Gahlord Dewald clued me in on this one. He knows how much I desire to listen and we have shared a common listening strategy for years. We try to listen to help. Gahlord likes to look for “the special hashtag people use when looking to be helped.” It’s called a question mark. And it’s a powerful hashtag indeed.

The folks at inboxQ understand this: “We started InboxQ because we realized that there were lots of questions being asked by people on Twitter but most weren’t receiving very useful answers. In fact, most questions go completely unanswered on Twitter.” And that’s a fact.

What inboxQ does is find that special hashtag for you. Pop in a few keywords and inboxQ begins scouring twitter, looking for people you can assist. Your first step is to create what they call “campaigns.”

A campaign is simply a category of keywords or hashtags used to delineate possible questions to be answered. You can create as many campaigns as you wish. The campaign opened for view above is called “wordpress.” And I’ve been using the inboxQ Chrome extension to answer questions using the Zeek Interactive account on Twitter for a few days now.

It  has been uncovering 20-30 questions each day.

You can answer the questions right in the extension’s window, without having to fire up Twitter or any of their third party apps, as you can see above. Of course, you can also see that I could be a bit more diligent about opening up the extension. Questions, after all, are best answered when someone is around to listen. Though, my results have been pretty good so far, even without constant attention.

Blog Post Fodder

Another thing the questions are good for is blog post ideas. I’m using the “TODO” tab to save questions I feel require more than 140 characters. Like these:

After a few days, the results have been very positive. I’ve been able to answer a few questions and create some good dialogue around WordPress, conversations we want to take part in. I’m not answering the question with any other desire than to help. But sometimes the questions open up an opportunity to talk about what we do as well. Witness this exchange:

I didn’t know James Hicks before I saw his question. And I know I would never have seen his question before inboxQ. I have no idea where it will lead, but I already consider the minute (total) I spent on it valuable. I hope James does as well.

What’s missing from inboxQ?

It does what it says it does really well, so there are only two things I’d really like to see added. First, the ability to add multiple accounts. I’d like to use the tool for other Twitter accounts I monitor, but it only allows for one account to be connected at a time right now. I can’t imagine this isn’t part of their future development strategy. Second, I’d like them to charge for it. I’m tired of seeing services like this drop off the map because they don’t have a way of making money. I’d pay for this one.

What kind of “listening to help” campaigns would you create?

The “Guru”

Turns out this “guru” trainer was not even paying attention to his client. He was having a ridiculous, loud conversation with someone else while his client was busy acting like she was working out. He was paying only casual attention to his client and when he did, his instructions were cliche, at best. None of his instructions were specific to his clients needs. Not a single one. He was loud, exuded cockiness and was doing absolutely nothing to help his client.

The Pretender

The client’s form was horrid and her level of intensity was below average at best. But there she was, paying a trainer to get her in shape. She wasn’t saying much. She wasn’t working hard. She was just going through the motions. I’m sure she left feeling like she had accomplished something. Perhaps she did, but not nearly what she could have. The same was true of the lady holding the attention of the “guru.” She was there, but her mouth was moving more than any other part of her body. They will probably both tell people they had a “great” workout today. They didn’t.

The Inspiration

To our left was a woman singularly focused on one of the most amazing yoga/gymnastics/core strength workouts I’ve ever witnessed. And I’m not overstating this. I wish I could have videotaped it. She was working out in a way that made me feel honored to be in the same room with her. Both Rocky and I engaged her and she politely engaged us back, never once breaking form or altering her workout. It was a thing of beauty. Her actions and her polite engagement around her workout  inspired me to work harder.

Universal Social Truth: Actions Speak Louder Than Words

The small, glass room we were working out in this morning contained about 15 people. We were, in that moment, a very small, very open social network. People from outside our network could see us and choose to come in, or not.  Inside the room, everyone could hear everyone else. We were free to engage or not engage as we saw fit. In that setting, I desperately wanted to mute the “guru” and his chatty pretender. I desperately wanted to go save his client. I couldn’t do either in a socially acceptable way.

I also desperately wanted to be better as a result of watching this one woman display a level of commitment to her workout that was truly amazing. I know many who passed by outside the room felt the same way. I would have gladly paid her to be MY trainer. I would seek her out, without her having to ask. Her public actions were harder to ignore than the loud banter of the the “guru” and the pretenders. And they spoke volumes about her knowledge and her character.

As you move through your social networks, which person are you?

Plancast is built around a simple concept – tell the world what you’re going to do and when you’re going to do it. Others who subscribe to your Plancast feed can see your plans decide to let the world know they’re joining you. Owyang calls this “The Intention Web.” A typical update looks like this.

That’s great. I imagine this is the perfect example of how the creators of Plancast.com intended it to be used. However, within moments of signing up on the site back on December 4, I received this plancast:

Last time I checked a blog post that didn’t qualify as a plan to do something, somewhere. My first reaction was a silent giggle. “Typical” was my thought.  That update is an obvious attempt to force a sales message into a platform that wasn’t designed for that kind of message. So, “for now Plancast.com is pure of marketers” made me giggle a little bit too. The marketers may not be there, Jeremiah, but the marketing behaviors are.

That said, I’m not at all worried that this kind of behavior will pollute the Plancast.com community, whatever that ends up looking like. The “force my sales message” way of using the site will either be rewarded or punished. Our cumulative reactions will determine whether it is accepted or rejected. No one person gets to decide. That’s the beauty of social networks. They are self organizing. It will be interesting to see which behaviors become accepted and which do not.

Where will the value lie? For me, Plancast.com has value only if it can help me easily and quickly understand where the people I want to connect with are going to be. It would certainly help me decide if a specific event is worth my time. That’s valuable. However, if it becomes a site peppered with links to blog posts, and messages about what people are doing at their desks, I have no use for it.

What are your thoughts?

We want to have the Twitter account be relevant and beneficial to our customers. Brad Coy sent me a DM this morning that included a link to a new Screencasting site that is built around sharing via Twitter and I think it will become an important part of how we eventually use our company Twitter account.

Screenr is the name of the service and it does one thing very well and very simply. It records what you’re doing on your computer screen and saves it to be shared via Twitter. Here is an example below:

As you can see, the quality is excellent. It works on both a PC and a Mac and can be viewed on iPhones. Additionally, you can download the resulting MP4 file and with the click of a button, share on YouTube as well. With very little training, our customer service staff will be able to publicly address customer service questions with simple demonstrations and share them with all of our clients via Twitter.

I like it.