Twitter Trauma – How to Keep Up?

Posted on July 22nd, 2009 by Keith Ferrazzi

So when I posted earlier this week about the joys of tweeting on the tour, I promised a post on the exhausting side of twitter.

Twitter and I have a paradoxical relationship. I love being so closely and intimately connected to my community. But I sometimes become exhausted by the fact that Twitter never sleeps and never stops pinging me.  It can be overly demanding, and sometimes tedious.  Please don’t misinterpret – I don’t mean that I find any one of my friends ON Twitter to be demanding, but rather the service itself.

Twitter operates in real time.  I tend to schedule my communications and process them in batches, usually on the plane.  Twitter is an ongoing conversation that doesn't pause for breath.  If I’m not monitoring it constantly, it’s easy for replies and conversations to get lost and buried. It’s easy to stay connected when I’m not that busy, but that's.... hardly ever. I have important emails to respond to and am rarely in front of a computer.  All I have is my UberTwitter on my Blackberry, and that only displays so many recent replies… I’m only able to see the last 20 replies from whatever time I’m available to check my Twitter.  Everything else gets buried.

Where's the balance? Any advice is appreciated. Guy?

This is a theme I’m experiencing in transitioning to new social media methods of communication: I love the increased intimacy, but am exhausted by the maintenance each new medium requires.  I have a Facebook fan page, a Facebook profile page to communicate with close friends, a LinkedIn account, Twitter account, Plaxo, Youtube, Flickr… the list goes on.  I know entrepreneurs are hustling to find a solution to this obvious problem and when they do, I want to be the first to know!

What I’m looking for - more immediately - is advice on how to handle the real time communication demands of Twitter amongst the rest of my time commitments and responsibilities. What's the best way to set expectations and fulfill them? I don’t want to alienate anyone, but it’s impossible for me to respond to everyone.  And it’s also tough for me to keep track of people with their handles and not using real names.

Advice that I have for anyone trying to contact me – or anyone else for that matter – on Twitter is to ping me multiple times (without getting frustrated!  Remember Never Eat Alone…).  The more I see you in my Twitter stream the more likely I am to respond.

As always, your thoughts and advice are very much appreciated.

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5 Responses so far | Have Your Say!

  1. Keith -- I know the feeling. Finally decided to look at Twitter in the morning while I am having my coffee. Gives me trends and also any news from over night. IF I am around the computer at noon, may peruse and send a couple of tweets. Really forget about it the rest of the day--then go on Twitter while watching the news in the evening. I no longer feel I have to be following any extended period of time.
    Kathy Condon http://www.kathycondons.blogspot.com

  2. Keith,

    Thanks for sharing - you're voicing the concerns of many leaders who've jumped into Twitter too.

    Again I offer my 15-minute checklist for Twitter, see (what's currently) slide #16 here:
    http://georgekao.com/socialslides
    (If slide is jumbled, download the PDF by clicking the "Actions" menu at the bottom of that page.)

    Basically, if you're clear on the people you most want to connect with and influence at this time in your career/life, then just respond to their @replies and DMs.

    Everyone else who's thoughtful should know that being a bestselling author, you're extremely busy and aren't able to respond to everyone or even most people who message you.

    Alternatively, hire someone / a team to triage your Twitter/FB/LinkedIn messages based on your criteria of who's a VIP and an "ideal audience" (prospective clients, partners, media contacts).

    Always a work in progress!

    Hope this is helpful to you and others.

    In service,

    George Kao

  3. Hello Keith,

    I must agree strongly with George on his points. Most people should understand that you have life and real time commitments... I personally use tweetdeck and sort through my DM's and Replies in the morning. (Likely not as many as you my friend.)

    I agree with you it’s a good tool to solicit questions with, if you are the one asking the questions to a broader base such as your followers. I don't know if all users should expect their followers to use Twitter to answer them though. Email, SMS and even Facebook messages are still considered to be the message etiquette today. (In my opinion…)

    To your last point – and I am speaking again from my opinion here… I think that relevance is an important part of getting attention. Remembering “Never Eat Alone” – it’s about building relationships through offering help and uplifting those who are around you. I can only speak for myself here, but when I go through my DM’s and Replies, those who tweet something offering to help me, share an article I have written, or offer me or my organization value are always the ones who get responses the fastest. I like hearing from people, and seeing what they are up to… and yes it does keep them on my radar, but the ones who get the first replies offer value.

    I think in keeping with the principals of NEA, we should try to offer value in our tweets, be it in the information sent to our followers, or when reaching out to one another. Once the relationships develop to a point where its socially acceptable to share more personal information, LinkedIn, Facebook, Email, Cell Phone (in that order) we can expect the speed of response time to increase, and people need to understand that.

    Social networking and the social ecosystem may speed up the rate of communication and expansion of our networks, but real world etiquette and offline social behaviors must be respected in the same fashions in both settings.

  4. I've given up a little bit on Twitter. I find it interesting how easily this can consume us to the point that we feel like we are missing something (on Twitter, Facebook, e-mail, etc) if we are not checking 50+ times per day.

  5. I feel the overwhelming exhaustion too. I agree with the comments above, but question the order Kent listed sharing personal information. I would much rather Email then share my personal Facebook and/or LinkedIn. I realize Email gets spammed a ton, but I have too many personal details on my Facebook account that I wouldn't want anyone off the street to have access to.

    I agree though, only the valued Twitterers would get the first possible replies from a very busy leader in social communications. I personally don't worry about the buried tweets. I think Twitter could create a better way to organize tweets so you only have to view tweets you are interested in seeing, instead of every single response from every person you follow.

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