Posts Tagged "community"

Social Media Snubbing

Posted by Erin Blaskie on May 28, 2010 in Social Media, Twitter | 10 comments

I’ve been taking some time lately to look for interesting and relevant people to add to my list of people I follow on Twitter and doing so has meant that I’ve had the opportunity to meet some really exciting individuals.  It’s also meant that I’ve had the opportunity to see who is / isn’t following me already and more importantly… who has blocked me.

Yep, there are people out there who have blocked me from following them.

I’m not embarassed to say so… It doesn’t even really bother me.  I just think it’s silly.  Blocking users doesn’t mean they can’t see your Tweets… It just means you can’t become one of their followers.  So, I suppose they have a very red velvet rope policy about who gets the honor of reading their 140 character updates.

Some of the individuals who have blocked me are people I don’t even know… However, I’ve drawn some parallels.  For example, there is a virtual assistant who is very prominent in the industry.  She’s got a blog and a forum and such and for whatever reason, she’s blocked me.  Maybe she doesn’t want me to be seen on her followers list as I might be competition?  Maybe she just doesn’t like me?  For whatever her reasons are, I can kind of understand it.

What I can’t understand though is why the other bloggers on her site have also blocked me… I feel transported back to high school where groups of girls would form cliques and gossip about other girls.  Gossip and be nasty.  Is this really where we’ve gone to in social media?

There must have been conversations amongst them where they have decided to band together and block me as a collective.  A clique.  To partake in social media snubbing.

I’ve always believed that when you are authentic and 100% yourself, people will either love you or hate you. You draw a line in the sand and people are divided.  It makes finding your ideal community or tribe a heck of a lot easier.

It doesn’t bother me when individuals decide to unfollow or block me for their individual reasons. What worries me about social media snubbing is when negativity spurs a group action.  When a group of people can be so filled with envy, anger, spite, etc. that they’d take a collective action.

Social media allows us to be social, to build community and to get to know each other a little better. I may not enjoy every single Tweet out there but I’d prefer not to close doors in people’s faces but rather weed out the most valuable followers and engage and interact with them instead.

Have you ever experienced social media snubbing?  What did you feel in that moment?

(Photo credit: Noja on Flickr)

How to Ask for a Product Feature

Posted by Erin Blaskie on Nov 11, 2009 in blog, Business Tips, Videos, Web & Technology | 6 comments

It’s probably no surprise to you to know that I am in love with Basecamp. If you follow me, at all, you’ve heard me talk about it. You may have also heard me mention that I would love them to add recurring milestones as a feature. I’ve asked once… or maybe a dozen times

Any time that I would Tweet to Jason Fried, founder of 37 Signals (the company behind Basecamp), or e-mail him, I’d always add “About those recurring milestones…” or P.S. – I heart recurring milestones. I reached the pinnacle of semi-success yesterday when he finally Tweeted me (either out of curiosity or annoyance, I can’t say haha) to say, “Hey Erin – can you e-mail me and tell me how you would use recurring milestones?”

So, I did what any video-crazy woman would do and I did a video.

When you want the attention of a company, product, service, etc. go straight to the source and illustrate the power of the community. After I posted the video, I then asked my community to go and five star the video to show Jason & the team at 37 Signals why this feature is so important and relevant.

If you want change, illustrate the change. Show them how, why and the benefit to doing so. People need to see how you’ll use a feature, a service, a product, etc. Illustrate, show, teach…

You can watch the video below or on my YouTube account. If you haven’t already, I’d love more five stars on the video!