So I started out by asking myself why I follow some people and not others and why in the world do I have any followers at all? I’m new to Twitter and obviously not some expert that anyone should heed, but I do like to think about why I do what I do. So in thinking about all this I decided (and that must make it so) that there are four basic Twitter modes: broadcast, network, journal and listen. I don’t know how many modes there were before I decided there were four, but now that I have it’s official and now that it’s official, everyone should understand what they are and in what context they belong. Understanding this is essential to understanding how I understand Twitter, at least for this evening. Understand?

Broadcast Mode

This is the "you" mode, meaning that when I tweet in broadcast mode, it’s about you and when you tweet in broadcast mode it’s about me. If you want lots of followers, you need to be in broadcast mode, which means your updates are for me, and in return you get a soapbox that matters. But if your updates are for you, you’ll never get that soapbox and that’s where most people trying to use Twitter for marketing mess up. They think they’re in broadcast mode, but really they’re in a me mode, which can’t be broadcast mode. Think of it like this: if the major TV networks ran nothing but ads, they wouldn’t really be broadcasting, except in the technical physcial sense of sending their waves out indiscriminantly in hopes that some intelligent alien civilization would receive their message and decide that earthlings should be easy to conquer, because few if any actual earthlings would be watching that drivel. People like me can’t even stand to watch network TV because I find a 7::1 ratio of "you" programming to "me" programming (ads) too low, but it seems to be good enough to draw a large audience. 1::7 is not, yet time and again I see Twitterers attempt to use it that way.

If I’m in broadcast mode, the tweet should be for your benefit seven times out of eight if I want to match the ratio of network television, which is aiming pretty damn low. One time in eight, it can be about "me", but that’s a maximum. If you’re in broadcast mode, you have to ask yourself three questions:

  • Am I being interesting and helpful rather than self-promotional?
  • Is this update for people who don’t know me except through Twitter?
  • Am I really a big enough deal to be in broadcast mode?

Only a few people can meet the last criterion. Oprah is in broadcast mode no matter what, because people will follow her no matter what. Oprah could burp and post "Whoa! Onion rings for lunch. Biggest belch of my life!" and people would be around the photocopier saying "Did you hear about Oprah’s burp?"
"No, where’d you hear about that."
"It was on Twitter. You should follow her."

Everyone else with aspirations of broadcasting should try to meet the first two criteria in 90% of their posts. Badbanana is a good example of a broadcaster. My friend Rand posts a quote or two each day. That’s a perfect broadcast mode usage — he’s offering content that I want. I see this person regularly, but we aren’t networking via Twitter. I’m a consumer of his content and he’s a broadcaster.

Network Mode

Networking is the us mode and it sits between journal and broadcast. It’s not so much to get your word out there, but to get yourself out there and to connect with other people. You can test for network mode with a couple of questions:

  • Can I think of a specific person other than myself whom this is for?
  • Would I welcome @replies and reply back?

You might have one or six dozen people that you hope will enjoy this particular update, but if it’s six dozen, you can think of one right away who is among the six dozen. If you try to pull one name from your list of followers and draw a blank, you’re probably not in network mode. If you’re not reading and replying to your @replies, you’re definitely not in network mode, you’re broadcasting. Did you mean to broadcast? Is it interesting enough to broadcast? Most often, I’m in network mode, but a huge proportion of my network mode posts are for my wife.

Journal Mode

Journal mode is the opposite of broadcast mode. It’s the me mode. Sometimes I’m in journal mode. I just want to remember something so I tweet it and then mark it as a favorite. When I first started on Twitter, I was in journal mode most of the time, but I’ve been kind of surprised at how quickly this diminshed and how I was soon mostly in network mode and mostly writing for my first two followers (a friend and my wife). If you’re in journal mode, write what you want, when you want. Just don’t expect any followers. Unless you’re an astoundingly interesting person, if you spend too much time in journal mode, even your best friends will abandon you. If what interests you turns out to interest tons of other people, you may get lots of followers, but you may still be in journal mode. You can figure this out easily enough with these two questions:

  • If I had no followers, would I write this anyway?
  • Am I okay with everyone unfollowing me, even my spouse and best friend, because I’m so fricken boring?

If the answer is yes, you’re in journal mode. Why does it matter? A lot of people spend a lot of time in journal mode, but they would be disappointed if everyone quit following them. Their Twitter stream looks like this:

8:24: having my morning coffee
8:39: threw in a load of laundry. Decided to just mix whites and colors.
8:55: hmm. ruined my white shirt.
9:26: going out shopping for new white shirt.

If you plan to mostly use Twitter in journal mode, updates like that are just fine, but it strikes me that most people with streams like that can’t answer yes to both tests questions. That means they’ve mistaken which mode they’re in. In fact, they want to be in broadcast mode or network mode and they have to think about their updates in those terms.

Sometimes it’s not that different. Today, I tweeted about my morning tea, but I tweeted because I had made my morning tea on my new Trail Designs Ti-Tri stove, which might interest backpackers who care about ultralight camp stoves (significant number of my followers) and I wanted to thank Rand for the stove. So really this was mostly network mode. To some extent it’s also a broadcast mode, since I want to tell everyone about this stove, but realistically, I was looking to tell people I know about the stove and perhaps engage them in discussion about it. So that’s more network than broadcast or journal mode.

Listen Mode

This is an interesting one. In listen mode, you’re reading your stream to see what people you follow have to say, you’re doing searches for stuff that interests you, or you’re actively soliciting opinions. In other words, you might be posting updates in listen mode. So listen mode is not the opposite of broadcast, but might be a complement. Ultimately, though, it’s a better complement to network mode. In many if not most cases, the point of listening is to make contact with others. I might just tweet out "Does anybody know a good cobbler in Berkeley?" A merchant like Zappos with tons of followers might write an update actively soliciting feedback about a change on the website. So it might be conversational, but it’s not social per se. The goal isn’t to make personal connections to people, it’s to get their opinions. But the logical result of listen mode is often to make a connection as a secondary consequence. The test for listen mode is simple:

  • Am I trying to gather information or opinions?

A yes answer means you’re in listen mode, even if you’re sending out an update.

Why It Matters

So who cares? Well, if you’re in journal mode, you may be holding yourself back on what you really want to say and record because you think you’re in broadcast mode. More commonly, though, people want to use Twitter for connecting with old friends, connecting with new people who share some interest, or marketing of some sort. In the first case, you’ll likely want to stay mostly in network mode, with some journal mode because your old friends actually care. In the second case, you want to be mostly in network mode. If you’re marketing, be clear on whether you’re trying to really connect with your customers, or just broadcast to them. It may evolve over time. When you first start, maybe you can connect with all of your customers, but over time, you’ll be forced into broadcast mode because you can’t really network with 20,000 people. But remember that broadcast mode is not advertising mode. There is no advertising mode on Twitter yet, but I see so many marketers who mistake broadcast mode for advertising mode, and think that broadcast is the me mode, not the you mode, which is why Twitter does nothing for them except waste everyone’s time.

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Filed under: Decision Making • Marketing

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