I follow Guy Kawasaki’s Twitter feed and today he submitted an interesting tweet referring to an article on Sphinn titled, “Would Truemors and Alltop be on the map without Guy Kawasaki?” Then I started to think about it. Guy does has a huge social media following, which he heavily leverages to promote his sites.
The article argues that, “Guy Kawasaki is spamming Twitter all day long promoting his two pet projects. Would we even know about these sites if Guy was not involved with them since neither site brings anything new to the table?”
Here I have to disagree right away. If you think Guy is spamming his feed, then leave. No one is asking you to pay attention to anything he says. People opt in to his feed because they are interested in whatever he has to say. Whether he is promoting Alltop and Truemors or just posting random updates - people want to know.
There’s a reason he has 10,859 followers on just Twitter alone. It’s because he provides something of value. It may not be valuable to everyone, but it is valuable to his 10,859 followers.
“Would we even know about these sites if Guy was not involved with them since neither site brings anything new to the table?”
Eventually, yes they would. Here’s why. Truemors and Alltop have something unique to offer. Both organize and present useful information in an intuitive fashion. Lets take Alltop for example. All the top sites, updated regularly, and presented in a clean format so you can get the information you need, when you need it, without any trouble.
This site does bring something new to the table. Instead of having to subscribe to every single feed on social media and regularly check your feeds for updates, you can simply visit social media on Alltop, find something you like, and take a further look.
If you had Guy’s social media following, wouldn’t you promote your ideas to people who are already interested?
Leveraging a social media following to promote a website like Guy does isn’t a bad thing. The people following his feed expect regular updates and useful information - because they asked for it. Let’s face it, anyone with a following as large as Guy’s would leverage it to promote their stuff. Whether people like it or not - that is up to them. But from the looks of it, I’d say people like it.
May 5th, 2008 at 10:39 pm
As Harry Beckwith says, “Certainty is a trick your mind plays on you; keep yours open.”
This kind of judgment-making is always a mixture of things. Anytime someone says it’s all one way or another, I get suspicious. There’s always a distribution of motivation. The more well-known anyone is, the greater the spread of motivations in their followers.
There are always people who do things mainly because everyone else is doing it without wondering about their motivations beyond that.
As long as Guy keeps delivering on his “brand perception” he’ll keep his followers, regardless of their various motivations.
Same goes for sites that share qualities with other sites. How similar do Truemors and Alltop have to be to their competitors before someone says “they bring nothing new?” It’s an individual judgment call.
I’d say, if it wasn’t for Guy or someone like him promoting them, they’d be less valuable properties. Would they fold without him or someone like him? Probably would hurt. Every business needs promotion.
May 6th, 2008 at 7:44 pm
@Dave
“I’d say, if it wasn’t for Guy or someone like him promoting them, they’d be less valuable properties.”
I’d have to agree with you there. This isn’t to say that Alltop and Truemors are bad ideas. But anyone with a large social media presence could easily promote a site, regardless of its value to users.
But like you said, every business needs promotion.
May 10th, 2008 at 1:14 pm
[…] you think about it, he is absolutely right. In a recent post I talked about how Guy Kawasaki leverages his social media following to promote Alltop and Truemors. This is a perfect example of the value of social equity. Not a dime […]