The necessary all call: go ahead and use it
This post is in response to Seth Godin’s post on calls to action.
Yes “all calls” are annoying, when we can’t filter them out. We live near a car parts lot, and every day they used to make loud announcements from the classic horn. This became intrusive, if you were anywhere outside your house. I have not noticed it for a long time. It may be that I have just filtered it out.
That brings me to why there are still good reasons for some all calls. I have made some great discoveries using the all call on Twitter. It has mainly been when I was trying to wade through a massive google search for either a product or service. I found Drop Box via a friend’s suggestion, a cool BlackBerry tool from @nanpalmero (he is especially helpful), and many other solutions by just asking simple questions of my community. Now mind you, I try my best to search out my answer first by asking a specific expert or I use the search tools at hand. But I don’t hesitate to ask my community if my quest is not fruitful. Is that wrong? I don’t believe so. Have I annoyed anyone? I hope not.
My key point is that the all call is useful, if you have exhausted all other means or time is critical. Example: (tsunami approaching Maui and my nephew and his wife were only able to receive text messages. They received news, after I sent out an all call via Twitter. They were sitting at an evacuation center waiting to hear if their house on the beach had been destroyed or not).
Would I not follow you if you constantly sent out annoying all calls that could have been answered with simple detective work? Yes, but I have seen the occasional all call stimulate discussion and problem solving when used well from Twitter, facebook and other community sites.
There are several types of all calls that feel negative: email spam, mindless cc’s (people have learned to not send them to me), facebook’s insistence on sending email to notify us of every follow up comment in a thread. But besides these, all calls work. If you have social capital with your network they can be a great resource. I enjoy helping others out when they ask something I know. We build community to be a community.
Regarding social capital, here is a great post by Mitch Joel.
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Totally off topic, but you just gave me an idea with this post. Thanks for that.
Regarding the content at hand, I have to agree that the all-call still has its place. I've made a few recently on Twitter and have had varying levels of success with the answers. I still think I can find better/faster info thru Google…but perhaps my social capital is in need of a boost.
I love the all call. Yes, the “How is your day going?” type of calls used by people that just want to keep your stream loaded with their updates are annoying. But when I want *personal* feedback from my community, I've used it to great success.
So keep calling. I'll listen.