Download Kutcher Million Followers

This special edition of The Bella Buzz podcast is in response to the mania that has taken over Twitter in a race to reach certain milestone number of followers.  Today a Twitter user was the first to reach 1 million followers. Our hosts Desiree Scales and Joe Magennis want to address the small business owner who may be on the fence about using the social networking tool to help expand their business now that Twitter has become a different animal of sorts.

Without rehashing the details of the Ashton Kutcher race with CNN to break the million follower mark, and a subsequent first tweet from Oprah Winfrey, the concern on The Bella Buzz is that the impression may be given that the number of followers and celebrity stature are the most important aspects of Twitter. We cannot emphasize enough that the value of Twitter is making real connections with real people who are contributing something to the community in a way that is helpful and giving, and in some way has a legacy effect of sustainability for the overall well being of the web.

The recording of this podcast with our youngest fan, Joe's daughter, eight month old Lily in the background, is a demonstration that being real while contributing good content is more important than polished media with no substance.

There is a challenge for any social media consultant working with clients about how to use these tools to full effect.  Joe shares his experience representing a band on Facebook and on Twitter in such as way that it does not decieve the followers into believing they are communicating directly with the musicians, but it does contain an element of inauthenticity that is contrary to true social networking.  His ultimate intention is to demonstrate the value of the communications and migrate the function of posting and talking to the fans to the actual band members. Desiree believes that we will see the mega-celebrities like Oprah designating the task to subordinates in a way that reduces the true connectivity of the medium.  Possibly the role of a social media consultant on the large scale accounts will be to filter the incoming messages for the client.

The act of discovery on line is like walking into a room full of new people each day, and each person might have that nugget of information that will make the difference in how successful you are.  Never in mass communication have we had the opportunity to interact with knowledgeable, informed people .. willing to share what they know.

If the goal of Twitter is to ramp up the user base for a sale to a potential buyer, then the door opens for the open source micro-messaging platforms. This will be a topic for future exploration, but we will soon have the ability to develop and grow your own community around a particular niche.  All of the tools that are necessary to connect will be easily installed on your own servers and you will be able to eliminate the clutter of celebrity while maintaining the benefit of Twitter like communications.

To reiterate, it does not matter whether you have one or one-million followers, the value will be derived by participating in conversations, helping each other out by connecting with these tools and discovering new concepts and ideas that never would have been presented to you otherwise.

We are here to help each other to succeed, and the power of Twitter is that it provides a platform where we can discover, connect and communicate in a way that benefits us all.

What do you think about the celebrity aspect of current Twitter campaigns.  Do you turn off the noise to take full advantage of the dialogue?  Are you a small business owner still not certain about the value that social networking can bring to your company?  Let us know, we would love to continue this dialogue in the comments below.