Week 2: Twitter, blogging basics, and conversation web 2.0

This is a series of posts chronicling my path as a social media evangelist for Vibemetrix.  What’s on my mind as I do a job that I love and my thoughts on the state of the industry.

Twitter followings

Last week I was pondering how to make the Vibemetrix account valuable to those of you that I’ve added to both my chelpixie and to the Vibemetrix Twitter account.  My followers have put trust in me personally and know that I won’t spam them with stuff that they find uninteresting.  To me that trust is huge and not to be taken lightly, so I’ll be tweeting links on both sides that I think will be helpful to those around me.

One of the best examples I’ve found is Ellie Mirman who works with the great people at Hubspot.  I <3 Hubspot, their Website Grader and their people.

Blogging basics

Last week I also wrote a particularly hard blog post for me to articulate.  I’ve gotten some awesome blogging advice including ‘let someone else look it over’ and other various methods of checking yourself.  What I’ve found is that I’m a perfectionist!  I want to make sure what I’m saying comes out perfectly instead of focusing on the basics.  I’m working on letting the words flow and not trying to make them too perfect.

Just remember, the basics are super important here.  Those will keep the rest of the post in line.

Corporations and Web 2.0

That post came while I was thinking about the implications of 3M and their actions regarding interacting with a customer who ran with a good idea that took off.  A nightmare for any brand.  I think that some companies aren’t bound to give a you-know-what about social media and web 2.0.  Some companies simply do not care about their customers, but more about their bottom line. Yes, of course it’ll affect their bottom line but convincing enough of the company is the challenge.  Showing them the money by showing them the numbers.

Here’s one way AT&T is handling their branding online.  They are monitoring blogs for comments, but this isn’t engaging their customers in a friendly manner.

Granted this guy is also commenting and likely annoyed that someone’s representing an AT&T rep but come on.  You can do better than that.  Be nice.  Engage.  Don’t fire.

What do you think?  What’s your best blogging and Twitter advice?  Are companies going to have to follow the conversation to survive? Did AT&T go too far?