A little over a week ago I was at a beautiful outdoor wedding. The entire wedding party was dressed nice and very classy. Sadly, one of the guests was not. I won't describe the outfit, but let's just say it wouldn't be appropriate for anything but going to a club (and even then, I'm not sure).
After the service, I made some comment about the dress in response to a friend of mine who talked about what she wanted to wear to the wedding she was going to. Keep this in mind: this was the first time I have probably talked about weddings the entire time I've been on Twitter. I'm not in the wedding business, I don't have any kids who will be getting married for quite a long time and I just don't care that much about weddings (don't get me wrong, I like weddings and enjoy them, its just not something I think about on a weekly basis).
Because of my one comment on wedding, over the next week I had about 10 people follow me who dealt with weddings! Every time I just got irritated because I know that they were following me because they probably have a program that find people who mention 'wedding' and then automatically follow them. Needless to say, I didn't follow back.
This is one of those areas that it really does directly relate to public speaking: KNOW YOUR AUDIENCE!! You have to know your audience if your speech is going to be effective. If your audience has the background knowledge already, you can skip some basic things - if not, you need to include it. Are they young, old, what business are they in, etc. All of those questions are key to tweaking your speech so you can be more effective.
Twitter is the same way: make sure you understand who you are following if you want to engage in the community. Are you a communicator? Are you in Sioux Falls? Do you know me personally? Do you read my blog regularly? If you answered yes to any of those, then it might be a good idea to follow me. If you are following someone just because I used one keyword, chances are, I won't follow back and its hard to have a discussion with people, when they don't engage back in conversation.
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