It is often said that the key to ‘how social media works’, or at least how you can gain inlfuence as an actor in social media is staying honest and true to what you believe as a person. (ie: don’t try to operate as a typical company) Although one can certainly make arguments against that, I do support the notion that an open and honest approach is appreciated by many. This is true in real life, but even more so online, where hiding ones true intentions can be a lot easier.

Thus, when it became apparent that the Dutch ‘twitterer of the year’ election was set up by a advertisement agency people began to criticise they way this was set up. Of course it didn’t take long before freelance journalist Bert Brussen announced on twitter that he would take care of organising something more fun. What followed is an example of a typical social media effort. Read the rest of this entry »

The question “do you deserve your following” might sound a bit odd. After all, if it is a followerbase like on twitter that you have, people have the option to unfollow you once they feel mistreated. Nevertheless it is a good thing to stop and think about how you treat the people that follow you online. Yes, of course there might be real life friends and other contacts represented in your following, but quite often posts on how to deal with your following tend to lean towards “what do you get from it”  side.

Thus I thought it was nice to come across this blogpost, asking how you really treat your followers. It’s a sad thing really, that posts like these have to be made, but I do think they are necessary, even though the answer to what a “good way” to treat them is migth be easy. Read the rest of this entry »

Have you ever taken a survey recently, or maybe several surveys? If so you might have wondered about several things. And maybe those things are exactly those things that bother me about surveys. One could have, of course, something against surveys altogether, but they remain a powerful research tool, that is one thing that’s for sure. Even though I’m personally calling for a broader way of doing research, I don’t think we should abandon it.

I do think we should look more into some of the things that come to mind when you look at a survey. These things are often related to a certain tradition that lies in doing survey based research and indeed in a sort of tradition that is created per tracker survey as well. Not changing things for tradition’s sake, is one of the worst things a researcher could do and still this seems to happen all too often. Survey methodology in general is one thing, but a lot of me wondering about survey research is the lack of changes, of innovation.

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