Are you having conversations with your followers or just babbling and not listening?

My Social Media philosophy/strategy has been to thank people who retweet or repost me, @reply to those who talk to me or about me; and thank those who mention me or “shoutout” at me. This can be an arduous task for me with over 90,000 followers, I work from home and am monitoring conversations for some clients all day long; so it is easy for me to switch from an email or telephone call, to Tweetdeck and respond. I have conditioned myself for this over the years, and what used to take hours, takes just moments now.
This is just one part of the process.

In the beginning, I did not have hundreds of people a day speaking to me.

I had to get outside myself and speak to others. I had to build a network, one conversation at a time!

Here are a couple of things to keep in mind when you are engaging, listening or “having conversations with followers/followees”:

-You are not better than anyone else, a superiority complex or a “too good to speak to the little guy” attitude is not going to get you results, and will probably turn people away. In fact, wondering why you have very few followers/conversations? This might be your problem!

-Quit telling people to follow you and start following/reaching out to them!  I can’t even begin to understand why it is so important to have people follow you that you aren’t even following. I am embarrassed for people who have very few followers and are constantly begging people to follow them, but they don’t even follow these people they are harassing. Once you really get Social Media, you will understand that last statement; and if you are one of these people I say to you: Are you really that important? Are you really that interesting?

-You never know where your next friend, lead/P1 (core listener) is going to come from. [{insert gratuitous Guy Kawasaki quote} "When I first started on Twitter, Robert Scoble told me to follow everyone who followed me. “But why, Robert, would I follow everyone like that?” The answer, he said is that, "it’s courteous to do so and because when you do, some people will respond to you and everyone who follows them will see this—which is more exposure for you."]

We have been taught to put together “campaigns” of how we will speak to others through traditional media outlets. But that is a one way street, and Social Media, according to its own definition is meant to be social. Most people are used to the traditional media approach of ‘broadcasting’ or even ‘narrowcasting’. Let me introduce you to your new best friend: communicasting! The exchange of thoughts, messages or information by transferring information from one to another; or many to each other; and connecting with other people.

How do you connect with others?
-Speak with people, not at them!
-Ask them questions.
-Check out their profile. Ask them about their town, their career, their children, their animals, their family.
-Check out the link to their website.
-Check out their other Social Media sites.
-Read their blogs and make comments.
-Notice their photos or background.
-Forget the conventional Social Media mantra ‘What are you doing?’ and start asking your followers ‘what are they doing?’
-Use search.twitter.com, twellow.com or wefollow.com to locate people in your industry, geo location or interests and engage them.

We all could do better by thinking a little less about ourselves and more about others