As elsewhere, the talks include intriguing and promising illustrations of the ways social media have been used for good, whether by facilitating communication between family members or by enabling solutions to problems like earthquakes or excessive whaling.

Also introduced were ways social media use has been controlled (or attempted to be controlled). Schools and employers fine people for texting and iPhone use in an effort to keep people focused on task. Municipalities or states prohibit the use of portable devices used for social media (among other things) in an effort to decrease car accidents.

Some governments like China have restricted or attempted to restrict social media use in an effort to control news potentially embarrassing to the respective government or to cut off objectionable content like porn and drug traffic, or perhaps to stifle foreign competition or time-wasting entertainment.

Consensus opinion in the liberal west (as elsewhere) has probably been favorable on the whole toward the new internet-based social media boom, on balance probably for various good reasons. Vices have been brought to the light of day. Solutions (whether charitable or business-related) have been brought to the place where the need was. Education has taken place. Popular opinion galvanizes action.

What I would like to suggest is that there may be a downside to the social media boom which I have not seen discussed. I take my cue, oddly enough, from James Madison’s reaction to democracy and from the fact that social media in some ways mimics pure democracy.

Madison, with many of the influential founders of American republic, viewed democracy with deep suspicion. As the tyranny of the few could be fomented on the governed, so the democratic majority could become a vehicle for oppressing the minority. Sometimes, the majority is wrong.

Translating to social media, what might happen during bitter conflict at war where news of somebody’s purported treason got out to various social media outlets? Remember that “the first casualty of war is truth.” And declared war need not be the only dangerous situation. During time of social unrest, what might a social media majority foment upon those of a disfavored minority opinion?

Possibly on a more benign level, slander and libel may spread like a virus while the boring facts don’t even catch our attention. Social media can kill business rightly or wrongly as well as make it grow.

In popular social media, where is accountability when this becomes a problem? Everybody becomes a publisher and a broadcaster. Majority opinion rules. No wonder some individual sites (like forums) prohibit and monitor negative comment. No wonder some helpful backtracking has taken place on a popular level.

But there is a larger context driving my thoughts here. I have discussed this context in terms of an economic theory, social mood, and bear market depression before.

Here I will only reiterate that mass social mood drives bull and bear markets. In the forthcoming greater bear market (such is my view), prevailing negative emotions will negatively affect social media use, putting greater pressure than hitherto on questions of social media control and civil liberty.

“Is social media a fad? Or is it the biggest shift since the Industrial Revolution” So begins a brief Socialnomics video densely packed with important statistics regarding the social media revolution.

For example, by 2010 in the US, there will be more Generation Y people than baby boomers, and 96% of them have joined a social network site. Or how about this: “80% of companies are using LinkedIn as their primary tool to find employees.”

Of course, to those already sold on the importance of social media for business, the major question is how to go about using it. The video itself suggests helping people in a friendly way works best. I found the video embedded in an excellent Michel Fortin blog post, where he suggests among other things, “add an element of curiosity, scarcity, or controversy.”

One other thing. I had to stop the video frequently to absorb the fly-by statistics. This may have been tedious, but I think you will find doing this worthwhile if you are like me.

Peter Rubel

Something like ten percent of Twitter users produce ninety percent of the tweets (per a Harvard study), and something like sixty percent of users never return after their first thirty days. These two factors alone suggest the numerical impact of Twitter is far less than in the media hype.

Further, Twitter’s business-friendly policy and strong showing in peak earning-year age brackets have lent themselves to business-oriented tweets. Twitter policy and automation by users has led to a more liberal use of self-serving or business-oriented tweets than the non-tweeting majority may care to digest.

I generally assume that users who merely view tweets without engaging themselves further will soon lose interest or their commitment will be haphazard.

Of course, many do happily use Twitter socially or for specific and limited purposes, and the business uses of Twitter have proven to be an economic boon in these hard times. One-time users may return, and layoffs may drive more to the kinds of self-employment in which Twitter is helpful. But I expect the gross number of users will decline in coming months to some more realistic level, and perhaps more so when Google Wave arrives.

Twitter is a great tool, but it may be advisable not to make it one’s only marketing tool.

Peter Rubel

P.S. If Twitter is merged with Facebook or Google Wave, its attractiveness may be greater or more secure.

Developing trust and relationships takes time and is based on a bit more than spamming sales pitches. Therefore, if relationship building is the goal, self-serving tweets should be in the minority. Alternate kinds of tweets fall into a limited number of categories.

The Other Kinds of Tweets

Questions Asking questions is a great possibility, though there is an art to asking questions that can reasonably be addressed in 140 characters.
Humor One can of course inject a bit of tasteful humor or respond to humor.
Retweets Retweeting others’ tweets compliments and benefits both the tweeter and the retweeter as long as the frequency of retweets is not overdone. In moderation, a retweet forms an independent witness to the value of the original tweet.
Thanks Expressing genuine gratitude or praise is always a good thing too.
Useful Stuff Then there is the plethora of news, quotes, and tips which may be interesting or useful to the reader. Some of it should be self-serving (or you are in the wrong business).
Links Include tweets with links to continue the conversation on blogs and announcements of webinars and conferences. Links can also be to further helpful information related to words that comprise the rest of the tweet. Various services exist to shorten URL’s so as to take up fewer of the 140 character limit Twitter has established.
Engage in their conversations Address their concerns. Be a listener. Don’t just talk. Answer questions if you have a ready answer or can readily research an answer.

Frequency of Tweets

Another issue important to developing relationships is the number of times each tweet is given. I’m not talking about the stuff you do for individuals once, but there are tweets that can be given multiple times. The question is how many without turning into annoying spam.

I am thinking of four factors to consider.

One, your followers are not always on Twitter at the time you are tweeting. Repeating a tweet at different times of day increases the chances your followers will see your tweet.

Second, consider which time zones your want to reach. Tweeting when your target audience is most likely to be asleep or busy elsewhere is not wise. Lunch time, evenings, and weekends often are better times.

Third, tweets will pass by the eyes of your followers at different rates depending on how many people your followers are following. One of your followers with a hundred followers will not see as many tweets flying by as a person following five thousand. For a given tweet, you can look like a spammer to the one following a hundred at the same time that you barely register on the radar of someone following five thousand. Striking a moderate balance between extremes is important.

Four, be persistent over a long period. Sooner or later most of your followers will become familiar with you. If your persistence consists in spam, your followers will drop out, but a with bit of creativity in providing real value, persistence pays off.

Peter Rubel/Twitter.com/katahdinme

P.S. Of course, followers come and go too. You will excite some for ten minutes, but a month later, the person has dropped out of Twitter. Pruning inactive followers thus becomes important over time.

Perry Belcher was a guest speaker for Matt Barak on a webinar last night. The call was SO great I had to take copious notes, a few of which are included here.

The topic was “How to Build Your Twitter List.” Perry’s basic premise was that Twitter is like a face-to-face party, so you don’t start a Twitter conversation with a sales pitch.

Peak tweeting times for the most viewers are 1-3 PM and 8-11 PM weekdays (presumably ET in the US), but forget Friday evenings. Weekends are great also, especially Sunday evening, the week’s top peak.

What to tweet about? I’m sure the percentages were rough … but

Make people’s lives better: 30%
Keep your people informed: 10%
Make your people laugh: 30%
Compliment and praise often: 25%
What YOU do: 5%

… with a emphasis on NOT selling to the “party” people and an assurance that once you have established yourself as a trustworthy friend, the friend will become your customer.

Some of Perry’s favorite sources for tweet content:

Alltop.com, PopURLs.com, Digg.com – for popular posts
Lifehacker.com – how to help people
Fark.com, Cracked.com – for humor (watch tastefulness, though)

Content can also be generated by (1) asking questions and (2) retweeting. Questions should be simple conversation starters so that more people in the Twitter “party” can pitch in.

But this is very sketchy. Perry has a whole lot more. Visit perrybelcher.com

Peter Rubel

If a person tweets me relentlessly with sales pitches (fleshed out via the links on the tweets)–OK, even if I am slightly pestered–I may drop them from my “following” list. In fact, that is what I have done sometimes, and I am not alone. Dropping with a click shuts them out of my site, like changing channels, as someone said. Social media does best when it is, well, social.

But if I fear I might miss an opportunity by dropping the person with sales pitches, or if the person I am following has provided tweets that lead me to know, like and trust the person, I may listen and I may buy. Tweeters using Twitter for business would thus do well to provide quality tweets consistently.

Quality tweets may be friendly or funny to attract.
They may ask questions to get conversations going (as long as the conversation is not long and relevant only to you and the other person).
They may answer questions to be helpful–and enhance one’s reputation as a go-to person. They may warn others of a problem that concerns them.
They may provide helpful and desired information, whether the information is self-serving or not.
… And there is always the self-serving link in one’s profile which fans and the curious will ferret out.

Focus tweets on things relevant to your keywords and niche, and you will develop a niche go-to reputation. Focus more broadly, and you may develop a broader, but less targeted audience.

Consistency of tweeting need not be all day long, although Twitter can be mildly addicting. One will want to provide tweets enough to be noticed, but not so many that one becomes annoying. Someone suggested ten minutes three times a day: morning, afternoon, and evening. Or once a day, preferably at peak viewing times for your target audience. Others are successful with less.

Of course, seasonal specials, promotions, and product launches will be times when you will want to provide more tweets than normally.

Peter Rubel

Various software and print products have arisen to teach users how to and how not to use Twitter to increase their business bottom line. Despite its detractors and mimic sites, Twitter and its users are evidently a force to be reckoned with.

Reasons for its growing popularity may be close to hand. One, it rides the crest of the virtual relationship wave on the internet. One can even use Twitter on one’s iPhone, if one doesn’t mind paying for text message “tweets” (as the micro-blogging messages are called). Obviously, the technology has not changed human nature, so that the bulk of the relationships are superficial and transitory at best, especially when Twitter only allows a maximum of 140 characters per tweet. But Twitter is a platform that has enabled the average person to touch a large circle of casual friends in brief, but significant ways, a natural for business. If done right.

More to follow.

Peter Rubel

For more information, I have been helped by http://thesocialmediasource.com/.

Peter Rubel

Most people on social media sites are not targeted to your business, but over time if you press things relevant to your business, your followers will become those interested in your business–or in you. Viewers on social media sites generally do not welcome sales pitches, but you can attract people by giving valuable information–or sometimes humor, if used in a way that ties in with your business in some positive way.

Most social media sites are protected against commercial contributions (except paid advertisements), but they can be a relational stepping stone toward business. And some sites like Twitter are business-friendly. Social media topics may be largely irrelevant to your business, but social media sites are where the people are. For better or for worse, social media is the trend of the future.

Peter Rubel

We may not like your customer’s appearance, political penchant, habits, mannerisms, or whatever, but we don’t need to offer our opinion to his or her face. At home or in the bar room Saturday evening, we let our hair down. And sometimes get embarrassed when we let something slip.

It’s not a new problem; it’s just that social media sites (digg, Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, etc.) have offered a medium to accentuate embarrassing problems. One’s private remarks are publicly available, sometimes to our surprise.

Of course, there are things we should never say anywhere at anytime. Other things are, well, arguably negative, facts being what they are. Murder and stealing are bad ideas in any forum, and it is a good thing to say so, tactfully, even if people get offended by the truth.

But there is something more. The economic theory associated with names like Prechter and Elliot suggests that the herd of humanity moves in substantive measure as an emotional unit and that the herd emotions drive markets bullish or bearish.

Part of that theory suggests that the mood of the herd in a bear market becomes relatively more negative, even antagonistic. If this is correct, social media arenas may become more antagonistic, generating forms of insulation and isolation, for example.

Of course, I am not advocating antagonism, and we all slip up saying or posting negative things we should not. Nor can I change mass psychology single handed.

What I am concerned about is insulation and isolation from honesty and truth. If out of fear or misguided politeness, we deceive others and ourselves, in the end we hurt others and ourselves. Sometimes even in our businesses in the long run. We reap what we sow. As someone said, “Speak the truth in love.”

Peter Rubel