In Jodie's Brain

So, I got to try out Google Buzz this morning, like thousands of other people today. I can see how it can become useful, perhaps. Not 100% sold on it yet, but I’ll play for a little while longer.

I like how it kinda takes the good things about commenting, Twitter, Facebook and instant messaging and puts it all together. We shall see… we shall see…

At any rate, within only a few hours of creating my first “buzz” I saw that it was “liked” – it was my brother. How sweet ;). But then, it was “liked” again… and I thought Hmmmm… was it really *that* interesting? It really was kind of mundane. I looked at who it was that was liking what I said and it was a gaming company, as in video games etc. I don’t do video games… I mean, sure, we have a Wii and I (*cough* used to *cough*) do a fair amount of DDR, and, well, I might play Mahjong a little too much on my computer, but I don’t recall any of my contacts being gaming companies. So, out of curiosity, I clicked to look at their profile. Sure enough, they were following people left, right and centre – they had followed well over 1000 people already and only had maybe 50 following back. (As of this writing, they were following over 6000 people and 115 following back).

They then “liked” another random, mundane buzz of mine. This is when I clued in; they found a way to get eyes onto their profile – put your business URL as your profile name and go around and “like” as many people’s buzzes (buzz’s? buzzi? er… whatever the plural is…) as you can. It’s not actual SPAM spam, but in this Web 2.0, relationship-driven, contact-enhancing roll we are on, it seems counter-productive.

Randomly liking people’s statuses/updates/whatevers doesn’t make me want to do business with you, my friend. I’m sorry. If you want to engage me, well, then engage me: add to the conversation, ask me questions, ask my opinion… be *authentic* (sorry… over-used current social-media buzzword there… but it fits).

Essentially: don’t walk in to the club double-gunning everyone you see in the hopes people will see you as cool and want to come sit at your table. Because they won’t.

Let’s not even TALK about your popped collar…

Read this, and had to share:

“…there has probably never been a better time to be in a creative business. So, stop the fear and negativity. The more fearful we become, the more we will fall back on tried and tested formulas for what we do – and that would be the kiss of death. It’s a brave new world – and it requires courage to move beyond our comfort zone.”

Full post by Terri Rogers.