Proving the Dunbar Number and still learning

It's been nearly a month since I wrote about my Twitter clearance and the lessons contained therein, but I'm still trimming the fat and still learning what I need out of Twitter. I've come to the conclusion that I needed to pretty much just start over with that account. There's just far too much noise over there and there are some accounts that I'd love to keep following, but their post volume makes it impossible. I started out with over 300 accounts that I followed. I am now down around 46 and may continue to trim as I watch my feed and sift out the accounts that are really valuable to me. At some point, I'm sure I'll start rebuilding it. But I've got to figure out what I want out of this account first. Who am I trying to connect with? I don't really have a solid answer to that question right now.

I manage five different Twitter accounts. One of them is my jewelry account (@gaiasjewel). Another is for my writing personality, while a third one is for the people I know and keep up with on a personal basis (one I don't want associated with my business personalities). A fourth is a placeholder for a future venture and finally, there's a joke account I maintain which shall remain nameless. For the last two, I do not keep up with a feed nor do I follow any of those who follow me. The fourth one I listed may only have four or so tweets associated with it. I might post once a month to the joke account, but the first three are my active ones and I'm trying to find a balance between them.

I read an article the other day about how the Dunbar Number still holds true in this era of social networking. They had interviewed Robert Dunbar and got his thoughts on how social media, specifically Facebook, affected his original findings. For those not familiar with his findings, he's a social anthropologist who discovered that a human brain can only track so many friends at a given time (thought to be around 150, though a specific number has never been settled on). Any people above and beyond that number become sort of fringe acquaintances. They're not people you'd do favors for or talk to on a regular basis. They're people you probably categorize and group in order to track them.

A short interview with Robert Dunbar and how I'm applying his findings after the jump.

Twitter clearance with an unexpected lesson.

Last week, I spent some time cleaning out the Twitter accounts I follow. A long time ago, when I thought I knew what I was doing with this whole social networking thing, I had set up a thing to follow back anyone who followed me after a three day review period. In that review period, I was supposed to go to this site and look through the accounts that had followed me recently and weed out the ones I didn't want to follow. The rest would be automatically followed. I don't even remember now where I set this up, nor do I think it's still working. Needless to say, I no longer believe this is a good strategy and if I can remember the site, I'm going to go turn this feature off if I see it's still working.

I have several Twitter accounts because I have several ventures and then there's my personal one where I keep track of the people I know. The truth of it is, I just can't keep up with much more than about 150 accounts for each of my accounts. I had racked up something approaching 400 follows on my jewelry account and many of them I just wasn't interested in reading.

As I started to go through my list, I began to notice I had unwittingly created a set of mental rules for weeding out the accounts I wanted to keep versus the ones I culled.

1. Fellow artisans - When I first started with this, I followed a lot of my fellow artisans in solidarity. But that's not helpful to either one of us really, unless we're doing very different work from each other. I might continue to follow some of my favorite knitters because I love their work and I don't knit myself. But I realized that unless a jewelry artist posts things that interest me (not just links to new listings or notes about promotions and such), there's really no point in me following.
2. Nothing but marketing - Twitter is an excellent marketing tool, I get that. But if you're not connecting with your readers, they're going to become disengaged very quickly. I can't tell you how many accounts I weeded out that were nothing but long lists of automated links to their new Etsy/Artfire listings. You've got to mix it up and become a part of the discussion. I'd say a good rule of thumb would be to make marketing about 30% of your posts. Any more than that, and you're going to start sounding like a constant commercial and people tend to ignore commercials.
3. Posting frequency/infrequency - Okay, I know I let my account slide for a very long time and so I'm kind of the pot calling the kettle black here. But I also know that I lost a bunch of followers in that time. As I went through my list, I began to weed out any that hadn't posted a single time yet this year. I was surprised by the number of accounts that I actually remembered being very active that hadn't posted since 2009. But the other end of the spectrum got cut as well. If I'm stretched so thin I can only follow 150 or so accounts, I'm not going to be able to follow a single account that tweets every 30 seconds. I'm sorry, no one's life is so fascinating that they have something valid to say that often. Find some middle ground and have something worth saying. If it's something very run of the mill, like dropping your kids off to school or watching your cat sleep, it better be written in an interesting or witty way.
4. Suppliers - Now, on this one, I may have to make another pass. I kept most anyone selling jewelry supplies that didn't fall into one of the above categories. But once I get another free day (yeah right), I'm going to go through that list and visit their sites to see which ones I'd actually consider buying from.
5. Overall snapshot of information - As much as we'd love to take in all their is to know about the things that interest us, we only have so much time to keep up with this stuff before it begins to eat into our productivity. So as much as I'd love to follow 20 blogs from creative career coaches, I probably only have time to read one or two. Likewise with Twitter. I only have so much room for each area of interest before everything gets too clogged to read any of it.

This gave me some insight, from a reader's standpoint, on how I should use my own account. I took a look at each account I followed, their profile and their last three tweets to make my decisions. As I started to notice these things recurring in my decisions, I started to think about what might make readers keep my account in their follow lists and what might make them decide to cut me loose. Right now, I can't say I'm providing much of anything that would really persuade anyone to keep me on. But I hope as I get back into the work itself, there will be more worthwhile things to post.

Hiatus over

I had taken some time off since my last writing to both work on researching how I should go about getting my store into public view and also to plan my gardens for the spring/summer. While the former task seems like it will never be complete, the latter is pretty much done. My gardens are on paper, now I just have to order plants and seeds and wait on the weather. I can't wait to get my hands back in the dirt. I know along with it, there will be a lot of back breaking work for at least a month, but also a lot of inspiration and enjoyment. I can't wait to see the first flowers and taste the first tomatoes and peppers and bring in a head of lettuce for the freshest salads possible.

I have learned a TON in the past two weeks about how to get myself out there in a new and constantly changing market. I've acquired an ArtFire account, which I'm looking forward to trying out in addition to my Etsy store. I signed up for the $7/month for the rest of your life promotion that's going on right now and you should too!

I've gathered all sorts of Twitter tools and I've more than quadrupled my followers in the past 24 hours and even though I'm feeling a little overwhelmed, it's easier than it was to keep up with followers and those I'm following with some of these tools.

I've also learned a lesson about how it all works that I never dreamed of. Sites like Etsy and ArtFire have brought sort of a revolution or maybe renaissance to the handcrafted market. I started out thinking I would need to hide my personality from my store, keeping it strictly business and using third person descriptions when writing things like store policies and such to really create a brand. As it turns out, the opposite is true. While I don't intend to link anyone to my Facebook or personal LiveJournal accounts, as I understand it, the Etsy and ArtFire models are just as much about social networking as they are about the business. There's a new age where it's ok for customers to know their artisans personally that help them make a better connection to the product or brand. I think someone in business finally realized that the products of artists are pieces of the artists themselves and that it's OK and even helpful to get to know the artisan behind the artwork. It's finally OK to run a business with an artisan's mindset. It's certainly a refreshing concept since all along I've thought I was going to have to force an unnatural business persona in order to sell my work. It's nice to know I can be myself and still find customers to connect with.

Now to just get back to work and give them something to connect with. With the sunny, warm(er) weather today, I'm feeling the spring colors of peridot, lavender amethyst and pale golden citrine. After a good run and maybe some playtime outside for my son, it's to the bench with me for the rest of the day.