Web Worker Daily

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. Read the rest of this entry »

We all have to follow never-ending streams of information to varying degrees. Small business owners and web workers have to keep their fingers on the pulse of what’s happening in their markets and with their customers and clients. Writers and bloggers read for inspiration and to follow the latest trends.
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I’ve been hearing a lot from fellow Web workers about their long-term clients who are resistant to change.

“They don’t want to start a blog,” one says.

“They are afraid of RSS feeds,” says another.

“They don’t even know about MySpace or Facebook,” declares yet another.

Are we all just too “into it” to remember that our clients are often way far away from it?

I’ve been lucky in the last year or so to have some clients who trust me implicitly to lead them down the right path toward enhancing and augmenting their online communications with social media tools. Others, however, dismiss it because it is just so far out of their realm that they would rather put off the discussion than try to understand the implications of a blog or a Twitter account to communicate their message. In some cases, I’ve been able to sneak in a few social media tools with positive results, however, I admit this isn’t very strategic.

Here are some things I’ve thought about or observed in terms of handling the reluctant social media client.

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About a week ago, I posted about Needing a Gentle Intro to RSS Feeds. I mentioned that I would read my RSS feeds through Google Reader over breakfast while my husband reads the paper and would let you know how I fared.

I know it has only been a week, but here are my first impressions about the impact reading feeds is having on my life and work.

1. They make me look smarter. Over the past week, I used Tweetburner to immediately post what I was reading when I was reading it to my Twitter page. On those mornings that I was immersed in feeds, I think I looked smart and informed. Either that or crazy or not busy enough actually getting work done. Read the rest of this entry »