Quid Pro No

And then there’s the question of obligation to those following. I’ve recently had many people start following me after I re-tweeted some particular items. I now feel a strange obligation to stick to this type of topic so as to not offend my followers. As a PR consultant, I have a number of clients in a wide variety of sectors and would like to be posting articles and info about any and all of those sectors, yet I feel I might disappoint. How are other consultants dealing with this? Multiple user names?

This is where social media etiquette falls apart in my opinion. You reach a point of popularity where you are beyond the transactional realm and become a broadcast medium. While this is good for business, it forces you to play favorites with your time.

You would not expect celebrities, for example, to follow back every single one of their followers. It would be insane and pointless. Nobody expects the reciprocation because of the volume of followers they have.

Similarly, you could not meaningfully join everybody’s network, because a) you would not have the time for it and b) it may be outside your area of interest.

Let’s say you live to age 75. Presumably you spend one third of that sleeping, which gives you 50 years of consciousness. That yields 18250 days. If you spend five hours per day on each of your 88000 followers, you’d eventually get around to each one. Of course, this excludes family time, vacation, days when you unplug, and days you actually get work done.

The point being, anybody who expects you to sign up for every network and be a meaningful contributor has unrealistic expectations. Don’t feel bad; you would not have brought any value to the network if you weren’t going to engage.

Chris,
Good post and I’ve asked the same question myself. It seems like there’s an imbalance in relative value at play here. Before I dive in, I’m going to preface my comment with the fact that I have no answers and don’t know what I’m talking about. But here goes.

1. The value of one fan- I’m going to go out on a limb and guess that your fan page has more fans than the real estate company’s page. With that said, the value of each additional fan on your page is far less than the relative value of additional fans of the real estate company.

Additionally, I think it is fair to say that a public follow from someone with many connections (which can be seen by all his friends) is much more valuable, as friends may see a follow as an endorsement and join themselves.

So in this case, the expectation of reciprocity is really an expectation of a social “profit”.

2. Free gestures vs. Paid gestures- It’s amazing how much our perception of value changes when money is involved. When a person buys a product from someone, there’s something beyond the cash exchange at stake.

Forget about examples in a market economy for a second. Think of the last child’s birthday party you went to. When it was time to stuff money in the card, I’d be willing to bet that you gave the same amount as was given to your kid.

When money is involved, the concept of reciprocity seems to be introduced unconsciously. So when this person made the “I’ll still buy your book comment”, it’s almost like they’re saying:

“I’m hurt by the fact that you’re not going to lend your name and association with my page even if it has no value to you. But I’m bigger than that. I will still continue to give you my hard-earned money for your wares. I know that it’s incredibly hard to make one additional mouse click, Mr. Internet Celebrity Guy. I mean, I spend my money and all I ask for is a couple of clicks. But hey, it’s not going to bother me.”

The idea is that the exchange of money for the product isn’t exactly a fair trade in the buyer’s opinion, and that there’s an expectation: Since the person parting with $$ is giving more than fair value in the deal, the seller has an obligation to do something more for the buyer if possible.

The bottom line is that some people will expect reciprocity ALL the time. Others will complain about everything you do or say. Still others will love everything you do and will never ask for anything.

We’re interesting animals.

I think this is a collision between
– the “biologically wired” idea that social interactions always have both an overt purpose (buying groceries, liking hats) and a subtext of building community
– the “technologically wired” idea that social interactions have only overt meaning, and further that their bandwidth overload demands aggressive filtering

I think there’s substance in both those ideas, and the collision and incompatibility are real. In choosing how to respond to things like this, we’re choosing where we fall on the “biological to technological” continuum. We really do have to make the choice (even I do, at 250 followers, let along you at 45k!). It really is a choice between biological and technological community. I suspect the necessary advice is “try to be as biological as you possibly can, because otherwise the technological/utilitarian will steal your soul.”

As your social media presence rises, I think it’s as simple as this:

Accept offers that will benefit your experience or offers that are most valuable to you.

You reached out to an individual to join your FB group for Trust Agents because you saw value and direction in it for them. If you had a side passion for real estate you would have accepted that invite because it’s another opportunity to gain valuable knowledge where your passion resides.

Thanks for the social media etiquette post.

Eric

Yes, I agree. I'd love it if you'd write about the time factor. I am sad when folks seem to be in a big fat rush these days instead of favoring a take your time and do it right, kind of pace. The unholy rush isn't going to help anything. :)

I think that sometimes we do take these things too seriously. We like to feel wanted, needed and when someone tells us that we just aren’t interested in them, we sometimes hear that as they don’t like us. I know that what I have to say may not be interesting to everyone but what they have to say might be interesting to me. I change my mind about what is interesting and I’m sure others do too. That being said, I can’t say that I don’t take a moment’s pause when someone deletes me from Facebook (Twitter follower count I don’t really pay attention to) because I like to think of that as a closer community with people with whom I’ve established relationships.

It’s a tough decision to decide when is quid pro quo not the best choice, but hopefully you’ll be better for the decision…

the norm from what i can see is most popular marketers want to BE followed but do not know how to be friends in return. its all business, no friendship or reciprocation unless it’s of benefit to them. a threat to societal welfare as a whole. we were already disconnected from one another as caring human beings. now disconnection from humanity is at an all time high. in the online world, sadly enough, business wins humankind loses once more. ya got money, traffic and a crappy tomorrow. congratulations.

Who hasn't thought about this at one point or another?

What's difficult is when someone crosses the line and uses the relationship to create social pressure. It's so weird, because most people are conflict avoiders, right? So this is taking that on its head, because they are using the percieved distance online interactions create this illusion of, and use that as leverage to create a situation where now YOU have to avoid conflict you didn't even create!

Eban, it really resonated with me the part about social contracts. There are so many percieved social contracts out there it's silly. Because some I just flat out don't agree with on principle. But even disagreeing with an expectation could get you labelled as Mr. Bad Guy.

So, to flip this back to me, I think about the situation I was in lately where I had beta invites to a program that was doing an affiliate offer, where anyone who signed up under me would get a coupon and so would I. I wanted the coupon, but also, I didn't want to be one of “those people.” So what I did was go through my address book and only e-mail the people I know personally who would actually be interested in the service — and tell them that something was in it for me and for them.

And guess what happened? One person responded back with an affiliate offer of her own! It didn't really apply to me, so I declined it, and felt perfectly fine doing so, but I did wonder — what does she think of me now? Did that bother her or offend her that I sent her an offer but I declined hers? Luckly she's a friend and it didn't bother her, but it did bring all these questions clearly to the forefront. Will I send out an affiliate offer like that again? In the end, is that coupon that I get worth the relationship perception I might be creating by sending it?

I don't know. What do you think?

I think it really has to do with picking and choosing the moments when we can/will help others–especially those who are new to the field, but have a genuine heart to give back to others ;) I appreciate this post, because it's something I struggle with. Shameless self-promotion gives me a migraine (even when I'm shamelessly promoting myself). I find when I tie it in to a bigger cause, usually a charity for me, then I feel better about putting myself out there.

I get that it's not all about me. A trip to Africa in February of this year really hammered that home. I've never been so impressed upon to help others with the meager means I have (be they financial or through the use of my social media accounts).

But that's why I love being in PR–sometimes I get the opportunity to give without getting anything in return. Really, isn't that the best reason. It's not all about us, and what we can get. Sometimes an exchange of time/money/twitter status is just a gift. I like giving gifts. We shouldn't always expect a return, but it's nice when we get one.

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