enjoysthings:

An enjoysthin.gs user who just launched his own iPhone app wrote to me and asked “What have you found to be the most rewarding ways to engage with users? … Any tips for a person that’s not very good at self-promotion but who simply wants to be a good creator of interesting things?” I emailed him back a response that quickly became an unrelated rant. I don’t know if it’s interesting, but I’d love to hear people’s opinions on some of this stuff. Here’s a slightly modified version of that response:

It’s actually been tough to measure the success of some of the things I’ve done. A lot of the time, I feel like I’m having a one way conversation. I’ll write blog posts, send email, mail stickers and never hear back about anything.  Sometimes they’ll tweet about it or post pics to flickr, but most of the time… nothing.

Although I’d like to see some more responses, I don’t necessarily think it’s a bad thing. I’ve come to realize that people do appreciate the personal email/postal-mail and things like that, they just don’t always have a cause or avenue to respond. Sure, sometimes people have nothing to say, but I think it’s hard for people to understand that I (more or less a business) am ready and willing to have an actual conversation with them. That I’m not looking for a marketing/sales/biz-dev/sleaze opportunity. For enjoysthin.gs, I want to be better about giving people ‘next steps’ with some of that stuff.

That said, the response has been great. People send email, messages, tweets and write blog posts fairly often saying very nice things and expressing surprise that I’m willing to do things other than sit around and collect money. I can’t single out any one thing, I think it’s the sum of all the parts.

One thing that I think has been important when engaging users has been that I don’t pretend to be a big company. I don’t ever say “we,” it’s always I. This is actually something I’ve received a lot of feedback about. Some people are extremely turned off by it, while others like it. For me, I just want to be honest about it. After all, it is just me.

I recently spoke with some VC people who gave me some “advice” which I promptly tossed in the garbage (along with any business cards exchanged). They said that I needed to say ‘we’ so that I could “seem bigger … like a real company.” I don’t get that at all, but I think it comes down to this: Many people confuse looking like a serious company with being a serious business. I’m firmly in the latter, which is exactly where I want to be.

Fun conversation via email with the maker of enjoysthin.gs in relation to the best way to be a human that builds things that are interesting and which the builder wants to promote without being an asshole. (paraphrased)