To My Friends Who Hid & Unfollowed

This is a public service announcement to all of my friends on Twitter and Facebook that unfollowed and hid me, respectively, during my time when:

• I was RTing like a zealot for the #hunkalert & #followfriday thing on Twitter.
• I had Twitter auto-updating in my Facebook status.

I'm sure those experiences were annoying and I apologize for filling up your news feeds with gibberish.

Now that I've figured out some things about those tools, namely to take better care of my follows in both places, I invite you to return to my normal programming, unhide and follow me back... I'd love to have your input and comments during my quest to become a successful writer.

Thank you,
bobroth
@zamees

The Brand As Self-Filter (Handmark)

A week ago, I noticed that Handmark was retweeting every tweet others were making that included their brand name. My initial reaction was one of annoyance. In their response, they said, "the thought is that everyone is running search filters." I didn't pay too much attention to this at first, but then I thought, if I'm a really avid Handmark fan, then I'm already following their account and have a search filter set to catch their brand whenever tweeted.

So, in effect, Handmark was preaching to the choir, annoying the loyalists while not necessarily gaining followers by retweeting everything that had been broadcast about them.

When Handmark asked for advice, I asked the twitterati what they thought about this practice:

• average_jane: Trader Joe's does that, too. I think it shows a lack of strategy behind tweeting in the first plan. What R they trying 2 accomplish?
• edubya: That would get annoying fast. I'd be hard pressed to follow their actual account at that point.
• edroberts: I wouldn't RT everything. But, if one tweet stands out or is especially relevant to everyone, the RT away!

Ed's advice is similar to what I would propose to Handmark; let your followers know when something great has been said about your brand and it will strengthen it. On the other hand, bombard us with everything said about your brand and it will weaken it. In this case, the brand has to be the filter.

But, do we trust brands enough to be their own filters?