Dude, the Government is Following Me!
An interesting question addressed in Government Twitter etiquette: talk but don’t follow is how can a government agency interact with tweeters?It’s a good article and the author and commenters address the issue quite well. I would like to take a look at the bigger picture. How should anyone begin a relationship with any tweeters and how do you know how to introduce yourself?
Based on my interactions and on various articles that I’ve read, I would say that the more formal a tweeter is, the more the etiquette of meeting and following should be. If I, Ulrn2Twtr, an individual decide to follow someone, I just click the button.
If I’m following someone who is new to Twitter, I like to send a reply message welcoming that person and offering assistance or information.
If I’m following an experienced tweeter, I might introduce myself but just as likely not.
If I’m following one of the Twitterrati, I don’t introduce myself because, well, I just don’t — maybe that’s a self-esteem issue, but I digress.
If I’m following a company or a government agency or a non-profit organization, I don’t introduce myself because I expect that the relationship will likely be more uni-directional. I’m following them so that I may get information. I would expect that at some point, they may ask for information from me but that situation would probably be informal and anonymous information. I would hope that they would not conduct an election on Twitter, for example. Ughghghghghg. Gives me the shivers just thinking about it.
As for being followed, I would hope that “just folks” like me would follow and not feel like they have to introduce themselves. It’s like being at a really big party that goes on and on… and on… and… but better than how that sounds. People just drift around in different groups, interacting in various conversations. I might like what @coolcatteacher says so I hang around that conversation and find out that @coolcatteacher is also friends with @timoreilly who also seems interesting. I decide to follow @timoreilly (not as creepy on Twitter as it would be at a real party) and find several of his friends to follow. It is an organic system that, if done in this fashion, will grow slowly and with a high level of quality. If this method doesn’t seem to suit your desires, there are many other methods for finding people to follow.
I appreciate it when bloggers let me know with a reply or direct message that they have a blog and I am invited to read it. I feel welcome. I don’t appreciate being “directed” to check out this blog, vote for this blog, comment on this blog, etc. “If you are interested” is very different from “You have to check this out” but that is just me.
I appreciate when a business lets me know that it is a business — sometimes you can’t tell just by the Twitter user name. I check the previous postings of these followers more diligently to weigh the number of ad posts against the number of community posts. If I find a disagreeable ratio, I may choose not to follow back. If I find no ratio at all, just ads, I will block the follower.
I would not want to suddenly discover a government agency following me. I am paranoid. I make no excuse for that. If I started following The Electric Company (not the PBS classic of the same name), then I would still want The Electric Company to ask to follow me and let me know what they hoped to gain/understand/learn by following me. You see, if TCE wants to share information, then I should follow it. If I want to share information with TCE, Twitter is probably not the best means to do so.
So, the less formal the connection, the less formal the negotiation for contact. The more formal — and institutional — the connection, the more formal the negotiation.
Ta.
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Thanks for your kind words on my post about government Twitter etiquette. Glad you found it interesting.
These days, almost half of the new people I follow are using a service like Tweet Later to send automatic DMs (Direct Messages) to thank me for the follow, and plug their site/service – or just to say hello. I don’t mind this at all, and have started doing it myself. (For my personal Twitter account, not the government one of my employer). And interestingly, I often get real, human responses back – so I’m finding it’s helping me make genuine introduction. Not what you might expect at all from an automated service.
I’d be interested to know where you stand on that sort of thing – is all automation and blanket tweeting a bad thing, or do you think it has a place?
I think it is nice, even courteous, to follow people back immediately and I don’t always manage to do that on my own. But I worry that automatically following people will encourage spammers. Also, auto-messages can seem cold. I would recommend thinking very carefully about how to word the message. I also like the automated messages that include a link to a blog or website if the wording is inviting but not pushy. For example, “Hi, thanks for the follow, if you want to know more about me please take a look at http…” is more successful with me than, “Thanks for following, you’ve got to check this out http…!” Oh, do I? I think not. As far as blanket tweeting is concerned, it’s difficult to do without seeming like spam. But we are all on Twitter for different reasons. Some people may want the sales call tweets. It’s not for me and I can easily avoid it without depriving others of their opportunities to receive it. Win-win.
I think of the auto-responder as an answering machine. It does make connecting with people more efficient but only if you follow up with the human contact. That’s why it’s nice that people are responding to you and, obviously — because of your kind comments here — you are following up and participating in the social part of social media. I would like to see more people playing around with Twuffer.com and creating scavenger hunts and other games with it.
Automation must be carefully monitored and I worry that people set up their RSS feeds and “share” without keeping an eye on what is really happening. Automation just sends things out; it currently is not capable of judging whether the information is accurate or useful. It should be used with caution. Auto-follow/auto-respond is fairly low-risk, low-consequence behavior and could be argued to be of high-value. Auto-feeds of news stories that might cause panic and violence is high-risk, high-consequence and is of little value. Choosing carefully how automation is used has been, and will continue to be, a challenge.