Here’s why business change is everything:
In Silicon Valley, a guy named Guy is getting closer and closer to owning you—or at least your in-box. Guy Kawasaki has been around the block plenty, and the former Tech Evangelist for Apple Computer is now landing in my in-box every day. Three times. And magnanimously teaching me how to drop it to one. Sort of.
Some background: Mr. Kawasaki, a Venture Capitalist by trade, has amassed nearly 200,000 followers on Twitter. He sends out so many updates each day that following him feels almost like he’s standing next to you. And . . . now he’s sending out each tweet three times. Automatically. And you can do it, too.
My reference above to “sort of” was about whether Guy was being a nice guy, or whether it was about exerting even more leverage in multiple places. And it’s the latter. And that’s OK.
Here’s Guy Kawasaki ‘s explanation of how to get each of his tweets one time instead of three. It’s straightforward. It’s honest, complete, and clearly written. He tweeted it out. And it covers more ground than I’ve ever seen anyone cover in 140 characters.
- Guy wants you to visit his web site, Alltop.com
- Guy wants you to think he’s being a nice guy
- Guy wants to promote the service that handles the multi-tweet policy he’s using
- He acknowledges being an “adviser” to that service, which since he’s a Venture Capitalist certainly translates to “owner”.
- Guy wants you to see how smart he is (and he is; READ the post, please)
All from a tweet. And an incredibly well-thought-out strategy.
Am I praising Guy Kawasaki? Yes. Am I criticizing him, too? I thought I would be when I started planning this piece, but no; Guy Kawasaki is simply the smartest guy on my radar.
And all he’s doing is mixing his interests together in a way you could be too, if you embraced business change and put some thought into it.
The squeeze starts when you decide it does. Or let us help.
That’s a bit much. Not all of us can be, or want to be, a Guy Kawasake — even those who might actually “embrace business change and put some thought into it.” (Man, is this absolutist style utterly inescapable in the social media world?)
And not everyone can or thinks he should get away with a strategy based on spamming your existing base of followers, who trust you not to abuse that relationship seeing as how you embody Web 2.0 and all, and threatening to continue doing so unless you Do As Instructed in an “honest, complete, and clearly written” tweet.
But not too many people want to call out Guy on this, after all — including me; my blog is, after all, on Alltop Top Law News. Hey, I don’t want no trouble.
But I am not about to give Guy an award for this move, no.
Thanks, Ron. I appreciate the complimentary part of that. I guess I DID “call Guy out”.
As for the rest: I’m not suggesting he deserves an award. What I am suggesting is that unusual, inventive tactics are more and more important, and Guy seems to understand this well enough to do something with the knowledge. And we’d all do well to follow that lead.
JY
If everyone did what Guy is doing, people would abandon Twitter altogether. Actually, it would be OK if his reposting service worked the way he *thinks* it does, repeating each tweet once 8 hours later, then again another 8 hours after that. It doesn’t. Your stream will be filled with Guy’s repeats, sometimes minutes apart. Yes, he has good ideas, and I want to hear them. But he also needs to acknowledge that something is broken and fix it.
Actually, Tom, I agree with the “broken” characterization. And although I’ll stand fast by the props I gave him, the fact that the only EASY choice was following a different account rather than Guy’s primary—which has its own ramifications—is not OK with me.
How about it, Guy? Are you saying that furthering your uber-marketing strategy should be your only goal, or should you also take some responsibility for the ramifications of how you do things?
Heh. Guy don’t answer questions, man. He’s not, like, the Answer Guy. He’s … Guy Kawasake!!