Derek Markham

As a blogger, bad PR moves are an easy target for me to laugh at in the privacy of my office, but sometimes I just can't help myself. I need to share.

So here's the latest PR fail to hit my inbox:

You've seen other people using fancy signatures in their emails, and you hear it's a helpful thing to do, so you spend the time to make a nice signature that includes your social media profiles and links to other web affiliations.

Awesome. Great thought.

And now you're sitting at your desk, about to send out a press release to bloggers, journalists, and social media mavens. So you copy and paste the info into the body, insert your signature, and blind copy everyone on your email list. Now you spellcheck the email and give it a good proofreading, then hit send.

Right afterward, your client gets tons of great coverage from bloggers, is ecstatically happy with your work, and you all live happily ever after, right?

Not.

Why not?

There's no single answer to that, but one clue might be because the people who receive your emails are a discerning bunch. They live on the web, and will click through your social media links to check out your streams, perhaps heading to your company website to see what's what. And now you've lost them.

Why?

Your social media profiles identify you as a PR professional, a communications expert, or perhaps even something cuter, like a strategist or guru or something, but when we look at the content you promote with those profiles, we're quite unimpressed.

Either you're broadcasting the same things to us over and over, or you've fed last night's Blip.fm stream to Twitter, or you are sharing too much information about your personal life with us. Or maybe you've greatly misunderstood the topics we're interested in, and think we will be impressed with whose Youtube channel you subscribed to, or which products you're promoting, while we also ignore your negative or bitchy updates.

And so we tune out. We hit delete and move on.

Before you include social media profile links into emails, go take a look at your profile from the vantage point of a stranger. Does it look like you're a professional? In what industry?

Are your social media links relevant to the people you're sending them to? If not, don't promote them. It only hurts you in the end.

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I'll admit it, I'm an info junkie.

I've got hundreds of feeds in my RSS reader (Feedly, for those who want to know), I have email subscriptions to blogs that I really don't want to miss, I've become a fan of almost any Facebook page that I'm asked to (if it fits with my interests), I'm a regular reader and submitter on digg.com, and I'm following about 8000 people on Twitter.

But I can't keep up anymore. Seriously.

Here's my dilemma: If I'm following 8000 + people on Twitter, am I really listening anymore? Or am I just collecting? Even using Seesmic or HootSuite, using groups, the stream of information is so fast and so full, it's overwhelming. And if I only really follow a few (using groups or lists), am I really following everyone? I used to follow everyone back, but I've been a bit more discriminating lately, and it's still too much.

I love new media and social media/social networking, and to me, using my trusted connections to filter and curate info makes a lot of sense. So having 8000 'trusted' connections means I have a lot of noise in my stream. I want to tune in better with the signal, not the fuzz.

So here's my plan, for better or for worse:

I'm going to start cleaning up my info stream so that I can better listen to those that add serious value to my day and my work. I'm starting with Twitter, as it's a tool I use all day long, and I want to focus on those key influencers that make me think. This means that I'm going to <gasp> start unfollowing people. (And for the record, when you 'unfollow' on Twitter, the url is actually http://twitter.com/friendships/destroy. Destroy?) I don't want to destroy any friendships. But if we don't interact (@ messages, RTs, etc.) then we probably don't have a 'friendship', right?

If I've 'unfollowed' you, and you think I ought to be listening to you, please hit me up with an @ message and let me know. Please don't take offense (I get unfollowed all the time, and I try to take it in stride.). Or send me an email at derek (at) naturalpapa (dot) com and let's connect that way.

My next step is cleaning out my RSS feed subscriptions, which may cut me off from some sources of info, but will ultimately let me pay more attention to those I really need to read.

I recommend that you consider doing the same for your streams.

If we're all following each other, who's really listening? I think we all might be simply broadcasting and not interacting. If someone isn't adding value to you, don't be afraid to unfollow.

This strategy may come back to bite me in the butt, but I'm willing to take that chance. Because my time is valuable, and your time is also valuable, I think we would all be better served by having a better signal-to-noise ratio.

What do you think?

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