blog

i wanted to let folks know about a great blogging workshop i attended.

media bistro charged $65 for a 3 hour workshop in washington, dc that covered blogging basics. their instructor, johnica reed, was worth every penny. johnica was quite impressive. at twenty something, this harvard grad created a great career for herself as a travel writer and lifestyle expert and blogger for several well known companies. most impressive was johnica’s ability to capture this boomer’s attention for the entire three hour period.

highlights of new blogging tips for me to consider included learning to pay attention to when i post to my blog. in the past, i’d proudly throw the post right out there as soon as i was finished. that time frame was usually some crazy hour in the late evening or on the weekends. “bad times,” said johnica, who advised the class to post during the heaviest traffic times. when i asked her what those times would be, she suggested 10am on a weekday, right after a person has come to work, checked their messages and doesn’t want to work yet so instead goes to their facebook page. mmmm, that tip was worth it’s weight in gold (i did notice an increase in traffic when scheduling subsequent posts for morning hours).

the class was given tips on what to write about, told the top blog subjects, and advised to combine the top blog subjects to create a specific niche blog.

johnica’s view of how often we should be on various social media platforms: fb at least once a day, linkedin at least three times a week, twitter at least three times a day and blogging at a minimum of once a week.

dear johnica lost me when she schooled the class on foursquare, the new “location centric social network” game that all the youngins are playing. i will never be the “mayor” of a location for checking into a restaurant or bar and announcing my location at different hours of the day and evening to the the online community. when i complained about whether we should make ourselves so readily available to the world, a sweet looking 20 something year old turned around and said, “it’s a generational thing. we grew up with these devices.“

we’re living in a world where people going out to dinner start the meal w/texts, tweets and picture taking of the food. a woman like myself prefers the old fashioned way of taking in the ambience and enjoying a good evening without the intrusion of social media enabling gadgets. still, it’s good to know all the extra stuff you can do if you have 24 hours a day to play (or be payed for) using your mobile communicators.

check out johnica’s class the next time she breezes into town. that may be a while. i believe she’s blogging from thailand this week…

last week i wrote about the pain i felt when i looked at some of the twitter and facebook sites of my young friends. a few people responded by telling me i was paranoid about potential employees taking the time to do detective work in looking up job candidates.
i looked to see if there were any surveys done on the subject and was astounded by what i found:

way back in August (light years away in social media time and knowledge) career builder conducted a survey about this very topic. according to this survey, 45% of all employers interviewed said they used social networking to research job candidates. that means almost half of all employers were already hip to checking you out five months ago! imagine how many employers are using this new hiring “screen” now? equally amazing was the fact that 35% of all the candidates who were in the final running for jobs got disregarded because of what they had on their personal twitter and facebook accounts. do you hear that folks? over one third of all applicants in the running got axed from the list because of inappropriate information circulating from their social media sites!

what constitutes inappropriate postings? things like photographs showing drug and drinking use. what does this mean? NO MORE POSING with beer and joints in your hands people! as i say to the older folks who are just learning social media techniques, let’s GET-WITH-THE-PROGRAM!

i really don’t feel like blogging today. i am blessed to be at a conference in maui this week. all i want to do with my spare time is see the humpback whales mating and frolicking with their young. but i’m forced to take a minute away from my few hours of meditation with nature to talk about my experience with twitter.

i realize i don’t know much about twitter etiquette. i still have basic questions like who should i follow and who would i like to follow me?

in the eyes of my mama and the many friends and family members i am blessed to have love me, i am a star. but my light as a celebrity ends there. because of that fact, i don’t throw out dozens of daily personal tweets announcing that i just woke up, am about to go to sleep or scratch my left or right cheek. after all, who cares? will that really help me to brand myself as an efficient public relations/social media consultant?

what i am doing is checking out the happenings of others who twitter and the reactions i get when i twitter. so far, i have “tweeted” a grand total of seven times in the last month. to date, i have 45 followers. my pal david burnett of Sports Sense insisted that i link my twitter with facebook. once we did that, i noticed that i’d get feedback each time i sent out a tweet. my new co-blogger, cousin dave, showed me how to “retweet” important information i came across. that’s a very simple process involving pushing one button.

i encourage all my folks who are curious about social media to experiment with twitter. in fact, i planned to blog today about twitter etiquette. instead i want to give a word of advice to my young friends who are using twitter as a social tool to communicate with friends. i realize that many of you are not utilizing twitter to build a business brand. you’re just having fun with another form of communication. but while typing away, PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE— remember that ANY and EVERYTHING you say on twitter is public information that can come back to haunt you when you’re looking for work down the road.

to those youngins in my network who are part of the ‘hip-hop’ generation, keep this in mind before you write anything!!! no college educated person (or life educated folks for that matter) should be using the ‘n’ word, ‘b’ word, or ‘f’ word when writing to friends in a public forum. i’m not saying this because i’m judging your language. anyone who knows me knows that i can be quite colorful myself when communicating verbally within my intimate social circle.

when you tweet, you put yourself out there for the world (literally) to see. and what that means is that ANYBODY you interview with for a job from now until the day you retire can access that information and make judgements about who you are and what kind of employee you would make for their company. unless you work for a rapper, nightclub or reality tv show, who do you think will hire you once they see your hundreds of questionable tweets? look at it this way: what good is it to spend a whole lot of money (or your folks’ money) on college if you get knocked out of the competition because you’re using language that is unacceptable in the mainstream world or talking about the latest good bag of weed you bought? i write this at the risk of sounding like an old fart but i’d rather sound old than see many of my bright minded friends and aquaintences get dogged because of a few unfortunate words or announcements they’ve made in front of the world.

enough of my lecturing already. i’m back to my quest to find whales before the sun sets here. peace & let’s stay as positively employable as possible!

happy new years everyone. i haven’t made many resolutions this year, but in the top five is to feed my blog. thanks to all of you who reached out over the holidays to make fun of my lack of content.

i’d like to introduce you to an upcoming social media guru. his name is david bailey. i am quite proud of him as he is my first cousin and inspiration to me to not give up on this stuff. david calls himself a “lifestreamer,” which is a fancy term for someone who keeps track of the daily activities of people and groups of personal interest. in other words, david knows more about the latest inner workings of web 2.0 activites than most self-proclaimed social media enthusiasts i know.

i’m looking forward to sharing my cousin’s insights as i get with the program. maybe hanging more with family will shame me into getting serious about my writing.

look out for my rundown on “following vs. being followed” on twitter later this week.

for the last few weeks, i have immersed myself in social media articles. one of my colleagues and social media gurus david burnett laughed at my “progress” at writing a blog and said that reading other blogs is not enough.

rick hancock, another social media giant, was even more blunt.
“feed your blog. It’s hungry!” he scolded.

these suggestions took me back to reality and the importance of writing a blog. what is a blog? why is it important to have a blog? what can a blog do to increase awareness for your passions?

let’s start with the definition of a blog. according to blogger.com, a blog is
“a personal diary. a daily pulpit. your own private thoughts. memos to the world.”

we now have access to millions of people. we can get our message out to promote our primary passions in life. and we can do this without leaving the comfort of our home office, whether that is your kitchen table, local coffeee shop or sitting on a beautiful beach.

i’m writing a blog because i want to cover my journey utilizing social media to connect with the world. i realize that my passion as a public relations specialist will become obsolete without the inclusion of social media strategy. social media is a critical way to market and promote any business in the world.

blogging will be my vehicle to sharing knowledge about how social media can be used as a tool to increase awareness for our passions.

let me end with a great link that defines a blog:

http://www.commoncraft.com/blogs CON

I