As many of you know, I’m really into Google+. This has prompted people to ask if I’m on the Google payroll, to which I say: if they look at my AdSense numbers, they’d question whether my help were that valuable.
That said, I really am rooting for it to succeed, and I have been borderline missionary in attempts to move people over to the service. This is totally contrary to my general belief on these platforms, which is to go where people are and do it to death. Maybe I’m getting a lil’ cocky, thinking I can bring people along with me to the + — think Stern going to Sirius, on a much smaller and less costly scale — but I’m doing my damnedest to bring the party over there.
Why? Well, sit down for a little shop talk…
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The other day, Richard Deitsch put out his list of the top 100 sports tweeters. Dan Shanoff followed with his own addendum.
I was on neither . Now, I don’t care about that, per se, but I did find that curious. After all, my presence on Twitter promoted my local radio show to a national audience, which in turn saved me from my most recent bout of unemployment. On top of that, Twitter was a big part of getting the attention of this guy, which is the reason most people reading this now know my name. So to each his reach and all that, but I have a hard time understanding whatever metrics are used to compile a list where that sort of thing wouldn’t make it seem like I’m worth following at least as much as guys that DM me on the low to agree with some of my more…adventurous takes on life.
I don’t know Deitsch well enough to talk to him about this without sounding like a whiner, but I’ve known Dan for years, so I asked him. He started with the expected, “can I be honest?” to which I responded with my customary, “that’s why I’m asking.” I’ve got reasons that my social media presence is established as it is, and whether or not I make a list isn’t going to change that.
He basically said it came to this.
That’s a fair complaint. If I think it and I think it’s compelling, I tweet it. Do other people think all the stuff is compelling? That’s honestly not my concern. I think Twitter has allowed me to showcase my brand, my shows and my company in greater depth than I would be able to anywhere else. And given that there’s no telling what will be the thing to catch someone’s attention, I can’t hold back something that gives a picture of what we’re doing over here.
The other thing is this: I think it’s silly for people to restrict themselves tweeting because that will only offend people who tweet casually. The people whose attention I want to catch on Twitter will be the people who use Twitter intensely. The people that just like to check a couple times a day to see what their favorite celebrities are doing aren’t going to do much for me, really. Either they were already into me, or they will not be swayed by what I do and don’t say on Twitter. I’ll reach those people on television or the radio, and it says nothing about me that those people don’t want to hear what I say about music. But since there are plenty of people who are interested in that, I’m going to tweet about it just like I tweet about sports. And just like I tweet about funny things I see at the mall, because there are people who want to hear about that….
It’s a multifaceted brand, and it would be silly of me not to share all the facets with people. And truthfully, if all you want is someone who talks sports and only sports, I’m not gonna be your guy, anyway. There are lots of others who do that better.
Now, here’s where this intersects with those lists, and why I wouldn’t be mad at them, even if I were so inclined to be: most people are just jumping on Twitter to see what people are talking about. Few are there looking for depth, and even fewer are looking for a lot of anything. I’d be curious to see how many people on Twitter follow more than 200 people, in fact, to get a better representation of this. So, the person looking to SI.com to see who to follow on Twitter is absolutely not trying to follow somebody like me. But, the person that follows 1,700 people, like I do? I’m in that person’s wheelhouse.
And seeing how that person is probably more influential than the person that follows a handful, I’ll continue to sell my brand as I do. I sincerely believe this is the best way to reach people.
More importantly, it’s a great way to engage people. Even the guy that follows 50 people is typically looking for engagement, whether it’s from his or her friends or the guys on television he loves or — and this weirds me out — the guy on television he absolutely despises. I’m more concerned with engagement than anything else, so I’ll run my tweet count sending RTs that serve a larger conversation or replying to people as I can, and as they make compelling arguments. I’m at the computer thinking about these things to get ready for tomorrow’s show anyway, so why not do it in a public sphere? That’s my outlook. My show’s like a bunch of people hanging out, so why not keep the party going on Twitter? I would be silly not to maximize the access my audience is kind enough to give me.
However, let’s be honest: that isn’t what Twitter was ever intended to be. It was meant to be brief. We see the term “microblogging,” and people like me will use a zillion posts to lay out an argument and respond to replies…which is really just a macroblog. But if I do that stuff on my blog, there aren’t as many comments. Hence me setting up shop and messing it up for people.
Many media folks have tried to mutate it for self-promotion, but you can only get so far doing that unless you OD like I do. Using Twitter to simply send columns and drop nuggets is masturbatory at best and hopeless at worst (if they’re not at the computer when you sent it, then what?). You can sell a brand, but selling items is very, very hard to do. That may work for folks that are already made in the game.
But for a cat like me, who’s had to hustle this from outside the typical channels? I needed to get in people’s kitchens, in where they lived, and I wasn’t going to do that worrying about whether I tweeted too much. And given that sportswriting has historically not been long for those from outside these channels — something that, clearly, is changing — I sure as hell tweet too much for anybody’s top 100 sports tweeters. Quite simply, I’m playing a different game than they are.
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Now, to bring this back to Google+. I need Google+ to do well because it is absolutely perfect for me. I don’t have any stock in the company, and I honestly won’t care if the thing crashes tomorrow. But I’ve talked with my consultants for hours and hours about all the things we can do with the platform, and it makes us giggle. We’ve already got plans for using the Hangouts, a setup for when they get streaming video figured out, ran a soft launch on some merchandise for my core audience, and have already begun sharing content in a way that allows us to continue The Morning Jones well after 10 am Eastern.
Plus, given that I work often with people in three different locations, and different groups within those locations, the + provides me easy, fluid ways to share things I work on with people, discuss future plans, etc. It is the ultimate one-stop shop for someone whose all over the place trying to build a brand that can’t so easily be encapsulated in one sentence, unless using the catchall phrase “lifestyle.”
But this is where I see Google+ running into a problem: really, how many people need the stuff I’m talking about? It certainly has its other benefits, most notably that it does more than Twitter and Facebook to encourage people to check out content shared outside of their circles and networks. That said, I’m not sure how great it will be to the casual user.
From what I can tell, what Google is going to have to do is sell the more influential people on the Internet on the service, hope they can bring audiences with them, and then let the audience figure out the power of the tools from there. Facebook has been historically resistant to being used as a utility, rather than just a way for people to congregate. Twitter has allowed itself to be whatever people want it to be. Google+ has the power to do the same thing as Twitter, but with the structure that makes Facebook less unwieldy for new users than Twitter.
But as things stand, there seems to be so much going on that G+ is amorphous and feels even more like the Wild, Wild West than Twitter, even though the thing is ultimately simple as pie. What seems to be tripping people up is figuring out “what do I do with this?” The answer: whatever it is that you want.
But sometimes, you have to nudge people toward what they want, and that’s what I haven’t seen G+ do. I know what I want it to do: EVERYTHING. For that reason, it doesn’t spook me like it does other people. That said, something has to happen to get folks to calm down and get a handle on it. Otherwise, this fantastic tool will go to waste.
And I’ll have to keep bombarding your Twitter feed, when I could instead maintain controlled conversations on G+ and send them only to those who want more of The Morning Jones than three hours, or send interesting techno stuff to folks concerned with them, or political stuff to…
So do the world a favor. Get on G+. Let’s do it for the kids, ha?
