The tough thing about social media is managing the noise and information over-load. We get stuck on what’s shiny and new. Seth Godin calls this being a part of the “drive-by technorati“. Jeff Turner has some good commentary on this too.
There’s so much to take in through email, RSS feeds, Twitter updates, Facebook Status updates, etc… How much of it is noise and how much of it is really useful?
I use Lists to filter through (some) of the noise. They look something like this:
- Friends
- DS Clients
- Real Estate.net
- Social Media
- News & Resources
- Apps & Services
Each list serves it’s purpose and I keep most of them private (I linked to the Apps & Services one since it’s public). Still, you have to read and learn to filter through the noise. In fact, just last week Gahlord Dewald (a very smart buddy of mine) wrote an excellent post on listening and being helpful through social media. In it, he outlines a few his own steps:
- Follow actual people on Twitter (as opposed to feedbots, robot brands, etc).
- Follow people who appreciate being helped.
- Trained myself to look for the special hashtag that people who want to be helped use.
- Spot someone looking to be helped.
- Have some specific real-world experience that is relevant to how the person wants to be helped.
- Share my helpful experience.
Gahlord sums up a strategy (or process) pretty well here. Still, you have to be present, attentive, and ready to respond. Is there a better way to filter?
Find people asking questions about things you know with InboxQ
InboxQ has quickly become my new favorite tool. In short, it helps you find questions people have about your business, product or industry in general (you can download it as a Firefox Addon or from the Chrome Web Store). Once you download the app, you connect to your Twitter account and create a new “campaign”. Here’s what I created for IDX searches: (You know, since I work for @DiverseSolution and all)
The neat thing is, InboxQ crawls and sends answerable questions straight to my InboxQ browser. There, I can immediately reply or flag it as a “To Do” and answer it later. Here’s an IDX question from @hennesmedia that I otherwise would have missed:
Here’s another list of questions that I filtered and responded to via another “WordPress/Blogging” campaign:
Does it make filter easier? You bet! It sends questions I can answer (based on keywords I specify) straight to my browser so I can listen and respond (this is the being helpful part) right then and there. It sort of helps take the work out of digging for opportunities to be helpful (think business) by finding and bringing those opportunities straight to me instead. Pretty neat if you ask me.
Over to you…
Do you find this app useful? How do you filter and connect with your audience on Twitter and other social networks? More specifically, how do you filter to find business opportunities?
inboxQ looks promising! installing now!
Dude, it's pretty sweet. Took me a moment to set up the right filters but to use your words it's looking “very promising” indeed!
Good advice, Ricardo. I find Twitter to be the Holy Grail of information. If someone asks me a question I don't know the answer to, I turn to Twitter. I can almost always secure the input I need.
The same goes with answering folks. If I see someone ask a question that I can answer, I always do so. It's has brought some really great people into my network.
I wasn't familiar with InboxQ, but I'll have to check it out. Thanks for the info!
Agreed! Pretty neat when you can rely on others to find the answer to something that way. It's also a great way to get fairly instant feedback on something you might be working on from your network.
The more you listen and respond, the better your experience. The reason I like InboxQ in this case is because it pulls in some fairly relevant questions as in the example I noted above. I don't have to follow a ton of people and listen all the time, rather, InboxQ pulls in those questions based on a keyword or keyword phrase I might have entered. It really does some good work in terms of digging out some potential opportunities in my opinion. So from a business perspective, I think it's pretty neat 🙂
Ricardo,
Once again, awesome post. One of my biggest concerns is, and has always been, to protect my brand. With the continued growth of social media the future of my brand depends on keeping my finger on the pulse and know what other people say about my business.
Great article!!
Michael Mekler
Thanks for the kind words Ricardo. See you in Atlanta!
My pleasure and see you in a few days 🙂