All Mouth and No Trousers

I’ve just read Penny & Thomas Power’s Know Me, Like Me, Follow Me – what online social networking means for you and your business.

If you haven’t come across the Powers yet, well they’re the folks that started Ecademy, a social network for business people founded in 1998.

I enjoyed the book. It provides some useful discussions of communication strategy on social media sites as well as an introduction to how to negotiate the social media space. If like me, you spend a lot of time trying to show people how to use online communications you might find it a useful addition to your library.

As a matter of course, I checked out Ecademy and created a free profile, as Penny talked so positively about the network.

However, I quickly realised that to get anywhere on the service I would have to pay the best part of 24 euros a month. Without paying I couldn’t reply to the friendly welcome messages I was being sent, blog or share my ideas.

I could add contacts and “likes”, but there didn’t seem much point without being able to engage and talk with everyone on the network.

After a few days of playing with Ecademy I decided to follow Penny Power on Twitter and sent her a tweet expressing my disappointment at not really being able to evaluate whether the network was for me without paying the monthly fee.

Penny promptly responded –unfortunately misspelling my name !– but her reply left me none the wiser.

Hey, thanks for spelling my name wrong!
Anyway, I tried another response but didn’t get a reply.

I waited a few hours and gave up. Penny didn’t follow me back, either.

Communication Takeaways

If I write a book extolling the virtue of online communication, networking, and building relationships on Twitter and other social media sites, I hope that I actually take the time to genuinely connect with people that approach me.

I also hope you, dear reader, recognise that one line brush-offs and marketing patter don’t really cut it if you want to be a successful online communicator. As you’ve probably gathered I won’t be purchasing Penny and Thomas’ service.

And finally…

No doubt Penny & Co are doing very well with their service and I wish them the very best. From reading the work they’re doing on Ecademy I can see that they are great at supporting their community, engaging with others, and helping people build networks.

But even though I’d bought the book, read it and taken the time to get in touch Penny – clearly a master of social networking and sales- managed to drive me away with a tweet. Funny that.

So my thought for the day would be that if you’re a business user on Twitter and even if you’re used to working regularly with social media, take a moment to remember every connection could lead to a possible sale and nurture those relationships. Really.

As for me, well Penny’s response and a DM tweet from Sally Ormond, helped me realise that this was one social media network that wasn’t for me. Twitter, Facebook, FriendFeed, Xing, LinkedIn, my own blog and all the other blogs I read are more than social enough for me.

As a matter of course I’ve also just sent Ecademy a support requesting they delete my account.