Once again, as Eric Clapton sang in the theme to the Paul Newman movie, "The Color of Money," It's in the way that you use it.

First of all, let's do a reality check. Unless you're Lance Armstrong, very few people want to know if you just twisted your ankle on a bike ride. Unless you're Shaq or some other person with legitimate celebrity status, very few people want to know what you're having for dinner tonight.

More and more I'm seeing people use Twitter too much as a mass marketing tool (and an ego gratifier) and not nearly enough as two-way communication. Now if you're a Tom Hopkins, Zig Ziglar or someone in the real estate world who really does have a large following, you're probably not going to be leaving many replies simply by the sheer logistics.

The rest of us have no excuse.

If you're using Twitter to update everyone on what you're doing, but you just never seem to have the time to reply to the "Tweets" of people following you (same goes for Facebook and other social media), you're missing the point and shooting yourself in the foot. There's not a day that goes by that I'm not in a conversation with a client, friend and/or colleague who is irritated with a person who "is always telling everyone what they're doing, but he/she never bothers to respond to what the rest of us are doing." This type of behavior comes across as very self-important in social media.

Social media are bringing larger numbers of people into close contact with each other like never before in our history. A major by-product of that is your actions (or lack thereof) are leaving a positive or negative impression more quickly with more people than ever before in our history.

Take time to assess your actions and be honest with yourself. Today's market is tough and it's only natural to look at social media and become enamored with the power to potentially generate business with soooo many people. Just make sure you take the time to respond, because the way Twitter and all social media will ultimately help you business-wise is that people will get comfortable with you and feel like they know you ... like you ... and trust you.

This can only happen if you take the time to respond.

Published: November 11, 2009

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Mark was born in left field and continues to live there. He's the Internet Marketing & Strategy Consultant for clients at GetMyHomesValue.com and he has have a coaching blog on ActiveRain, which is gaining in popularity. Mark believes that technology has really brought business full circle back to its roots... people helping people, and this is the basis for his coaching. He is also currently writing his first book, set to be completed by the end of the summer.