Let me take you on an imaginary journey to my secret laboratory. There I would show you my (sadly) imaginary time machine that looks suspiciously like a piece of street furniture designed to function as a temporary prison and communication system for the local police. Don’t worry, though – it really is a time machine.
We’ll hop back to 1845 and pick up one Samuel Morse who, for the purposes of a shorter story, will conveniently fail to question both the science of time travel and the fact that this particular blue box appears to be larger on the inside than the outside. On our arrival back in 2010 we will explain to Mr Morse how people communicate these days, perhaps even showing him the wonders of the telephone, e-mail, and Twitter.
What do you think he’d say? Apparently he was inspired to work on long-distance communication methods by the unhappy situation of not knowing his wife was ill until it was too late, but I still think he would be overwhelmed with your ability to sit down at this glowing box of tricks you call a computer and find out what the weather is like on the other side of the planet in an instant.
How about the ability to ask for a photo of a particular restaurant in New York and, assuming somebody is feeling particularly helpful, get said image via TwitPic?
Mankind has taken the art and science of communication to new, previously unimaginable levels. I mean, I still remember when I first heard about BroadBand and thinking, “No way… it’ll always be dialup”. Our means of communicating, socialising, and news-gathering are nothing short of revolutionary. It kind of makes you wonder how we manage to take it all for granted.
But there’s one important thing we must remember:
First impressions STILL matter
No matter how you communicate, that initial impression imprints your image on the minds and attitudes of the people around you. If you answer the phone with, “Yeh, whaddya want?” you’ll give a different impression to if you used a simple, “Hello”. Turn up to an important meeting looking (and smelling) like you’ve just been dragged through a field and you might not get the outcome you wanted. If your blog or website is ugly and difficult to use, your visitors won’t stick around long.
But the real spark for this post is Twitter. Now, I love Twitter, but I started to notice something recently. Whenever someone follows me I check out their profile. It’s partly because I’m curious about who’s found me interesting, but also because I want to know whether I should follow them back. I’ve been deciding “no” more and more because when I visit people’s profiles they don’t look like people.
How can a person not look like a person!?
A particularly bad case would be someone with no bio, no avatar, no website, and a timeline full of ReTweets or (horror of horrors) the same message sent to loads of different people. That just screams “robot” to me. But even if the timeline looks like a person, I still want to know more about you before I follow you. A biography doesn’t take much work. I’d love to see, if not a picture of you, something that shows a bit of your personality. And I’m always curious to know about your website… if you have one (and I’m aware not everyone does).
I know this might come across as picky but it all comes back to that first impression. That impression is formed in just a few seconds, so why not take every opportunity to make a good one? Tell your potential followers a little about yourself. Show them your face and/or something relevant to your personality. And, for goodness, sake, don’t let your timeline fill up with messages that make you look like a robot and/or spammer.
What can you do about it?
I didn’t intend this to be an advertisement, so let me wrap up a few things here. Just remember that the first impression counts and, if you want to make a good one, you can take the few steps I’ve mentioned above to show you’re a honest to goodness human being who would be well worth following and conversing with. If that’s enough for you, have a quick look around Geek-Speak and see if there’s anything else that might interest you. How about playing a game?
But if you want to know more, can I recommend an ebook by my friend Mike? It’s a great starting guide to Twitter and will surely help you in your quest to set up an effective Twitter presence. There’s even a 30 day money back guarantee if you do buy it and decide it wasn’t right for you.
Now go, make good impressions, and try not to look like a robot :)
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{ 5 comments }
That was funny! I was reading the post, nodding sagely, and I had no idea it was going to lead to my Twitter book.
But you make such a good point, and I use pretty much the same technique in deciding who to follow back or not, as I’m sure most people do. I suspect there are thousands of robots merrily tweeting each other, and very few being read by real people. It’s a complete waste of everyone’s time and our resources.
Heh – to be honest I had no idea it was going to lead to your book when I wrote it either. I just thought, “what’s a good resource to help people improve their Twitter presence?” and the Beginner’s Guide is what came to mind.
The one that really set me off looked like a real person… proper picture, first and last name, bio, and a website link to a small estate agent, but the timeline was just constant “This person is worth following:” tweets. I still don’t know if that’s a robot or not, but they’ve tweeted nothing else for three days.
I’ve certainly seen an increase in bots following me on Twitter lately.
I find it amusing that some of those bots are way too good looking to be real people, or are wearing far too few clothes that you would usually expect when trying to create a good first impression! ;-)
What you mean all those stunning women displaying acres of cleavage aren’t really following me because they find my avatar irresistible?
…..all my illusions shattered…..:)
I usually follow them anyway… spices my twitter stream up a bit :)
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