Written by Tyson Crosbie
The truth just sounds different. I heard that saying once when in grade school, I don’t know why but it always stuck with me.
The social game on Twitter
Lately on twitter I am starting to get a lot of noise from social gamers. These are the people who think that having the most followers is the key to online fame and or fortune. They probably read Chris Brogan’s blog religiously and implement every strategy that can be automated, duplicated or easily implemented. Unfortunately by doing this they are missing the entire point.
The noise I am talking about specifically in this blog post are the automated responses to new follows. They usually read something like: “Thanks for the follow! I look forward to your tweets! Check out my URL.” Besides being generic and lazy these automatic messages just wreak of the old school advertising numbers game. It rings false to me and I usually choose not to follow or unfollow the owners of this noise.
Demand truth in advertising
I believe we are selling ourselves all the time, and we are buying with our time from those who demand it. Getting what we want when we want is the key to all the things we talk about in Social Media. Relevancy, authenticity, accountability.
In a world that is increasingly on demand and unique to each audience member, it is only relevancy that will rule the day. The days of noise inserted for the masses between the content that we want to consume are waning. Truth in advertising will happen when the advertisements are as valuable to me as the content I am watching, reading or consuming. I hope it will become indistinguishable from the content.
We will likely never get away from the numbers game, it is an important part of being human and social. We want to believe that we are connected to each other and share a common experience. Accountability however, speaks to a personal responsibility in choosing your own content. The more you choose to manage your personal experience the more you will attract a positive one. This way I think the numbers will take care of themselves.
My content filter
Personally, I prefer truth over automation, personal connections over the most connections, accountability over laziness and community over empire. These preferences just feel better than the alternative and I believe that is my truth.
What is your content filter built out of, what is true to you?
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