The lesson, to paraphrase Bill Maher: Get someone to disable your Facebook Fan Page before you attempt a last-second kick.

Update: It didn’t take long for the “Billy Cundiff Sucks” FB Fan Page to reach 50 fans.

Count customer service channel among them.

More and more, companies are responding to negative tweets. Twitter is becoming a way to circumvent IVRs and get an actual human being to call you. No CEO wants his or her company drawing the ire of vocal tribes.

While tweeting alone may not get you the answer you’re looking for, consider it another club in the bag when fighting the good fight.

The recent Twitter redesign got me thinking about how I use the service. Reviews of Twitter 2.0 seem to be mostly positive. In short, Twitter seems to be a grown-up version of its prior self. So, maybe I should use Twitter in a more “grown up” manner as well.

Background

For the last two years, I did what all of the social media experts told me I was supposed to do:

• curated lists
• used hashtags
• mastered the art of the pithy “RT”
• observed trends
• connected with others
• built my own following

But Twitter was starting to feel, well, stale. So I decided that it’s high time for me to refine the way that I use it. (And I’m not the only one. Chris Brogan caused quite a ruckus with his post on social media fatigue. Many people followed suit, dropping people they followed en masse in an attempt to reduce their own noise-signal ratios.)

My Twitter problem was twofold. First, I spent far too much time reading relatively meaningless tweets. (Lest you label me a hypocrite, I am aware that the vast majority of my own tweets in all likelihood fall into that category.)

So, my 2012 Twitter “strategy”–and I use that term pretty loosely–entails the following:

Tweet Less

While initially intriguing and even fun, I’ve decided that Follow Friday is just not time well-spent. Apologies in advance to anyone miffed that there’s no #FF with your Twitter handle. More generally, I just don’t see the need to always report to the world on what I’m doing or reading. I’m going to see if less is truly more.

Follow Fewer People

I used ManageFlitter to nuke all of the people I followed, only to add back certain ones–and add new people and companies altogether. Apologies in advance to anyone miffed that I no longer follow you. Nothing personal. While I have no magic number in mind, it seems to me that Dunbar’s number is a good starting point.

Feedback

Are you using Twitter differently next year?

Actually, it isn’t, especially when you crowdsource. Why not have your fans buzzing about your product or service or even TV show?

This is exactly what AMC does with its superb show Breaking Bad. The show’s site is exceptionally well done, rife with content, and extremely social. For instance, AMC recently ran a contest in which fans (like me) could upload videos about why they love the show.

Spoiler: I was one of several people whose videos were chosen.

Simon Says

Seth Godin calls this sneezing in Unleashing the Idea Virus. You can spend a great deal of money telling people to do something, but that’s much less effective than it was in the 1950s. Or you could create an amazing show, build a tribe, and have them recruit others.

Which do you think is more effective?

Feedback

What say you?

Voila! I’m number four. Not bad, eh?

Turns out that many people have recently been googling those terms and, as luck would have it, I seem to be near the top of Google’s search results. Rarefied air, I know.

Also, recently a friend of mine asked me for the secret sauce of social media. My response: There is none.

Simon Says

Sometimes, serendipity just happens. Posts I’ve thought were gold fell on ostensibly deaf ears. Other times, marginal posts attracted significant views and comments. I honestly have no idea about future results when I hit the publish button.

Don’t believe anyone who tells you that they know “the” secret to all of this stuff. Follow a bunch of best practices and keep plugging away. Luck favors the bold.

Tim Ware of HyperArts joins me for 18 info-packed minutes on Facebook fan pages, web design, and emerging technologies.

In The New Small, I make the point that many very successful small business owners are great lawyers, accountants, and computer technicians. They do what they do well but, by virtue of being small, don’t do some things as well as others. That’s a given. No one can be great at everything. So, where can many small biz owners improve? Website content and marketing come to mind.

With respect to marketing, it’s easy to look at boutique marketing agencies for guidance–and, ultimately, results. After all, they’re the experts, right? The same holds true for highly touted services. You may not get any individual attention, but you’re spending less money on some type of program that (again) is supposed to yield results.

Are these programs worth their costs?

Perhaps, but be wary of potentially specious claims like the one mentioned in this post.

The ad above appears in my Gmail, a tool that, like millions of other people, I use to manage many different e-mail accounts. For those of you familiar with Google’s e-mail offering, the ad above is redacted from a marketing agency. In all likelihood, you’ve seen these many times before and may not even notice them.

But I digress.

Mark Twain famously popularized the aphorism, “There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.” Case in point: 99.34% email delivered.

Numbers without Context

So, what’s my issue with an ostensibly high e-mail delivery percentage? Simple: the number has no context. In fact, it provokes more questions than it answers. Here’s a biggie: What’s the average e-mail delivery success percentage?

If the industry average is 98 percent then 99.34 percent is pretty good. But what if the average is 99.999 percent? If so, then 99.34 percent is actually pretty poor. We just don’t know from that stat.

Disclaimer

Now, Gmail only allows one line and a relatively small number of characters per ad. Gmail would not have take off to the extent that it has if massive ads crowded the basic viewing space. (As an aside, I wonder if Facebook is pushing the envelop too much by Nascar-izing its pages.)

Am I carping here? I don’t think so. 99.34 percent still means that 66 out of 10,000 e-mails are not delivered.

Now, I’m sure that I easily send 100 e-mails per day ranging from:

• See the Federer match last night?
• Any update on the status of my claim?
• Here’s the proposal for six months of consulting.

A better way to phrase a sites email delivery ratio would include context. For example, the product or service delivers 47% more emails than XYZ. How about 23 percent fewer email bounces than industry average.

Bottom line: I don’t care about all emails equally and I’ve been emailing for nearly 20 years. I am well aware that all technologies carry risks with them and always have. Delivering mail is at least conceptually the same as making a phone call or sending an email. But one question remains: Is 99.34% good or not?

Feedback

What say you?

This post originally appeared on the American Express Open Forum.

I walk into the Empire Room on 5th Avenue in Manhattan last night for NxNYC. It’s a clear parody of the big event in Austin, TX this week. I see a few familiar faces and exchange some hugs and kiss hellos. After getting situated, I start to meet new people.

It turns out that there are quite a few people there looking for work. Sign of the times, I suppose. A bunch are seeking employment with a company in a social media or corporate communications’ capacity. In theory, these are the people who would be creating content for their prospective employers. Think blog posts, podcasts, and videos.

We eventually exchange business cards and go on our merry ways. This morning, I take a look at some of the cards and see e-mail addresses, Twitter handles, LinkedIn profiles, and cell phone numbers. Yet, there’s something missing on a few of these cards: websites.

I don’t get it.

Wouldn’t this be the first thing to list on a business card? Where else would you showcase what you can could do and, more important, what you have already done? While www.johnsmith.com is probably taken, why not get creative? Even if it’s blogspot.johnsmith.com, why not put your body of work in one place for all the world to see? Think Chris Spurlock here. His resume went viral for a reason: he showed that he’s remarkably creative.

You presumably have the time to launch a site. What’s stopping you?