Once upon a time you could talk to people on Twitter. You could ask them questions, needle them, thank them for following you and even joke with them about their tweets. No so much anymore.
In our scientific study of hundreds of thousands of Twitter interactions (well, ok, maybe it was an unscientific study and only included a bunch of our tweets, but….), we are sad to report some disturbing trends:
- Responses to @Messages have gone down a shocking 55% over the last year.
- Even worse, responses to DM Messages have dropped 73.3% in that year.
- Most troubling of all, though, Thank You Responses have plunged a shocking 193% in just 12 months.
These figures had better make you stop in your tracks and rush right over to the @Message and DM Message Links on your Twitter account.
No Excuses, Please
Oh, sure, we can hear you saying:
- “I don’t have time to write back to people.”
- “I’m too important to interact with the doofusses on Twitter.”
- “Lots of my DM messages are spam.”
You know what? If you don’t have time to respond – you’re just another “Bombastic Blatherer,” the fastest growing and largest single group on Twitter (don’t ask us for the statistics).
If Chris Can Do It
Over the past week, we’ve been ignored by the mighty and the meek. We’ve had DM messages sit like lonely hitchhikers on the Bridge to Nowhere. We’ve had @Messages die certain, agonizing deaths. And, while some folks say thank-you, most of you don’t (and you know who you are!)
But, you know what? Real social networking takes time. Time to interact and time to respond and even time to thank people.
Chris Brogan has well over 136,000 followers on Twitter. I don’t know him and he doesn’t know me, but I’ve @messaged Chris exactly twice this past year. Both times he acknowledge my tweet by responding.
So, Back to Janet
We opened this article with a screen shot of Janet Betschart thanking the folks who answered her question about Outlook. My German isn’t very good, but it’s good enough to know she was thanking those folks. Or, you could use Google Translate:
In fact, if you want to know whether a particular person is getting feedback on their Tweets – just go to Search.Twitter.com and put in that person’s handle with the @ symbol in front of it. You’ll find out who has real followers who is simply whistling Twixie.
When we did this for Janet, even though she doesn’t have hundreds of thousands of followers, five or six folks answered her question right away:
And then Janet took the time to thank them, right in front of Twitter and everyone.
What can I tell you? Thanking people and responding to them are now as endangered as the waterfowl in the Gulf of Mexico. The current out-pouring of icky, black, Bombastic Blather is turning the Gulf of Twitter into a giant self-serving swamp.
You can help clean it up. Just write back.
{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
This is an awesome post to say the least!
There’s way too much of those “bombastic blatherers” and aside from it being just plain rude, its a lost opportunity.
People today want to interact with a brand (whether it be the company brand or an individual)
Also, forgive me if I’m wrong, but this is supposed to be “Social” networking and there’s nothing social about ignoring those who support your brand.
Thanks again for this. Well done!
Respectfully,
Paul Castain
Michael,
Thanks as always for keeping us accountable and human in the crazy, impersonal on-line world. I enjoy our conversations, and I’m personally thrilled to get a “thanks” on Twitter – especially when it comes from great authors and great friends. Keep up the great work! -Sara
Hi Paul and Sara,
Paul, yes – odd isn’t it that “social networking” seems to be in danger of being taken over by those who are anything but social. Sometimes it comes from those people who are selling their Twitter services to others. I noticed that two of the Denver Post sports writers have Twitter accounts now – but never communicate with anyone. All they do is “bombastically blather.”
Sara,
There is no better person for saying thank-you. If you do a search for David Meerman Scott here on our blog – you’ll find a good article about saying thank-you on social sites.
Thanks to both of you – and keep communicating!
Ha! GREAT POST – I’m relatively new to twitter and the amount of “spam tweets” is amazing..it just seems like people only join to sell you something, so it’s a twitter network of people trying to sell each other stuff that no one wants to buy since the “regular” consumers don’t bother with twitter anymore…since well..the spamming and all.