Figuring it all out one day at a time
This video discusses my recent social media fast, the benefits, and why you should plan one for yourself.
Books mentioned:
A Tale of 3 Kings-http://amzn.to/18MoJxA
Making it All Work-http://amzn.to/11zc4oT
Getting Things Done-http://amzn.to/1aVWppm
Tweets by HeathMullikin
http://www.facebook.com/heathmullikin
I am a huge fan of Twitter and other social media. At the point where I was trying to build 2 blogs, make a little money online, and connect with people around the world I made the decision to use a program called TweetAdder. TweetAdder is a tool that allows you automatically follow back anyone who follows you on Twitter, send messages automatically, and do things that can gain you a large following. I was obsessed with my follower count. At one point, @chaseurlion was over 40,000 followers, @chaseyourlion was over 15,000, and @heathmullikin was over 20,000. I was trying to build a brand, but instead I built a monster.
There are lots of people who use tools like Tweet Adder to spam the world. I tried not to be one of those people. I was content to follow people based on certain criteria and unfollow them based on other things. Out of over 75,000 followers, only about 30% were real people. Now, did this tool and strategy help me connect with great people I wouldn’t have met otherwise? Absolutely. In the process was I following around 75,000 people myself? Yes, and many of them were sketchy to say the least. I knew it was time for a Twitter Reboot.
A few things have happened over time to bring me to this place. First, there was a run of great people who decided to unfollow everyone and start all over on Twitter. Michael Hyatt blogged about it here and he heard about it from Chris Brogan. Now, I’m not going unfollow everyone, but I am going unfollow a lot of people. Secondly, I decided that managing multiple accounts and blogs was not in my best interests. Finally, I realized that every connection mattered. Being followed by a spam California real estate firm with 100,000 followers was far less important than connecting with a college student with 25 serious followers. TweetAdder had taken true intentionality and connection out of the equation.
Enter ManageFlitter. Erik Fisher from Beyond the To Do List recommended this service and I am loving it so far. ManageFlitter is not a bot that runs 24/7. It allows you to really see who’s following you and who you’re following. My favorite feature is that I’ve been able to see who’s tweeting too much(spammers) and who’s not tweeting at all(quitters). Neither of these groups are real connections so unfollow away! It also has a great Whitelist and block feature. I can list everyone I know and never want to unfollow(Whitelist) and blocking means that I will never follow that person and they are unable to follow, DM or @mention me. There are all sorts of great uses for ManageFlitter, but right now I’m concentrating on making all of my connections count. Did I mention that they have a free version?
All of this is part of a strategy involving two projects I’m working on this year. It will all tie in with the calling God has placed on my life and some great opportunities ahead of me. Call all of this “Launch Preparations.”
What does that even mean? I’ve been working on some life planning for myself, my family, and my church. This past weekend I had the opportunity to share some thoughts on forming good habits with some ministerial students from Southern Wesleyan University. One of the habits was to create a life mission statement to [Read more…] about The Tweetable Mission Statement
Last week I posted about some Social Media Research I was doing to see what tweets at what times get the most clicks. My goals this week were to continue to tweet out quality links using HootSuite and to also schedule the posts with Google Plus using the Do Share app for Chrome. This constituted a switch from Safari as my primary browser to Google Chrome. (FYI-I will be posting about my history with browsers later this week.) I simply copy and [Read more…] about Social Media Research Part 2
I meet a lot of people at Christian Conferences. Today, I am attending the Newspring Leadership Conference (#nlc) in Anderson, SC at Newspring Church. I’ve been to all of them so far(this is year 3) and the speaker lineup includes Matt Chandler, Steven Furtick, Criag Groeschel, James McDonald, Perry Noble, Judah Smith, Andy Stanley, Judah Smith, and Jud Wilhite. The first 2 years were challenging and life changing and I will miss Mark Driscoll this year. I have been to a conference at Willow Creek before and that was incredible, but mostly I’ve stuck with local and denominational events. Our district has a yearly retreat that is required for full-time pastors and it is always refreshing. In 17 years of attending conferences, here are a few [Read more…] about The 8 People You Meet at Christian Conferences
I decided to do some Social Media research to find out if the information I was reading on when is the best time to post on Facebook and Twitter was true. My goal was to see what times and days people were more likely to click on a posted link and to see what types of links people would click on. HootSuite makes this all possible. It enables me to schedule tweets throughout the week and track my clicks using their ow.ly link shortener. Their new “Hootlet” button(which ironically was released soon after Buffer came on the scence) makes tweeting out web articles and pages a snap.
What were some of my goals? [Read more…] about Social Media Research Part 1
