Yesterday, I watched my Twitter stream transform into a spirited conversation, complete with hurt feelings, wounded pride, and genuine attempts to put forward logical and eloquent arguments. Online friendships were torn asunder, and strong new allegiances formed. The culprit was a deceptively simple question: What makes someone a social media expert?
The question seems to have arisen because a certain print and online publication hired someone to fill that particular role, and another party felt the chosen person’s follower count was insufficient for the task. Implying, you see, that someone’s Twitter follower count is an important (if not the sole) indicator of social media success, and therefore a strong contributor to achieving “expert” status in that particular field. Read the rest of this entry »
As Om reports over on GigaOM, Amazon’s Kindle device has taken a price cut and is now available internationally. I’ll be adding one to my holiday wishlist this year; it’s the perfect device for anyone who likes to read and travels frequently but doesn’t want to lug books and magazines with them. I have been dying to be able to get my mitts on one here in the UK. However, as Om notes, the price still looks a little steep at $279 (plus international shipping and taxes — as yet, Amazon.co.uk is not selling it and international customers must order through Amazon.com).
Now that the Kindle has dropped in price and is available internationally, will you buy one?
I confess: I’m a terrible scatterbrain. It takes a lot for me to force my thoughts into a nice, orderly line and to keep them there — particularly in those busy times when I have a lot of competing priorities. In those times, I’ll often find myself working on one project while ideas for other tasks pop into my head at random.
Those thoughts can be as simple as “don’t forget to email Pete about that invoice” or as intricate as a new angle on an idea I’d been working on before. They’re basically the random things my brain spews out while I’m trying to focus on something else. I know I’m not alone — a lot of people experience the same thing.
Through a long process of trial and error, I’ve found that the best way to deal with these random thoughts — thoughts that are important and valuable, but unrelated to the task I’m working on — is to note them down. This way, I can be sure I won’t forget them, but I also reduce their interruption into my focus on other tasks. Read the rest of this entry »
Almost exactly a year ago, Apple introduced its unibody aluminum MacBooks. “Unibody” means that the case is a single piece, with the battery being sealed inside. My immediate reaction, shared by many road warriors and web workers, was horror: “They can’t do that!” Not only did Apple do it, but soon after, the range was expanded to include the 17” MacBooks as well. As of today, the only MacBook available with a removable battery is the legacy white 13” MacBook, whose days are believed to be numbered by many analysts.
So what happened when legions of Apple fans were faced with being unable to change out the batteries on their beloved notebooks? Did angry mobs descend on Cupertino? Not exactly. After the initial shock wore off, we began to ask ourselves how important removable laptop batteries actually were.
There are good arguments for removable notebook batteries, especially if you compute on the go a lot. Power outlets are frequently unavailable in locations such as conference rooms, convention centers and aircraft. Power access is improving in newer facilities but it is still easy to find yourself without power. Having the security of the second battery in your bag makes the quest for power a little less panicked. Also, replacing a battery that has outlived its hardware life requires no downtime. Read the rest of this entry »
Paid tweeting is nothing new. We’ve all seen spam users and posts in our Twitter feed and our following list, but usually the attempts are painfully obvious and easily dismissed. A new venture, Sponsored Tweets, by IZEA founder Ted Murphy (the guy with the tongue, in case you, like me, didn’t recognize the name but know the face) is bringing sponsored tweeting to the mainstream, and he has a pack of celebrities, both traditional and online, to back him up.
The idea is simple: companies pay Twitter users to mention their products in a favorable light. It’s paid content, not uncommon in the blogging world, brought to micro-blogging for the first time in a concerted, organized and coherent way. It even includes an attempt at transparency, via a “disclosure engine,” use of which is required for Sponsored Tweets posts. Read the rest of this entry »
Before becoming a full-time freelance consultant, I worked at a couple of very large companies and some small startups. While big companies and startups have different ways of doing business, there are also many common business practices used by most companies regardless of size. Measuring success across a variety of metrics is one of those practices embraced by companies of all sizes. When I work with clients, I help them figure out how they will measure the success or failure of the online community projects that we are implementing together. However, recently I realized that I haven’t done a good job of measuring how successful I have been as a freelance consultant.
Don’t get me wrong, I measure many things and look at the results with a critical eye. I have analytics to measure my blog traffic, tracking tools for social media metrics, business metrics (finance, marketing, etc.), and much more. What I haven’t done is clearly defined what success as a freelancer looks like for me. Do I want steady growth in blog traffic, and if so, how much? What are my financial goals for individual programs (training, consulting, book sales) and overall for my consulting company? How important are various social media metrics to my business? Read the rest of this entry »
Hi, my name is Dawn, and I am an information junkie.
I love learning new things and sharing them with others, and you can see this trend by looking back across my posts here on WebWorkerDaily and elsewhere. You’ll see many posts focused on finding and consuming information. As I write this blog post, I’m sitting in a coffee shop getting ready for a meeting with someone who has agreed to spend some time demoing Yahoo Query Language (YQL) to help me learn even more techniques to feed my information habit.
I’m also an avid Twitter user, primarily because it is a quick way to consume a variety of information, from keeping up with personal friends to discovering new tools to little nuggets of useful information. Read the rest of this entry »
Recently, I was commiserating with a friend looking for a new job about the unpleasantness of that task. I remembered the hours of fruitless toiling, sending countless resumes off into the void, along with unique, individually tailored cover letters for hundreds of positions. Days that first seem like a pleasant extended vacation eventually become a drawn-out reminder of just how little money you’re making, and just how unproductive your waking hours actually are.
Thing is, I realized that was what it was like before I became a web worker, when my ideal job was still a cozy 9-to-5 in an office somewhere, with a salary, benefits and a paid lunch hour. Once I gave up that ideal in favor of pursuing freelance opportunities online, the dreaded Job Hunting Process, which I thought was written in stone, largely ceased to exist. Sure, what replaced it wasn’t exactly a walk in the park, either, but for all its faults, it definitely beats the cold dread of Workopolis and Monster.com. Read the rest of this entry »
Web Work 101: How To Escape The Cubicle
