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    Wednesday
    10Mar2010

    Why I'm Crazy for Twitter 

    DateWednesday, March 10, 2010 at 08:08AM

    Not only can the concept of social media be a bit overwhelming for small business owners, but choosing which social media outlet to dip your toe into the water with can be enough to have many people running for the hills with confusion and dread.

    It can all feel like a bit much without a clear understanding of what social media makes possible for you and your business. So I've decided to share a few reasons why I love Twitter so much and why it's a great idea for you to check it out.

    First let me share with you that I've been online blogging and using social media for ten years. I now spend the majority of my social media time on two of the giants, Facebook and Twitter, but it's on Twitter that my business minded social media world has expanded in the most fascinating and fruitful ways. I am not critisizing Facebook in any way, I love it, there are just significant differences in the way the two sites are set up.

    Facebook is geared to help you find and connect with people you may already know, or be slightly acquainted with - even if it's from twenty years ago. Facebook is permission based, and for me it is the perfect tool for keeping up with family, friends and my local community of Long Beach California. But four or five updates and shared links from friends on Facebook and my screen is filled.

    I use Twitter, on the other hand, to keep up with subjects I'm interested for my clients, to promote my clients to those interested in their expertise, and to keep in touch with subjects and sources of interest for me from around the world.

    Think of Twitter as a constantly updating networking tool extraordinair that you focus only what you're interested in.

    I don't follow my friends on Twitter (unless we're interested in the same subjects), and I don't follow anyone who simply posts what they ate for breakfast, what they bought at the store, or the movie they want to watch tonight. My categories and criteria are focused on:

    Health & nutrition experts (i.e. @smnutritionist), social media experts (i.e. @mashable), focused tech media (i.e. @venturebeat), creativity coaches (i.e. @starshyne), greener living experts (i.e. @alexismadrigal), bicycle advocates & experts (i.e. @bikecommutenews), design innovators (i.e. @inhabitat), favorite news & media sources (i.e. @time), and authors, agents & publishing houses (i.e. @janetgoldstein).

    I currently follow 331 people and organizations, and am followed by 417 (these numbers are constantly in flux).

    I don't know about you, but I don't have the time to read every magazine and newspaper I'm interested in every day, nor can I keep up with 417 people directly via email directly. Twitter allows me, in a sense, to do both.

    Via Twitter I have placed a client on KCET (our local PBS station) and other outlets, introduced clients to influential writers that are difficult to reach by other methods, booked clients as guest bloggers on websites with large followings, increased my clients' social media presence and website traffic, kept up on the very latest news for the industries I'm interested in, and introduced clients to the movers and shakers in their own and complimentary industries that are really important to know about.

    Twitter moves at a fast and furious pace. It is a ticker tape of newsfeeds you focus on what you want to focus on. It is also set up for updates of only 140 characters at a time and just your one small photo is included (space is so precious that an industry has sprouted up just to create "mini" links for websites whose links are too long to fit in the 140 characters).This means that I can see ten updates on my computer screen at a time, and because so many items are "retweeted" (or reposted), I can keep in the loop by checking in with it several times a day - no I don't watch it 24/7.

    Like Facebook Twitter is free, but initially Twitter takes more time investment to set up because you start with a blank canvas. Twitter isn't set up to "suggest" friends to you the way Facebook is, neither does it pull possible friends from your email list, but once you get going the connections you want to make come quickly because of the "retweets" updates that people repost from someone else.

    Think of it as a giant six degrees of separation for the entire world. What subjects are you most interested in? With Twitter you can use "hashtags" (i.e. #LongBeach, #GreenLiving) to find others interested in the same subjects.

    In a nutshell Twitter is where I go to find news and bits of information I just don't have the time to track down for myself, and it puts me in touch with like minded people from around the world who I can personally connect with and send a direct note to if I like (only the most popular folk don't allow direct messages, i.e. best selling authors, celebrities, top journalists etc.), or we can have a conversation in public on our Twitter feeds.

    Unlike Facebook with Twitter you can "follow" just about anyone who is on Twitter - but it doesn't mean they're going to automatically follow you. For example, I follow Anderson Cooper, best selling fantasy author Neil Gaiman (who wrote Coraline), and Fast Company Magazine - none of whom are going to follow me right now - note I say right now, I'm optimistic.

     

    AuthorMelissa Balmer | Comment1 Comment |
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    Wednesday
    17Feb2010

    Moving From Informing to Sharing Your Passion

    DateWednesday, February 17, 2010 at 06:08PM

    I had a wonderful breakthrough session with a client earlier this week. We hit the perfect sweet spot path for our future PR efforts together and it felt great. I love it when I have a gut feeling about the way things need to move forward, a client buys into it, and then synchronicity starts to unfold.

    About two months ago I asked this client to seriously consider mixing up the tone of her blog, to contemplate sharing more of her warm engaging personality and her own personal journey rather than focusing solely on sharing scientific facts and advice.

    I wanted her to begin engaging an emotional hook.

    For many of us this sounds easy, but initially she really found it a challenge because it was so outside of the realm of her normal professional writing. Happily she stuck with it and worked out a way to give her blog posts more emotional resonance without writing in a way that made her uncomfortable - and she's already started to receive several compliments from friends and readers on the new tone and, more importantly, increased readership.

    Why? My client is absolutely an expert in her field. She is at the top of her profession, but because she's moved from simply informing to sharing her passion she's engaging people in a whole new way.

    Don't get me wrong, informing is important, even preaching has its place (sometimes we need strong medicine), but after awhile both can fall on deaf ears. We are emotional creatures who love a good yarn, we get tired of constantly being sold and told in blogs, on Facebook and Twitter and with endless emailers by those who are simply constantly promoting themselves.

    Remember, we live in a time when information overload is a constant possibility.

    And many people confuse constantly posting chatter about what they're doing with the talent to really connect and build viable fans.

    Why do we want to be so good at creating our emotional hook and engaging with very specific readers looking for just our type of story telling? One of the greatest strengths of the Internet (by which I mean Websites, Blogs, Social Media etc.) is using this kind of story telling to create avid fans and economic prosperity for yourself via "The Long Tail."

    Because of its expansive reach the Internet now allows people the opportunity sell in very niche markets and make very good money from them (note I said opportunity, but you've got to be savvy). For example Amazon.com has certainly opened up writing markets in very specific genres that simply couldn't be sustained by brick and mortar storefront book stores before.

    Those who are successfully harnessing the power of the Internet and social media to really grow their businesses are excellent at not only getting the word out about what they do, but how they do what they do, what inspires them to do what they do better, and who is teaching them something new every day.

    Let me share with you some examples of what I'm talking about and who I'm personally a fan of:

    A book that is on my "must read" list is "The Happiness Project" by Gretchin Rubin (@gretchenrubin on Twitter). With a moniker like "Maitriquest" focusing on kindness, of course I'm a sucker for anything about happiness, but Gretchin really hooked me not only by her beautifully orchestrated website and campaign to educate others about her upcoming book (she started the website about a year before the book was published), but also her generosity in how she wanted to share the idea of "a happiness project" with others.

    I am also a new fan of writer/author and digital print & self publishing maven April Hamilton who creates Publitariat, a site dedicated to self-publishing, small imprints, explaining the publishing world, and more.

    So here's a question for you. How could you personally bring more emotional resonance to your own blogs, tweets and Facebook headlines? What could you say that would leave readers wanting to know more of the story?

     

     

     

    AuthorMelissa Balmer | Comment1 Comment |
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