Living The Leveraged Lifestyle!: ~What does Austin's South By Southwest Music & Media Conference (SXSW), Mike Dillard, Gary Vaynerchuk and I Have In Common...

Funny... I was just pondering this very thing the last couple days as I tried to keep
up with all the news and happenings at the South By Southwest Music and Media Conference up the road in Austin (and coincidentally MikeDillard's hometown...that I should so be at btw as one of my heroes Gary Vaynerchuk is there and rocked the house yesterday with his keynote) and it became a dillemma for me as well as it is for Mike Dillard as he shares below!

What am I and Mike Dillard referring to??

Well none other than....

See as I did not make it to Austin this year, so I was living vicariously through all the live 'Tweets' from Twitter re Austin's South By Southwest (#SXSW) Festival, namely from my Friend Jonathan Cohen (@Coffeegroundz) and all other 'Tweeple' who were 'Tweeting' at a rapid fire pace, especially when 'The Man' Gary Vaynerchuk was speaking yesterday (see video from his talk below) and well I had several people add or 'follow' me in the process and as
I was sifting through the people who have 'Followed' me to see if I want to 'follow' them in return, I started to thin about who I really wanted to Follow and why and should I follow them
just because they are following me, and this my Dilemma...the very Dilemma Mike Dillard refers to below in his message, read on...this from Mike......

I Have A Dilemma...

It’s been the source of an internal debate for a few weeks now, and I’d like to get your thoughts…

I’m talking about Twitter, and the single question that we must all eventually answer…

Do you follow someone just because they followed you? Or do you only follow people you genuinely know and want to follow?

Over the past few months, I’ve done both.

After talking to my good friend and social media maven, Perry Belcher, I decided to “reciprocal follow” everyone who was following me about two months ago.

There are two reasons you’d want to do this…

1: It’s polite.

2: It helps you gain exposure, which will help increase your number of followers.

As of today, I follow around 10,000 people, and have 11,900-ish followers at http://www.Twitter.com/Mike_Dillard

Looking back, I’m not convinced that was the best move to make, and here’s why…

It’s not the number of people who follow you on Twitter that matters, it’s the number of people who actually listen to you.

And if everyone is just “reciprocal following” everyone, not because they WANT to listen to that person, but because they’re trying to increase their exposure and number of followers, then we have a problem...

Everyone’s following everyone, but no one’s really listening.

When I had 8,000 followers and followed 50, I knew that all 8,000 people subscribed to my “Tweets” because they genuinely wanted to plug into my life, and hear what I had to say.

That’s no longer the case.

And it gets worse…

Once you follow 500+ people, you have to start using specialized software like www.TweetDeck.com, just to filter and manage so many messages.

And if you already use TweetDeck like me, you’ve probably set up a custom sub-list of real friends so you can separate all of their messages from the masses of people you don’t know.

How genuine is that?

In the end, reciprocal following simply dilutes the power of an application like Twitter because it’s a behavior that’s motivated by greed instead of authenticity, just so we can all enjoy the illusion of having “more followers”.

That doesn’t sit right with me, so after many days of thought, I’m going to do some surgery on my Twitter account and * gasp * “unfollow” the 10,000+ people I don’t truly know.

If you’re one of them, please do not take it personally. It’s not.

I'm sure I'll lose quite a few people during this process, but that's fine. If that's what it costs to be authentic, then so be it.

And if you continue following me because you truly have an interest in what I have to say and offer, then THANK YOU. That’s what this tool is all about.

My Twitter address is http://www.Twitter.com/Mike_Dillard

In the end, I feel that any true “following” you build in your life should be based on providing real value, not the perpetuation of an illusion daisy-chained from one person to the next.

(If you feel strongly about this as well and would like to share this letter, you're welcome to do so as you wish).

Sincerely,

Mike Dillard

PS Here it is the Full blown non edited, R-Rated (for language) 71 min talk Gary Vaynerchuk (@Garyvee) talk Gary did yesterday at SXSW:

PSS And in case you are still not sure what Twitter is, are not yet Tweeting or are but still not sure exactly how it works, here's a great expanation of Twitter in 'plain english' in 2 min: