It’s Pull not Push, Marketing not Sales, 3rd Millenium not 2nd

Twitter FollowFriday

Image via CrunchBase

As it’s Follow Friday I thought that I would talk about Twitter – I’ve been on Twitter for a couple of years and we rent most of our flats due to twitter. I discovered fairly early on that Twitter doesn’t work as an advertising medium, and that the people with a small number of high quality followers are much more influential than those with large numbers of followers acquired by automated and indiscriminate means. Almost since the beginning I have been an advocate of quality, not quantity, and if you don’t want to follow my story jump to the Conclusion.

Twitter and Facebook

My Twitter account is a business account – rightly or wrongly I restrict Facebook to family and personal friends and the swapping of personal news, photos & events. I did syndicate my Tweets onto my Facebook account for a short while, but my friends didn’t appreciate business type tweets invading their Facebook timeline just as I block Farmville et. al. from mine, so I rapidly disconnected the 2 accounts. If you are one of my Facebook friends who sends their twitter feed through to their Facebook Status, then I am afraid you are wasting your time, you are blocked, and further you are losing the opportunity to connect with me on a second level. I urge you to disconnect your Twitter feed from Facebook, you can always do what I do – use Tweetdeck for Facebook as well as Twitter, and when a Tweet is appropriate for Facebook send it to both sites at once.

Twitter and Advertising

Perhaps I should explain what I mean by the apparently conflicting comments that I successfully use Twitter for business, but that it is useless as an advertising medium. I’ve nearly always been personal on Twitter even though it is a successful business tool for me, but in the early days I used to use twitter to advertise the vacant flats that we had, just as classified ad sites used to feed their ads onto twitter. This was a resounding #fail and anyone still using Twitter in this way is crippling their Social Networking effectiveness for zero benefit. I do occasionally mention vacancies, but Twitter is just a window into me and my business. A prospective tenant peers in through this window, and if they like what they see they will go & find out whether we have vacancies. It’s pull, not push, marketing not sales, 3rd Millenium not 2nd.

Can you have Too Many Followers?

Can you have Too Many Followers? – if you wish to leverage your internet presence, then yes!

I just stated that you can’t sell to people on twitter by broadcasting to them – the reason for this and the beauty of twitter for it’s users over other media is that the listener controls what they listen to. The only way followers will actually read what you tweet is if they know enough about you to recognise that you are worth listening to – and that means some form of engagement, which probably means that you have to listen to them on twitter also. The simple equation which most people and twitter applications miss is that your reach is related not to the people who follow you, but on the number of people that you successfully follow.

How do I successfully Follow?

How do I successfully Follow? A very easy question to answer – you read what your followers tweet. If you aren’t reading them you shouldn’t be following them! I use Tweetdeck to separate my follows into groups, the most important 2 being:

Friends
Follow Friday

Most of my follows are not on either list, more of that later.

Friends

Believe it or not I need to explain who Friends are – they are people I know and like, but I’m not interested in their Twitterfeed. I think it’s very important to avoid the concept that follows on twitter are people that you like, and vica versa. These are people I love very much, but don’t want to read their feed all the time.

Follow Friday

Follow Friday is a list that I maintain solely to recommend to others on Friday (today!). I read the all tweets of these people (when I have connected to twitter – one of the most powerful twitter tools is the OFF button!) and these are the people that I recommend to you to follow. The list is continually revised – if people for their own reasons start repeating their tweets excessively or change their behaviour in some other detrimental way I drop them off the list, there is one person who has been removed & reinstated 4 times! Here is the list that I recommend for Follow Friday that you can subscribe to, but if you are only looking at it to see if you are on it then you are missing the point!

Follows

Before yesterday I used to follow 1300 people – this wasn’t the result of blind auto-follows, I have always tried to be selective about about who I followed, however I decided that following 1300 people and giving them a reasonable amount of attention would take up more time than I can afford. Yesterday I discovered a tool that I thoroughly recommend and used it to unfollow 650 people. It was an intensely manual process taking me 2 hours, so I wish that Twitter rules could be relaxed to allow it to be automated, but nevertheless I am pleased with the result. No doubt I made a mistake, and if anyone reading this was unfollowed please contact me and I will refollow. The point is that the people that I needed to unfollow will either automatically unfollow back, or not notice. Both are fine with me, as both types are exactly the sort of person I was trying to unfollow! If you notice, then I am very happy to correct my mistake.

Conclusion

Sorry – that has been more of a rant than I had intended when I started. I hope that you read it through, and got something from it. The main two lessons would be:

Here is the list that I recommend for Follow Friday that you can subscribe to
Here is a tool that I thoroughly recommend to unfollow people who you shouldn’t really be following

Tags: Advertising, Facebook, followfriday, Online Communities, Social network service, Social Networking, TweetDeck, Twitter
Posted in General on May 28th, 2010 | 1 Comment »

Finding a Flatshare through Facebook & Gumtree

Pimlico Flats recently had a tenant whose joint tenant wanted to move on. The tenant who wanted to stay very successfully found a reliable and well recommended flatshare from amongst her contact by using Facebook. As it worked so well I asked her to share her story:

By L. an existing tenant of Pimlico Flats.

When my flat-mate decided to leave our lovely Pimlico flat to be closer to her office (and to help out a friend who had a spare room which needed to be filled), I must admit I was slightly panicked. The rent for our flat was extremely reasonable (as well as being excellent value for money), but not so low that I could even imagine paying for it all myself; we also still had a good seven months left on our lease. I wondered how I was going to explain to my landlord that I couldn’t afford the rent on my own and, as all my friends in London were already sorted for accommodation themselves, that I didn’t know anyone else who could take on my flat-mate’s share of the rent. I resigned myself to an uncomfortable conversation with my landlord and a horrible period of flat-hunting far away from the area of London I had come to love and call home.

Luckily for me, my departing flat-mate had a very clever idea for finding someone to take her room. “Why don’t we just make a group on Facebook?” It turned out to be a brilliant idea; the flat photographs well, Pimlico has excellent transportation links and a real sense of community, and the rent is very reasonable for the rather ample amount of space on offer. We made our advertisement a ‘group’ rather than placing an ad in Facebook’s Marketplace; this allowed our friends to invite their friends to the group and also allowed for a wall and a discussion board where prospective flat-mates could ask questions. To cover all our bases, we also set up an advertisement on Gumtree. Then, we waited.

Within a day of both ads going live I had 30 emails from potential flat-mates who had seen the Gumtree advertisement and wanted to see the flat. I responded to them as they came in with my responses ranging from ‘No, the room is a single room so you AND your boyfriend won’t both be able to fit’ (don’t people read the advert before replying?) to ‘No I won’t send you a picture of myself so you can get a better idea of who you’d be sharing with’ (rather creepy, if you ask me).

Our Facebook group had only garnered a mild amount of interest (as in 3 replies) but the quality of them was far superior to the misspelled and slightly off-putting responses which had resulted from the Gumtree ad. Most helpfully Facebook allowed me to see who I had in common with the potential flat-mates contacting me. When V. got in touch about 3 days after I set up the Facebook group to say that she needed to move into a flat asap, I could immediately see that we shared a friend in common from Scotland and a little bit about her. I felt much more comfortable inviting her round to see the flat knowing a bit about her and that we knew someone in common (who I could ask for an informal reference) than I had with any of the more anonymous Gumtree respondents.

So, obviously, I would recommend using Facebook to find new flat-mates if you find yourself in a situation similar to mine. The usual caveats apply however; people can sometimes turn out to be not who they seem (no matter how many friends you have in common!) but if you apply a bit of common sense and caution, you will go a long way to keeping yourself safe.

Starting a Facebook group is simple:

Go to your profile page and click on the section of the side-bar labelled ‘Groups’.
At the top of the next page you will see a button called ‘+Create a Group’. When you click on it, it will take you to a page where you can fill in your group name, a description of the group and contact details.
I recommend titling your group something like ‘____ room(s) available in lovely (Pimlico/SW1) flat £____/month’. The more information you can include in your title, the likelier people will be to invite their friends to it. After you’ve created your group, you can invite your friends to it; don’t limit the people you invite to only those living in the city where your flat is located; you never know how many friends of friends may be living in your town and looking for somewhere to live.

Tags: Advertising, Facebook, Gumtree, Renting, Social network
Posted in Renting on April 16th, 2010 | 3 Comments »

Watching the 2010 Boat Race from Pimlico

The Boat Race (also known as the The Oxford and Cambridge Boat Race) is a rowing race between the Oxford University Cambridge University’s Boat Clubs, and takes place this coming Saturday 3 April 2010 at 4.30pm. Members of both teams are traditionally known as blues and each boat as a “Blue Boat”, with Cambridge in light blue and Oxford dark blue.

The first race was in 1829 and it has been held annually since 1856, with the exception of the two world wars. The event is a popular one within rowing and the public at large. An estimated quarter of a million people watch the race live from the banks of the river, around seven to nine million people on TV in the UK, and an overseas audience estimated at around 120 million, which would make this the most viewed single day sporting event in the world. Most people have a particular team that they support year after year, mine is Oxford who won last year although Cambridge currently lead the series since 1829 by 79-75.

The attraction of the race is beautifully summarised by Dan Topolski a former rowing coach who coached Oxford to victory no less than 12 times:

“It’s a purely amateur event. The rowers do it for the honour and the love of the sport – not for money. They are first and foremost students at the two universities taking part in a brutal race requiring Olympic-standard training and involving many Olympic-level athletes in a competition which has been going for 181 years. It’s a very traditional British event, raced at the worst time of the year, often in terrible conditions over a winding course, full of uncertainty and tactics, which, at four and a quarter miles, is three times longer than the usual Olympic distance. The chances of a sinking, of clashes or of disqualification and collapse gives it a rare unpredictability and sense of potential danger – a bit like Formula 1.”

If you are in Pimlico and want to watch the race you have the following options:

The Boat Race in the Park

It is on BBC Television after a five-year absence, Dan Topolski is one of the BBC’s co-commentators 3.10-5.10pm BBC ONE.
For a bit more atmosphere I think it’s very likely that your local pub will show the race, but do check first.
To make an event of it take the District Line from Victoria to either Ravenscourt Park or Putney Bridge (both 20 mins) and a 10 min walk to Furnival Gardens or Bishops Park. Both have a festival which will run from 12noon until 6pm and will include full BBC 1 coverage of the Race on the large screens, beer stands, will supply alcohol and soft drinks at both parks.
Some people watch the event from one of the pubs which overlook the river, it is impossible to exaggerate how early you need to arrive and how packed they will be.
If you wish to watch the event live it is very feasible, and free. However do not be tempted to travel by car, take the District Line from Victoria to either Hammersmith (mid race) or Putney Bridge (start).
If going to the start cross Putney Bridge to watch the race start from the Surrey side – this has the advantage that you can see the preparations, warm up, and actual start.
If going to mid-race you walk to the river and then either cross Hammersmith Bridge to the less busy Surrey side, which offers a better view because of fewer spectators, or stay on the Middlesex side and walk towards Chiswick to find a good viewing point. As this is on the outside of the bend you see much much more of the race, however the crowds will be much deeper.

Click for Full Map & Details

Further information on all aspects of the race is available at The Boat Race’s own website and I expect that the media will focus this year on the Winklevoss twins, who are both rowing in the Oxford crew. Cameron and Tyler recently won a massive out-of-court settlement acknowledging their role in developing the ideas behind the social networking site Facebook.

Tags: Boat Race, Facebook, London Life, Rowing
Posted in London on March 31st, 2010 | No Comments »

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