This is kind of embarrassing, because you’d think I would know better. But when you’re excited about something and you want to share your enthusiasm with others, it can blind you to obvious things you should pay attention to. So I’m going to tell you this little story about how I made a faux pas on Twitter the other day so that you can avoid doing the same.
Grant Griffiths and I are hard at work putting the final touches on Blawging Lawyers, an resource to teach attorneys how to blog and grow their law practice (Grant’s the former lawyer in our dynamic duo, in case you couldn’t figure that out. 
). When I’m in the zone like this and completely immersed in getting something ready to launch, I hardly think about or spend time on anything else.
So, anyways, I hop on to Twitter, my favorite social media platform, and I see Brian Clark on there saying something about lawyers to someone, and I have Blawging Lawyers on the brain, right? So I just jump in with one of those “check this out” kind of tweets, thinking that Brian would be interested in seeing what I’m up to, for a couple reasons: he used to be a lawyer (and knows they could use the help) and I’m using what I learned in Brian’s Teaching Sells program (now closed again, sorry) to do it.
Here’s where I made my blunder, and where you can learn from my mistake: I figured he would be interested in hearing about what I was up to, and normally he would be, but you see, Brian was in the middle of a heated discussion with another person on twitter and he was being accused of all kinds of outrageous things by this person. The subject was not lawyers, but both of them are (or were) involved in law in a sense.
So I just jump in with an enthusiastic pitch for my program… and the timing couldn’t have been worse! Luckily, Brian’s a diplomatic dude and that prevented it from being any more embarrassing.
But… do you see the problem? On Twitter, people are involved in other conversations you’re not aware of, and you only see their half of the conversation. Just like you would look both ways before crossing the street, you should take a moment to check on another Twitter user’s current conversations before you just jump in with something. It only takes a second and it’s worth saving youself a little face.
Now, I know this episode wasn’t that big of a deal, but what if it was? At a social gathering in physical space, you would make sure you weren’t butting in inappropriately (unless you’re “that guy”), so why would you do that on Twitter? It pays to pay attention.