How To Be A Clueless Twit and Social Media Failure

When I was a kid and I did something dumb my Dad would call me a Twit. Usually, in a somewhat loving way, He was trying to tell me that I should have given more thought to my actions. These days I seem to be running into a whole new breed of Twit. Yesterday I was having a good time making people chuckle on Twitter. It was Halloween and the din of the political vitriol was starting to really bug me. I thought I would lighten things up and make people laugh. As a result I started picking up a following that trended up more than the usual conversation flow that takes place on Twitter. Nothing earth shattering, but right in the middle of it someone that had just started following me posted this "Tweet".


It appears that someone was trying to interlope my conversation flow. Do I love the "Brand X*" baby carrier? WTH? I didn't say anything about baby carriers. You have a store? So what? My kids are grown, I bought my last baby carrier a long time ago. These days a baby carrier to me is the parent that walked into the house with the baby in the first place. Toys and candy I will do all day long. I'm not buying any more "equipment". I don't even think the conversation I was having had much to do with babies at all until I remembered I told someone earlier that my Grand Son was about to be born any day. Then it dawned on me that either through some slick automation or just plain Twitter stalking, someone jumped in with the full intention of trying to sell me and those in my sphere some over priced baby crap. FAIL! I immediately "unfollowed" the "person" and blocked them from being able to enter into the conversational flow that was taking place.

The sad fact? More and more people are completely missing the point of social media and trying to immediately sell into the spaces they are INVADING. It doesn't work that way. Never has, never will. I confirmed a real estate professional on Facebook the other day. He immediately answered with a post that tried to sell me on his secrets of short selling. The only thing short about it was how long it took to hit the delete key and block him. Do yourself a favor and look at Paul Chaney's power point deck that he presented to the attendees of the recent Real Estate BarCamp. Do your homework on what Social Media and Conversational Marketing is.

If you're the type of RE professional that looks for an immediate return on every investment you make, be it in time, or cash. Don't bother with social media or blogging. It's not for you. If you're the type of professional that understands that these tools are a means of establishing your brand, defining your niche and creating a long term ROI, rock on. There's really no such thing as a "social media butterfly" and the definition of Twit hasn't changed since the first time my old man slapped me on the back of the head 40 some odd years ago.

I'm not Dear Abby. I can't tell you how to act at a party or at Church. Use some common sense. If you wouldn't walk up to everyone in the receiving line after services and slap a business card in their hand and tell them you want to help them with "all of their real estate needs", don't do it online either. If you are the kind to do something like that, you're running the risk of someone writing a snippy blog post about or "Tweet" about. They may not be kind enough to do the following:

*Twitter Handle Removed To Protect The Clueless.
**Name of Lame Baby Carrier Brand Removed to Prevent The Brand From Getting Any Google Juice From The Clueless.