December 1 is soon upon us, and that means that the FTC will be watching social media (I think bloggers particularly) very closely as it is related to disclosure of products and services. In a nutshell, don’t shill online if you haven’t disclosed that you got something for it, money or otherwise.  Good news for me, I am an open book and simply don’t talk about stuff that I don’t want to and really talk up stuff that I like…paid or not.  However, if I have not made it perfectly clear, just wanted everybody to know who has paid my bills at one point or another, or given me cool stuff to check out.  I am going to keep this list dynamic and current on my Disclosures page. If you want a good FAQ page for the FTC guidelines look here, if you really want to read the entire text, check out the PDF here.

I work with a lot of brands, running social media programs in all shapes and sizes. As such, I want to be perfectly open and clear about who I work for and who I do not. It would be impractical to list companies and brands that I frequently mention that I do not work for (there are far too many), but I will list those with in some capacity. Between my previous consultancy and my current position as Senior Director of Social Media Strategy at M80 I get to do some pretty amazing things with some really exceptional companies. Below is a list of organizations that I have (or had) a professional association with in some way.

One of the wonderful things about social media is that it’s still a bit of the Wild West.  Sites like Twitter, Facebook and YouTube, while all covered nicely with their Terms of Service Agreements, are really very self-governing in terms of what content is produced.  When I talk to thought leaders and everyday users of these spaces about rules and norms, the divide is evenly split, with half saying that there should be rules imposed, the other half saying that it’s free speech all the way.  I tend to fall into the latter camp, although I do have three rules of my own that I try to follow.  Why?  Because I really do believe in social norms, and even though we are interacting with people in a digital sense, we are still interacting…we’re sharing the space and I want to do my part to be a good person.

If that reason isn’t compelling enough and you think I want to just sit around and hold hands with all of my digital friends, singing Kumbaya and roasting S’mores over some UGC campfire, then consider this: what you say online today will likely be searchable (and therefore discoverable) forever.  You may not care about having an outburst on Twitter right now because it doesn’t affect you, but down the road you may be in another position altogether, perhaps looking for a job.

Both of these are reasons enough for me to watch what I publish, so I have adopted these three basic guidelines.

Continuing with the theme of following others on Twitter, I previously wrote about how to follow good people and a strategy for unfollowing some as well. Since I’m into organization, especially with email, I thought I would share with you my strategy for sorting and following back those that choose to follow me.

Manage Twitter With Rules (click for full size image)

When somebody follows you on Twitter you will typically get an email telling you so.  This is great…to a point.  I found that My inbox was getting cluttered with email alerts from Twitter (don’t get me wrong, I love my followers!) but it was challenging to wade through and find more time sensitive emails, especially since my primary account goes to my iPhone.  In the interest of streamlining the process and to make sure that I don’t miss anybody (I like to follow back real people, but not robots), this is how I sort it out.

1. Create an email account for Twitter.  I originally used my primary address (matt at mattsingley dot com) for my Twitter account, but found that I didn’t like it all going to the same place.  I create a unique account that is used only at Twitter, so now the info won’t go to my iPhone, just my primary and secondary computers.
2. Create a “rule” for sorting.  I use Microsoft Outlook, so I simply created a rule that the email will follow.  You can do this by right-clicking a message and choosing “Create Rule…” or Tools–>Rules and Alerts–>New Rule.  I made the rule that any email sent to my unique address that contains “is now following you” in the subject goes to a special folder I created called “Twitter Followers”.  This way it doesn’t sit in my inbox, and I can go check it out anytime without disrupting my normal work flow.
3. Sign up for SocialToo.  I discussed this in my unfollowing post, but it should be repeated here.  Sign up at SocialToo and select the option to get a daily email.  Once a day I receive an email that shows who started following me (thank you!) and who unfollowed me (it stings a little!).
4. Create a “rule” for SocialToo.  Using the method described in #2, I created a rule that not only puts my daily SocialToo report into my Twitter Followers folder, but it also flags it for follow up that day.  Now to follow back I just open up that one email, check out who is new, and when I’m finished I can mark the flag as completed.  No more retracing my steps!

That’s it!  A quick and simple way to organize your friends in Twitter.  Of course there are tools (even in SocialToo) that allow you to automatically follow everybody that follows you…but where is the community in that?  I actually click on every single person’s link, read their bio, look at their tweets and often click through to their website.  I still think Twitter is a conversation and not a lecture, so the more tha I can interact with people and get to know them, the better!  If you have any strategies that you use to organize your Twitter life I would love to hear about them in the comments or with an @ reply to me.

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