Blog Carnival — the votes are in

I got to judge this weeks social media blog carnival submissions. And the winner is… Diane Guercio, with her submission: Keeping Twitter Alive. There are plenty of articles out there explaining how to get more followers, how to increase your traffic, and how to get a top listing on one ranking site or another. But very few posts address the importance of making connections that have real substance.

Diane noticed many of her new followers lacked the human element, and dug a little deeper. She found followers whose Tweets were populated exclusively by Twitterfeed. There was no human element there — every single post was automated, completely eliminating the possibility for connection and interaction.

There are plenty of companies out there ready to help you automate your Twitter stream, promising to bring you thousands of followers, and offering to help you fake your way to Twitter fame. I think of them as the get-rich-quick schemers of social media.

Diane’s post reminds us that there can be true value in the connections we make on Twitter. She now screens all her followers, as we all should. And she says it best:

… I feel like if we don’t screen like this, the medium will become a mass of autoresponders autofollowing each other, with little oases of interaction. And I love the heartbeat of twitter.

Congratulations, Diane, on winning this week’s Blog Carnival :)