I'm talking about tagging, posting links, messages, over-promoting.
On Twitter:
1. There are people who only follow in hope you'll follow back. As soon as you do that, you'll receive a message telling you to check out their site, blog, book, link, picture, take your pick. It annoys me a great deal. I will take a look at your site when you say something I find interesting, no need to pester me.
2. Then you have those who post promotional links as if there is no tomorrow, no personal conversation, only link after link, clogging up my feed. I will press unfollow very soon.
3. I will not follow someone who collects followers and never tweets. What's the point? If they never tweet, they will most likely never really succeed in whatever they're doing. Or they're just collecting 50k followers to then bombard their poor and unexpecting following with their links.
4. There was a guy who followed me, when I followed back, he really had the nerve to ask me to RT his tweet. I was new and I did it, asked him to RT something in return. I will not do that again. The next person who asked had me press unfollow.
On Facebook:
1. I've ranted about tagging in my status today. Since a few days there's this joke making its round, where you have to tag the first ten people on your friends-list and they all do silly things according to this joke. Great, I had a giggle the first time, then had my mouth twitch the second time, but when I got tagged a couple of times more, I almost lost it. Why? Because it's not only the tagging, it's also the notification you get every time someone responds on this thread. I don't get this tagging business anyway. It might be wonderful for some teens who proudly share their drunken pictures, but I'm using facebook professionally as an author. I once had a guy tagging me in all his pictures and I couldn't even remove the tag. I had to unfriend him in the end in order to avoid it happening again.
Though I'm certainly one up for a laugh, I don't get why people feel the need to tag me in their writing. If you want me to look at your writing, ask me, being tagged feels like throwing your notes in front of me, saying: go, read it! I had one guy who tagged me almost on a daily basis, but I'm not interested in his writing. Such behavior is obnoxious. I've tagged a handful of people once, maybe twice, but I'd rather just post the note and ask for comments. Works fine without forcing others.
2 Sending a friend-request and as soon as I accept I get an invitation to look at a page or just to 'like' the page, usually a book. Sorry, dear, but I don't know you or your book yet, why would I like it? I've stopped responding to all requests. It shows up on my page and I decide what I like and what not. Or those who ask to share their link: I share what I feel 'worth it', not because you ask me to, maybe I need to know you and your writing first? In the end I'm an author who has a reputation, what if you wrote the worst book on earth and I share it? Sharing is recommending and I won't do that without knowing you or your book.
Google +
Since recently, I'm getting e-mails from friends who are new to google +. I'm so happy for them, but I'm really not happy to receive several e-mails per day telling me what they found out. If I want to know, I can google it myself and take a look. I've not asked to be in the mailing list and I will immediately unsubscribe. Luckily, only two have done it to me so far. I will forgive them, but imagine you have hundreds of friends and they all add your address and click the 'send-button' a few times per day, you'll certainly be not impressed.
Don't get me wrong, I'm absolutely for supporting each other, helping to get noticed, etc. but some people really take it to the limits. You will always find me retweeting links to blogs or books from friends and tweeps; I've had a lot of support and of course I'll give back -- with pleasure -- but I decide myself who and what, not because I get it dictated.
Well said Stella :)
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