Every now and then you see a message from a Twitter account that says… “Follower -1, Unfollowers – 0. I didn’t know I was this awesome. Get your daily stats via justunfollow”. Justunfollow [now Crowdfire] is a necessary social media tool, but many are very ignorant about how to set it up right and how it works. Here’s some daily wisdom for my friends in Halifax, Dartmouth, Truro and elsewhere. Education helps combat ignorance; even in social media.
So how did this post come about? I had a client that saw a post ranking about JustUnfollow [now Crowdfire]. She wondered if it was OK to use. And from the rant, she really was wondering if JustUnfollow was safe to use at all. When you look at the following rant, you will see why:
The author of these tweets, let’s call him “John Doe”, may be skilled at what he does, but he’s wrong in what he tweets about regarding Twitter and JustUnfollow [now Crowdfire]. Here’s a tweet that shows the type of tweet that “John Doe” was NOT loving:
And it is not long before someone else retweets “John Doe’s” tweet to their followers. Here’s what the retweet looked like:
Not only was “John Doe” wrong in his original assertion, but so was the retweeter of “John Doe’s” tweet. Both assumed that JustUnfollow [now Crowdfire] was a trojan virus, and started screaming from the roof tops.
But let’s look at the real cause of the tweets that “John Doe” was complaining about in the first place. Now please don’t get me wrong, I am not saying that “John Doe” is a bad person. But what I am only saying is that proper training and knowledge would have prevented this unhappy moment in the first place. Oprah said it best… “When we know better, we do better”. So instead of spreading misinformation, knowledge helps us respond properly.
What is going on is not a VIRUS in this case. It’s a setting, a simple check box in the “Automate” section of JuntUnfollow [now Crowdfire] that remains checked. Let me show you in a screen shot. Look at what I have circled below. I have it “UNCHECKED”.
So we see a “Check Box” setting that says “Tweet my unfollower and follower stats“. When this box is checked, people will tweet out from their Twitter account the numbers that our poor friend “John Doe” is going nuts over.
So who is to blame? Is it JustUnfollow [now Crowdfire]? Is it Twitter? It’s neither. The real perpetrator of this type of tweet is the person who is using JustUnfollow [now Crowdfire], and does not know any better. They have sped through the set up process and failed to choose the correct settings to keep everyone in their Twitter community happy. “John Doe” would have been smiling if the owner of the Twitter account had simply known better, and unchecked the “Tweet my unfollowers and follower stats” check box. There is nothing good that comes out of RUSH. One simple thing can cause a lot of grief.
So at the end of the day, it’s not Twitter’s fault, and it’s not JustUnfollow’s [now Crowdfire] fault. Whose fault is it then? It’s the person that is using JustUnfollow [now Crowdfire]. It’s their fault for not knowing how to use the settings. By the way, in my social media training programs, when the workshop participants set up JustUnfollow [now Crowdfire], this is the first setting we go to and TURN OFF. That type of tweet clearly just annoys people like “John Doe”.
So to sum this post up, Oprah said it best… “When we know better, we do better”. Don’t remain ignorant. Get some wisdom and knowledge.
And by the way, I like JustUnfollow [now Crowdfire]. It is a great social media tool for keeping people honest. I see nothing bad with JustUnfollow [now Crowdfire] so far. One just has to set the settings properly.
So let’s be smart out there today and have a great day in business. Here’s hoping “John Doe” has a better day today too 🙂
