Less is more

[Disclaimer: incoming prerequisite food segue alert.]

See that juicy dish above? It's flank steak with salad, a few bits of bacon and blue cheese drizzled over by a nice mustard and cider vinegar dressing. Made it last night in 20 minutes. Very simple.

Twitter is still simple. For now. But all hell broke loose yesterday when it was announced that it may be considering a 10,000-character limit for tweets.

I literally said, "What the eff?" when I read that.

As a writer for the last 20+ years, I relish putting my thoughts down on the medium of the day. Whether it's a blog post of a few hundred words, a magazine article anywhere from 1,000-10,000 words or a book of 100,000 words, it's what I love to do and have been lucky enough to make a living from it.

So when Twitter came along -- back in the day when Social Media Guru was still on people's LinkedIn profile -- I was really confused. I couldn't understand how to get all my thoughts and opinions into a scant 140 characters (not even words). I struggled with it for a while and wasn't a fan.

But then I realized after following the early adopters that, yes, you don't need to blah blah blah for ages to get your point across. As someone who likes to cut to the chase, this was perfect for me!

I became a special ops tweeter = get in, get the job done fast and get out. Then onto the next 140 mission.

The aim now was to make full use of that limited space, and it became a fun challenge. Real-time self copy editing came to the fore ... "thanks" became "thx" ... say goodbye to "the," "a" and em dash. It was like the wild west of writing.

And now I'm hooked. And now Twitter may be trying to change into something it's just not. A mini blogging platform.

Please, Jack, reconsider.

John.

Don't go for the quick buck, it's just not worth it

I made a quick Twitter comment yesterday that all of the work Herb Communications has done -- or pitched on -- so far since April this year has come from referrals or previous relationships built via LinkedIn and other places.

It's very gratifying and much appreciated! Brands have put their trust in our results and that means a lot in this very competitive digital communications space.

I'm very hot on customer service, referrals and making sure that every effort is made to ensure the client is happy. For those that know me will also understand that I regularly call out what, in my experience, is not working too well ... and make suggestions (with examples and case studies) of what may be a better option.

The client can then decide if they're comfortable with that particular strategy at that particular time. Sometimes, it just needs to be revisited in the future. That's OK. There's no rush. Better to make sure the client is totally on board before proceeding because YOU ARE IN IT TOGETHER.

You have put your name and reputation on that particular piece of work or project and should be very happy to stand behind it, and use it as an example for your portfolio once launched.

Whatever you do, never chase the $ signs just for the quick buck. Sure, it may pay a bill here and there ... but you may never hear back from that client again.

Solid, regular, reliable work is the key to being successful and making a living. Just be honest, call it as it is and put out there what you hope to get back. Ask for referrals, send reasonable and fair quotes and respond in a timely manner -- even if it's a, "Sorry we don't know yet, still finding out an answer for you."

And help people for nothing now and again. It won't kill you. They'll remember that and -- the genuine ones -- will gladly reciprocate if you ever need some support in the future.

Don't go for the quick buck, it's just not worth it.

John.

Do brands really hire underpaid social media people with fleshy, flawed faces?

[Disruption. That was going to be the topic of today's blog post based on what's currently happening between Uber and Toronto taxi cabs. But that can wait for another day; disruption is not going away.]

"Of course brands screw up a lot on social media. It’s because, despite their rictus grins, the plastic masks of friendship they wear are just hiding the fleshy, flawed faces of underpaid social media people, who are often trying to be the fun voice of several soulless logos at once."

Ouch!

That scathing paragraph comes from a blog post entitled, "Brands aren’t your friends, they’re the idiots at the social media party" on The Next Web site.

The gist of the article is that brands aren't our friends and many fake their social media presence to pretend they are. I have seen some brands do that, and some not. Horses for courses.

We can't forget that the consumer is in the driving seat now. I believe that people do enjoy following their favourite brands, and can just as easily leave them behind if they become, "the leeches of social networking, desperately trying to drain some blood from every bit of creativity they encounter," as the blog writer describes.

Brings to mind this meme:

Whether it's kitchen roll, cars, soft drinks, cookies .... whatever ... people do like to follow certain companies. It's up to those brands to judge the audience and engage accordingly.

John.

I'm not interested in what happened while I was away, please, stop asking me

Back in January of this year Twitter introduced its "while you were away" feature that pops up now and again depending on how long you spend checking tweets.

Granted, some people may find it useful. I particularly don't because I tend to use my Twitter stream as a real-time scrolling Matrix of what's going on in the world. While I've "been away" there have probably been 200 billion billion more tweets, and I don't feel the need to catch up.

Horses for courses as they say.

What is annoying though? The fact I've pressed "no" (in a very firm English polite way) when asked by Twitter if I find it useful. About nine times by now, I estimate.

So why does it keep appearing? I fully understand that it's not my Twitter, and Twitter doesn't owe me anything to use its free service and that -- maybe -- they're just still gathering feedback and stats on the "yes" or "no" responses ... but surely it can't be that hard for them to recognize my "no" choice on my account, and thus I never get asked again.

Yeah, I know = first world problems, right? But using digital communications to ask the same question over and over again is quite frustrating. I hope they tweak it soon so advocates who use Twitter a lot don't start to get a negative view of the brand.

(And if you like these blog posts you can just follow Herb Communications on LinkedIn and get notified when a new one appears while you were away.)

John.