Six Ways to Get Unfollowed on Twitter

    People follow one another on Twitter (and unfollow) for a lot of reasons, but in my book, these six things will get you unfollowed pretty quickly.

1)      Post too many times a day -  My general rule of thumb is that most people can post five times a day.  Even ten is acceptable if you have something really good to say, or if there is some special event that you are live tweeting.  But once you start crowding my feed, you are a target.

2)      Post too many times in a row – Some people post five or ten tweets in a row.  Sometimes it is a bunch of separate things all sent at once, and other times someone strings a long post into five or ten tweets.  If you want to blog, write a blog.  Either way, if you do it very often, I’m probably not going to follow you.

3)      Post too many pictures – I know everyone says that pictures attract attention, but if all you do is post a bunch of pictures, posters or memes on my feed, I’m probably not going to follow you.

4)      Post Off topic – I generally follow people because I am interested in what they post.  I completely understand that we are all human and a little “human interest” is fine.  The occasional post about your kids, or your nice dinner is okay, but if you say that your posts are about science, religion, business or whatever, and spend most of your time posting about something else, your days on my list might be numbered.

5)      Post ads – I understand that many of us are on social media to promote our place of business, books, or even ourselves.  But if all I ever see are ads instead of useful content, I’m probably not going to follow you.

6)      Post “click-bait” – We all have a variety of interests and occasionally we find interesting things that we want to share, but if the majority of your posts are links to “click-bait” advertising that looks like “Wow! Look at this Crazy Stuff!”  I’m probably not going to follow you.

    

I'm sure that  missed a few.

What have people done that made you unfollow them?

I tweet primarily about church, faith and religion, but also science, technology, the space program and the human condition.  And of course, a few about my kids.  Follow me @PastorPartridge

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The Death of Communication in the Information Age?

    Sometimes it seems that the march of progress takes us places we don’t want to go.  Earlier this year, our East Ohio Conference magazine, Joining Hands, migrated to an all-digital format and this month we learned that our district newsletter, Tuscarawas Ties, is doing the same.  Both follow a trend.  Many other publications have made this migration for a variety of reasons.  

But these two cases are different.

    I think that the transition from Tuscarawas Ties was well done but fear that the digital migration of Joining Hands will not accomplish its intended goals.

    Tuscarawas Ties has been moving in this direction for more than a year.  Although produced once each month, it had changed to a schedule of eight electronic editions and four print editions each year.  Moreover, most of its recipients are pastors and church staff who are comfortable with computers and email.

    Joining Hands’ transition was more abrupt.  They transitioned from printing once every three months, to not printing at all.  In December’s concluding edition, our Conference Director of Communications, Rick Wolcott, said that we would instead publish “stories online as they happen” in order to “increase their impact.”  The target audience of Joining Hands was broader and directed toward the church at large and the mailing list included retirees, laity, pastors and local churches that ordered multiple copies to display or pass along to key volunteers.

    If your target audience is composed of those who prefer your product in an all-digital format, then such a migration makes sense.  Tuscarawas Ties is mailed to pastors and staff that use computers every day and the news contained in it is often reprinted in local church newsletters and bulletins.  For that reason, an electronic edition is both needed and valued. 

But I don’t think that the same holds true for Joining Hands. 

    Joining Hands brought us news from around the conference.  It was full of stories of how our churches were making a difference in the name of Jesus Christ.  But the audience was not made up exclusively of people who appreciated reading that same material online.  If the churches where I have served are representative of the rest of the conference (and I think they are), producing an electronic only magazine will make it impossible for eighty or ninety percent of our members to read it.

    Trinity Church (my current appointment in a suburban, middle class community) has, by far, the most computer users of any church that I have served.  We have more than 250 members.   I have email addresses for twenty-five.  Of those, perhaps ten spend significant time on the Internet, and four might read a church magazine online.  Based on the performance of our Facebook page (where I post links of interest) ten to fifteen might see a particular post but less than five would click on it.

    I am certain that in churches that are older or less affluent these numbers would be even more discouraging.

    Joining Hands is not the first publication to move to an electronic format and it won’t be the last.  But many of those that have done so no longer exist.  The readership that they had in print did not follow them online.

    I do not doubt the professionalism or the good intentions of our conference leaders, but I fear that we have created a system that is cheaper, faster, and produces news…

…that no one will read.

Seven Things Car Dealers Should Know

    Last week I shared some of the ways that we were able to save money when we finally had to go shopping for a new car (Seven Car Shopping Tips to Save You Money).   Our experiences were mostly positive, but there were times that were not.  While we were ultimately successful in finding a great car for a price that we could afford, there were a number of times that we just shook our heads at the attitudes and behavior of various car dealers.  On the other hand, there were a handful of them that were doing an awesome job.  Here is a list of things that we wish all car dealers knew:

  1)      It would be nice if automakers would make the cars that we want: Chevrolet used to make the Venture, which we liked so well we bought two of them.  It was comfortable, affordable, reliable, had eight seats, and got good gas mileage.  We would have happily bought another one, but they don’t make them anymore.  Our local Chevy dealer only carried other brands of minivan in their used car lot and almost no one makes a van with eight seats.  Brilliant.

  2)      Dealers should know that we own computers and know how to use them: Thanks to the Internet, before we left the house we knew what car we wanted and every dealership within 50 miles that had one.  We knew the Kelly Blue Book recommended price, and how much the dealerships wanted for them.  Several dealerships seemed to have no clue that this technology exists.

  3)      Just because it looks like a van, doesn’t make it a van: One major brand advertises that they have the highest fuel economy in a minivan but when we looked into it, their minivan only has seating for five.  Seriously?  Our Aunt Gladys’ Buick LeSabre has more seats than that, it gets better gas mileage, and its big overstuffed leather seats are almost certainly more comfortable.

  4)      Comfy seats do not always make the sale: The dealer whose lot is literally across the street from our church was courteous and polite but failed in two ways.  1) They had nothing close to our price range because the vans on their lot were all loaded up with leather seats and all the extras and 2) while these vans were only a little more than we were looking for, they made absolutely no attempt to negotiate.  We left.

  

  5)      Rudeness never pays: Downtown Ford in Canton offered one price online but when we asked how much the car cost, the saleswoman made two mistakes.  1) She nearly demanded that we drive it before she would tell us the price and when we insisted, she copped an attitude and gave us a base price that was $2500 more than the price quoted online.  We left.

  6)      We don’t negotiate the price of most things, but we expect it when buying a car AND some of us prefer to pay cash: One dealership we visited had two, reasonably priced, low mileage vans that we liked.  We test drove both of them.  They wouldn’t budge on price and insisted that because they were a wholesaler they couldn’t negotiate.  They did, however, try very hard to offer us a “better deal” if we would only take out a loan, despite our offer to pay cash.  How is paying interest supposed to save us money?  We left.

  

  7)      Being polite and helpful never hurt your business: The salesman at Greg Pruitt Honda met us in the lot almost as soon as we got out of the car, asked what we were looking for, and actually listened.  He told us that they didn’t have any in stock but got several in each week and would, if we wanted, let us know when one came in.  He was polite and helpful even though he knew he didn’t have what we wanted and also knew that we would continue to look elsewhere.  I will almost certainly go back to their dealership the next time I am looking for a car.

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See last week's  blog, "Seven Car Shopping Tips to Save You Money."