’t think twice. It would certainly look to you like someone appreciated something and wanted to Tweet about it. Nothing too remarkable there.

The article itself was also unremarkable enough. It told how Twitter can build your business. Half of it was stuff you’ve read before and the other half was the typical bad advice you’ve also read before.

Warning Signs

However, in this case, scores of different people tweeted the exact same message, with the exact same wording. They did so almost all at the same time, all on the same day – and then stopped for good.

What you’ll notice in the screen shot above is that none of these folks “re-tweeted” someone else’s message. “Re-tweeting,” by the way, is a way of saying, “I agree with this person” or “I, too, liked the article that she mentioned.” Re-tweeting is a way of showing respect, admiration, agreement or thanks to someone who actually wrote a tweet that you found worthwhile. It’s a very cool thing when used honestly.

But please notice, these folks have “independently” created their own message. And, they are all using the EXACT same language. How could that be? Hmm… if that doesn’t make your “hogwash siren” go off, I don’t know what will.

(Please Note: the screen-shot above has been altered to protect the innocent – if there are any innocents, which I seriously doubt. Read on, but remember, don’t waste your time punching in the phrases, links, or Twitter names, because we made them up to protect, well, us. If you want to know the real names and links, just give us a call).

The Author’s Not Even @ Home

What you’ll also notice in the screen shot is that no one refers to the author of the linked article by her Twitter handle. They all refer only to her real name. On Twitter, that is really, really odd.

That’s probably because the Twitter handle for the author (@JRMishmash, for instance) has not been used for several months. Now, that might not make you suspicious right away, but remember, the article is about the power of using Twitter.

Yes, fans and fannies, it’s the old “fake expert trick“:

I’m an SEO expert whose own web site has no traffic.

I’m a relationship expert who only pumps my own stuff.

Or, in this case:

I’m a Twitter expert who never Tweets.

In an almost direct quote from her company web site at Mishmash PR, we find that she guarantees “measurable results” because:

Mishmash PR develops campaigns that will harness public relation strategies, social media, Web 2.0, and SEO-powered campaigns to deliver your customer message.

But, it’s all blather. The amazing thing is that she and her company are selling you their social media expertise and they don’t have any. They don’t Twitter and don’t participate in the ongoing, online discussion at all. All they do is sell their stuff.

Automation and Semi-relevance: the Name of the Spammer’s Game!

We were pretty sure general sliminess was involved here since those “hogwash sirens” had gone off more often than a Kansas tornado alert.

So, we asked Mike Keliher, one of our “Board of Learning Directors“, to help us explain what was going on here. He pointed out:

Well, you’ll notice that none of these people write messages at/@ other Twitter users. At the very least, that’s lame. It’s often a solid indicator of spamminess or other general bullshittery.

We like Mike not only because of his willingness to help us, but also because of his colorful language. He went on:

You’ll note, too, that @birdsofafether and @goshmoney, for example, have posted similar/identical messages and links several other times, too. More importantly, I’d bet a case of beer that these accounts are part of a network of accounts that claim to offer folks “100,000 impressions for only $12!” and things like that.”

The seediness of it almost makes you gasp. Well, not gasp, since there is a ton of such seediness on Twitter, but you get our point. Keliher finished up by telling us:

They set up a bunch of sort-of-real-looking-but-not-really Twitter accounts — and propose to help others spread word about their stuff for a few dollars. Or they link to pages in an effort to increase those pages’ Google juice. Or they are used in one way or another to game any system that’s unsophisticated enough to be based on sheer numbers.

We’re sure thankful for folks like Mike Keliher. I think it’s pretty fair to say that if we wanted to hire a PR firm, we’d pick his company (Fast Horse, Inc.) – instead of one that jiggers the links to their non-existent work on Twitter.

No More Cobbler’s Kids Excuses

Remember, it’s entirely within your hands to say “stop” to this kind of duplicity. Instead, if someone wants to optimize your web site and increase your web traffic, just ask them to show you how they do it for their own site.

When they say, “Oh, I get all my business from referrals and from my speaking engagements,” tell them to go jump.

If someone wants to sell you a seminar about the power of networking and building relationships, simply try to interact personally with them in some way.

When they say, “Oh, I’m much too busy for you,” tell them to go jump.

And, if someone wants to sell you a seminar about social media, just ask them to show you what they are doing with it.

When they say, “Oh, I don’t use Twitter, but you should,” tell them to go jump. And tell them to stay there!

Thank You: inuyaki.com’s Spam photo is used under Creative Commons license.