Like many of you, I use Twitter. (@chriswebb) I use it for a variety of reasons, both personal and professional but have always thought of it as a very ‘personal’ tool. By that I mean it’s an ecosystem of *people* that despite the distance and in some cases, anonymity, relate to each other. It is a social tool – I mean it is called “social media” for a reason.

But I am seeing a trend among several users who are opting for an automated response to everyone who follows them. For example, today I got the following warm-hearted response from someone I followed:

“Thanks for following me! Find GREAT Real Estate deals w/my E-Book (link omitted)”

Wow, how…personal.

So, do I respond personally to everyone who follows me on Twitter? No. But I also don’t send some impersonal canned response either. Instead, I’ll choose to actually engage you in conversation at some point using the tool. That’s the point, isn’t it? Just using Twitter and other tools like it as just another channel to send the same spammy messages one might use in other media is completely missing the point.

The same goes for Authors who use social tools as part of their personal platforms to help support their books. I encourage you to use tools like Twitter – in fact it is becoming more important that you do just that. But use the tools in the way they were meant to be used.

Why not just tweet a simple welcome to new followers?  Maybe 5 or so at a time?  At least then people know you are actually doing it and not relegating it to some cold, automated script. If you can’t manage that for some reason, then just skip it.  I’d rather see nothing than an autoreply.

Do you use an automated, canned response for your Twitter followers?

Earlier this week, we started inviting a selected group of people to try a new, free tool that we are calling “knol”, which stands for a unit of knowledge. Our goal is to encourage people who know a particular subject to write an authoritative article about it. The tool is still in development and this is just the first phase of testing. For now, using it is by invitation only. But we wanted to share with everyone the basic premises and goals behind this project.

At first glance it seems that they are looking to take on sites like Wikipedia, and Squidoo, which they likely are but I wonder if there isnt an opportunity here for authors to leverage knol as an instant part of their author platform. Google says they want to use Knol to highlight the author as an authority on the subject.

The key idea behind the knol project is to highlight authors. Books have authors’ names right on the cover, news articles have bylines, scientific articles always have authors — but somehow the web evolved without a strong standard to keep authors names highlighted. We believe that knowing who wrote what will significantly help users make better use of web content.

“But I already have a blog,” you say. Yes, I hope so, but knol may be another part of your author platform, and more importantly perhaps knol content will be featured on Google searches in the same way YouTube results, News results and other Google properties are featured. Google has not said this – it is pure speculation on my part, but it seems likely to me.

Our job in Search Quality will be to rank the knols appropriately when they appear in Google search results. We are quite experienced with ranking web pages, and we feel confident that we will be up to the challenge. We are very excited by the potential to substantially increase the dissemination of knowledge.

So, perhaps this is a new addition to your platform and a chance for you as an author to increase your recognition as an authority on your subject. It’s still very early, so a lot remains to be seen as to how knol will work and how it will be received by the public, but I’d say knol is a tool you must review when it’s available.

There’s a sweet spot for getting on Oprah and for being on NPR as well. You rarely hear about romance novels on All Things Considered.

My point isn’t that you shouldn’t try to get these middlemen to broaden their horizons or to give up on something you’re passionate about. It’s just that it might be easier to build a new sweet spot than it is to persuade an established middleman to change his rules for you.

You’d be surprised how many authors suggest that Oprah, billboards, and an ad in the New York Times would be good marketing platforms for their books. Of course they would – just not for tech books.

I will disagree a little with Seth and say that I believe there are plenty of “established middlemen” that are appropriate and willing to be a part of a buzz machine for your book. The key is not over-stretching, and ultimately I think that is Seth’s point.

Photo Credit: Maddie Digital