Who to Follow on Twitter for Business (Even if They Don’t Follow You Back)

Happy Valentines Week – hope you and the ones you love most had a great day.  What I enjoyed, second only to my time with my beautiful wife and daughters, was being asked to write a Valentines song for MarketingPros PRO. It was a hoot, at least for me (OK, I got some good comments, too).

Writing a love song from the Profs to their peeps got me to wondering, though –  what about the flip side of Valentine’s Day, the unrequited love? It seems an especially important question for the Twitter-centric, given the lust after famous (or at least well-followed) members of the Twitter elite.

Twitter Isn’t Exactly Like Middle School – But It Can Come Close

As a relative newbie (less than a year) on Twitter, I admit some frustration at not getting all The Notable Ones to take note of me.  I’m rather late to the game, so it’s a bit like when I changed schools in middle of, shudder, middle school.  I was so desperate to make friends and break into well-established social circles that I started buying gum and handing it out before school.  I felt  a bit the same when I first joined Twitter and caught myself gratuitously mentioning, retweeting, etcetera.

Hey, Some of the Popular Kids Like Me – Why Don’t You?

I will admit to getting excited by my assumed “validation” of being followed by social and content leaders on Twitter.  OK, so they’re sharing their love with tens of thousands of others – it’s ME they really lust after, right?  And then I get to thinking, “Hey, if the likes of Jay Baer, Liz Strauss and Glen Gilmore can follow me, why can’t you, Mr. or Ms. Bigshot?”  I also read the occasional post from the well-followed as to the boorish, clueless behavior of those desperately seeking social attention.  I hear some go so far at to serenade their inamorta or inamorato outside of virtual windows…

I Want to Be The Taylor Swift of  Twitter for Business

At first I thought I might go all Taylor Swift on the unreachable – you know, how every time some guy breaks her heart she writes a song to get even? But rather than being immature and trying to musically shame people into following me, I thought that my Unrequited Twitter Love song should give a shout out to some of the notables on my followers list.

Not all mentioned today are in five or six digits when it comes to followers… but all are admirable, aspirational models of what it means to share, connect and provoke thought on Twitter.  Their other common thread is that I have been introduced to many by some of my unofficial Twitter and social media mentors, particularly Mark Schaefer and Gini Dietrich, through whom I’ve discovered Amy Howell, Sean McGinnis and Ian Cleary from today’s song.

So sit back, grab a beer and get ready to cry in it, ‘cause it’s time for The Unrequited Twitter Love Song!

American Airlines, Customer Service Ninjas, and the Power of a True Brand Story

The new American Airlines rebranding has received a lot of attention lately, much of it disproving the old adage that there’s no such thing as bad press.  In addition to their new logo – which I, in apparently contrarian mode, happen to like – there is new advertising, which is, to be generous, less than breakthrough (for a pithier appraisal, see Robert Passikoff’s commentary in Forbes).

The airlines press release proclaims “The ads, featuring both customers and employees, illustrate the important linkage between the knowledge American employees possess and how that knowledge aligns with the reasons people fly.”

Good thought, but the run-of-the-mill, introductory ad at least is self-congratulatory and company focused rather than being convincingly customer-centric.

Using Real Humans, But Missing their Real Humanity

While American’s new made up story did nothing to get me to look at them in a new way, an encounter with their true story did.  Last night, while scrambling to use American Advantage Miles to take a spring break vacation, a service rep, who asked to be identified only as Thomas F., not only went the extra mile, but seemed willing to make a round-the-world trip to get us what we needed.  He spent a generous amount of time on the phone, persisting despite the inherent challenge of our late booking, limited availability, our desire not to pay the exorbinant fees tacked on if flying their “partner” airlines,  and our need to get kids back into school on a timely basis.  This, mind you, was after my wife and I (OK, really just my wife) had spent countless hours online trying to work it out before ever calling.

To our surprise, American not only let us deal with a real human being, but an absolutely awesome one.  About 30 minutes into the adventure, when I could tell that every dead end only made Mr. F. more determined to see us through, I (the inveterate customer-service complainer) actually asked “How do you just keep going?”  His reply:  “At this point, it becomes a mission with me.”

If your Employees are On A Mission, Let the World Know

This unusally positive experience made me wonder why American had to get so grandiose in their brand positioning and the subsequent campaign. Why could they not tell their own true stories and connect human-to-human rather than corporation-to-public?

The answer, I think, is that big brands and their big agencies are still more comfortable with “story selling” than true story telling.  American and the big brand world at large would do well to strip away the self-importance, pretense and even the big production values to simply let their brand truth shine through.

A 3-Step Plan to Get from “Story Selling” to Powerful Brand Storytelling

1)  Listen to your customers. Really open up your ears. Brands typically pay for a lot of focus groups, surveys or even one-on-one interviews, but few manage to really hear and understand the feedback. Allow your researchers to tell you what’s really being said, not just what the organization has predetermined it wants to hear.  Then tailor your customer experience to that before you ever start worrying about logos or ads.

2)  Listen to your own people.  Apply the above to your own employees.  Continually. And provide them with both the invitation and the means to keep telling  you what’s really happening on the front lines. This will improve both your operations and communciations.

3)  Tell their story in human terms, not corporate or even ad speak.
“Change is in the air,” and “There’s something new in the air,” accompanied by corporate fantasy images of customers and employees looking longingly, lovingly up at airplanes, is generic advertising at best.  If you’re really hearing what employees and customers are saying, you’ll find a true brand voice, a convincing, human voice and a compelling, believable message.

New American Airlines Commercial:

Top Blogs, Top Social Media Dogs Get the Twitter Love Song Treatment

Welcome to the eighth edition of SocialSong, the more meaningful musical alternative to Facile Friday, er, Follow Friday, and a good place to learn who to follow on Twitter for business (especially if you want to learn about social media and content marketing).

This week the Twitter Love Song goes out to:

@ckburgess   OK, so I’m not exactly discovering an unknown here, but I am encouraging you, along with me, to pay closer attention to just how Cheryl Burgess blogs.  MarketingSherpa named her’s the best Social Media blog of 2012. I generally don’t care for marketing awards, because I come out of traditional advertising, where the awards are plentiful and almost uniformly unrelated to results.  But I admit this one got me to take notice, both of her clear, practical posts. and her incredibly long list of other awards. Color me jealous, but also appreciative.

@stellar247 I have this odd, almost emotional attachment to Kelly Mirabella. I started listening to her podcast Mastering Social Business when I was making weekly three hour round trips to visit my elderly mom.  Kelly’s fun, upbeat, easy-to-understand banter with co-host Paul Serwin was welcome both as early education and a relief from the heaviness of those sandwich-generation days. Since my mom’s been gone, I’m not on the road as much, so I listen less… but I can heartily recommend the show, and I enjoy following Kelly on Twitter.

@nickwestergard   Face it; I just like people from Iowa (I was born there). I find them to be reasonable, helpful and smart, without an I’m-so-much-smarter-than-you edge.  That’s how Nick Westergard strikes me.  He’s a professor-digital-marketing-maven-podcaster in the Iowa City area, and he caught me with his post “Writing is Selling: Why Content Creation is Worth the Time,” a straightforward pitch for the bottom line benefit of all this word wrangling.  Send it to those recalcitrant clients.

 @cspenn  Christopher Penn is one of those guys that gets around way too much and will forever make the rest of us look bad: author, speaker, blogger, podcaster (and co-creator of PodCamp with Chris Brogan), professor and martial artist.   He’s also good at sharing, as with a post from CSI (Customer Service Investigator) about how the big brands do, or don’t, respond to tweets.

 @brennermichael  Michael Brenner would be even more well known to all if he simply put his name at the end of every B2Community post (he co-founded the community).  He’s also a big-time marketer (SAP), blogger (B2BMKTGInsider) and, from the looks of his Twitter background pic, a devoted Dad (I’m always a sucker for a kindred spirit in that department). He’s at a level where people pay attention when he publishes a list, like his tally of top B2B influencers (companies and individuals).

@marketingprofs The ubiquitous Ann Handley finally got me to cough up some dough and go PRO with Marketing Profs. It’s actually all the fault of that damn @jasonkonopinski, who tweeted about his dependence on it for his own continuing education. Jason-wannabe that I am, I obviously had not choice but to sign up. It still remains to be seen if I will routinely schedule the requisite learning time to make my investment worthwhile, or if MarketingProfs will (through on fault of its own) be simply my latest social media gym membership… intended to get me in shape, but ultimately wasted.

@smcknox  If I understand correctly, Social Media Club of Knoxville is the hosting organization, along with Mark Schaefer, of Social Slam, an annual, up-close-and-personal social media conference in Knoxville, Tennessee.  I will be a first-time attendee this year, and am eager to rub SM elbows (ooh, sorry.. that sounds a trifle untoward, doesn’t it?) with  many of the folks I follow on Twitter.

@shellykramer  Shelly Kramer is an influential blogger based on, of course, her content.  But here’s my superficial confession:  I just like her profile picture. Somehow, it exudes that combination of friendliness and seriousness that a) make me want to trust her and b) fancy that she could be a professional friend. Or maybe she’s a jerk… but I doubt it.  She consistently tweets, and blogs, about interesting things of value. What more can I ask? The latest example that captured my attention: “What CEOs Think of Social Media”

That’s it for this week.  Just a reminder that I’m hoping to get a few of you to join in the Social Song Sing-along, as so ably demonstrated last week by Andrew Davis.

“It’s not enough that I follow you/I want our Twitter love to be true…”

What I Learned from My Neighborhood Merchants This Holiday about Finding Quality Content 

I live and work in Evanston, Illinois, the first town directly north of (and attached to) Chicago, right along Lake Michigan. While we are within easy driving distance of major shopping malls, we are within even easier walking distance of some terrific one-of-a-kind shops (interested? Try the Main Street Station Merchants, including Eureka! Antiques, pictured above).  Stopping in to a few yielded some terrific gifts, and that old “Aha!” pleasure of unexpectedly finding the perfect thing.  It also put me in mind of a terrific New Year’s resolution for content marketers in 2013:  Stop shopping at the content mall.

As Content-Centric Marketing Becomes More Common, Me-Too, Factory-Produced Content Just Won’t Cut it
Throughout 2012, one article after another trumpeted the seismic shift from push to pull, from paid to earned and owned.   The big brands are jumping in with big bucks; the small brands are signing on with high hopes.   In short,  all signs are good for content marketing to become a real revolution in 2013. Or are they all bad?

Quality Content Creation vs. A Quantity of Content Mindset
Not surprisingly, given the rush to stake out content turf, surveys cite the difficulty with creating sufficient quantities of quality content as their number one challenge. The answer?  Why, buy in bulk. Set up your calendars, assign topics, and then tap into one of the many freelance databases or content creator corrals (versions of the aforementioned Content Mall).

With enough discipline and centralized, editorial effort, that might just work. But will it yield that ‘Aha!” pleasure for your visitors, prospects and customers?  Will they discover that you, out of all the great new goldrush mass of online and offline content marketers, truly understand them – and your own brand – well enough to deliver that perfect thing?  I have three simple suggestions for making sure that your content can, indeed, deliver just that

 3 Simple Suggestions for Creating the Kind of Content You Can’t Get at a “Mall”

1. Keep both the message and the process P2P 
   Content marketers seem to just be coming around to the need for strategy, and a realization that the strategic focus for content and the social media that drives it should be squarely on the people it seeks to serve, not the brand from which it emanates (Steve Farnsworth shared a video on this subject recently).  That’s great;  start thinking like brand communicators and focus on what the consumer benefit is, not what your story or features are.However, it’s hard to communicate that human benefit, if you take a corporate, lowest-cost posture toward your communicators.  Content marketers need to develop their own, well-known, mutually-invested content creators. Don’t just issue an assignment to an anonymous freelancer who you only know via a few samples on massive website of freelancers – cultivate your own sources via networking, or your own deep digging on the Internet – and then get to know the creative types who will create your content.  Talk to them.  Video chat.  Follow their blogs.   If they are local, sit down and have coffee with them (I know… how quaint).

   Of course, only do this if you are interested in producing the best content, not the cheapest (and yes, that’s how I start many initial conversations with prospective clients, explaining that we will never be their cheapest resource, preferring to be their most valuable).

2. Start with less, expect more
   Multi-model content marketing is ideal, but it’s better to start small than not at all. Identify your highest value content category (or two).  Invest in the highest quality content creators that you can afford for that arena, be it blogging, video or other, equipping and expecting them to really get to know you and your brand. Execute well and consistently, develop a following and then branch out as you are able.
3. Don’t be afraid to get creative – think beyond the written blog
   Does anybody really need another white paper?  Well, yes, I suppose so, if it’s really good, in-depth and on-point to the needs of a high-value target.   The tried-and-true still have a central spot in content marketing, but it’s also time for the untried-and-new.  Don’t be afraid to stick your corporate neck out a bit (in keeping with whatever your true brand personality is, of course; I don’t advocate being different for its own sake).

   The Creative on Call content that is currently getting the best response is also the one that received the comment “It takes some serious nuts to push out like that.”  It’s called #SocialSong Saturday, an alternative to Follow Friday, and it’s not for everyone, but it is proving to be the most meaningfully differentiating and engaging content we’ve yet produced for ourselves (yes, I use the first person plural constantly to describe my virtual non-agency).

   Think beyond the blog, slideshow or over-stuffed info graphic.  How about comedy? Fiction? Performance art?
   Public service? You are truly only limited by your imagination – and content marketing needs to become a more imaginative commercial art.

Here’s to a Happy 2013 for all – a year of content creating “Aha!” moments like never before.

How the Original “Owners” Lost Brand Christmas to Better Storytellers – And How to Get it Back

I know that, at cocktail parties or in content marketing, one shouldn’t broach the unmentionable subject of religion. Nonetheless – and seeing as it is nearly Christmas – I am going to venture into that questionable territory to ask a simple question: Whatever happened to Brand Christmas?

First, let me clarify. Although I am a practicing Christian (and “practice” is the operative term here, as there is no such thing as ever getting it right in this life) I am NOT joining the “Christmas is under attack” chorus. To me, that is just so much manipulative fodder for the regrettable likes of Fox News et al. No, I am talking about Brand Christmas from a marketing perspective.

Hey Churches: Forget the new hand bells… sign up for Hubspot
Brand Christmas has traditionally been promoted by its original owner, the catholic church (small c… look up the difference) via the push marketing of preaching, much of it product- rather than benefit-focused. Centuries before people started using their DVRs to skip the push marketing tactics of mass traditional TV ads, parishioners and the public at large started skipping out on the let-us-tell-how-you’re-going-to-hell pulpit pronouncements* (why do you think the adjective “preachy” has a negative connotation?).

Contrary to the model of the guy who’s mentioned in the first half of the brand name, the pitch has been all tell and no show. Where are the modern parables? Where are the compelling, real-life vignettes? Where are the modern Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, brand journalists all? Any outpost of the church universal (catholic, for those who didn’t look it up) who is considering buying that new set of hand bells would do better to invest in a good content marketing platform.

Where are the Storytellers for Brand Christmas?
Because the self-evident power of story has too often been ignored in promoting Brand Christmas, competitors have been able to use it to effectively redefine the holiday into a happily amorphous winter shop-a-thon. Today, the “mass” originally implied in the name mostly means mass marketing. Clement Moore is the granddaddy of brand journalists here, an evergreen storyteller selling Santa, that pleasantly secular shadow of a saint. In so persuasively promoting the big man in the red suit, and having countless publishers, retailers and parents pick up the now non-religious tale, Moore and those who gleefully followed have cornered the holiday market.

Brand Christmas Needs more Creative Content Marketing
Don’t get me wrong; nobody pens a better piece of keepsake doggerel than Mr. Moore. His brilliance is in imagination, not form or presentation. Imagination is precisely what is lacking in the Brand Christmas narrative. It’s all too much the same rote telling, whether from a thousand weary pulpits or in a countless contemporary Christian praise songs that all draw from the same limited vocabulary and worn out images.

How Can You Describe the Concept of Being “In the Image” without Imagination?
The best Christian writing seems to be non-fiction; my favorite author along those lines is the erudite, insightful and highly accessible Philip Yancey. But where are the great fiction writers telling the story for Brand Christmas? Come on folks, we’re talking the Word Incarnate here. How about some words that really bring it all to life?

Why has even that brand storytelling turf been ceded to the secular, where mash-ups of mythic-with-the-modern stories thrill millions (think Rick Riordan’s Percy Jackson series, updating the Greek gods)? Are the keepers of Brand Christmas afraid of fiction? Is the assumption that there is no mass market for it?

Once Upon A Time, A Great Christmas Brand Storyteller Strode the Big Stage
There is a willing, or at least tolerant, mass market for it, if one looks right under one’s (American) nose. It is accessed annually by the unassuming and blanket-toting animated character, Linus, in the now-classic A Charlie Brown Christmas. Apparently Charles Schultz had to hold his ground against considerable network opposition to keep this part of the production in the final cut. But there it is. In the middle of one of the most popular holiday stories  –  pitched at and appropriate for a wide secular audience – the heart of the real Christmas story, told in timeless prose (straight scripture, actually), delivered by a beloved, animated character. Storytelling at its best, for Brand Christmas.

Can You Think of Any Imaginative, Artful, Unusual Examples of Storytelling for the Christmas Brand?

I realize that I protest too much; many artists, writers, songwriters, etcetera over the years have poured imaginative heart and soul into telling the Christmas story.

It simply doesn’t happen enough, and has been superceded by secular versions and visions. If you have a favorite example of “brand storytelling” in service of the real story of the coming of what we Christians believe to be our bridge to God, please tell us here.

Merry Christmas. Really.

————————————

* While I believe great preaching is hard to come by, it’s certainly out there.  My current favorite preacher, Matt Fitzgerald, who’s made Advent a little more expectant this year with sermons like “What If There Are Two Kinds of Christians, and We’re Both Wrong?” and “The Ape in the Manger”. If you’re so inclined, listen to the audio; the transcripts don’t do them justice.

Songwriting as content marketing and social engagement, or… installment three of the musical alternative to Follow Friday.

Welcome to the third installment of Social Song Saturday, the “Twitter Love Song.” The idea is simple: sometimes, a facile #FF just isn’t enough to recognize those who are tweeting, or retweeting, the really good stuff.  This week you’ll get some great suggestions of who to follow on Twitter, including:

@mdchudahy  There’s no one tweet in particular that caught my attention, it’s just that he has proven over time to consistently tweet interesting, worthwhile content (and yes, once in a while that includes mine).

 @TheJackB  I discovered him via @ginidietrich; he’s a dad, a blogger, a thinker, an open mind and heart (well, at least in writing he is); a couple of posts on his blog that mention his grandfather really got me. Also, in the aftermath of last week’s unthinkable tragedy at Sandy Hook Elementary School, he did some good thinking aloud, sharing how he talked to his kids

 @jonathansalem is the co-author of “Tell the Truth:  Honesty is Your Most Powerful Marketing Tool.”  I got to sit down and do a video interview with him – fascinating guy with a lot to say (worth hearing).  Watch for that interview in mid-January.

@belllindsay works for an “interesting” writer/blogger/thinker (understatement), the aforementioned @ginidietrich… but she hardly writes in Gini’s shadow. Her post this week on why she’s ditching Twitter for Facebook not only inspired a flurry of instructive commentary… it also contained my two favorite lines of the of the week:

1.  As my dear old dad always said, “A change is as good as a rest.”
2. Facebook was the ‘beers on the back deck’ to the boardroom of Twitter

How can you not follow a writer like that? (BTW, my apologies to this self-proclaimed grammar geek for the “audio typo” as I attempt to sing your Twitter name.)

@conversionation captured my attention a couple of weeks ago, with what was essentially a non-business post, written just after his mother was diagnosed with cancer.  I struggle with how personal to be in my business writing, how much self-disclosure is required to be “authentic” (my absolute least-favorite buzzword). His post “On Being Human: The Ties That Connect Us.”  fairly well answers the question in the title.  Be human. Dare to actually connect.  All communication is human-to-human, whether the context is business or personal.

 @dbvickery hosts #hecklershangout along with @margieclayman, through whom I discovered it.  I’ve only made it to one (a hoot of an informative affair), and I missed this week’s edition.  The guest and topic list is eclectic – this week the discussion was on financial advice for college with @jodiokun (I have a high school junior, so I MUST review the video).  Next up: @jasonkonopinski, who appeared in the first Twitter Love song. I will do my best to be there!

@seigelgale is the branding agency with simplicity as its long-time mission and The Global Brand Simplicity Index as its content cudgel, which it uses to beat us all into simplicity submission (just jealously kidding about that last part). The Index is a great annual study tracking the brands that best get down to the basics. It even assesses the bottom line shareholder value of those anti-complexity efforts via the Simplicity Portfolio, which the study encompasses.  I mine it repeatedly for support of my wild assertions, but am remiss in posting anything about the latest edition, which came out earlier this month. Be on the lookout for that, please.

 @crestodina runs Orbit Media in Chicago (@orbiteers), and was generous enough to publicly share his agency’s marketing plan.  Andy is definitely worth following, if only for the fact that Orbit Media also hosts Wine and Web, a monthly chance to get social in person while learning from an interview-style presentation with a variety of web design, digital marketing and social/content leaders.

Who do you passionately follow on Twitter?  Reveal the reasons for your social crush and who knows – they might turn up in the Twitter Love Song!

 A new series in Branding Magazine features brands that  go beyond corporate lip service to be truly customer-centric

From Branding Magazine: An interview with the people who bring Regus’ Customer Journey to life.

I hate buzzwords.  My two least favorite are “authenticity” and “customer-centricity.”  The former I wrote about some time back in a Branding magazine article, “The Death of Authenticity.”  Today, in the same publication, I’ve launched what I hope will be a series of articles looking at brands that truly deliver exceptional customer service – or rather, that go beyond traditional notions of service to center their efforts, their brand, their business on the customer. Oddly (to me at least) customer service is often siloed at some distance from brand marketing, even though the former is absolutely critical to paying off the promises of the latter.

Branding Magazine may feature your brand, or your client. Send your suggestions!  I hope you’ll read  the first article “Regus: How the  Royal (Customer) Treatment Gets That Way” and also send me suggestions of other exemplary brands to profile. Please leave your suggestions in the comment section here, or contact me via email.

Are Sappy Quotes Sinking the Social Web? A Friday Rant

 “Personally I have no bone to pick with graveyards. “ This quote is attributed to Samuel Beckett – but unlike Sam (we were on very close terms), I do have a bone to pick with the excessive use of quotes, particularly on Twitter. (Note: I realize that I am preaching to the choir relative to heavy business users of Twitter et al – but I ask that you read on to see if you, too, don’t find this a battle worth joining).

Famous Quotes are Inane Effluence Clogging Our Twitter Streams
IMHO, there is no more thoughtless form of “content” (which is to say, devoid of thought), than the incessant tweeting or posting of easily culled quotations. It is not so much that the sentiments expressed aren’t valid – it is simply that they are not useful to those of us using Twitter (or Facebook, Pinterest, etc.) for business.  They are empty, blatant pleas for attention – and likely counterproductive pleas at that.  As Laura Dugan noted in her MediaBistro.com post “13 Reasons Why You Don’t Get Followed Back”:

“While we all think Mark Twain was devilishly funny, he doesn’t need to make an appearance in all of your tweets. Having too many inspirational, funny, moving, spiritual or other quotes in your Twitter feed will likely turn off a lot of people who go to Twitter for unique information from real people.”

I would add to Laura’s litany of reasons not to use quotes the idea that doing such merely telegraphs your inability to generate truly original content, even 140 characters of it.  I know you can find your way to BrainyQuote.com – that’s just not enough of a reason to follow you.

Quality Content Creation vs. Anybody-Can-Do-It Quote Curation
Content marketing should be about providing value to your followers, not monopolizing, and effectively neutralizing their social media channels. In the hierarchy of valuable B2B content, random quotes are just above the noxious humblebrag but below the ubiquitous cute animal videos (I actually saw one I liked today; I liked it because there was a strong marketing point to it).

Three  Ways to Fight this Aphoristic Trend
I hope you’ll join in the effort to keep social media useful for business by
1.         Retweeting this post, including the hashtag #quotessuck
2.         Retweeting, reposting and pinning the #simplegraphic “If all you tweet or post are Aphorisms does that make you an Aphhole?”
3.         Suggesting in the comments section how you would go about ridding the social media world of this mind-numbing march of maxims.

Thanks! Let me hear from you.

Introducing #SocialSong Saturday, because #FF Just Isn’t Enough
As I sit here on Saturday morning after a week glued to Twitter, where I’ve been meeting some terrific, smart, funny people and learning a lot from the content they share, I’m thinking that Follow Friday is so, well, yesterday.  Not only does it fail to fully express my admiration and gratitude, but a simple #FF is no #FFing good at revealing any of the insights that have been shared with me.

Love Has No Shame, on Twitter or Elsewhere
So, casting pride aside, today I begin a weekly song fest dedicated to those who have shared the most useful, interesting or motivating tweets with me this week:

@ginidietrich
You’re my lead-off Twitter Love mostly because your ultra-simple, just give-em-the-content-and-be-yourself homepage video inspired me to break out my video camera and create #SongSong Saturday.  You also offer a stream of useful content and interesting guest bloggers at SpinSucks

@cc_chapman
I’d like to say we commiserated in the comment section of your post “When It Gets Real” about how great it is to see our latest best-seller in the bookstores.  Alas, mine is still in the works.  Still, we did discover a common love of the writer’s spirit (that is, well-aged single malt scotch).

@markwschaefer
Your Tao is what first got me to say “Wow! This guy is good.”   You often manage to slap me up side the head with that Twitter Tough Love, as in your post “This is why I’m not reading or tweeting your blog post,” which cruelly pointed out my deficiencies in the headline arena.  To top it off, you used me as inspiration for another post, “Ten reasons to blog even if nobody reads it.”

 @jasonkonopinski
OK, this may only qualify as a bromance, but you caught my eye with Poetry Friday, a fresh, almost shaming reminder of why I love words and writing in the first place.   Check out yesterday’s post on Sheamus Heney, and his poem “Digging.”   This week I also came across a previous post on Shel Silverstein that should make any writer want to go out and play with real abandon.   The poems notwithstanding, my favorite insight of this week coming from you was actually this little gem:  Attention is king (finally, somebody recognizes that content is just the delivery boy).  Just one question for you… when is Gerard Manley Hopkins slated to appear?

@nickwallen
I lust after your ability to consistently curate and tweet meaningful content,(thankfully including some of mine) as well as create it, as in your post encouraging a little creative risk. You hold the #1 spot in this anglophile’s AngloFile Twitter list (yes, I know you’re a Kiwi, but it’s all about where you live).

 @margieclayman
I believe I fell in Twitter Love with you when you started promoting #vetsmatter, which got me to run my own raise-money-for-returning-vets-on-Twitter campaign (now concluded, the full amount donated). This week you gave the Devil’s advocate his due in a nifty post that takes Hubspot, and all of us, to task.  And of course, there’s always #hecklershangout to look forward to. We’ll have another less than secret rendezvous there again soon!

@glenngabe
I first fell in love with you offline, with your SEO book (you were one of my first teachers; can’t say I’m yet exactly an A, or even a C, student).  But, as an SEO guru, you left yourself open to my crack about being the SEO police when you shared the Inbound Town infographic.  Hopefully everyone will visit your blog to see what a real SEO police force can do.

 Sing Me A Comment or Two
OK, that’s it for the very first installment of #SocialSong Saturday.  Let me know what you think, and feel free to add a couple of verses of your own in the comments section. (BTW, to you think I should have guest songbloggers offering up their own Twitter Love?)

The Tao of Twitter: Changing Your Life and Business 140 Characters at a Time is a clear, useful Twitter how-to manual, and I can  see why it and its author, Mark Schaefer, have garnered so much praise.  What I don’t understand is why so many of the overwhelmingly positive reviews feel the need to almost apologetically qualify this as a beginner’s book.  That’s exactly what it is, and exactly what people like me and most of my clients need:  a book that will get us to begin using Twitter and start appreciating what Schaefer refers to as the “… diversity, usefulness, profitability, power and fun of Twitter.” [pg 5]

Rather than repeat what others have already said well, I will link below to a few of the aforementioned reviews.  For my review, I will simply share some highlights, in the form of Tweets, of what struck me most in reading The Tao, and why I plan to keep it at my side as an ongoing reference. (And yes, I will be tweeting each of these, so I am showing the entire tweet, including links.)

Reviewing The Tao of Twitter in just 10 Tweets

1. Twitter isn’t exposition, its discovery: a “majestic random synergy” @markwschaefer http://bit.ly/QFhbS1 pg5 
2. Targeted connections + Meaningful content + Authentic helpfulness = Tao of Twitter @markwschaefer http://bit.ly/QFhbS1 pg15 
3.  “Connections lead to awareness. Awareness leads to trust. Trust is the ultimate catalyst” @markwschaefer http://bit.ly/QFhbS1 pg20 
4.  You can effectively use Twitter to “pre-populate the business relationship” @markwschaefer http://bit.ly/QFhbS1 pg20 
5.  Set up your Twitter profile carefully. “No picture = no followers.” @markwschaefer http://bit.ly/QFhbS1 pg37 
6.  On Twitter “The catalyst… for every connection… is content” @markwschaefer http://bit.ly/QFhbS1 pg51 
7.  For Twitter success “spend a little more time on the Mighty Mighty Retweet” @markwschaefer http://bit.ly/QFhbS1 pg56 
8.  “The study showed that Tweet quality is much more important that quantity.” @markwschaefer http://bit.ly/QFhbS1 pg76 
9.  “Social media is P2P.  Person to person.”  @markwschaefer http://bit.ly/QFhbS1 pg87 
10.   To succeed “try to follow this path, to stop selling and be selfless…to give back to the universe”  @markwschaefer http://bit.ly/QFhbS1 pg87

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