The Road to Entrepreneurship...

I am really lucky to be living in a time where it is possible to have a real time pulse of events around the world, easily keep tabs on with my favorite people, and share my thoughts on a public forum. I believe that social media has become one of the greatest by products of the Internet. With that said, I have noticed some things that ruin the social experience for me while on social media platforms such as Twitter and Facebook. On this post, I will highlight my top social media (mainly twitter) usage peeves. The underlying theme you will notice is that all the highlighted peeves have to do with noise in my feed.

First, let me acknowledge that I do sometimes partake in these practices and that I am sometimes part of the problem.

1. Oversharing
   Twitter and Facebook updates are a fantastic medium to spread our thoughts, messages, and agendas. In fact, Twitter started by asking the question - what are you doing right now? However, that does not mean that you need to share this every minute of everyday. I do not need to know that you are eating a tuna sandwich and enjoying it or that you are standing in line waiting for your venti latte. Far as I can tell, there is no prize for sending the most amount of tweets in a day.
2. Social games
   FarmVille - Need I say more? Play your social games but please stop sending milestone posts to all your followers.
3. “Follow Friday”
   Ah yes, the #FF tradition where a twitter user suggests other twitter users to follow. While this is a valuable tradition that will highlight interesting twitter users, I have a problem with twitter users who create umteen posts trying to #FF EVERY user on their following list EVERY Friday. Doing so not only creates noise on your followers’ feeds but it also does not add any value to anybody. Its just a list of twitter use ids that mean nothing to anybody. If you must #FF a twitter user, simply send the #FF tweet of the user and maybe why this person should be followed by your followers.
4. Public conversations
   Sticking with the noise theme of this post - another peeve that I have is twitter users having otherwise private conversation in public over Twitter. There is no reason why two users should make day plans over public replies. That is what Direct Messages (and email) are for. Keep these conversations out of the public feed.

Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare, Gowalla, Buzz….the list goes on. Social interaction using online media is here to stay. Think about it… it was only a couple of years ago when such social sites were predominantly used by technology early adopters(technorattis). Now it appears that almost all segments along the technology adoption curve have signed onto using such media, yes even the laggards. The point here is that the Internet continues to revolutionize our lifes and social interaction is another example of that. So, I pose the question - how well are you utilzing social media to enhance your social interaction and build relationships?

To help you answer that, think about the following use cases and see how well you apply them.

Enhance your personal network
The common argument against social media is that it does not serve as a good networking tool - compared to traditional networking. Traditional networking, which includes getting introductions and face-to-face meetings can be enhanced through online social media. I value traditional networking - nothing can replace facetime with contacts and the purpose of this post is not to knock it. However at best, a typical networking meeting can only occur twice a month, usually at a coffee shop, for an hour(maybe). This means that you have to learn most of what you want to know about your contact within that time. Of course an alternative method could include communicating via email or over the phone but that usually means you have to ask the “right” questions in order to learn more about your contact.

Adopting social media (and using it well) can enhance this relationship. For instance, by simply “following” or “friending” your contact, you have access to any thoughts, gripes, or announcements that this contact may share. You can now ask better questions and have better conversations when you do meet face to face.

Build your brand - push your agenda
I would first like to give credit to Gary Vaynerchuk, I think he played a significant role in convincing people, myself included, to leverage the power of social media to brand themselves and push their agenda. To piggyback of the previous point, having the ability for create a better quality network of contacts gives you the opportunity to spread your agenda. Regardless of what your interests are, you can begin to build a “following” through your network. For instance, I am very interested in technology and entrepreneurship. I use social media to interact with other liked minded individuals as well as push my agenda - that is entrepreneurship and business development.

Stay current
The final case that I would like bring home is that of using social media as a legitimate news source. Just like social media greatly enhances your personal network, it also improves the quality and frequency of information that comes to you. The real time and unregulated nature of social media sites (as they are today) gives unprecedented access to news that relates directly to you. Sticking with the example of entrepreneurship, “following” individuals who are prominent entrepreneurs known nationally or locally will keep you informed on new entrepreneurial developments as well as failures and catasthropes in different industries.

So given these use cases, I ask again, how (well) do you use social media?