Ashley: Welcome to the podcast, Ian. Thanks for joining me today.

Ian: No problem. It’s good to be here.

Ashley: After many months of tweeting online, we finally meet, like many a podcast guest.

Ian: I know, it’s been awhile. We’ve been chatting on Twitter and various social networks for – I don’t know. It’s certainly been months and months and months. Probably over a year, and we’ve not actually had a chance to speak to each other yet.

Ashley: That’s why I love the podcast. It’s a selfish thing; I get to meet people, I get to talk to things I love talking about and learn things with people, and we get to produce some great content at the same time. So it’s a win-win-win-win-win.

Anyway. I asked you to come on the podcast today because you’re also really big into Twitter and social media. Maybe we should quickly first just do a 2-minute spiel about your background and what you do.

Ian: Oh dear, put me on the spot. Yeah, I actually trained as a musician, so I’m a professional singer. But I’ve always been involved and interested in technology. About 12 years ago, I set up a small web business with my dad, and I’ve been doing that ever since.

About three or fours years ago I started a blog at iag.me, and I’ve been dabbling in podcasting as well. Yeah, I’ve just been fascinated by the psychology of social media and I enjoy blogging and meeting people online. Well, just what we’re doing today. That’s a little bit of a background on me, I think.

Ashley: One of the things that I’ve noticed over the last month, and one of the reasons I wanted to have a chat with you today, was that everyone’s doing the same thing on social media, and after awhile it gets a little bit dull, shall we say. I mean, it’s never dull on social media, but you know what I mean; you start seeing the same kinds of tweets and the same kinds of promotions.

In the last – I’d say it’s probably been 6 months, you’ve been throwing a few things out there that have really gotten my attention, and one of those was the “Stop Saying Thank You” post. What was your inspiration for that?

Ian: Well, it was an article by Mark Schaefer, and Mark Schaefer is a digital marketer based on – I forget where in the States, but he’s somewhere in possibly Tennessee. I met him at a conference in Wales last year, and I just was fascinated by the way he didn’t just take everything as read on social media. He really thought things through.

He wrote an article about why, when he reached a certain number of followers on Twitter, he unfortunately – he was trying to thank everyone for mentioning him or linking to an article, and he got to a point when he just physically couldn’t thank everyone. He just didn’t have the time to do that.

So he made the decision not to thank anyone. I won’t go into the full details of what he was saying in that article, except it really made me think. It made me think “Why do I spend, why do we all spend that time, when people link to one of our articles or mention us, why do we spend that time saying ‘thank you’ on its own?”

Now, I believe that manners are really important; I’m a polite person, and I do say thank you, and I do believe that it is important. But I was really analyzing this and thinking I’m saying “thank you, thank you, thank you” all the time. What am I actually saying? Am I just going through the routine of doing that, or am I actually engaging in a conversation with this person?

That’s what this article was about. It’s got a rather provocative title, “Stop Saying Thank You on Social Media.” I’m not quite saying that, but I’m saying don’t just say thank you. It’s a case of say thank you, but then carry on the conversation. Maybe share something else with them. That was really the point of the article.

Ashley: Okay, that’s really interesting. Basically, I’ve seen the same kind of thing, and there are a lot of people doing this “thank you” exercise, and I certainly did it for a long time, whether it’s a bulk “thank you” or an individual “thank you.”

Some of my more recent articles have had over 100 tweets, so then you’re getting kind of crazy. You’re getting a stream of “thank yous,” which is another issue, of course. Do you really want a stream of just constant “thank yous”?

But I think what’s behind that, and what you wrote further on in that article, is really interesting, which is that – yeah, what are you doing? “Thank you” in itself is almost like a minor acknowledgment or a placeholder. Are you really actually acknowledging that person? Are you starting a conversation? What are you doing there?

I really liked some of your ideas there. What were some of the other suggestions you had there?

Ian: Yes, I was really trying to give people ideas of what else to do instead of just saying “thank you.” Because I see, almost like when people say “How are you doing?” – which we all do, we all say “How are you?” as a greeting, and if we’re honest, most of us are probably not expecting the person to say “Well actually, I’m having a really bad day. My granddad has died.” Which I think is a shame, because that’s where we are.

But on social media, I think we’ve got the opportunity to be interested in more people, how people are, and just to be genuine, because thus is the power of social media. We can find out more about each other, even in the 140 characters. It’s an ongoing relationship.

One of the things that I came up with – well, it’s something really simple – it’s just really a list of ideas of how to replace a simple “thank you.” For example, instead of just saying “thanks for sharing,” you can ask them what they thought of one part of the article. Of course, that is assuming