Tuesday, July 28, 2009

An Open Letter to Twitter's Fitness "Gurus"

Dear Fitness Guru on Twitter:

Yes, so I've started posting tweets about going to the gym, working out, and fitness in general.

And you've done your "job" and followed me because I posted a magic word that made my tweet turn up in your search feed.

Now, if it were me, and I was a "fitness guru" hounding followers by virtue of their going to the gym, especially if I were hoping to also hawk my services and/or program, and I found someone by way of a gym-frustration-tweet, I would, oh, I don't know, engage the person in dialogue about how they might increase their performance/results/whathaveyou.

I mean... Guys, come on. If I wanted to follow someone who was just going to randomly tweet fitness-encouragement, or randomly tweet about how awesome their program is, I'm thinking I'd have probably done so by now.

If you found me by way of my kvetching about my frustration with my lack of progress, or my (alleged) hamstring issues, or my almost blatant indirect request for assistance, why the hell wouldn't you take a few moments to engage me and try to assist me?

When I was ranting about not being able to find a good pair of workout pants in my size for a reasonable price, I had more than one plus-size company follow me on twitter, but only this one actually took the time to engage me directly.

Guess what? That company actually had the closest to what I want for the closest to what I feel like paying. They'll probably get my business. Not only because of that, but because I feel good about the responsiveness of their pre-customer service.

What I'm trying to say, guys, is that, really, we're probably not going to follow you back just because you think you're the shit. If you have a program you believe in (and I'd hope you do, what with all the promoting it), then you should be able to take the time to engage a potential customer. Especially if they're obviously presenting something you should be able to help them with.

Otherwise, you just look like a joke.

No, really,
The Gym Hippo

PS: I totally followed Active.com back. Dude. It's Active.com!

PPS: Also, I reinstalled my twitter stream over in the right-hand column. You're welcome.

2 comments:

Wine Dog said...

Very few actually "get" twitter or even social media for that matter. I don't have super stalker skills, or desire, but I did go look at their tweets and that's how you do it.

Yalumba wine caught me talking nice about their Rosé. They followed and then they engaged and engaged. It's easy to say "I'm glad you enjoyed our Rosé" but they engaged after that. Dude's in Australia.

dolphyngyrl said...

See? That's how you do it! I mean, if you're trying to sell a product, it stands to reason you automatically have something in common with your customer base, right? So continued engagement should not be that hard. Especially if you're doing the social media thing for a living.

Also? I could totally tutor you on the super stalking thing. Just let me know. I'll come over. :)