There’s a few too many Tweets and Bloggers out there who love the sound of their own voice a little too much for my liking.

I thought the idea of tweeting and blogging was to engage in the community around your niche subject. To give and take with the people who leave comments or have a conversation with you on Twitter. Not just to have the monopoly on the conversation and to only respond to the people who you deem worthy.

Wrapped up in their own hype
There seems to be a growing number of people who have a huge fan base but actually loose the reason of why they have grown so popular.  They are so wrapped up in their own tweets and popularity to listen to conversations people might be trying to have with them.

It’s the equivalent of being a room and you’re standing next to them but they choose to turn their backs on you and just ignore you.  It’s just plain rude, arrogant and bad manners. Or perhaps it’s because I’m not in the ‘in clique?’

What am I talking about?
For instance there’s a well known tweeter out there who’s an author of a book about online community management.  Having tweeted him a few times he’s just blatantly ignored the questions I’ve posed to him.

There’s someone else who runs a well known blog on social media – and I’ve posted a comment on their blog (perhaps a rather challenging comment) but they’ve chosen to not to post my comment.

Maintaining your own credibility
Once you build a reputation as someone who’s good in the technology or social media industries you need to maintain that reputation. It will take more time to manage your tweets and blog posts etc  – but surely that goes with the territory and shouldn’t be seen as a chore but as great challenge to have as you  have grown your optimum exposure.

It’s a slippery slope when you start ignoring the more challenging tweets or blog comments. As your fan base will start seeing you as less transparent, authentic and real, and only as someone who wants to participate in conversations if it suits them. The same rules of networking and managing your integrity offline apply online.

If there’s one piece of learning I take from this, is that you need to walk the talk and not just talk the talk. I pledge to all my followers of my blog and twitter that I will always personally respond to any comment – as that’s just part of who I am and my online personal brand integrity.