Post #12: Some step-by-step info on how to use Twitter

How egotistical is it to say that my post yesterday inspired me to write this one?

Well, it's my blog, and I'll be egotistical if I want to.

Anyway, in addition to hearing a lot of grumbling about how Twitter could never be useful for a company, I often hear a lot of questions. To a newbie on Twitter, the homepage can look like gobbledegook. It can be very intimidating, as a matter of fact. I know this because I was there not so long ago.

Straddling knowledge and ignorance as I now do, I thought I would try to answer some questions that I often hear or that I had when I first started out. If you have any other questions, feel free to ask me. I'll do my best to help ya out. First, a question I don't hear a lot but should:

How can I pick a username? You want to try to pick a username that describes what you are about but that is not verbose. Full disclosure: My Twitter username (@RealLifeMadMan) is really longer than it should be. Remember, when you post, or when people respond to you, your username takes up valuable characters.

What does the @ mean or do? I like to think of the @ symbol on Twitter as a pointy finger. If you want to say something to someone, you use the @ and then their username (no space in between) and that tells them you are talking to them. If you are retweeting (I'll get to that in a minute) it shows everyone that you are pointing to the person who actually wrote what you are posting. Without the @ we'd all be talking to ourselves.

What is this RT I see everywhere? Okay, RT stands for retweet. When I first started using twitter I thought everyone was a fan of Richard Thompson. Anyway, Retweeting is kind of like legal plagiarism. If you really like what someone has posted and you want to share it with the people following you, your post would look like this: RT @smartperson blah blah blah. The RT tells your followers that you did not come up with this gem yourself. The @ symbol tells everyone who actually did come up with the gem, and it also lets "smart person" know that you are quoting them. Pretty good multi-functional use for 2 letters, right?

What's the difference between the homepage and the profile page? The homepage on Twitter is like the homepage on Facebook or LinkedIn. You'll see posts from the people you're following. If you go to a person's profile page, you'll see everything they've posted, and you'll also probably see a lot of @ symbols. That's because anytime that person has talked to or responded to someone, it shows up on his or her profile as well as out in the open. That's why monitoring what you say on Twitter is SO important!

What is a direct message? A direct message serves the same purpose as a Facebook message or a LinkedIn email. It's a way to communicate with someone without the whole world seeing what you're saying. Characters are still limited, however, so if you really want to quack at someone, you might want to *gasp* send one of them ole antiquated email thingies.

How can I find out who is talking about me? Along the right-hand navigation is the @ symbol followed by whatever your username is. By clicking on that (over and over again every minute) you can see who has mentioned you or who has retweeted you. It's all right there.

How can I build my base of followers? The easiest way, of course, is to convince people you already know to join your Twitterhood. Other ideas, failing that, including doing a search for keywords that interest you and see who is talking about those things -- follow them! You can also start to follow some of the recommended Twitterers that Twitter will prompt you with. This can include everyone from the Huffington Post to The Onion. You won't necessarily gain a rapport with any of the celebs on Twitter, but you can build a reputation by posting to their page or following other people who make posts you like.

What are trending topics? Actually, trending topics are another good way to look for people to follow and potentially get followers yourself. Topics or conversations are marked by the hashtag symbol: #. A lot of times, if you are attending a seminar or especially a webinar, they'll tell you to tweet your questions to #webinarname. That's because people can then search for that specific subject and see all of the posts related to it in one fell swoop. When major world events happen, you'll often see them over on the right hand of the site. #TigerWoods was there for quite a while. #HaitiEarthquake would be another example. By scanning trending topics that you're interested in, or by contributing to the conversation, you can build your network.

Do I have to use my phone? No! I just go to Twitter.com on my computer because I fear that using Twitter on my Blackberry would lead me into a dark vortex of no return. There are also numerous ways to manage your Twitter account, like TweetDeck. I'm keeping it simple, at least for now :)

Hope this helped. Maybe it convinced you to give Twitter a try, or if you are on Twitter but don't really get it, maybe it gave you some ideas. Or maybe I muddied the waters and you've lost what little interest you had. In any case, happy to be of service, and like I said, I'll be happy to answer, or at least try to answer, any other questions you might have!


Photo by Stephen Eastop. http://www.sxc.hu/profile/Eastop

#11: 10 Reasons Twitter is not just for kids

I'm going to be honest. When I first heard rumblings about Twitter, I had a single and instantaneous, from the gut, instinctive, ancestral, no doubt about it reaction.

What a stupid idea.

Yep, it's true. I was a non-Twit-liever. I couldn't understand why anyone would want to read 120-character updates from millions of different people all at once. More than that, I didn't understand why anyone would want to post updates about their life in rapid succession. If grocery shopping was meant to be a spectator sport, one of the big television channels would be all over it. Believe me.

There's a lot about Twitter that is ideal for those of the younger crowds. They're used to texting, so tweeting isn't that much of an adjustment. It's kind of like how us old-timers (but I'm only a 30-something!) used ICQ and AOL IM. Boy, some of the conversations I had with those tools should totally have been preserved by the Library of Congress. Heh.

Anyway, I've drunk the Twit-Aid, as it were, and I now see a lot of value that it can offer. So here are my ten reasons why Twitter is not just for kids.

1) Verbosity Stinks! As a person who tends to write in a Dickensian fashion (pay me by the word, PLEASE!) I can tell you that updating Twitter in 120-140 characters is a real challenge for me. But it's good. It's kind of like a verbal Sudoku. How can I fit words together so that they convey my point?

2) News Abounds: Because so many people have taken to the fair lands of Twitter, there are great founts of knowledge just tweeting away, waiting for you to dive in and grab what you want. In my own little world of Twitter, I follow sources ranging from The Drudge Report to MSNBC to the Wall Street Journal. I can always read more, but it's a great way for me to keep updated on what's going on in the world.

3) Your Crowd is Out There: While tweens, kids, and teens come to Twitter with a merry band of friends already set up a lot of the time, it's definitely possible to stick yourself to groups and individuals who are on your same wavelength. I can post about how great a documentary is and have people say "Darned right." Through these kinds of engagements, it becomes apparent who you might jive with and who you might not.

4) Professional Development: This might not be true for every profession, but as a marketer, Twitter is kind of like the mixer that keeps on giving. There is so much information, useful information, posted every day that I often feel overwhelmed. And in a world that often seems vacuous and just full of bad news, seeing a fire hydrant of information splashing towards you that will actually help you swim in the waters you like is a nice change of pace.

5) Humor: Some people have the gift to write literal one-liners on Twitter that are so subtle and brilliant that it just blows me away. I can't do it. I am lucky if I can get away with a 1-pager most of the time!

6) There but not there: People are increasingly tweeting live from seminars or conferences. While this might anger the person whose presentation is being peppered with beeps and clicks, it's great for busy pros who can't make it out of the office. The essence of the experience is capture, conversation can still happen, and it's all right there, easily accessible.

7) Voting: I don't necessarily mean voting in the traditional sense, although that kind of works. With every tweet, a person really has the potential to vote. A mention of a product, positive or negative, can be a vote. A retweet of someone else's post can be a vote. Expressing anger about a law or injustice, expressing support for a cause or candidate, all can be done in a setting that is mined constantly by Google. What could be a more powerful vote than that, other than actually going to the polls?

8) Spreading the Word: Whether you are a company, an artist, or just a concerned individual, Twitter is a tremendously powerful tool for spreading the word, not only because of the retweet feature but also because it's so darned open. I follow PBS, the New York Metropolitan Museum, UNICEF, and the ACLU, among others, because I think it's important to help them maximize their use of Twitter. I can assist them in getting their messages out, and that makes me feel like I'm doing something useful with my time.

9) Twitter is a car, and you're the driver: If you are a budding artist or a Fortune 500 Company, Twitter can help you drive people to a hub, whether that's a blog, a website, a Myspace Music page, or something else. Teaser posts, enticing questions, maybe even controversial comments can get the ball rolling. They don't use the word "follower" for nothin.

10) It's FUN! That's right. I said it. I am thoroughly enjoying seeing up-to-date posts about what PBS is going to be showing, what the News Hour is going to be talking about, or what's on the radar of everyone from The ACLU to Simon Pegg. I enjoy analyzing what posts people find interesting and what kills off 20 of my followers in one fell swoop. I enjoy trying to make every word meaningful. It makes me feel, well, like a kid again.

#10: Little House on a Facebook

When I was a kid, nothing made me happier than to sit down with one of the Little House books. I found them entrancing for reasons that I can't really explain other than to say that learning how people lived a century ago was just endlessly fascinating.

"Pioneers," as we now call that massive amount of people who settled the lands from the Ohio River to the Pacific Ocean, were an odd bunch of people. It seems like when you read about pioneers, the challenges they faced were always huge. Their victories were also always huge. They defined self-sufficient, after all.

Pioneers are on my mind today because of a really good question that came up at the PMPA IT Committee's session on Social Networking, of which I was privileged to be a part. The question was in regards to a boss and that boss's marketing director. The boss had posed the following question: "I know that we need to get involved in Social Media. How can we make enough money to justify getting someone to run a successful Social Media campaign?"

This is a real "chicken and the egg" kind of question, and it's haunting companies around the world, big and small, b2b and b2c.

I sort of wondered, as I searched for an answer to this question, how the pioneers would have responded to similar questions in reference to the famous "Go West, Young Man." See, the pioneers had heard that "the West" was this great new frontier. They saw all kinds of studies showing that wheat and corn could grow in Nebraska just by planting seeds and singing a song. They were hearing stories about gold and silver and all sorts of other valuable and wonderful things. That's not too dissimilar from the way a lot of companies are hearing about Social Media I think. Facebook is the land of gold. Twitter is a wide open field just waiting to be planted. The sky's the limit and the horizons are endless.

The amazing thing about the pioneers, it occurred to me, is that they didn't have the time or the luxury to ponder our modern-day "how are we going to do this?" questions. Even though the West seemed limitless, everyone knew that the land would have to run out eventually. A farmer in Virginia or a struggling merchant in New England couldn't wait around and see how his buddies were doing. He couldn't flounder over whether the risk would ultimately pay off. He had to go and hope for the best.

Today, we have the ability to do research, but it's a right that often isn't taken advantage of. We have the opportunity to learn about problems that could be comparable to a Summer of grasshoppers...say, a Facebook "like" page that isn't attracting any likers (I still like fans better, sorry). We could do some detective work and find out that sometimes there are really big raging prairie fires, something like the story about a guy that went into a town to meet with a big client, tweeted that he had arrived in a town that totally was crap, and then met with the client to find that everyone had seen his tweets.

I think it's kind of sad that we can't, or at least shouldn't, carry our pioneer heritage with us into efforts to market our companies and products and brands via Social Media. We all want to be trailblazers. Even if none of our competitors are on Facebook or Twitter yet, there's that gnawing desire to squat on the land, build a sod house of a fan page, and kick everyone else off when they come a'knockin. But factually, jumping into Social Media these days without doing the advanced footwork and planning can be downright dangerous. It can be like taking one of those shortcuts through the mountains that weren't clearly mapped out and actually ended up being dead ends or long ways around. None of us want to be the Social Media version of the Donner Party, right?

There are still plenty of ways to be pioneers in the business world and/or in the marketing world. You can still pave the way to new and exciting ideas. You can still try other things before your competitor tries them. But Social Media is not something we should jump into just because we heard it has worked really well for somebody else. Not everybody struck gold in 1849. Not everybody found an oil well in their back yard. Being methodical and asking the tough questions may not be quite as romantic as being a swashbuckling adventurer, but it's far more preferable than the alternative.

#9: Can one good idea kill all other good ideas?

Riding on a wave of euphoria after deciding to keep some of my favorite VHS tapes (I wish I could quit them) I decided to watch Being John Malkovich, one of my all-time faves. One of the previews was for Unbreakable, written and directed by M. Night Shyamalan.

It got me to thinking.

When Sixth Sense came out, everyone was convinced that Shyamalan was a complete genius, and you have to admit, that was a pretty good movie. But from my own personal perspective, Shyamalan didn't really ever top that. Signs was okay but a little too fatalistic for me. Also, as has been pointed out many times, why would aliens who hate water come to a planet that is 78% water-based? Ehem. The Village wasn't all that bad, but you were just waiting for "the twist" the whole time. The fact that the twist, again in my opinion, wasn't nearly as awesome as the one in Sixth Sense kind of was disappointing. The twist had been Shyamalan's big idea, but he set the expectation that everything would try to top that or at least meet it. And again, according to me, that gamble didn't pay off (feel free to disagree).

Thinking about the career of M. Night Shyamalan got me to thinking about ideas in general. In another movie (not nearly to the level of Sixth Sense but still pretty amusing and one degree of separation away because Bruce Willis is involved), Over the Hedge, the phrase "enough is never enough" is oft repeated. I think that's how we've gotten not just regarding material objects but regarding awesome ideas too.

Think about Google. Google started as this amazing way to organize this burgeoning internet, and everyone was amazed. Information accessible at your fingertips. That's amazing!! But that one huge idea wasn't enough for Page and Brin. We all know where Google is now...at war over the Chinese interwebs.

A few posts ago, I talked about how Facebook is starting to concern people because of privacy concerns (with a touch of "crap, are THEY taking over the world too?!?). Facebook started primarily as an online yearbook. What a great idea! And when I first joined Facebook, I was stunned that it hadn't been thought of before. Well, okay, Orkut and Friendster had kind of been there, and MySpace sort of. But Facebook seemed different. It was easier to talk to friends and family spread all around the world. There were a few games to play. Fine. But look at how much Facebook has changed just in the last couple of years! Zuckerberg is looking for another idea as innovative as his initial concept of Facebook, but I can tell you from my own individual experience, all he's doing is freaking me out!

I think this needing to top a great idea is not just a symptom of celebrity and power. I think we all have this problem. Success is no longer an end-game. Wealth is no longer an end-game. Look at these athletes of ours. Do you really need a raise from $50 million to $75 million A  YEAR?! I mean, really? That $25 million is just keeping you back, right? If your business succeeds or has a good year, you want it to make the Fortune 500 list. If you get a promotion, you feel the next stop should be CEO. Anything else is unsatisfactory.

I'm particularly worried about this when it comes to the arts. How are we gauging success? I think some of our artists and actors are getting tired. That's the only explanation I can find for Chris Rock involving himself in a re-make of Death at a Funeral, a movie that was hilarious in its own right and, more to the point, is less than 3 years old. Surely he has more talent than that. Surely he has more original ideas. Is music going to continue to suffer because being a great artist is no longer enough? Are singers going to feel like they have to re-make the music industry with every song, every album in order to truly be a success?

There are some folks out there who don't seem to get paranoid about having the next revolutionary idea. The Coen Brothers keep cranking out masterpieces. Each is somewhat similar just because its them, but you don't really feel like they're trying to revisit old ideas. No Country for Old Men couldn't possibly be more different from say, Raising Arizona. Stephen Hawking keeps on writing and exploring, but you don't feel like he's trying to top A Brief History of Time. He just loves what he is doing.

Let's face it. Most of us are not going to have any world-changing ideas. But if you do...if you are able to think of something no one else has ever thought of, and if you are recognized for that accomplishment, will that be enough for you, or will you spend the rest of your life just trying to top it? Will enough be enough? Now there's a revolutionary idea for ya.

#8: The secret to good health's a diet alright...

I'm going to plagiarize John Lennon ever so briefly and say that about 6 years ago, I went through my "fat Elvis" period. I know, of all of the things to quote from John Lennon, that's what I choose. But it's appropriate.

You see, around that time, I had gone through pursuing my Masters in Library and Information Science. Not a lot of calisthenics involved, but 3- hour classes where you kind of just...sat there. To stay. uh, alert, I would wander over to the student center and get various types of mochas. With whipped cream. Then I'd go home and make something like Ramen or Kraft Mac & Cheese, because my fat Elvis period was also my "Holy crap I'm poor" period. Guess I could have saved some money by not buying those mochas, but I digress.

One day, I looked in a mirror and thought, "Man, my pants are really poofy...like MC Hammer poofy." Then I realized it was actually me that was poofy. I instantaneously felt worried, ashamed, embarrassed, and otherwise just plain bad.

Since that time, I've been working hard to lose all of those mochas. I've done a lot of different things, including Yoga, Pilates, biking, and most recently, my Wii EA Sports Active game (awesome!). And of course, I've changed my diet drastically to the point where I'm now about 75% vegetarian (I only eat meat on occasion when I go out or visit someone...haven't purchased meat to cook for about 3 months now).

It occurred to me today though that being healthy, losing weight, and all of that jazz is really all about one thing. Lying to yourself.

Dr. Phil, Jillian Michaels, and Oprah will never say this or condone this, but it's really true. Here are some examples.

You have to tell yourself on a regular basis that really, with the limited free time that you have, you'd much rather work up a sweat and get sore and stinky. Watching TV with a glass of wine or a cup of tea is just way too sedentary for you.

You have to tell yourself that a veggie patty with low-fat mayo and some baked chips is just as satisfying as a Wendy's burger, fries, and a Frosty.

You have to tell yourself that if you count that walk to get the mail as your daily exercise you'll just feel bad about yourself when you go to bed that night (this is a wammy of a lie).

I was thinking of this diet of lies this morning when I went to the grocery store. There was a LOT of ice cream on sale, and I do like to have a tiny bowl of ice cream as the weather starts to get warm. Some of my faves were on sale too. Mint Chocolate Chip. Moose Tracks. I'm drooling here as I type.

I did not buy any ice cream.

No, instead I left the freezer aisle and went to the dairy aisle. I got 2 containers of Yoplait Whips key lime pie, 2 containers of Yoplait Whips Lemon Burst, and 2 containers of Yoplait Whips Chocolate Mousse. And I told myself that these would taste just as cool as ice cream. I told myself they would taste just as good as that Starbucks coffee ice cream with almonds or as good as my Rocky Road.

Is any of this true? I have to type here that it is, or will be, because this is one of the carefully constructed lies that will help me take my health one more notch up the ladder. Cuz while I've made an awful lot of progress and while I'm almost to that goal weight, I'm just not quite there, and ice cream won't push me along.

Everyone knows that lying is really the key to health, because everyone who makes this decision in life ends up becoming an evangelist about it. Don't be offended. It's not about making you feel bad for eating that fantastic looking Chik-Filet sandwich. It's really because that person REALLY REALLY wants one of those, errr, no they don't because they told themselves that breaded tofu will taste just as crunchy.

Try it out. Tell yourself just one white lie. It's a real domino effect. And hey, no one will be able to call you a "big fat" liar. Just an obnoxious one.

#7: We are all of us Trumanéd

I know, William Shakespeare would be so happy that I am taking one of the last lines from Romeo & Juliet (we are all punishéd), bastardizing it so that it relates to the Truman show, then remarking that we may kind of all be punishéd anyway. It's why he wrote Romeo & Juliet, I'm fairly certain.

Maybe not.

Anyway, on with the show.

So, The Truman Show came out in 1998. Neither Facebook nor Twitter existed yet. How did we live?!? But anyway, some of the most memorable parts of the film, at least to this budding marketer, were when the people around Truman would randomly pop in product endorsements as they were talking to him. Like this, for example:



Sure seemed crazy and over-the-top back then, didn't it?

Funnily enough, we have all become product placement billboards. We may or may not be conscious of it. You're gonna want some proof, aren't ya?

Have you ever mentioned in a Facebook post that you made pancakes with that new heart healthy Bisquick and didn't notice a difference in taste?

Have you ever tweeted that you went to Wal-Mart and really found their customer service outstanding and much improved?

Have you ever really really liked a movie and blogged about it after seeing it?

Guess what, friend! You're a marketer!

Of course, sometimes it's even easier to work product placement into your friends' lives. Have you ever "liked" or "fanned" (or whatever Facebook will call it next) a product page on Facebook? Like, for example, that time I signed into Facebook and saw that some of my friends had become fans of Pepsi..."Why sure, I like Pepsi too. I will fan them," said I. Didn't really think about it until it was too late. Same thing happened to me with Lion Brand yarn. Sure, I love Lion Brand yarn! I'll become a "fan"! Now I get updates about the latest kits and yarn sales going on. What the heck is going on here?

This isn't to say that our own individual contributions to marketing are all that is left. But it is kind of overwhelming to think about how much we market without realizing it. Don't think it has escaped my mind that in mentioning those brands above, I was giving them pings and bings and dings on Google alerts and other social media tracking sites. Yes, even talking about how products are marketed can result in product marketing.

I don't know who the "Truman" is in this new reality. I think maybe we are all switching off. I was a Truman when I clicked on that "fan" button, but then I became a marketer because my fandom was announced to other friends. Kind of insidious. Kind of instinctive. Maybe even kind of unfair.

Welcome to The Truman Show.

Post #6: Foursquare and the Open Graph, Achtung Baby

Okay, let me start by saying that yes, I am aware of the fact that I am a marketer. I know that nothing should thrill me more than something like Foursquare, where people can holler to the winds that they are at such and such a place doing such and such a thing. I know that as a marketer the news about the Facebook open graph should have me feeling like I'm on some sort of Cloud 9. The marketing future has been paved with gold. The internet is forever young. All of the goals of the great explorers, from Coronado to my personal fave, Ponce de Leon, have been fulfilled. I get it.

However, and I just add this as a bit of an aside, marketing is only a portion of my life. I mean, don't get me wrong, marketing is great. Love it. But I do have other facets to my personality, and those facets are all curled up into the fetal position right now.

Let's start with Foursquare. The first time I saw a friend posting Foursquare updates, I left a comment along the lines of, "If I am going to stalk you, I want to have to work for it." As I saw more and more updates, I began shaking in my boots, not necessarily for the folks I saw, but rather for possible ramifications.

I tend to jump mentally to the worst case scenario. It's a gift.

But to me, what jumped to my mind is that now, if someone (heaven forbid) wants to hurt a child, they don't have to go to a chat room anymore. They don't have to plot and plan. They just have to watch Twitter and see where kids are going. How can this be monitored? Another good point that even my paranoid mind hadn't thought of: if you are letting the world know where you are, you're also telling the world where you are NOT. Other folks have thought of this and created a site called Please Rob Me. You can read more about that at Tech Crunch.

I understand that there are a lot of other things out there that, like Foursquare, help broadcast your location to the world. It just seems like this one is spreading a little bit more like wildfire. Are we being careful?

Now for the Open Graph thing. I've had a bone to pick with Facebook for the last year or so, full disclosure. I don't like the fact that the site's interface changes every five seconds. But what I especially don't like right now is that if my friends decide to play Mafia Wars, they are not only sacrificing their time, which is fine, but they are also sacrificing some of my privacy. No matter how locked down you think your account is, applications can still access some info like your profile picture. And this new Open Graph thing? It's built on that same kind of application platform.

I'm not really worried about myself in this scenario. I always was kind of creeped out by Facebook. "If you enter your email address we'll find all of your friends" stood out as an "achtung" sign for me from the start. But there are people who are using their credit card on Facebook. There are people who are probably posting things that they really shouldn't be posting. There are kids posting things that probably shouldn't be posted. Are they aware that their settings have been changed to automatically allow Social Plug-Ins? I was aware of it because I saw the news because that's part of my job. I went into my settings and dug all the way to manually blocking Microsoft Docs, Yelp, and Pandora as applications. Is everyone that aware? I don't think so. And they're not really getting a kosher heads up.

I don't really have a problem with the idea of the internet becoming a social mechanism. I've been frightened enough times by PPC ads related to email content showing up that I've just accepted that you have to live with what you post. And as a marketer, the possibilities are exciting. But as a person, and in particular a person who worries about other people who may not be plugged in mentally even if they are plugged in socially, I just worry that maybe we're not being careful enough.

What do you think?