Twitter Love Q & A with Slash Coleman

Q: What’s the difference between Facebook and Twitter?

A: Facebook is a public platform that pushes the personal toward business. Twitter is a public platform that pushes business toward personal. 

Q: What does that mean?

A: You can do business on Twitter 24-7 and no one will think any less of you. Do business on Facebook 24-7 and your account will get flagged and deleted.

Q: What does Twitter do?

A: Joining Twitter gives you the ability to scream on the internet. Once you choose to follow someone, you now get to eavesdrop on every scream they make. The more people you follow, the more screams you’ll hear. I’m following 1,335 people on Twitter. That’s a lot of noisy people!

Q: Doesn’t all the screaming hurt your ears?

A: Yes, that’s why you need to download Hootsuite.com. The free application gives you the ability to listen in on individual screams and target the screams you want to hear in two ways:

1) By a persons name (also called a Name tag)

2) By topics that interest you (also called a Hash Tag)

Q: What is a Name Tag?

A: When you sign up for Twitter you decide what your name will be. Each name tag in Twitter has the @ symbol in front of it. My name tag on Twitter is @slashcoleman. I have a friend Tiffany Ferreira. Her name tag is @iknowtiffany. My family runs a furniture biz called Tinkers. Our name tag is @thetinkergirl.

 Q: What is a Hashtag?

A: When Tweeters tweet about topics they put the “#” in front of their topic. Some recent Hashtags I’ve used are #storytelling #virginia, #va, #grief, #bereavement. At Hashtags.org, you can type in a Hashtag and you’ll find out who’s using it on Twitter and how popular the Hashtag is. Better yet, it even breaks usage up by date, hour and number of times it's been used with a really cool graph.

Q: How do I use Name Tags and Hashtags?

A: As I said before, name tags have a @ in front of them. Topics have a # symbol in front of them. For instance if I want to mention something going on in Richmond, VA when I tweet it, it’s better to type, “I love the #rva #snow and drinking warm coffee with my friend @valleyhaggard” rather than “I love that it’s snowing in Richmond and am drinking a cup of joe with Valley.”

One is a scream. The other is a part of a global conversation.

Some Sample Tweets I sent out for my PBS Tweet campaign:

a) Thank you @WGTEPublic #ohio for deciding to air @PBS special #neonman about #loss #grief #widow #hospice http://bit.ly/neonhelp

b) sure hope @RMPBS will air #neonman #NETA @PBS special about #grief #hospice #widow http://bit.ly/neonhelp . Thanks @UNCTV for airing it!

Q: Is it good to have a lot of followers?

A: Yes and no. It looks bad if you’re following 1,000 people and only 13 are following you back. If you’re using Twitter to develop relationships most of the people you follow will want to follow you back. The best advice I can give is to follow others that are aligned with your mission. Friendorfollow.com will allow you to type in your Twitter name and it will tell you which followers aren’t following you back. Is it important? Sometimes it is.

Q: What is #FF or #Follow Friday?

A: There’s a trend or a holiday on Twitter that happens every Friday called #followfriday or #ff. When you want to thank someone for helping you out or want all your peeps to follow one of your own followers, you can make a list like "@kindnessgirl, @davidbhutchens @la_poetessa #followfriday" and send it out into Tweetland. This results in friends of friends finding out who your friends are. They in turn sometimes follow your friends and you've just made the world a better place.

Q: What is a direct message?

A: After a day or two of following someone, send them a direct message that shows them you’ve been following them, visited their website or at least read their Twitter bio. When I found out that @GingerTice loved making artwork I wrote," I'm looking forward to checking out some of your artistically inspired tweets."

Q: What is a RT or a Retweet?

A: If developing a relationship with followers is important, then re-tweet some of their tweets, which means you copy and paste their message into your tweet bar and send it off into tweetland with a RT before it. If you have an upcoming event that you’d like help with in spreading the word, you can add PLZRT (please retweet) after your tweet and, with any luck others will heed your call.

Q: How can I talk to someone I don’t know?

A: Follow their conversations and then try to find a way to include yourself. When you ask them a question or include them in your own conversations include something from their bio or about them in the conversation. This is an example of something that doesn’t work. A performer was trying to get on the Ellen show and wrote, “Hey @theellenshow I know a great performer you should check out!”

Q: How do people have time to tweet all day long?

A: I’m not one of those Tweeters who has a fancy phone to send tweets out all day. Plus, it's not my style. Hoot Suite allows me to sit down in the morning and create all the tweets I want and schedule them to be sent throughout the day. When I was sending tweets out to every PBS station for my campaign, this application was the terrific!

Slash Coleman is a professional storyteller best known for his award-winning PBS special "The Neon Man and Me." His twitter campaign helped him win over PBS stations nationwide and land a two year distribution deal with NETA His recent column in Storytelling Magazine concentrates on social media and marketing strategies for artists and he was most recently featured on the NPR series "How Artists Make Money." For more information about Slash Coleman - please visit www.slashcoleman.com

Twitter 103 with Slash Coleman

Q: How can I improve my chances of being seen on Twitter?

A: Like most on-line tools that are meant to build your professional community, you’ll need to participate in conversations on a regular basis. If it helps, think of Twitter as a virtual telephone.

Q: What do you mean “participate in conversations”?

A: Twitter is more than just a Billboard for advertising your latest projects. Sure, your next tweet has the potential to be seen by thousands, but if you only Tweet “Look at me! Look at me!” your followers will eventually look the other way. 

Q: What’s a good Twitter Strategy?

A: I recommend sending out 5 tweets per week minimum, divided up in the following ways:

• 1 Re-Tweet.
• 1 Follow Friday.
• 1 Random Thought.
• 1 Direct Message.
• 1 Conversation Starter.

Q:  What is a Re-tweet?

A:  I covered this in the previous article, but it bears repeating. When you copy and paste someone else’s message into your tweet bar and re-send it, you have re-tweeted their message.  

Q: What is Follow Friday?

A: It’s a Twitter holiday that happens every Friday and is also known as #followfriday or #ff. When you want all your followers to know about your favorite people, tweet “@kindramhall @storyLornaMac, @pdxstorytheater #ff.” This results in friends of friends finding out who they are and in turn who you are. 

Q: What is a Random Thought?

A: It’s a quote you like, it’s a reference to your current trip to Starbucks, or it’s a link to your recent blog entry. For example, “It’s always darkest when it’s really dark out,” or “The #traffic on I-95 is horrific!”

Q:  What the best way to use a Direct Message?

A:  A day or two after you start following someone send them a Direct Message that shows them you’ve visited their website or read their twitter bio. When I found out that @kindramhallhad also performed on the Exchange Place stage I wrote, “Hey Exchange Placer. Your blog is awesome.” An on-line twitter friendship soon blossomed.

Q:  What is a Conversation Starter?

A:  Find someone you’d like to start a conversation with, read their tweets for a week and once you’re familiar with them, find a way to include yourself in their conversations. This is a good example, “@thecheckoutgirl do you know about the @PBS program about 2 #VA boys? Since you write about #comedy I thought you'd like it too!” This is a bad example. A performer was trying to get on the Ellen show and wrote, “Hey @theellenshow I know a great performer you should check out!”

Slash Coleman is a professional storyteller best known for his award-winning PBS special "The Neon Man and Me." His twitter campaign helped him win over PBS stations nationwide and land a two year distribution deal with NETA His recent column in Storytelling Magazine concentrates on social media and marketing strategies for artists and he was most recently featured on the NPR series "How Artists Make Money." For more information about Slash Coleman - please visit www.slashcoleman.com

Twitter 102 with Slash Coleman

(This post was originally published in Storytelling Magazine in 2011)
 

Q: Staring at a column of random thoughts (Tweets) is overwhelming, isn’t it?  

A: Yes, that’s why you need to download Hootsuite.com The free application gives you the ability to listen in on individual thoughts in two ways:

a) By a persons name (also called a Nametag)

b) By topics that interest you (also called a Hashtag)

Q: Is it true that having Twitter without Hootsuite is like having a car without keys?

A: Yes.

Q:  What is a Nametag?

A:  When you sign up for Twitter you’ll decide what your username will be. Each Nametag has the “@” symbol in front of it. My Nametag is @slashcoleman. I used my own name. Others use something clever like @getstoried.

Q:  What is a Hashtag?

A:  When Tweeters tweet about topics they put the “#” in front of their topic. Some recent Hashtags I’ve used are #storytelling and #NSN2010. At www.hashtags.org, you can type in a Hashtag and you’ll find out who’s using it and how popular it is.

Q:  What is the correct way to use Nametags and Hashtags in my tweets?

A:  Right: The #NSN2010 in #LA is awesome. I’m meeting great #storytellers.

Wrong: I’m meeting lots of great storytellers at the National Storytelling Conference in California.

The first one is a part of a global conversation that others can search, find and read. Anyone who follows the topics #storyteller, #LA or #NSN2010 will immediately see my message in their Tweetdeck column. The other is a random thought that is un-searchable and lost. (When I set Tweetdeck up, I was surprised to find mentions of me dating back a year. Some resulted in bookings).

Q:  How do people have time to tweet all day?

A:  Most don’t, that’s why they download HootSuite (free at Hootsuite.com). It allows you to create all your tweets in the morning and schedule them to be sent throughout the day.

Q: What now?

A: Click your name in the right corner. When the menu pulls down, click “Who to follow.” Click “Find Friends” Type slashcoleman in the search bar. Click the green“+” sign. You are now following me. Tweet a message to me: “@slashcoleman I love your #Twitter article in #storytelling mag.” I will tweet back to you recommendations on how to use Twitter to boost your storytelling connections.

Q:  What is a direct message?

A:  A 140 character private message that only the person you’ve sent the message to can see.

Q:  What is a Retweet?

A:  When you copy and paste someone else’s message into your tweet bar and re-send it, you have retweeted their message.  Retweeting is a nice thing to do, like holding the door open for someone else.

Slash Coleman is a professional storyteller best known for his award-winning PBS special "The Neon Man and Me." His twitter campaign helped him win over PBS stations nationwide and land a two year distribution deal with NETA His recent column in Storytelling Magazine concentrates on social media and marketing strategies for artists and he was most recently featured on the NPR series "How Artists Make Money." For more information about Slash Coleman - please visit www.slashcoleman.com

Twitter 101 with Slash Coleman

Re-posted from my original article in Storytelling Magazine 2011.

Q:  What is Twitter?

A: Twitter is a room on the internet that is open 24 hours a day where you can speak and listen to conversations happening around the world. 

Q: Isn’t that what e-mail or a phone call is for?

A: Have you ever spent all day trying to get a Verizon representative on the phone or waited weeks for an answer to an important e-mail? Twitter conversations can happen instantaneously.

Q: Yeah, but I’m already overwhelmed with online stuff why should I worry about another one?

A: Twitter gives you the most bang for your buck, period! 

Q: What does that mean?

A: Whether you choose to speak, eavesdrop on global conversations, or contact others directly, you are limited to 140 characters. That’s roughly 18 words. It’s quick, to the point and for those who tend to ramble, it keeps things tightly focused. 

Q: Facebook consumes gobs of my time, won’t Twitter?

A: Nope. You don’t have to worry about photo albums, answering messages from old boyfriends, or losing hours of your life playing Mob Wars or Farmville. On Twitter you simply speak or listen.

Q: Isn’t Twitter just a stripped down version of Facebook?

A: No. Facebook is used to make personal connections. Twitter is used to make business connections. One is like a living room while the other is like an office space. Facebook will punish you if you use it strictly for business, Twitter won’t. 

Q: How do I sign up?

A: Go to www.twitter.com. Choose a user name and password. My user name is slashcoleman. I used my own name. Others use something clever like storyconnect. (Hint: Use your first and last name, no capital letters or spaces)

Q: Any advice for creating my bio?

A: Reveal your most unique aspects. Avoid dry and factual and lean toward unique and truthful. Rather than write, “Award winning storyteller from Lexington, VA,” write “Storyteller and bicycling enthusiast who loves fishing.”   

Q: What am I seeing on my screen now that I signed up?  

A:  A few self explanatory links at the top, space to write your tweets, followers, following and listed.

Q: What is it called when you speak on Twitter?

A: Tweeting. You simply write something in the empty space labeled, “What’s Happening?” and push the Tweet button.

Q: I signed up, what do I do now?

A: Click the Find People link. Type in someone’s name. If they come up, follow them. Now, when they send out a tweet, you’ll see it.

Q: What does “following” mean?  

A: It means you are following this persons tweets. 

Q: What does “followers” mean?  

A: These are people who are listing to your tweets.

Slash Coleman is a professional storyteller best known for his award-winning PBS special "The Neon Man and Me." His twitter campaign helped him win over PBS stations nationwide and land a two year distribution deal with NETA His recent column in Storytelling Magazine concentrates on social media and marketing strategies for artists and he was most recently featured on the NPR series "How Artists Make Money." For more information about Slash Coleman - please visit www.slashcoleman.com

10 Ways to Love Twitter Better

As many of you know, Twitter and I broke up a few weeks ago. If you read my break up letter then you know that things weren’t going well between us. I know this may sound weird, but we are living together again and thanks to some good counseling sessions with @Joannefunch and @iknowtiffany , and @Mox_eMediaGirl , I really think we might be able to make our relationship work.

As you might know, I was introduced to Twitter about a year ago and we maintained a cordial relationship during that time. I didn’t really understand her very well nor she me, and I didn’t share that much of myself with her. To be honest, I was still in a relationship with Facebook and a lot of my energy was still going toward that relationship. Even though things with Facebook had started to take a turn for the worse, I guess I was still holding out that things would eventually get better.

I guess it has a lot to do with my Sicilian blood. I sometimes like to throw the baby out with the bath water. Often, my lack of patience gets the best of me.

You see, my first step in changing things with Twitter was downloading THE TWEETDECK. I say it like Donald Trump refers to himself as THE DONALD. With THE TWEETDECK I felt like I had gone from an “elementary school puppy love lets hold hands during film strips kind of guy" to a full blown “going together junior high school romance kind of guy"

If you are newbie to Twitter then you may find yourself in the same frustrating relationship I found myself in. I can honestly say though, now, 1 month after downloading THE TWEETDECK I'm already looking on-line for engagement rings. Let me explain.

1)      Understand Twitter Baggage

When you sign up for Twitter it gives you the ability to open the front door to the on-line world and scream your bloody lungs out. It’s the equivalent of me going into K-Mart and yelling, “Hey everybody. My name is Slash Coleman. I’m a storyteller. I have a PBS special called The Neon Man and Me. Does anyone want to help me?” For a moment, K-Mart gets quiet and then everyone returns to what they were doing. I am now utterly alone and feel stupid. My scream is soon forgotten.

But you not only have the ability to scream, you also have the ability to be on the other side of those screams. If you sign into Twitter, you basically get to see a bunch of other people screaming their bloody lungs out too. Once you choose to follow someone, you now get to eavesdrop on every scream they make. The more people you follow, the more screams you’ll hear. I’m following 726 people on Twitter. That’s a lot of noisy people!

2)      Learn to use “I” statements:

When you download THE TWEETDECK (free) it gives you the ability to have individual conversations with specific people inside the K-Mart. And you and everyone else inside the K-Mart will now be wearing name tags. This is so you will know who you are talking too.

Each name tag in Twitter has the @ symbol in front of it. My name tag on Twitter is @slashcoleman. Remember my friend Tiffany Glass Ferreira, founder of the Real Small Art League, who I wrote about a few weeks ago? Her name tag is @iknowtiffany.

Whenever I want her to see something that I’m screaming, I’ll make sure to put @iknowtiffany in my message. Cool huh?

3) Wait 30 minutes before you go into the pool after eating

THE TWEETDECK  will give you the ability to divide all the screams up two ways. 1)By a persons name tag and 2) By topics that might interest you. You can divide THE TWEETDECK into columns and follow these two types of screams.

As I said before, name tags have a @ in front of them. Topics have a # symbol in front of them. The # symbol is also called a hash tag. For instance if I want to mention something going on in Richmond, VA when I tweet it, It’s better to type, “I love the #rva #snow and drinking warm coffee with @iknowtiffany” rather than “I love that it’s snowing in Richmond and am drinking a cup of joe with Tiffany.”

One is a scream. The other is a part of a global conversation.

I have one column that follows #rva topics (Richmond topics) and in my Tweetdeck I put people I follow in Richmond into that column. Now, whenever anyone uses the topic #rva I can see those specific conversations.

4) Look in the mirror and say, “I love you.”

Rather than screaming downstairs, “Hey baby doll, is dinner ready?” You can now walk down the stairs and go up to your lover and whisper in her ear, “I can’t wait to eat dinner with you. I luuuuuv you. Is it ready?”

In one of my Tweetdeck columns I’ve set it up so if anyone mentions me (@slashcoleman), I can now see it immediately.  That’s pretty dang cool! When I set Tweetdeck up, I was surprised to find, within minutes, mentions of me that dated back almost a year.

5) Take it to the next level.

I’m not one of those Tweeters that has a fancy phone to send tweets out all day. Plus, it's not my style. Hoot Suite allows me to sit down in the morning and create all the tweets I want and schedule them to be sent throughout the day. Since I’m sending tweets out to every PBS station for my campaign, this application is the bomb! Plus, Hoot Suite, like Tweetdeck, allows me to break up all the screaming into columns to follow certain people or conversations. In less than a month, I’ve gone from a bonified Cro-Magnon man to a civilized bird. Tweet! Tweet!

6) Go on a Twitter Cruise

Still want to go to the next level? At Hashtags.org, you can type in a hashtag (a topic) and you’ll find out who’s using it on Twitter. Better yet, it even breaks usage up by date, hour and number of times it's been used with a really cool graph.

7) Visit the Swiss Alps and Marvel at their Beauty

At http://visibletweets.com, you can type in a name or a hashtag and all the tweets using that name or hashtag will be displayed in a stunning, incredible and quite trippy way. Put some good music on your I-Pod, type in some hashtags and be prepared to be wowed. For those who are looking for an artistic way to find out what to follow on Twitter - this is it.

8) Be Up Front About Your Intentions

Adam Ant sang a song in the 80’s about this topic or maybe he had an album under the same name. Anyway, http://friendorfollow.com will allow you to type in your Twitter name and it will tell you which followers aren’t following you back. Is it important? Sometimes it is. It looks bad if you’re following 1,000 people and only 13 are following you back. If you’re using Twitter to develop relationships most of the people you follow will want to follow you back. The best advice I was given in terms of this was from Jonah Carla Holland. She said, "You need to look at why you are following someone and see if their mission aligns with yours and reevaluate if you still want to follow them, even if they aren't following you." After that, I went through my list and un-followed a lot of people that weren't aligned with my mission. She was right. Once I did that, I found I was able to get more focused on why I was using Twitter.

9)Remember Our Anniversary

There’s a trend or a holiday on Twitter that happens every Friday called #followfriday or #ff. When you want to thank someone for helping you out or want all your peeps to follow one of your own followers, you can make a list like "@iknowtiffany, @Mox_eMediaGirl #followfriday" and send it out into Tweetland. This results in friends of friends finding out who your friends are. They in turn sometimes follow your friends and you've just made the world a better place. A website that has taken the Follow Friday concept to the next level is www.wefollowfriday.com. It’s kind of like a chain letter for Twitter. If you actually want more followers and you don’t care who they are, then this is a good way to get them.However, there's something to be said about too many on-line friends.

10) Be Etiquette!

What does this mean exactly? If you follow the rules of social engagement in your everyday off-line life, chances are you’ll want to follow them in your on-line life too. As Kimberly mentions in her blog post (see above) it's good to know your neighbors. How? Use the following steps in this order to develop stronger Twitter relationships.

a. After a day or two of following someone, send them a direct message that shows them you’ve been following them, visited their website or at least read their Twitter bio. When I found out that @GingerTice loved making artwork I wrote," I'm looking forward to checking out some of your artistically inspired tweets."

b. If developing a relationship with followers is important, then re-tweet some of their tweets, which means you copy and paste a previous tweet of theirs into your tweet bar and send it off into tweetland with a RT before it.

c. Find ways to begin to ask your followers questions or include them in your own conversations. This is an example of something that doesn’t work. A performer was trying to get on the Ellen show and wrote, “Hey @theellenshow I know a great performer you should check out!” This is just a scream.

And speaking of screams, my Jewish grandmother Hilda, when I would say something weird and funny to her would say (with her Yiddish accent) "Oh Slashtipher, Yewr such a scream!"

 

For more info about "The Neon Man and Me" and other storytelling projects by me - Slash Coleman - please visit www.slashcoleman.com

Day 15: The Neon Man (Slash Coleman & PBS): Break Up Letter to Twitter

Dearest Twitter,

My intention in writing this letter to you today is to say things out of my love for you, for support of your own path. To point things out about you that you may not see, things that affect those around you whom love you and things that seem to hold you back from being all that you so desperately seem to want to become.

With that said, my letter isn’t meant to be judgmental or hurtful - only truthful. In a relationship where there hasn’t always been a lot of truth, I think truth can be a gift if you let it.

The reason I am writing this letter to you rather than breaking up with you through my Tweet Deck is so you can reflect on my words, read them again if you need to, print them out and perhaps show them to your counselor. 

Besides, if I broke up with you in 140 words or less, I knew all your followers would just say, “That's just plain out harsh.” In a relationship that’s been plagued with judgment and distance I don’t think I can handle more.

Twitter, you have so many rules and I know rules can protect us from bad things – lies, deceit, people who might hurt us physically. But rules also keep the good out as well as the bad. 

Rules keep out good things like – more than 140 words, e-mail addresses, the warmth of a hug, and trust. It is these good things that sustain us and give us the energy for life itself, without these essential things; it can feel as if we are being crushed by life. Since we started our relationship, more often than not, I feel crushed by you.

Since we started our relationship nearly 8 months ago:

I’ve found that more and more I’m afraid to express myself freely with you and I feel like I have to watch what I say around you. I’m looking for a partner where this isn’t an issue. I know Facebook isn’t perfect, but at least I know where I stand in that relationship.

And to be honest, I get jealous a lot. You seem to have so many followers and with all the distance (sometimes I don’t hear from you for hours or days and the best you can say to me is ‘What’s happening?”) I can’t help but to make assumptions about your love for me. As a result, I feel that my self-esteem has taken a blow since we’ve met.

One of the bigger issues is that besides reading all my correspondence you prevent me from spending time with my friends, family, and anyone else outside of our relationship. You pretend you are open to this sort of thing, but in the end I just don’t feel like you respect me.

I know I may lay awake tonight longing for you and deep down, I may want you back and I hope you will eventually appreciate my honesty because I know deep down you are decent. But I know this break-up is for the best.

I love you,

@slashcoleman

#neonman

PS. I wrote this poem for you last night.

”Tweet me one more time.

Tell me what You need.

Tell me you’re mine.

Fill my heart with joy, but keep me close.

It's only one second from 4ever.”

For more info about "The Neon Man and Me" and other storytelling projects by me - Slash Coleman - please visit www.slashcoleman.com

Day 14: The Neon Man (Slash Coleman & PBS): Twitter Fall Out

For the first time since I committed to writing a regular blog on August 13, 2009, it's official. Twitter has totally ruined my relationship with all social media. I feel like I've been cheating on my blog and Facebook. I am ridden with guilt and shame. I know what I need to do on Friday. It's obvious. I'm breaking up with Twitter.

For more info about "The Neon Man and Me" and other storytelling projects by me - Slash Coleman - please visit www.slashcoleman.com

Day 13: The Neon Man (Slash Coleman & PBS): Twitter What?

So, it takes me like an entire hour to compose one tweet. How I can win over 300 PBS stations at this rate is beyond me? I feel like I'm programming HTML code for love sick aliens.

When I passed the question on to @iknowtiffany (Small Art League)I found out I can program my tweets in advance through http://www.socialoomph.com/ and I can even set them on one day for the whole week... to go out at "peak times" (7am, noon, 4pm, 7pm). 

But, you know what, I'm beginning to question my sanity.


For more info about "The Neon Man and Me" and other storytelling projects by me - Slash Coleman - please visit www.slashcoleman.com

Day 6: Neon Man & PBS Gets Twitter

Today I met with Tiffany Glass Ferreira founder of the Real Small Art League. We met over at  Weezies Kitchen  on Cary Street. She's been a real supporter of my work and she's taken a few of my artist marketing classes and so I was excited to hear what she might have to offer in terms of advice for my viral marketing campaign.

Let me just say that half way through the meal, I felt myself transition through a Vortex, as if I'd been living the life of an Aborigine for the past year and I'd just been introduced to Ultrabright Toothpaste and boxer briefs.

I signed up for Twitter a year ago and kept the profile because people told me "it's something you need to do." I didn't put a lot of energy into it. In a year I made about 160 tweets, following 1,200 people and have about 500 people following me. I basically used it like a Neanderthal for the last year. I friended people on it and I'd occasionally transfer a status update from my Facebook account to my Twitter account. 


When I first started using it, I asked a lot of my friends who were on it how to use it and they all said, we don't really know, but that's the whole point. I never really understood it..... until today.


Wow! For those of you who have gone through that same vortex, you know what I'm feeling right?


She showed me the tweet deck and I got to view all these messages that were directed toward me that I never even knew existed. Better yet, remember that guy Jeff Anderson, that I wrote about the other day, the creator of The Cricket Toy (@thecrickettoy), well she showed me where he had "re-tweeted" my status update from the other day when I saw all the cone-heads walking around Carytown. When he re-tweeted it, it went out to over 5,000 of his twitter followers. Holy Cricket-moley.


Now, just to give you some perspective, I spent the entire morning separating the fax #'s on my PBS list so I could start my 8 week PBS fax campaign. When I asked Tiffany about my Fax campaign idea, she was very nice - she didn't laugh at me or anything. 


After meeting with her I saw how it was insane to compare the fax with twitter, but it also helped me see how old skool Facebook actually is. I came home feeling that Facebook is a lot like snail mail.


Anyway, at home I downloaded the tweetdeck and am now well on my way to the modern world. I even had some queries about gigs that I found using tweetdeck that I would have never found otherwise. 

I think maybe they should have a technology friend that they assign each person when they renew their driver's liscence so they can make sure we don't embarasss ourselves when it comes to stuff like this.

Social Media VS Web Sites 101 and a half

An interior decorating boutique approached me in October about helping them with their web presence. With the economy still face down they felt that having a web site would help them bring in more customers for the Holiday season. They also wanted my advice on a Facebook Fan page. The gallery has no web presence at all – no website – no Facebook page – nada – zilch – goose egg!  If you Google them, the only thing that comes up is their Yahoo Yellow pages entry.

I had them fill out one of my Website Building Helpers and then had an honest sit down with them. Here was the gist:

1) NPR reported in November that according to projections retail sales in stores would be down 1% and retail sales on-line would be up 6%. Does a web presence affect sales? No doubt. Yes!

2) A web presence is more than a website or a Facebook page. A web presence includes everything that comes up when you Google your name. This includes: Your website, blog, articles that have appeared in print, on the radio or on TV, social media profiles on Twitter, Facebook, My Space, Linkedin, etc.

3) A website takes up to 6 months to start establish. A Facebook presence takes up to 3 months to establish before a “Call to Action,” is effective.

4) The boutique wanted to pay someone to create a website. I recommended against the website and instead told them to take the money and hire a teenager to maintain a blog and a strong presence on Facebook and Twitter presence.

Have things changed for you in terms of how you use your own website? If so, I’d love to hear from you.