Scott Stratten aka @unmarketing is one of social media’s must-follows on Twitter for his common sense speak-the-truth advice on how to use social media tools. He’s just released his book, UnMarketing: Stop Marketing. Start Engaging, and it’s already a best-seller. The Triangle social media community was rewarded with a stop on his UnBook tour at the Triangle Chapter of the American Marketing Association’s lunch on Thursday due to Chris Moody’s persuasive efforts. If Scott comes to your town, you must go see him. He’s full of wisdom about social media, communication, business and people, and he’s hilarious.

He started off by telling us his UnRules. I know that all my event and association tweeps will like these.

  • Turn on your phones.
  • Turn the ringer on if you think I’ll like the song.
  • Tweet what he says and use the hashtag.

Scott loves Twitter. He once called it “the greatest mastermind group in the world, 24/7.” At first he didn’t get it, so he lived on Twitter for a month to figure it out. He discovered that Twitter is all about people. He says that if your market niche is human, Twitter might be for you. Heck, even cats are on Twitter (paging Mr. Scrubby). But, it’s not a business platform; it’s a communication platform that businesses can use – a big difference.

Be consistent, present and responsive on Twitter. Spend a half hour a day on Twitter. His Twitter stream is 75% @replies. Twitter is about talking with people, not to people. Focus on pull and stay, not push and pray. I’ve often seen this advice of his retweeted: “Reminder to take at least five minutes to reply/retweet others. Nothing about you. Interact, engage, give.” He advised us to check out our tweet cloud. The highlighted words will give you a clue about your Twitter behavior.

Conversations –> relationships –> trust –> business. The key to business relationships is trust; you do business with people you know, like and trust. Twitter doesn’t replace real life networking, but it enhances it. But remember, relationships take time.

Twitter is publicized customer service. We avoid confrontation so instead we whine on twitter to the world. Be present and responsive. All we want is validation.

Just because you say your video is viral doesn’t make it so. People spread awesome, not meh. Evoke emotion from people and they’ll spread the word.

If your product or customer service sucks, it sucks harder in social media. If you are a moron in real life, you’re a bigger one on social media.

Someone asked how to reach people who aren’t normally on social media. He said to write great content. That’s the best SEO.

There are a lot of tactics on his “stop it” list. Pay heed.

  • Don’t piss people off with slimy sales tactics like obnoxious buy-now pop up windows, fine print and cold calls.
  • Don’t automate tweets to Facebook. That’s confusing and obnoxious to those who don’t use Twitter.
  • Don’t automate Facebook updates to Twitter. They usually result in cut-off tweets with a link back to a lame Facebook status update.
  • Don’t schedule tweets to go out if you’re not going to be present to participate in the resulting conversation. The shelf life of a tweet is about five minutes. Be present or be an unresponsive jackass.
  • Don’t RT others’ compliments about you. That’s just you talking about you. Lame.
  • Ignore the trolls. They live in their mother’s basement and have bad moustaches. There are too many other good people on Twitter. “My job is not to be the jackass whisperer.”

If you couldn’t make it to the lunch, here are some resources to check out:

Photo credit: David Armano on Flickr