DailyBlogr - What we often fail to see in Social Media, but is actually valuable

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If you didn’t know yet, I’m one of those weird people who follow around 15,000 people on Twitter, while is being followed by a cool 22,000. Why weird you ask ?

I have friends asking me all the time, how in the world are you following 15,000 people, and how do you manage it ? And some even dismiss me for a gamer. I see all that happening around me, and quite frankly enjoy it. The critics, the admirers and the friends.

Let me make a few things clear here. If you’re a critic, it might help you to understand how and why following a lot of people actually helps. Also, why the focus is not really on numbers but something more valuable, that we often fail to see at first sight.

I agree that it is difficult. When I started on Twitter, I had no clue where this was headed. Heck, I didn’t even know how Twitter was going to help. It was a time waster (Remember this post?). But later when I found more and more people moving in, I jumped the bandwagon. From there, it was a roller coaster ride and quite a good one that.

I was unclear of a lot of things but certain things caught my interest.

Following people back for general courtesy.

I made it a point to follow all the genuine people who started to follow me, as a general courtesy – nothing else. People followed me for a reason, but I couldn’t stop following them back however “little value” was perceived of them. I actually thought it was unfair and harsh not to follow someone who’s decided to follow me. I might actually be missing something if I was not following him – couldn’t that be the case ? Very much. I couldn’t take that risk so I follow everyone who follows me, if I see that they’re genuine. Also, every time someone adds me as a friend on facebook, I try and dig up their profile gathering as much information as possible about them, just like that, I don’t know why, may be the curiosity in me, but I do it and believe me it has only helped. You never know when but it will help.

Don’t be an inverted cup and let all the coffee pour over you.

Call me an information addict, but I find extreme joy in learning new things, especially things that’s progressively addictive. Some of those topics have been not-so-productive really. When I was in school, I loved video games. Right from the “Space Invaders” and “Pac Man” DOS games we used to play at school waiting in line to the Xbox series which I play now. Some of them were indeed productive, like SEO, which I learned myself from trial and error methods on my network of websites. So the crux is, whenever I find something interesting, I dive in, and do the best I can there. This way, I can be sure that there is only either one of the results. Either I fail miserably wasting a lot of time, or I learn inside out of the subject. But I can’t imagine the idea of sitting dumb doing nothing when you have a a hell lot of information passing right in front of you in huge volumes !

Same was the case with Twitter. As soon as I realized that there is lot of information being passed around, I couldn’t stop getting addicted to it. I dived right in and devoured huge proportions of it – not to mention, I loved it. For the same reason, I followed almost everyone  back, and left the spam bots right where they belonged. I’ve never regretted this, even the best friends I’ve made on Twitter are people who could have been ignored for no value.

When you judge people, you forget to understand them.

Its actually one of my favourite quotes of Mother Teresa. I’ve made it a point not to judge people the first time. Its unfair to judge someone with very limited information that you can get of him the first time. Like follower number or tweets. Not everyone started tweeting with me, so they might not have enough tweets to convince me of a long tweeting history. Only when you make a relationship with someone would you know if he’s worth being with you or not, just like people you meet in your life. Makes sense right ?

Believe in relationships, numbers mean nothing if not for them.

Be it Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn, every new friend is a resource to something new and a relationship made is for ever. One would have to go through it to understand what is like. We’re social beings and relationships are the most precious things you’ll ever see in your life. So, when you have opportunities to make relationships with even the guy you had the remotest possibility to meet, sitting in the other side of the globe, why would you want to miss it ? I can’t find one good reason to miss it.

So, what is the point to I’m trying to prove?

I’d like to send a reminder signal to everyone who’s behind the number game. Its not your fault, I know, to see numbers as the final metric of measurement. We all get carried away with it. But at the end of it all, its not really numbers that matter. The person with 1 million followers on twitter is only as good as a programmed robot if all he does is “talk”  a monologue. There would definitely be a couple of them however, but that’s okay. We should understand that social media is the greatest communication platform mankind has ever witnessed, that is vast, borderless, vibrant and yet effective. If we focus on ROI here, you’re sure to fail in the long run. So instead of focussing on numbers and returns, think about making better relationships. Better communication and making better friends, with whom you might have never even known about, if not for social media. Be thankful and be merry.

Whoops ! How zen of me eh ?

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