Open up your mind and say, ahh...

As you might know, I chose to unfollow the 131,000 or so folks I was following on my Twitter account. I did this primarily because I was getting crushed by direct message spam. I chose to follow that many people in the first place, because I felt that reciprocal following was polite. However, I came to realize that I wasn’t actually seeing anything that anyone was posting. In fact, because I followed so many people, the various software I use to view Twitter couldn’t even be served enough data.

What I’ve Learned

First, I learned that people put a lot of emotions into their social network subscriptions, and they put a lot of value into the concept of “friending” online. They feel an emotional response to whether someone chooses to connect with them via a social network or not. Responses in the comments and in my contact form and via other means of communication ranged from indignation that I would dare to unfollow them after “all these years” to hurt (I just can’t understand what I did wrong!) to some kind of, I don’t know, reverence: “I’m truly honored to have been followed by you for as long as you did.” All of these emotions were interesting. None of them are something I’m judging. They’re just all interesting for what they are.

Second, I found that by following a lot fewer people (I’m currently following around 370), I see a lot of conversations that were missing to me before, plus I’m seeing more of my @ mentions and more information in general. This is interesting to me because Twitter had become fairly crippled by me when I was following so many people. The software couldn’t even send me the messages intended for me in the @ replies.

Currently, I’m wondering what I want to do about following. The 370 I follow are all wonderful people. I’m still missing some good friends that I’m sure I’ll find via @mention and add back, but I don’t want to add everyone back again. I said that was my intention in the original post, but I don’t think that would be very beneficial. Instead, I think I’ll keep it quieter like I have it now. But what I might do is cycle in and out some number of followers, like drop 30 and add a different 30 from time to time, to see a new set of conversations from time to time.

These Are My Observations For Me

One point to make to you, especially the “you” who has to deal with clients who say, “Well Brogan did this,” and “Brogan unfollowed everyone,” please realize that a lot of what I do with each social media tool set is experiment. I work hard to understand what will work well, what won’t, what will serve my needs or my clients’ needs, and what will happen if I do this or don’t do that. To follow along with what I do too closely would be to fall in some of the same ditches I’ll discover by making mistakes and learning from them. Experiments are just that, and sometimes, things shake out in ways that aren’t as intended.

What I Know For YOU

Twitter is what you want to make of it. I know that the most important element of using your Twitter account, if I had to pick just one, would be to reply as often as you can, if engagement and community matter to you. If they don’t, use it however you want. But to me, replying when you can and as often as you can seems to be what people value most.

What’s Next for Me and Twitter?

I’m thinking of Twitter more and more as an “in the moment” tool. For instance, it works really well at events like PodCamp and other conferences, because people can easily follow a stream of information flowing out of hashtags. Twitter does serve well as a “feeding network,” sharing information into an ecosystem of people who are looking for new and interesting things to share. So, with that in mind, though I’m spending more and more time on Google+, I will still use Twitter to keep information flowing. I will reply as often as I can there, though I will likely go a lot deeper into conversations on G+. Why? Personal preference, plus I believe there’s more value to be had at Google+ in the longer game. It lets me “see” people better.

Do What You Like

There are so many ways to decide how you want to use Twitter. Find the one that works for you, especially as an individual. I prefer accounts that are a mix of informative and also diverse. You might see your needs differently and want to keep things very homogenized. Do what works for you.

And no matter whether I’m following you or not, you’re still important and doing good work. My following is not a seal of approval. It’s a choice. Like all things in life.

Make sense?

The placebo effect isn’t a lie. In fact, if you believe something is going to help you get better, it may very well do just that.

This very same effect works with stereo equipment, wine, politicians… just about everything where our belief intersects with reality.

You can believe that Ford is better than Chevy, that California reds are better than French ones and that your particular tribe is right (and that everyone else is wrong.)

Marketers love the placebo effect because it opens the door to stories and fables and word of mouth and varied perceptions. It gives marketers room to sell more than price and features. The first cultural byproduct this benefit creates is the notion that everyone is entitled to believe what they believe, and it’s rude to question it.

The second, is a real problem, though. If you spend enough time experiencing your own take on reality, you come to believe that what works for you might actually be a universal truth. Marketing plus psychology might equal science, it seems.

For the placebo to work, you have to believe it, but sometimes believing requires suspension of your connection with verifiable fact.

When that happens, we might believe that we’re entitled to believe things that conflict with demonstrable truth and an understanding of reality. With enough internal spin, you can believe that the moon walk was a fake, that levitation is possible and that the world is only 6,000 years old. You are welcome to believe that aqua metals will improve your sports performance and that z-rays will cure your arthritis, but only until it collides with things that are actually true. Placebos are a good thing, and everyone is entitled to their own beliefs, but they’re not entitled to their own science.

We now have to deal with the fallout from personal science. We’ve so blurred the lines between stories we tell ourselves and our perception of the outside world that it’s easy to be confused and easier still to confuse others if it advances your cause.

Consider the fact that the world is getting warmer. To be clear, everyone is entitled to have an opinion on what to do about global warming. The question I’m wondering about is whether we should solicit the opinions of the population as to whether or not it exists. We’re asking people to bring their knowledge of statistics, earth science and atmospherics to bear on analyzing data… Of course, most people don’t have that knowledge, or care that they don’t. If all that matters is belief, why should they?

Dylan told us that you don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows… I’m not sure you need to take a poll either.

Before you send me an angry email, consider that the question of what we should do about the trend is a different discussion, one that should be had. The question of how (or if) we should take action is not what this post is about. The trend I’m concerned with is the notion that we’re entitled to get upset when the truth doesn’t match our point of view. Does the weather care what you think?

Spotify has come under a lot of fire for a recent decision to force users to use Facebook to sign up for its streaming music service. The change, made not long after Facebook’s f8 developer conference on Thursday, removes the option of signing up with an email address and a password. Instead, users have to use Facebook Connect.

Here’s how Spotify explained the decision in a statement:

“To us, this is all about creating an amazing new world of music discovery. As most of our users are already social and have already connected to Facebook, it seemed logical to integrate Spotify and Facebook logins. We already use Facebook as part of our backend to power our social features and by adopting Facebook’s login, we’ve created a simple and seamless social experience.”

Spotify goes on to explain that it believes the change makes it easier on the user, since they don’t have to remember yet another username and password.

SEE ALSO: Spotify Comes to Facebook PICS

There are a lot of people that are unhappy with the decision. The company’s GetSatisfaction account is filled with angry and confused responses:

“I just don’t get it. Before you had access to every user of the web, and now you are restricting membership to people who like and trust Facebook. If you want to make more money, improve your service, add better features and provide a better product. It’s the only way to win the freemium battle, not ridiculous moves like this.”

Spotify is trying to leverage the reach and power of the world’s largest social network to grow its user base and distinguish itself from the competition, but has it gone too far? We’re curious about what you think.

Meghan Keaney Anderson is a marketing manager at HubSpot, a marketing software company in Cambridge, MA that makes marketing automation software.

We are all seeking a way to scale personal attention. The great promise of marketing automation is that it enables you to trigger messages based on a visitor’s actions on your site, ideally sending messages when they are most relevant rather than spam. But whether you are a B2B or B2C marketer, you can recognize that buyer-behavior is ever-changing. If marketing automation tools are to remain useful, they need to adapt and evolve as quickly as buyers do. There has already been much discussion about the next phase of marketing automation, and a lot of it has focused on the marketer’s needs (revenue performance management etc) here are a few things to consider from the customer’s perspective.

Much of prospect and lead activity now happens outside of your site.

Buyers control how and when they interact with your company, and more and more they are navigating their decision process outside of the confines of your website and your exclusive set of marketing campaigns. To truly be relevant, lead nurturing and email campaigns need to take into account buyers’ experiences across multiple channels and platforms.

Social media interactions should factor into targeted email campaigns. If an individual has downloaded a whitepaper that’s one thing, but what about if they tweet about it too? That indicates an additional level of interest. Additionally, you should be triggering communications based on all the types of content a lead has viewed and not just the forms he or she has submitted.

For example, we want to know that a person has signed up for a free trial, but what if they signed up for a free trial and primarily looked at one content type on your site? That information can help you provide an even more personalized experience to your leads, and should also be available to your sales team so that they know in advance what your lead was looking for. You should consider all of the avenues that someone could use to find your content.

Email is changing.

In the past, the only barrier to in an individual’s inbox, was a basic filter set up to weed out malicious and spammer content. That’s no longer the case. Today, more and more inboxes are being reshaped to help viewers prioritize their email and de-emphasize any non-urgent material. 3 million organizations now use Google Accounts, which gives users the option to automatically sort their inboxes by priority, as determined by the content and their relation to the sender. Even without Google’s “priority inbox,” many users leverage filter tools to automatically redirect marketing messages to side-folder. To stand out, your messages have to be tailored and useful.

Content beats technology ten times out of ten.

When well run, marketing automation should provide leads and customers with exactly what they need and nothing more. It should be interesting, relevant and useful. One of the biggest errors with marketing automation tools has to do with the content strategy not the tool itself. Without smart, tailored, useful content – marketing automation is just a intelligent spamming tool. Many marketing automation systems today have neglected the key principal of good marketing in favor of volume. Instead of just increasing the volume, speak to the pain points that a particular person has had. Ask what questions they had after reading the ebook, and them send them further content on those subjects to keep their interest.

What other limitations to today’s marketing automation and lead nurturing programs have you seen? If you are using marketing automation today, what unique content have you sent your leads?

#AdaptorDie!
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Image Credit: Shutterstock

Google has rolled out a new feature for Google+ that lets users share the circles they’ve curated with their friends.

“Starting today, you can actually share your favorite circles with others,” Google+ engineer Owen Prater said on Google+. “So if you’ve got a great Photographers or Celebrities circle, for instance, then you can share a copy with your friends.”

A new “Share” link now appears when you hover over a circle on the Google+ Circles page. Clicking the link will let you add a comment and share that circle with your friends on Google+. The search giant is careful to point out that this only shares the members of the circle you’re sharing and not what you’ve named the circle. That will always remain private.

The young social network is on the rise ever since it opened itself up to the public. A recent report claims that Google+ now has 43 million users, an increase of 30% since dropping the invite barrier. Another report pegs Google+ as the eight largest social network in the world, just behind MySpace and LinkedIn.

By Matt Hardigree, Jalopnik

Chowing down in the car used to mean going condiment-free or wrestling with a foil packet as likely to squirt ketchup on your lap as on your French fries. Heinz has a solution with its “car-friendly” packet. But does it work? Let’s find out.

The sauce-maker’s been pitching the Heinz Dip & Squeeze package as the only way to eat in the car without getting so much ketchup on your hands it looks like you’ve killed a toll booth operator. The trick is its ability to open wide for dipping or tear neatly for squeezing.

To properly test this minor miracle of engineering, I braved the greasiest burgers, freshest fries and crispiest onion rings I could find. Conveniently, all of them can be found at Charlottesville’s Riverside Lunch, angina be damned.

So… to the review:

Exterior Design: Modeled after the iconic Heinz 57 bottle, the packaging is both familiar and novel. Compared to the often squished and deformed foil alternative, the design is a revelation. Warning, it’s a bit shiny and its size makes it hard to store in your pocket.

Interior Design: Like the fiction of Trollope, the ketchup reservoir is wider than it is deep. This is fine when dipping a French fry, although trickier when trying to douse an onion ring in Reagan’s favorite vegetable.

Handling: Unparalleled dippage, with easy cover removal and storage. Clean, neat and simple. Ripping off the top for squeezing requires slightly more effort, and you can’t compress the package it into a flat sheet of foil.

Acceleration: Generally speaking, we oppose model bloat. In this case we’re behind it 100 percent because there’s no decrease in performance. Your speed in finishing off an order of fries will no doubt increase because you’re no longer futzing with pesky packets.

Value: The new packets to retail for $1.99 for a 10-pack, but if you’re paying for ketchup you’re doing it wrong. If you’re given a packet for free (as at Chick-Fil-A and, soon, Wendy’s) it’s a great deal.

Photos: Matt Hardigree/Jalopnik

Kobo is continuing its bet on social books with a new feature that shows who is reading at the same time as you and a Facebook integration that makes sharing your reading activity automatic, using Facebook’s new Open Graph.

The Borders-backed company became the first of the major ebook players to add a social layer to reading when it released a product called Reading Life in December 2010. That product tracks reading activity in a dashboard and rewards users with badges when they meet new characters or approach milestones in their reading. They can choose to share all of these items to Facebook as they go.

Now that sharing — and more — can happen automatically if the reader chooses. Kobo announced that it would become one of the first book platforms to use Facebook’s new Open Graph at f8 last week. This means the app doesn’t need to ask for permission every time it posts to a user’s wall and can send updates to the news ticker.

If two friends are reading the same book, for instance, that might show up on their mutual friends’ news ticker. Reading habits can be a box in Facebook Timelines, and, in some cases, Kobo will post interesting tidbits about a reader’s activity on his or her wall.

Kobo has also brought social interactions to the page level with a new feature called Kobo Pulse. While Reading Life’s social features were largely contained within a separate dashboard of the Kobo app, Kobo Pulse inserts them right into books’ pages. It will initially launch on the iPhone and iPad.

On each page of a book, there’s a button (“a pulse”) that glows stronger when there is a lot of social activity on the page. Tapping it pulls up a bar that shows how many of Kobo’s 5 million users are reading and discussing the book, how many have liked it, and how many comments the page has. Dragging it upward pulls up a dashboard that keeps track of the conversation happening throughout the book, displays reader reviews and recommends new books.

Critics of ebooks often cite the escape that a static paper book provides — and they started making that argument long before Kobo added discussions and sharing to every page. Kobo’s social book concept is fun. It’s instantly gratifying to see how other people have reacted to specific passages as you’re reading them. But will it ruin reading?

“I think that even people who feel that books are, as you describe, a quiet moment would still agree that when they’re done reading a chapter, when they’ve paused in a book, they do talk about it with others,” says Kobo CFO Dan Liebu. “They talk about it with others who have read the book, they talk about it with their friends. And we’ve given them the means to do that.”

The unconvinced, he says, can always turn the feature off.