If you don’t have a professional blog or web site, you may think that you don’t need to worry about content strategy. Think again. Celine gave some great advice in her article “How to Develop a Content Strategy for Your Professional Blog,” but these days our blogs and web sites aren’t the only windows to our professional souls. If you use social media platforms for professional purposes, you should consider having a content strategy for the material you publish on them as well.

What is Content Strategy?

Kristina Halvorson sums it up nicely in her superb article “The Discipline of Content Strategy” on A List Apart:

“Content strategy plans for the creation, publication, and governance of useful, usable content.”

If you’re tweeting or updating on Facebook or elsewhere, you’ve got creation and publication of content down. But what about all the other keywords in that definition?

Developing a Content Strategy For Your Social Media Presence

Putting together a content strategy for your social media presence can be a real challenge, especially when you mix business with pleasure; my Facebook friends include relatives, old friends, new pals and purely professional contacts, some of whom I’ve never met personally. You can’t please all the people all the time when you have such a mixed audience, and the privacy settings are too global to adequately address this issue. (My only strategy for Facebook is not to publish things that are too personal. Content strategy is as much about what you shouldn’t publish as it is about what you should.)

But Twitter, for example, is a different story. It’s easy to have separate “personal” and “pro” Twitter accounts. And if you have a pro Twitter account, it’s also easy to apply a content strategy to it. The same is true of professional networks like LinkedIn.

Planning and Governance of Useful, Usable Content

Here are some ideas that might help you get started on a strategy:

• Planning: Define your mission (what you want to achieve with your content). Define your audience. Define what you want your content to do for your audience (inform, persuade, entertain). Define the nature of your content (what it should consist of and the tone of the content). Decide how often to produce it. Decide how you will interact with your audience.
• Governance: In this context, I interpret this to mean managing and monitoring your content and its impact, as well as your own role. Are you meeting your audience’s needs? What’s working and what’s not, and why? Is the quality of your content consistently high? Are you responsive and available?
• Useful and usable: Most of the blogs and Twitter accounts of small businesses I see need a content strategy. They tend to be too inwardly focused, all about their own updates and services (boring), or else they are too much about the owner/founder. These businesses generally need to figure out how to provide some real value to their audiences in order to keep them coming back and turn them into real fans, or even evangelists.

Here’s an example: I discovered a nice app the other day called Memory-Life. It’s a site where you can store media and other files in a virtual “box of memories.” (It’s still only available in French, but hopefully not for long. You can see a demo by clicking “Voir la démo.“)

It has a Twitter account, but it could be doing a lot more. Its audience is interested in preserving memories, so in addition to the occasional updates about upgrades and features, it could share links to articles about repairing old photos, or compressing large video files. It could provide creative suggestions, like “Upload pictures of all your grandmother’s jewelry to your box of memories” or “Create your own art gallery with Memory-Life.” It could suggest alternative uses for the app; designers could use it to create inspiration boards, for example.

If you want to connect with and engage an audience, your content has to provoke thought and action. You know you’re adding value if your content is being retweeted, liked and shared. It takes work, but it’s worth it.

You Too Could Be a Content Strategist!

Content strayegy is a relatively new career field. Large corporations are beginning to have in-house content strategists, but there is no reason why this job shouldn’t be done by consultants, which is where you come in. It could be an ideal occupation for a web worker.

If you’d like to learn ore about content strategy, in April, several chapters of the Society for Technical Communication are putting on “Content Strategy Forum 2010,” a two-day conference on content strategy in Paris. The conference is intended for:

“…anyone who develops, manages, or delivers content within their own organization or for their clients: user experience designers, information architects, business analysts, technical writers, web project managers, documentation managers, translators, web marketers, practicing content strategists, and those looking to break into the field.”

Learn more about the conference program and register here (tickets are very affordable).

Here’s some additional recommended reading on content strategy:

• “Content Strategy: The Philosophy of Data,” a great article by Rachel Lovinger
• There are several good articles on A List Apart about content strategy.

Have you implemented a content strategy for your social media presence?

Image by the_franz from sxc.hu

Last Friday, I was attending Portland’s weekly Beer and Blog event, and I stumbled across what later turned out to be an interesting trend. I had two separate, unrelated conversations about an hour apart with people working in the technology industry who once used RSS readers but had mostly abandoned them in favor of using Twitter to find news and interesting blog posts. I talked to a couple of other friends and posted the question on Twitter, which confirmed that many people are using Twitter as an RSS reader replacement.

One of the people that I talked to at Beer and Blog was Jason Mauer, Senior Developer Evangelist for Microsoft and @jasonmauer on Twitter; he says:

“I follow Twitter for the conversation anyway, and have found it’s mostly duplicative to also follow the blog feeds of people I’m already following on Twitter. If they post something, I’ll usually hear about it in a tweet.

Where Twitter really pays off is through the power of social networking — interesting content surfaces naturally from people’s recommendations. I might not know that blogger at all who just wrote a really great post, but I’ll hear about it via retweeting. People I follow deliver content piping hot right to my desk. And unlike RSS, Twitter is two-way — the discussion is right there. I get more bang for the buck spending the precious resource that is attention on Twitter than on an RSS reader, which feels like a chore in comparison.”

Mike McClure, strategy and governance consultant and @mcclure on Twitter, says:

“I use twitter in lieu of an RSS reader for productivity and efficiency reasons. All but one of my news sites make announcements on Twitter anyway, so I don’t need to check yet another news source. If the news is big enough, it’ll be circulated enough that I’ll find out soon enough anyway. I’m an analyst not a reporter, so being first to see the news is less important to me than seeing a broad set of thoughts and opinions about the same news.

For real-time information there’s Twitter, for everything else there’s Google.”

McClure also mentioned that Twitter lists might make it even easier to use Twitter to keep up on news, since you can categorize groups of Twitter accounts to create news lists for even easier access to news feeds on Twitter.

These conversations got me thinking about how my use of RSS readers has changed. I am still an obsessive user of RSS, but the feeds that I check most often aren’t news related. I have feeds for Yahoo Pipes that track mentions of all my various projects, clients and other important information, and I regularly read feeds that have unique content that I wouldn’t otherwise find (web comics, niche blogs, online community content, etc.) However, I read my news feeds or mainstream blog feeds much less often than before. Most of the news that I would get from technology blogs has already been discussed and linked on Twitter by the time I get to it in my RSS reader, so I rarely need to read my news feeds.

The feedback on Twitter (as Twitter doesn’t store tweets indefinitely this link may not work in the future) shows that many people are replacing RSS readers with Twitter, but that doesn’t tell the entire story.

As you can see, quite a few people have reduced their use of RSS readers, but like most trends, it isn’t universal. There are plenty of people — like me — who still use RSS readers for some feeds, but there are other people who have actually increased their RSS reading as a result of Twitter. The increased usage seems to fall into two categories: People who read Twitter in their RSS reader, and people who run across new things that they then add to their RSS reader.

Has Twitter changed the way you use an RSS reader?

Most of us don’t just work on the web, we kind of live on it too. And our virtual neighbors are people who speak our language. But you must not forget that people like us are still the minority, even in places that have universal Internet access like the U.S. and Europe.

We’re often called on to be more than service providers. Sometimes we also have to educate our clients, and even be ambassadors of the worlds of technology and the Internet.

There Are More of Them Than There Are of Us

First example: I launched and manage a social network. On the signup form, one of the required fields is “Tags.” As it turns out, this field is so daunting to some people that they abandon registration at that point. And the question that comes in to customer support the most often — by far — is “What are tags?” (I’ll be making that field optional!)

Second example: I recently met an author who wanted to use a chunk of text from a blog post that someone had emailed him, without including the source. He tried to find the source online so he could cite it, but couldn’t. He didn’t know about putting quotes around text when using a search engine.

Final example, just to point out that it’s not necessarily a generational thing: There is a couple in my building, aspiring fashion photographers in their late 20s. I said something to one of them about Twitter, and he said “What’s Twitter?” These two could really use an online portfolio to show off their work, and they might contact you some day.

The moral of the story is that your clients may have close to zero understanding of things you and I take for granted. So we have to walk a fine line. Here are just a few things to keep in mind:

• Watch your language. You undoubtedly want to dazzle your client with your mastery of your field, but my advice is keep it simple. Avoid the temptation to toss around buzzwords and acronyms. I mean, who would have thought that the word “tag” could be so scary? A lot of people are still using the web for email and Amazon, and that’s about it. People like this, who could end up being your clients, will run screaming from the word “algorithm.”
• Avoid “yes or no” questions. If you ask “Do you know what a CMS is?” and your client has to say “No,” she’ll feel embarrassed. Formulate your questions in such a way that you will, at the same time, give the client some good info and confidence in your expertise, get some useful information from the client as well as a sense of her level of understanding, and avoid making her feel uninformed. For example: “I think a content management system would make sense for your project. It would make it easier for you to do A, B and C. Can you tell me how you’ve handled A, B and C in the past?”
• Tell them only what they need to know. I’m not suggesting that you keep your clients in the dark. Just that you should not bombard them with information at the start. Address the big picture in a general way, and provide more specific info only for the issues at hand over the course of the project.
• Be respectful. People who are technophobic, who live in fear that the Internet will steal their bank account info or their very soul, or who have lifestyles that just don’t include computers are people too! This is where it’s most important to put on your ambassador hat.

An Interesting Side Note

My husband attended an intercultural management seminar a few years ago in which the instructor talked about the differences in American and French approaches to explaining things. Americans tend to operate on the assumption that their listener has no knowledge of a subject, and begin at square one. The French, however, start off explaining things at a more complex level, and they do so out of respect; they don’t want their listener to think that they think he’s ignorant. The point is that if you’re working with clients of another culture, keep in mind that things could be different.

If you have tips for educating clients, please share them in the comments.

Writing content for the web can take many forms, but a good number of those forms will probably involve an interview at some point or another. As a general rule, good interviews have three characteristics: One, they make you forget that someone other than the reader is asking the questions. Two, the reader leaves knowing something they didn’t before. Three, the reader doesn’t learn anything about the interviewer from the interview. The tips that follow should help you achieve these things.

Interview by Email

Personally, I think this is the best form of interview, for the simple reason that you don’t have to ask someone if you can record the conversation, but also because it’s far harder to misquote someone when you have their answers in their own writing.

Email also lets you relax and lay out your interview strategy and the actual questions. In theory, you can do that when speaking live to someone, too, but depending on who you’re interviewing and how confident a person you are in social settings, talking live may muddy the process a bit and leave you flummoxed to the point where your interview quality is significantly affected.

Regardless of how you choose to conduct your interview, because some will no doubt maintain that live is a much better alternative, perhaps because you have a greater chance of catching your subject off guard (a valid point), the advice that follows still applies.

Keep It Simple, But Focused

Ask open-ended questions. This should be self-evident, but if you ask someone a question they can answer with a simple “yes” or “no,” many often will. Instead of crafting an impressive, incisive 25-word question that’ll net you a three-word answer, try to keep your end of things relatively light and allow for plenty of expansion on your interviewee’s part.

But open-endedness can also be a double-edged sword. If you ask too vague a question, you might get a wealth of information, but it might not be useful, pertinent or interesting information. The key is to keep it on point. So, for example, instead of asking “What motivates you?” to someone like Ashton Kutcher when your publication focuses on social media, ask, “What motivated you to become so involved with Twitter to begin with?”

Care to Elaborate?

If your initial interview questions don’t elicit what you were looking for, or one answer in particular takes you in a new and potentially more interesting direction, don’t shy away from contacting your source again for further information. Think of the initial interview as a collaborative first draft process.

An exchange of two or three sets of questions and answers isn’t unusual. I always find it better to do this sort of thing over email, since you don’t have to worry about setting up times for face-to-face meetings or phone conversations for follow-up questions, and you can view the entire threaded conversation in your inbox when you later go to write the article. You could also use IM, but as with phone conversations, always make sure to get your interviewee’s permission before logging the conversation.

Post-interview

There are many ways to conduct a post-interview. The simplest is just to send a thank-you note, along with a publication date for the content that will result, and a promise to follow up with a link when it goes live. Depending on the purposes of the interview you’re conducting, more or less may be required.

If you’re just starting out with a source that you’d like to retain in the future, and who might be sensitive to how they are portrayed, you may want to forward an advance copy of the finished piece so that they can give you input before publication. Generally speaking, this isn’t advisable, though, since it puts too much control in the hands of the person being interviewed. If that person is your company’s CEO, and your piece if for the corporate newsletter, then by all means, forward it for his or her approval first.

Interviewing for the web resembles interviewing for print, but it doesn’t necessarily mirror it. It’s hard to give broad advice when the type of content you’re producing makes such big differences in how you go about the task, but hopefully the advice above gets you off to a good start.

If you have any good interviewing tips, share them below.

I’ve been a little caught off-guard lately with some of the presumptions people seem to be making now on Twitter. Where did all these expectations, such as an expectation for a response to a retweet or a “follow back,” come from? Why are people coming to Twitter with the belief that others should act and react just the way they expect? That isn’t how the real world works. Why should it be any different on Twitter?

Why Don’t You Respond to Me on Twitter?

The other day I received a message from someone I like (but hardly know) asking me why I’m not responding to their messages to me on Twitter. In a momentary panic, I clicked around to look at all of my recent @ messages and my DMs (direct messages) and couldn’t find any addressed to me from this person.

When I asked them about their message to me that I failed to address, I was pointed to a retweet of one of my tweets they had put out to their followers. It appeared that this person retweeted me with an expectation that I would respond to that retweet as if it were a personal message to me warranting a response. Maybe they were expecting me to thank them for the retweet, and because I didn’t do it within 24 hours I’ve broken some new unwritten rule. Why didn’t I get the memo?

My theory on conversing on Twitter is that you:

1. Do the best you can.
2. Try to use the Golden Rule (as with all social media).
3. Respond and thank people when you can, but you shouldn’t be held accountable for thanking every person every single time they mention you.
4. Regularly tweet a general “thanks to everyone who retweeted me this week” or “thank you to everyone who mentioned me for #followfriday today” rather than naming each person by Twittername (and that should be okay).
5. Try to retweet or give kudos to others when you can, and as appropriate, just because it is a nice thing to do.

Yes, I believe in being courteous, but I’m getting a sinking feeling that many people are now doing “nice and generous” things on Twitter for the kudos, public thanks and @ mentions they expect to get. Some people’s thinking now seems to be “that person has 5000 followers, so if I retweet them, they will thank me — their followers will see my Twittername and maybe even link over to my Twitter page.” They are co-opting nice gestures and turning them into strategic ploys. My skin is crawling at the thought. No wonder that, increasingly, the kudos I get from popular Twitterers is by DM instead of publicly.

Why Don’t You Follow Me Back on Twitter?

When it comes to expectations on Twitter, I think an unrealistic one is expecting people to follow you back if you follow them. Sure, it would be nice, but my advice is to follow people because you are truly interested in what they have to say, or are truly interested in connecting with them in some way and cultivating a relationship, or both. What could you possibly gain by following random people purely in the hope that they will follow you back? Here’s what you gain: Noise! The dilution of your Twitterstream with worthless noise. Why use Twitter that way?

If you really want to know why somebody might not follow you back, I’ve come up with a little guide to different types of Twitterers who probably won’t follow you and the reasons why. Hopefully, this list will save you some disappointment and heartache.

1. The Celeb — If they’re famous and actually using Twitter, chances are they just won’t follow you back. Unless they are @britneyspears.
2. The Frugal Follower – If they are really good at time management and controlling their impulses, chances are they are only following people they know or who they truly admire, and you’re just not one of them.
3. The Snob – They might not know who you are and therefore you are not worthy of a follow back. Or maybe they don’t like you.
4. The Chooser — They only follow their friends.
   
5. The Novice — They may not know how to follow you back.
6. The Overwhelmed — They haven’t noticed that you’ve followed them, and just haven’t gotten around to seeing who is following them to determine who they want to follow back.

If someone doesn’t follow you back, that’s okay. Yes, there may be moments where your emotions get the best of you. I’ve personally seen people who I do know — who I’ve known for years — who have not followed me back. I admit that for a moment now and then I do think “Oh no, they don’t like me.” But then I let it go, because I realize that I’m probably guilty of doing the exact same thing to others. And I don’t mean any offense; I’m just #6.

So the next time you’re interacting on Twitter with some expectations, realize that not everyone is on Twitter for the same reasons as you, and not everyone uses Twitter in the same way you do. There are actually no written rules on Twitter, and that’s okay. There won’t be anarchy on the streets because of that. There may be some hurt feelings along the way, but as long as we each do the best we can, what else can anyone ask for?

What are your expectations when using Twitter?

Community has been a big focus for me for a long time. I’ve helped companies build and manage online communities, and I even co-founded a non-profit in Portland that organizes free events for the technology community here. I also try to help people with their businesses or ideas whenever I can, and I do a fair amount of match-making to help people find the resources they need for their projects. Some of this makes me money, and some of it I do for free because I believe it’s the right thing to do.

In communities, people help each other without asking anything in return. By helping other people solve problems or helping them get ahead, you also increase your social capital, and it becomes more likely that people will help you out at some future point. The catch is that you have to be willing to help people first without any specific expectation that they will return the favor. This is the basic idea behind whuffie, a concept first introduced in fiction by Cory Doctorow in “Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom,” but applied to today’s communities in Tara Hunt’s “The Whuffie Factor.” If you haven’t read these books, I recommend both of them. I’m currently reading the latter, so whuffie has been on my mind lately.

While the concept of whuffie applies to everyone, it is particularly important for freelancers and other web workers. Those of us working alone need to support and help each other, since we don’t have the same resources as people working on-site at large corporations.

Portland is a town with a large population of freelancers, consultants and telecommuters, and many of these people offer services similar to my own. The natural instinct from some people would be to retreat from these potential competitors in case you might be up for the same job at some point in the future. I encourage you to take an alternate view: focus on cooperation, instead of competition. By helping each other, we make the entire community stronger and more vibrant, thus raising opportunities for the community as a whole.

Here are a few of the things that I do to support my community:

• Be available. I attend a lot of local events, and I am always happy to help people. I give people Yahoo Pipes demos, answer their questions about corporate blogging or other social media, provide advice about finding community manager jobs, and more. Just catch me at a local event, like Beer and Blog, and I’ll always do my best to answer questions or point you to someone else who can.
• Give back. Find ways to give back to your community. A few years ago, I noticed that while Portland had an amazing user group community, we didn’t have enough events that brought people together across technologies. Rather than complain or wait for someone else to organize some new events, I stepped up to help organize events like BarCamp and Ignite Portland. If you attend local events, offer to help out in some way or start a meetup of your own to bring like-minded folks together.
• Share the link love. I read so many amazing blog posts and articles that shape the way that I think about things in more ways than I can possibly count. As a result, I like to share them with other people even when these links go to my direct competitors. I have a couple of ways that I share links with people. I start by bookmarking them in Delicious, and in a weekly blog post, I pick five to ten of those links to share with my readers. I also do a monthly newsletter, and I always include a section for interesting articles written by other people.
• Help promote your community. I try to help other people promote projects that are interesting to me. This often takes the form of a retweet to share some interesting new event, link, or project with the people who follow me on Twitter. Sometimes it turns into a blog post if it’s something that requires a little more explanation.

These are just a few of the more visible ways that I support my community, and they don’t include the one-offs that come in via email or that happen face-to-face. I help people because it’s the right thing to do; the increase in whuffie is a nice side effect for me.

How is your whuffie? What do you do to support your community?

Photo by Aaron Hockley of Hockley Photography, used with permission from the photographer.

If there’s one thing doctors and lawyers hate, it’s being repeatedly asked for their professional opinion about something outside of the office by friends and acquaintances. First of all, it’s professionally irresponsible to advise people without a full grasp of their specific situation and context, and secondly, complying with requests of that nature effectively amounts to giving away for free what you normally do for others for a fee.

Web workers, too, have to deal with these kinds of requests, but I personally find that people are even less abashed about asking for advice and help related to blogs, social media, networking and other web work because they don’t regard it as a specialized service the way they do with medical and legal expertise.

I’m not saying giving away freebies is always a definite no-no, but I do think that as web workers we need to start reinforcing the value of our work by drawing a line between friendly advice and working for free. Here’s how I’m trying to create that demarcation.

Parry When Possible

I’m mostly of the opinion that the easiest way to deal with most conflict is to avoid it, and free advice is no exception. Most of the time, when people ask me to do something like set up their blog, write their cover letter/resumé introduction, or otherwise give away what I normally require a fee for, I either respond noncommittally or agree to talk to them more about it later on. It avoids unpleasant scenes with close friends and relatives, and nine times out of ten, you’ll never hear about it again.

Role Reversal

It’s hard to keep this tactic from sounding too snarky or sarcastic, but as with most things, asking someone to see things from your perspective can help curb friendly requests. Avoid the “Do I ask you to help me remodel my kitchen for free??” knee-jerk response. Instead, exercise some tact and take the time to fully explain real parallels between what exactly you do for a living, and how it is you do it. Often, people don’t think anything of asking for web working advice because they don’t see the work behind it, since the process can be fairly opaque to outsiders.

This One’s On the House

Refusing to give away advice or help isn’t always the best course of action. If, for instance, your mother wants you to help her set up a travel blog (sign up for Blogger and pick a theme), looking to make some money off the deal would probably be pretty callous of you.

Even in less clear-cut situations, the advantages of giving something away might outweigh the downsides. Always examine whether or not you might be able to work out some kind of barter arrangement in exchange for other service, or for future consideration, if you know the person you’re dealing with to be dependable and have a solid sense of fair play.

Convert the Lead

If you’re an optimist, then you won’t see requests for pro bono help as an annoyance. You’ll see them as viable sales leads, and therefore a valuable source of potential income. This is another tricky bit of business, since many people will immediately become disinterested in your services when they find out you won’t be performing them free of charge. But that actually makes it a doubly-beneficial solution, since you’ll land a sale if the person you’re dealing with has a genuine need and you’re a good salesperson, or you’ll dissuade them from coming calling on you in the future when they’re looking for free advice.

Being asked about your job is great, especially if you love it as much as I do mine. I love the opportunity to talk about what I do with people who are genuinely interested. What I don’t love is being asked to do something by someone who couldn’t care less about the how and why of web work, just so that they don’t have to do it themselves. People will only respect what you do for a living if you respect it first, and part of that means not cheapening it by doing for free what you would normally do for a fee. Plus, shouldn’t your buddy from college learn to write their own cover letter at some point?

Do you find that people often ask you for free advice/work? How do you deal with these requests?

I like Twitter, and I embrace it for both personal and private use. Until recently, though, I’ve been hesitant to take the next logical step and attend a tweetup, despite their popularity here in Toronto. (A tweetup is a gathering of Twitter users, and is something our own Aliza Sherman has much more experience with.) But I did finally bite the bullet and give it a try. Actually, two tries, to be more precise, which resulted in two very different experiences.

For the sake of all those involved, and to avoid scaring people in my area away from specific groups or events, the identities of all those involved will be kept a secret. The specific names of people doesn’t matter so much as the setting and organization of the event, anyway.

Tweetup the First — Small + Casual = Quality

Like a debutante at her first ball, I was nervous but excited about attending my very first tweetup. Two things drew me out of my shell: The organizer was someone with whom I’d had very positive dialogues on Twitter leading up to the event, and the guest list was small and handpicked by said organizer, whose judgment I trusted. It didn’t hurt the the venue was mere blocks from my house, in a neighborhood I was familiar with.

The format was very informal, without a guest speaker, and with socializing at the top of the agenda. Drinks (primarily sangria) and conversation flowed freely, and not once did I encounter a sales pitch or aggressive self-promotion, though I did walk away with a few business cards and a strong impression of who people were and what they did. That was key for me, since the hard sell inevitably sends me screaming for the hills.

End result: I had some laughs, made some worthwhile connections, and generally had a good time. I can be shy meeting people for the first time, but the small group size (10 to 12 people) made it impossible to stay in my shell for long.

Tweetup the Second — Large + Cliquey = Nothing Worth Tweeting Home About

I was so impressed with my first tweetup experience that when another hashtagged event came up a month or so later, involving some of the people from the first and a whole lot more, I was all for attending. This one was different in a few key ways: It was an ongoing monthly event with a larger, devoted following, and the setting was bigger and flashier, lending it a definite party vibe. At first, that was what appealed to me about the event, but I think it ultimately bears most of the responsibility for my eventual disappointment.

Maybe I should’ve looked more closely at the attendees list, but what I found out too late was that most of the people attending this particular event were already deeply entrenched in their own cliques, so that they basically pared off into tightly knit clusters of four or five at the beginning of the evening and talked (as groups of friends often do) about insider things that I wasn’t privy to. A few new attendees who were in the same boat as myself managed to group together and chat amongst ourselves, but it felt a little too much like being relegated to the kids’ table at a family reunion for my tastes.

Take-aways

This by no means covers all the bases when it comes to tweetups. I’ve yet to attend the kind that takes place in a convention hall and features a guest speaker(s), for instance. But it did teach me some valuable lessons about what to expect when your Twitter usage intersects with the real world. My advice to other novices: Try out more intimate events first, even if your natural inclination is to go to bigger happenings in order to blend in more easily with the crowd. For event organizers, I’d advise you to try to avoid clique formation as best as possible. I’d rather not spend my night feeling like I’m back in high school, whether or not I bring a built-in group of friends along for the ride.

Do you attend tweetups? If so, what do you/don’t you like about them? If not, what are your reasons for staying away, and what might convince you to go?

Twitter is still a scary, untamed frontier for many businesses. They know that they should be engaging with the Twitter community, but aren’t sure how to do it.

I’ve collected up some of the most common questions asked by Twitter-for-business newbies and answered them below.

Is it bad to have a lopsided following/followers ratio?

Balance is better. Following 150 people with only 75 following is OK. If you have more lopsided figures of, say, 300 following to 75 followers, that might give tweeters pause before they consider following you. Focus on quality over quantity.

How do I stop people from following me?

Block them. Go to the person’s Twitter page and click “Block” in the sidebar under “Actions.” Once you block someone, they won’t show up in your followers list.

I’m concerned that a follower of my company is a porn site. What if my clients see such a follower prior to my blocking them?

First off, most folks don’t have time to analyze your list of followers. Secondly, most people know that spammers go after everyone and we don’t always catch them all. So it’s not a concern, unless you have lots of them.

If you block someone, is there a way to see those you blocked, in case you want to reverse your decision?

You can reverse your decision by going to the person’s Twitter page and clicking “Unblock” under “Actions.” You can view a list of people you’ve blocked, but it’s an XML file and not very readable: http://twitter.com/blocks/blocking.xml.

Should I protect my Twitter page, so I can avoid spammers and such?

This is a bad idea, particularly if you’re using Twitter for business. Some Twitter users don’t follow people who protect their updates.

I’m trying to implement Twitter at my company, but can’t get executive buy-in. What can I do?

Many businesses are using Twitter to connect and exchange ideas with customers. It might help to do a search to find case studies and examples of businesses using Twitter and show how they’ve benefited.

Do you recommend having separate Twitter accounts for business personal use?

That depends. Many people have a single account that they use for all because it adds personality. But if you like to share strong opinions and talk about sensitive topics like religion or politics, then a separate personal account would be wise. It also depends on what you represent. Are you working for a large company and tweeting in its name or are you a one-person business?

What are the liabilities associated with a business using Twitter?

It’s up to the business. The company might want to consider drafting a policy on the company’s rules for how employees use Twitter and other social networking sites. Suggestions for things to address include usage, company disclosure and consequences for violating policy.

Who should manage a company’s Twitter account? Marketing? Product Management? Sales?

It’s important to note that Twitter users easily detect fakery. Who does the tweeting depends on the purpose of the Twitter account(s). Be honest about who is doing the tweeting. Avoid having personnel far removed from the executives to do the CEO’s tweeting, for example.

What are those words starting with # like “#b2b”?

They’re hashtags. They make it easier to tag references to a topic, event or other common factor. For example, if someone tweets about a job opportunity, he could tag it with “#jobs” so those looking for jobs can easily find it.

Should you use a account name that is recognized to be associated with your company, or not?

For business-related Twitter accounts, you should either use your real name or your company’s name. If you use the company’s name, you should put your real name in your profile. If multiple people tweet from the same company account, then say so in the profile. List their names, if you can.

If the people you are following are listed on your Twitter page, how do you prevent people from clicking on your competition? Can you follow someone without it being listed?

It’s better to not hide the people you follow, even your competition. Having open dialogue with your industry — including your competitors — will help you earn trust and credibility. If you really want to follow someone without them knowing, then subscribe to their Twitter RSS feed.

How often should a business tweet?

Avoid posting many tweets in a short space of time and overwhelming followers’ streams. Think quality over quantity. A good rule of thumb is to post few tweets spread out over the course of the day.

How do you respond to people who say something good or bad about your business?

Being able to rapidly respond to any news about your business is valuable. If it’s good, either tweet the person directly or in a direct message (DM). You don’t want to bug people with a short “Thank you for that.” If it’s something bad, try to solve the problem or ask questions to find out the problem. If you find out the problem and you’re researching the answer, don’t wait until you find the answer to respond. You can respond quickly with a “We’re researching this and will get back to you.”

Should I block followers who have nothing to do with my business?

No — unless they’re spammers or have inappropriate content.

How can we quickly build up our list of people to follow?

Use search.twitter.com or an application like twellow.com, which can search profiles for keywords. However, don’t be in a hurry to build a big list. Remember lopsided followers/following is not good.

Is there a way to integrate CRM with Twitter?

Some CRM applications include Twitter and other social media sites as part of the app. Some have add-ons. If yours doesn’t, create a custom field.

How do I get leads on Twitter?

Focus on providing value with your tweets. Spread out links to your own content, because doing it too often turns off many users. Help others, ask questions and share thoughts about your industry or business in general. These are just a few of many ways you can build relationships on Twitter.

What ways have you found Twitter useful in your business?

Image created at twitlogo

Yikes! I participated in two Twitter chats last night and lost a follower as a result of overwhelming his stream with my tweets.

Here are eight simple ways to avoid driving your followers crazy by dominating their streams, and perhaps losing them in the process:

1. Use a second ID for chats: One brilliant user has a second ID that was identical to his main ID, except with “Chat” added at the end.
2. Avoid responding to everything: Some well-meaning users respond to almost every individual question or comment with a tweet rather than summing up and holding back. If you want to thank someone, then send a direct message (DM) instead.
3. Ease up on #followfriday: Oh my gosh, some people have nothing but “@name @name @name (x 10) #followfriday” in their stream on Fridays. Their whole Twitter page is full of names. Make your #followfriday more meaningful by recommending less people and explaining those recommendations.
4. Watch those links and quotes: Sure, we all appreciate a good quote and links to great articles. Just take care not to fill up your stream with quotes, links or both.
5. Schedule tweets: Typically, I don’t recommend automating anything in Twitter as it will likely lower your rep. However, if you’re like me and only check Twitter a couple of times a day, then you may want to spread out your tweets, replies, etc., using an automated service. This avoids cluttering a person’s stream with bursts of tweets.
6. Dump the short tweets: Some people’s Twitter page show lots of meaningless tweets, such as “Cool!” “I agree,” “LOL” and “Thank you for RT.” DM those messages instead, or expand your responses to add meaning.
7. Share your own links sparingly: Just now, one user has three tweets to his own blog in my stream. It’s OK to share your stuff, but certainly not one link after the other. Spread ‘em out. A good rule of thumb is to tweet your stuff no more than once a day..
8. Drop the play-by-play: Lots of us love sports, but not when you give us every play at the event you’re attending. This applies to conferences and events, too. Instead of “live tweeting,” give one or two summaries of what’s happening.

Every rule has exceptions. Some folks tweet from conferences and share great insights. The point is to tweet carefully and wisely. Follow us on Twitter @webworkerdaily.

How do you tweet without irritating your followers?

Image created at twitlogo

For those of us who earn our living working online, the always-connected lifestyle can have its benefits and its drawbacks. I spend most of my day at my computer, whether I am in my office or working from other locations. When I step away from the laptop, I rely heavily on my phone as a way to check email, Twitter and RSS feeds, and I use it to look up information or get a map to the location for my next meeting. However, it isn’t always clear when using these devices violates the social rules defining acceptable behavior. In the New York Times, Alex Williams shares his views on the topic of smartphone usage and manners, so I thought that I would try to outline my take on appropriate use of devices in various social situations.

Photo by scriptingnews

Conferences and events: For most events, using a laptop or phone falls within the boundaries of acceptable behavior. We use our devices to take notes, blog or tweet about the event, and keep up with our email and other work during these events. Possible exceptions to this rule could be where the event is small and intimate, or where most of the attendees are not computer-savvy and so someone typing on a laptop might seem out of place.

Company meetings: In this case, it depends on the company or the situation. In several of the technology companies where I have worked in the past, everyone brought laptops to meetings and used them to take notes or keep up with important emails during the breaks. In some companies, you might find that laptops are only acceptable in meetings where they are absolutely required: Bringing your devices to these meetings would likely be frowned upon. It also is usually inappropriate to bring your devices to very small meetings with only a couple of people.

Client meetings: You should expect to keep your laptop closed and your phone put away during important meetings with clients (you know, those people who pay you to do stuff for them). This was the biggest adjustment for me when I became a freelance consultant. I’d spent years working at technology companies where I could always open the laptop to take notes or add items to my task list. I had to (gasp!) start carrying a pad of paper and a pen to use for my notes during client meetings. Exceptions can be made when you need to show the client something, or if you need to take a lot of notes (first ask if they mind if you take notes on your laptop).

Important meetings: For important meetings with executives, interviews or other critical meetings, play it safe and keep the devices put away. You don’t want to blow a great opportunity by doing something silly.

Social settings: It depends. When I am hanging out with my techie friends, it isn’t unusual for over half of us to be sitting with computers or our phones while also engaging in conversation. However, with other friends, the devices stay put away. In general, take your cues from the other people in the room to decide whether you should be texting or reading email.

These are some of the things that I think about when deciding whether or not to open the laptop or pull my phone out of my pocket. As you can see, there are no hard-and-fast rules, and I have probably made a few mistakes with my own device usage. I like to be connected, and I probably push the limits of acceptable behavior in most cases.

Where do you draw the line between acceptable and rude behavior with your electronic devices?

One of my favorite blogs recently has been The Art of Manliness. It’s not a boneheaded celebration of dumb machismo, rather a thoughtful exploration of what being a man can and should mean in a post-feminist world. With values anchored in equality, the writers explore everything from employment and relationships to parenting, grooming and etiquette.

Last month, in response to the deepening recession, one contributor wrote “How To Network Like A Man.” It’s a great essay on networking, oriented around the story of a man losing his job and immediately putting to work his network of professional relationships to find new work. The advice in the essay isn’t gender-specific, and applies pretty broadly to almost anyone in a professional context — for web workers, good networking skills are even more valuable than understanding CSS or Photoshop inside out.

Here are some of the key points to take away from the piece:

1. Develop a networker’s mentality — being communicative, reciprocal and thinking of yourself as a”business owner” can help place you in the correct frame of mind for networking effectively.
2. Know Your Networking Tools – LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, MySpace and blogging are all name-checked as being part of the portfolio of digital tools necessary to actively network and maintain a significant public profile. (MySpace looks a little out of place there to me.) The article also provides a few tips on business cards, resumes, phone etiquette and the age-old handshake.
3. Look like a professional — the writer notes that appropriate professionalism with headshots, email signatures and documents can all help to brand yourself appropriately, and goes on to suggest a few dress codes for different personas and even times of day.

Some of the best networking advice I’ve read recently comes from Guy Kawasaki in a post called “The Art of Schmoozing.” He suggests that the essence of networking is “establishing relationships before you need them” and “discovering what you can do for someone else.” Kawasaki’s advice is really about altruism and generosity of time.

Share your networking tips in the comments.

We’ve all learned that good news travels fast online, but bad news travels faster. Now, with social networks, blogs and microblogs, the speed with which bad news can travel online is staggering, as everyone can get in on the conversation almost instantly. What can any of us — individuals, organizations and companies — do to handle a social media communications crisis?

After publishing my 10 Golden Rules of Social Media, I’ve been asked by a number of people what to do when things go wrong in the social mediasphere. Anyone who is putting themselves out there using social media tools is bound to encounter moments of crisis — some as large as the Domino’s fiasco, others as small as an old-fashioned person-to-person flame war.

My advice is to plan now. Don’t wait for that communications crisis to take place before planning for how you’ll handle the fallout when something bad (inevitably) happens. Here’s a blueprint you can use for your own plan.

1. Pay attention. Whether you are using Google Alerts or Twilert or any other monitoring service to see when your name or brand name is mentioned, setting up “digital listening posts” is essential to help learn about not just the good things people are saying about you, but the bad things as well. Getting an early “heads up” can make all the difference in the world between crisis and total disaster.

2. Review context. Before you panic and jump the gun to respond to what might appear to be a crisis, dig a little deeper to make sure you understand what is being said and why. You don’t want to enter the conversation until you have a firm grasp on the issues being raised.

3. Address promptly. Timeliness is everything when dealing with and defusing the crisis. Every day, every hour, every minute you agonize over what to do — or ignore the situation altogether — is time wasted.

4. Acknowledge first. Once you figure out what has happened and what some of the emotions are behind it, make sure to address these issues or emotions in your responses. Like any good interpersonal communications, start with statements like “I understand you’re frustrated” or “We realize this is a confusing situation.” Give credence to the other party’s feelings and perceptions. They may not be correct, but they are valid in that they’re what they believe and feel.

5. Don’t overthink. Running through committees, endless drafts and approval processes to get a response out there can cause far more damage than good. As long as you have taken the time to assess the situation and can take a rational, respectful tone in your response, even an awkward response is OK to start with, and buys you time to continue to respond to the problem.

6. Be open. If you’re upset, nervous, worried, shocked — don’t be afraid to express that as well. People want to see a human response to a crisis, not an overproduced, formulaic or canned reply. When there is a crisis, there are people involved. Pretending there are no emotions mixed in the mess is a surefire way to lose credibility with others. Domino’s CEO responded pretty quickly and openly. However, check out his response to the crisis. The CEO never once looks at the camera. If you are going to be open and forthcoming in your response, at least look straight at the camera at some point. Even when reading from a teleprompter, you can set it up so your eyes are directed at the camera. Otherwise, you’ll look shifty and untrustworthy.

7. Fix the problem. If the crisis is bringing a problem to your attention, admit it, address it and fix it. If something is wrong and you can make it right, do it. If something isn’t really wrong but someone perceives that it is wrong, don’t dismiss their concerns. Take every exchange seriously, and do your best. That is all anyone can really expect. If you make sincere efforts and consistently take the high road, you stand to gain some goodwill, even if the problem is not entirely resolved.

8. Tell your story. Telling your own story throughout the “fixing” process is another good way of helping defuse the issue. Giving updates such as “We’re still looking into that bug that caused your data loss,” and “Please contact us privately so we can make amends to this situation” lets anyone paying attention to the situation see something is being done, even some of it has to happen “behind-the-scenes.”

What other things should we think about when it comes to crisis communications in a social media-powered world?

I spend a significant amount of time, more than I probably realize, naming things both online and offline. We have usernames, Twitter handles, blogs, training classes, books, events, and so much more. Each one needs to have a name, and many of us probably don’t spend as much time as we should when picking a name. Personally, I hate coming up with names: the brainstorming to come up with something unique, the paralysis of choosing, the uncertainty about choosing something that won’t work as well as you thought it would, having to change the name later, and more. I prefer being poked with a sharp stick.

I started thinking more about naming this week when I went to my fitness tracking web site, Gyminee, and found myself on a new web site, DailyBurn. After poking around on the blog to find out more about the change, I found this:

So, why the name change? First, we noticed that while Gyminee was a memorable name, nobody could spell it! This is significant considering that people need to type in our web address in order to sign up.  Second, while we liked Gyminee, we wanted a name that would resonate better with what we are all about; improving health one step at a time, essentially daily change.  Oh yeah, we also got a little tired of hearing jokes about a cricket and hearing, “Isn’t that the name of a kid’s clothing store?”

As painful as it is to change names, I think they probably made a wise choice. I’ve made similar choices in the past. For example, I’ve renamed my blog three times. It started out as the “Open Source Culture” blog, but I found the topic of open source to be too narrow when my interests started spreading out into many other areas of online communities and social networking. I wanted to keep something similar, so I dropped the word “Source” and changed it to the “Open Culture” blog, which turned out to be a terrible name. It meant nothing, it wasn’t memorable, and there were many other blogs and podcasts with the same name.

I finally got fed up and decided to come with a brand-new name and a real logo for my blog. I wanted something that would evolve with me and wouldn’t be tied to a particular technology. I also wanted something that was tied to me, but was more creative than using my name. I came up with the idea to use an anagram of my name, and I cycled through several of them before I found one that I liked with an available domain name: Fast Wonder. For the logo, I went with a Southeastern Five Lined Skink, a very fast type of lizard that I would often see on my grandparents’ deck in Tennessee when I was a kid. This skink is black, orange, and vibrant blue, so I took its colors as the scheme for my blog.

Originally, I had a static web site using the fastwonder.com URL and put the blog at fastwonderblog.com. In retrospect, this was a domain naming mistake. Finding the right name to use for your URL is just as important as the name itself, and I should have spent more time thinking about the domain names and how they would work together. If I was starting from scratch, I would have put the blog somewhere on the fastwonder.com URL, but I think the SEO hit from moving it now outweighs the potential benefits of moving it, so I’ve decided to leave it on fastwonderblog.com.

Here are a few things you might want to think about the next time you need to pick a name.

• Is the domain name available?
• Is it unique and memorable?
• Does it fit well with your business and the image you want to project?
• Will the name grow with you or limit you later?
• Will it be confused with other names?
• Are there any obvious jokes about crickets or anything else that might get annoying?
• Can people spell the name?
• Is it short enough not to be annoying when typing it on an iPhone or other mobile device?

What mistakes have you made with past names? What steps did you take to fix those naming mistakes?

Image by stock.xchng user thenys

Working on the web is great, but you miss out on some great business-building opportunities if you’re far removed from the majority of your clients. Business lunches and dinners are a fantastic tool for greasing the wheels of profitable partnerships, but if you’re in Taipei and your client is in Reno, it can be a little hard to coordinate. What web workers should not do, and what we too often do, is just shrug our shoulders and leave it at that.

Even across great distances, we can still schmooze and butter up with the best of ‘em. The key is good CRM, which applies regardless of distance. Here are some examples of how you might go about bridging that geographic gap to form a solid client-contractor bond.

A Little Friendship Goes a Long Way

It’s hard to gauge the degree of formality a client expects from you, especially if you only correspond via email or other digital means. If possible, however, and if you aren’t getting any red flags, you should try to let yourself be a little more human in correspondence with at least one of your client’s staff. This might mean exchanging emails beyond the professional minimum, or connecting on Twitter or Facebook, or whatever you think might result in a more chummy relationship.

It’s a far cry from a wild night out on the town, but it will still go a long way toward making your professional connections more than just an email address you send correspondence and work product to. Make sure you’re not overstepping any boundaries here, though, or you’ll end up doing more damage than good.

Dinner’s On Me, Even If I’m Not There

Just because you aren’t physically able to take clients to dinner doesn’t mean you can’t do that remotely, too. Try to find out your client’s taste when it comes to food and restaurant choices, and then, if possible, get gift certificates to send them on special occasions. While gift certificates may not always be available, especially for independent restaurants, contact the restaurant directly, and I’m sure most of the time you’ll be able to work something out.

The key to success with this kind of gifting is making sure it’s timed appropriately. Just giving a client dinner for no apparent reason could actually backfire and arouse suspicion that something isn’t going well with the project. If you’re familiar enough with your client to know personal details like anniversaries and birthdays, than that’s the time to choose to do something like this, but if not, stick to major project successes.

Quirky Gifts

I’ve actually only been on the receiving end of this, but it worked a treat. In passing, I mentioned on Twitter my dismay that Apple Jacks (the cereal) wasn’t available for purchase in Canada. Within the week, I’d received two boxes of the coveted breakfast item in the mail. A colleague had spotted the mention and quickly rushed to my aid, at his own expense, expecting nothing in return.

This small act of kindness did more to solidify my good feelings toward him than probably a year’s worth of email or Twitter correspondence could have. This kind of opportunity may not just fall in your lap like my Apple Jacks comment, but if you keep your eyes and ears open when dealing with your client, a similar situation might arise in which you’re in a unique position to scratch a quirky itch in a fun way. Best of all, in most cases this kind of relationship-building won’t cost you nearly as much as dinner or other gifts, and it comes with a significantly higher rater of return compared to other methods, in my opinion.

It may not be quite the same as traditional face-to-face business outings, but there’s a lot of relationship-building you can do as a remote worker, too. It helps keep clients happy, yes, but it also helps you put a human face on your contacts and professional associates, which is far more valuable in the long run.

Photo courtesy Rifu Senka on Flickr

Much as we wish it wasn’t true, on occasion we take on a contract that gets us in over our heads. Especially when we’re just starting, out or are unfamiliar with the field or industry in which we’re working. Obviously realizing that you can’t deliver what the client is expecting, and what you originally agreed to produce, can be a very stressful experience. It may even seem like it’s the end of your professional life.

It most likely isn’t, so don’t panic. There are steps you can take to mitigate the damage and come out as clean as possible on the other side.

I’ve run into this situation on two previous occasions. Once, I brought it on myself; the other time, the firm I was working for passed me a project due to staff transitions that had already been handed off so many times there was no clear record of who began it. The following tips come from what I learned from both experiences.

Review Your Initial Commitment

Before you resign yourself to failure, make sure you aren’t mistakenly writing off a success. The parameters of an engagement have a tendency to shift once you’re underway, and you end up doing work that you never planned or promised to do in the first place. The temptation is just to keep working as long as the client is willing to pay you, regardless of scope changes, but that’s not always the best way to go about it.

If you’ve already accomplished what you intended, and you haven’t renegotiated based on a scope change, you might want to bring it up with your client, especially if you feel you’re getting out of your depth. Better to cut your losses and suggest another service provider with expertise in the new area. Your client will think better of you than if you carried the project through to completion but did a sub-par job.

Provide a Transition Package

If you have to leave work half-done, your client will likely want to have it completed either in-house, or by someone else. You can make that person’s job a lot easier, and soothe your client, by preparing a hand-off package. This can contain any number of things depending on what you’re working on, but make sure to detail your workflow to date, what has and hasn’t been accomplished, and what might need to be reviewed or corrected.

A smooth hand-off is especially important if you’re giving the project to someone else in a firm that you work for, but it’s a definite must either way. It proves to your client that you’re a consummate professional, even if this particular situation is beyond your expertise.

Propose a Solution You Can Provide

Just because you may not be able to give the client exactly what they want doesn’t mean you can’t come up with another, possibly better solution. There are often more than one means to an end, and providing a client with alternatives will also show them that you’re committed to the project and trying to exhaust all possibilities before throwing in the towel.

Be careful how you frame alternative suggestions. Some clients will respect your opinion immediately because they hired you. Others, though, will be quite set about how and what they want you to deliver, so proposing alternatives will be a delicate matter.

Payoff

In the best of all worlds, we’d all finish all of our contracts with a 100 percent satisfied customer, who got exactly what they were looking for. In fact, that’s not always possible. Falling short is a depressing event for any freelancer or contractor, but with a little care, it can be just another unpleasant memory and not a career-ending disaster.

What do you do when you can’t deliver on a project?

Image by flickr user purpletwinkie.