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?

Facebook went from being a way to broadcast information to 5k people, probably 4k of which I didn’t know or even have a business link to, to a platform I either had to take seriously or walk away from.

Mark has created 3 layers of friends – his real friends, his tangential friends, and The Power Layer.

The 3rd layer is emerging as a very unique and interesting network in FB. Its what I will call “The Power Layer.” These are people who in whatever industry they are in , retain some level of power. Having them as FB friends, although very simple and non committal, gives me some level of access to them, and them to me. These are people that if they sent me a FB mail, i would certainly read and respond to , and I think they would do the same.

Hat tip: Dan Blank

As I have written before, I keep 2 Twitter identities, one of which is one of our brands, Wrox.  The identities are distinctly different, but both “me” – @chriswebb is Chris Webb, editor who talks about publishing, social applications and their occasional intersection.  @wrox is still Chris Webb, editor, but the conversation focuses on programming, web development, .NET and other topics of interest to Wrox readers.

Why keep them separate?  Well, followers of @wrox may not care at all about what @chriswebb has to say about social media and publishing in general, while @chriswebb followers probably are not interested in the latest ASP.NET MVC release.  It is not obvious to @wrox followers that it is Chris Webb behind the username (although I don’t really hide that fact,) and I don’t think they care.  To them it’s just Wrox – a source of programming books and online content.

I touched on this subject briefly via Twitter earlier today, and got an intersting comment from a follower of both @wrox and @chriswebb:

@wrox is fundamentally different than, say, @mcdonalds or @tylenol
@wrox has the ability to gather a community (in this case developers) into one, big conversation. it’s a great experiment.

But back to Shel’s point – is Wrox being social or is it all just Chris Webb?  Is part of what defines the Wrox brand already social?  What do you think?

Collegaue Ellen Gerstein, who had been managing the Dummies Man Facebook profile, was recently alerted that Dummies Man was banned from using the social networking site and all evidence of him had been purged.

Your account was disabled because you violated Facebook’s Terms of Use, to which you agreed when you first registered for an account on the site. Accounts can either be disabled for repeat offenses or for one, particularly egregious violation.

Facebook does not allow users to register with fake names, to impersonate any person or entity, or to falsely state or otherwise misrepresent themselves or their affiliations.

I think this is the beginning of a very intersting discussion. We didn’t impersonate anyone – we are Dummies Man, and he was only on Facebook as a goodwill ambassador for the brand. As Ellen says,

Over the months since, Dummies Man has been friending people, commenting on profiles and fan pages, and benignly exploring the site. It wasn’t a huge organized marketing campaign, more a way for us to dip a toe of the brand into the social networking waters.

Perhaps the profile could be considered as advertising a product, which may be the rub. I wonder if this precludes other well-known brand ambassadors from having identities on Facebook? I see that the Michelin Man has a page. I wonder if Disney approached Zuckerberg about a Mickey Mouse profile what the response would be.

What do you think? Should brands be allowed to have Facebook profiles?

A recent post discusses authors using socia applications to promote their books – a great way to build the author platform we publishers often talk so much about.

Our Facebook Group is now approaching 250 members. Many thanks to everyone who has joined, contributed, posted links, images, and discussions. It’s come as no surprise to me that the most active members of this group are authors. This supports a little theory I’ve had for a while:

Authors are doing more with social media than publishers.

Well, that may be true but it’s not for lack of trying. I suppose sheer numbers might indicate there are more authors in social applications than publishers, but that stands to reason. Many of us are pushing into this space and although it is too slow for my taste. For example, our For Dummies brand is experimenting in Facebook, our Wrox imprint has a Facebook Group and a Twitter Stream. But for now these efforts are currently the work of a few ambitious individuals.

When I worked in publishing houses, the main complaint from authors – rightly or wrongly – was usually to do with marketing. Usually an accusation of a lack of marketing when a book didn’t sell. Which may have been for any number of reasons – possibly including poor marketing, but possibly also including unrealistic sales expectations, and simply publishing in a niche with a small readership, or in an area that was already crowded with competing titles.

Given the volume of titles produced, and finite resources, people and time, publishers must also prioritize. But authors have always had a role to play in marketing their own book, and the more successful ones are proactive about it.

1. It is one of only a very few from traditional print publishers
2. It is not just a branding play
3. They have built in some interesting sticky features
4. Good tie-in’s to their content

I believe items 3 and 4 are the most important for content providers. The Quiz is offered every weekday morning and the scoring system is probably motivational enough to keep many coming back for more.

In addition, they offer ample opportunities to click through to the content related to the quiz, and I thought the “study links” for the next day’s quiz feature was especially clever.

The scoring seems a bit off to me, but that’s likely because it was my first test on the first day. My particular ranking of 68% among Facebook users is strange as I got 100% on the first test. See how competitive I am already?

It is important to remember that we are in the very early days of Facebook apps. I am sure we will see many more from content providers as the platform matures and as companies figure out exactly what they want to accomplish with these applications. Still, it’s exciting to see traditional publishers playing here.

(Thanks Read/Write Web)

However, companies must change the way they think about social sites like Facebook and how they can get their message to those members. Social networks are not just big websites, and most current strategies wont work on these sites. The key is to engage!

I can point to several reports that seem to show traditional advertising models don’t seem to be working on Facebook – at least not in its current form. Facebook is working on a more focused system for advertisers, and those results remain to be seen. Perhaps more focused efforts will have better results.

Now, I am not a marketing or advertising expert. But I suggest the way to reach Facebook users is to engage and participate with the community using the tools that Facebook provides. Get in there! Some thoughts:

• Find your customers
• Participate in Groups
• Create your own Group
• Don’t sell – participate in the conversation
• Add value to the conversation – don’t just shout your message
• Build an application

What are your thoughts on Facebook as a marketing platform?

The 4 Hour Work Week

“What were the 1-3 biggest wastes of time and money?”

This led me to create a “not-to-do” list. Number one was no book touring or bookstore signings whatsoever. Not a one. All of the best-selling authors warned against this author rite of passage. I instead focused on the most efficient word-of-mouth networks in the world at the time-blogs. The path to seeding the ideas of 4HWW was then straight-forward:

* Go where bloggers go
* Be there with a message and a story that will appeal to their interests, not yours
* Build and maintain those relationships through your own blog too

His success is a lesson in the power of social applications and is a must read for anyone involved in publishing – this is the new marketing and PR. It’s amazing how Tim was able to create community around his book – but more fascinating is the way readers created their own communities (via Ning) and extended his 4HWW “brand.”

(via David Rothman)

“What’s Twitter?”
“What a waste of time.”
“Why does anyone care about what you have to say about these meetings?”

You may have had similar experiences in trying to explain a new technology, social networking, Twitter specifically, or quantum physics, for example.

The discussion really boiled down to “What is the value in a tool like Twitter?” I’m always frustrated when people fail to see the value in new technologies or the revolution occurring right in front of our faces – the use of social media, social networks, web working and so on. Some of this frustration probably stems from my own enthusiasm for such tools, but I’ll bet I am not alone.

1. Twitter is another tool I use to communicate. Not everyone can stop what they are doing to speak on the phone, or even find the time to schedule a call. Not everyone gets to their email right away. IM is blocked in some companies. Etc.
2. Twitter is a tool I use to find new topics. I find it to be an interesting look at the things people do with technology, and a way to discover new tools and approaches I had not yet found myself.
3. Twitter is fast becoming the quickest way to reach some of my authors. At least one has indicated she prefers to be connected via twitter.
4. Twitter is where conversation is happening, in real time, around the globe. I have had several interesting discussions with not only my authors, but authors from other publishers via twitter.
5. For every 100 “Walking my dog.” tweets (and there a lots of those) there is 1-2 real golden nuggets that lead to a new author, a new book, a new topic to investigate.
6. I am approaching 100 “followers” on Twitter – people who read what I say. 100 is not a lot, but as that number grows what a great platform for me to talk about my books, my authors, and my company.

In the end, Twitter is just another tool. It’s value is in how you use it.

Photo credit:  Safanna

It’s important for enterprises to recognize the limitations of Internet-mediated communication and collaboration. While the Web has transformed the way we work, there’s still no substitute for being there.

WWD’s Gunderloy points out – and I believe rightly so – that web working is not meant to replace the “face to face” in all situations, but is simply a new (or additional) way to connect where it might not be possible otherwise:

You won’t be herding cattle, bandaging wounds, or assembling televisions over the web. What you will be doing, we believe, is increasingly communicating and collaborating over the web in smart ways when it makes sense to do so. Web work doesn’t make physical proximity irrelevant, but it does reduce its importance in many cases, and gives us the tools to be productive in cases where proximity is inconvenient or impossible.

Although I happen to be sitting in a corporate office, behind a desk along with about 300 of my colleagues, I still consider myself very much a web worker. In fact, I’ve been doing it for nearly 10 years now. Not exclusively mind you – I do still have the occasional personal meeting with authors, vendors, and partners – and of course we have way too many “face to face” meetings here in the office. But the bulk of my job is done as a web worker:

1. I do topical research almost exclusively online. Be it blogs, conference videos (I’m watching Gnomedex live as I write this post,) online presentations and so on, most of what I need to learn about new and emerging topics I can find online.
2. I have worked with hundreds of authors over the years. Nearly all of them I met online first – that is if I ever meet them face to face at all. In fact, I would say that I have never met most of my authors face to face. I don’t think this makes these relationships any less real – I chat with them on IM almost daily, I follow and converse with them on their blogs, we speak on the phone or over skype, we converse via twitter, I have even met with them virtually in Second Life.
3. I have made hundreds of deals over the years and I’ve only signed contracts across a table in person a handful of times. Almost all of them are made and discussed using email and the methods I mention above.

I could go on, but the point is that web workers aren’t always sitting in a Starbucks looking for wi-fi, and the deals they make, the products they create and the work they do is no less real than what gets accomplished shaking hands at a convention. The difference may be in the speed, efficiency, and cost savings we generate in working the way we do.

I tend to think that Forbes got it right last week when they published their article entitled “How to Network Like a Pro Online.”

What do you think?

Photo credit: Pisco Bandito (which was a collaboration between 2 artists who have never met in person)