If you’ve been hanging around the Internet for a few years, you may have heard the adage, “Content is King”.  As a writer, and in many instances a web writer, I’ve hung onto that phrase like a gold coin.  It validates what I do, which is create the content that all the lovely code in the background supports.   Code is important – useability is important, but without ongoing new content, any website will wither and die (putting the lie to my last post, heh heh).  But Doctorow takes this concept one step further.

“Content is just something to talk about” puts human interaction at the centre of the picture.  And it explains the rise of social media on the web, the growth of multi-user games on all platforms, and the persistence of people meeting in real life, and not just in “cyberspace”.  Content without conversation is just broadcasting, or just advertising.  It goes to the listener/reader/viewer/visitor… and stops there.  If the sender is lucky, it may lodge as a piece of information in the receiver’s consciousness, and they may act on it someday.  If the sender is luckier, or perhaps more engaging, it may be something that the receiver wants to talk about.  And then the message gets a whole new burst of energy.  The energy behind the message is what gives it meaning, and a life of its own.  That happens because we humans like to communicate with each other.  Thus the conversation begins.

I see the truth of this all the time on my social platforms of choice: Twitter and Facebook.  Users are constantly sending out little bits of information, but the fun really doesn’t start unless those morsels are taken up by someone else and responded to, passed along, or even “liked”.  And for that to happen, there has to be a conversation starter somewhere in the message.

“I had cornflakes for breakfast” is not likely to generate any sort of conversation beyond “Me too,” or “Yeah, so?”  But (and this really did happen to me, though it was long enough ago to be Before the Internet) “Oh shoot, the ferret I’m babysitting just jumped in my cornflakes!!” conveys a bunch of conversation starters.  Who is crazy enough to babysit a ferret?  What is it doing on the breakfast table?  Do ferrets like cornflakes?  How long did it take to clean up?  It has action, emotion, and personal experience, and those are the key ingredients to starting a conversation.

If you’ve been on Twitter, or Facebook, or even the phone – you’ll know what I’m talking about.  Our world is shaped by the relationships and conversations we have with other people – by the emotions we feel as well as the information we receive.  As you consider the message you have to bring to the world, ask yourself: is this a conversation starter?  Who will I interact with as a result of my putting it out there?  How will the conversation proceed?  What might happen?

This wisdom applies whether the nature of your conversation is commercial, or personal.  In fact, as a model of effective communication it is all the more important because it puts the personal into every transaction – and we all want to be treated like a person, and not just a “consumer” (of media or anything else), right?

Help me carry on this conversation: pass it along to your own friends, or send a comment to me.  I’d love to hear from you.

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What happened in the meantime?  The short answer is – I needed a break.  2009 was an incredibly intense year, in which I found out what happens when you start a business on no money, and try to do everything yourself.  It magnifies both your strengths and your weaknesses.  And by the autumn of last year, I was running on empty.  So I escaped to the “security” of paid employment in a completely different field, and I did my best to take care of my family.  It took a bit longer to take care of myself as well, but that seems to be coming along, too.

As of right now, I am looking for more work in the communications field (where I have always been at my best). I’ve also signed up for Social Media Camp on October 3rd, and I’ve just finished the seminal book, “Here Comes Everybody” by Clay Shirky.  Those three things alone deserve separate posts.  So stay tuned.

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Going this route instead of putting together an e-newsletter via Constant Contact, AWeber, Vertical Response or any number of other email messaging services represents a shift in how I’ve communicated online these past couple of years. I’m used to the email blast, to carefully crafting a newsletter with a few different articles, and to putting calls to action in all of it.

With Feedburner, I’m simplifying things – a lot. And that is good, because frankly putting together my own email newsletter was beginning to feel like a huge task that I really didn’t want to take on. Now, if a reader likes my work and wants to stay up-to-date with what I’m doing, he or she can subscribe to the blog via email. I can post articles, let my readers know where I’ll be and what’s coming up, and I can even blog cool deals… and it only has to be done once – not repurposed and put into a newsletter format.

And as much as I’ve had tons of training and experience in marketing, I am taking a laid-back approach – I know I’m tired of all those call-to-action formulas, so I imagine you are, too. I hope that this way, you’ll get good content and nothing but the content.

This move also recognizes that, while many people are adopting tools like Google Reader or Flock to stay on top of their favourite blogs and news sources, many more still depend on email to stay in touch. These are the folks who don’t blog themselves, don’t read blogs, and really would rather not learn that skill right now. I get that. Feedburner lets me stay in touch with them their way.

Feedburner works best if, like me, you are not a daily poster, but are more likely to put out something of significance once a week or so. (Lately, I’ve been specializing in the “or so” – next habit to improve: consistency!)

So, do you care to join me in this experiment? If so, just put your email in the box. I look forward to keeping in touch this way!

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It’s supports a wonderful local charity: Power To Be.  Kids with disabilities deserve to get out and try new things, and just be kids.  Power To Be gives them the opportunity to stretch themselves and find out just what they CAN do.  Check out their website at www.powertobe.ca.

It’s going to feature a great variety of local talent: CBC’s All Points West host Joanne Roberts will be the emcee through the evening, which will feature comedy by Mike Vardy, and music by Vikki Flawith and Easy, Char, Crimson Star, The Gruntles and RIPT.

Twestival has shown the power of social media – particularly Twitter – to build community quickly. While people organize hundreds of fundraisers every year for worthy causes, my experience has been that when you do most of your planning in person, and with phone calls, pulling together a fundraiser can take months.  Using Twitter both to organize and to get to know each other, we’ve been able to form a team in a very short time.  It’s amazing how powerful a sentence or two can be in conveying just the right information.

Here’s a fun little video that Cris Vleck cooked up for us to get the word out:  watch it and buy your tickets!

YYJ Twestival Video on You Tube

And remember to buy your tickets in advance and swish right past the people lining up at the door:

www.amiando.com/yyjtwestival

Only 7 more sleeps!  See you there?

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Has the Vancouver social media community considered starting a chapter of the Social Media Club? I know it’s “yet another thing” for many people, but its whole mission is to have these conversations, both in person and online. It has benefited the Victoria community enormously for these reasons:
1) The larger organization is a wonderful space to share local discussions and “lessons learned”, and the arrangement is reciprocal, with wider discussions seeding the local level too.
2) It encompasses the full spectrum of social media – not just blogging, not just the “flavour of the month” – and many of our discussions are applicable across platforms.
3) It is becoming a recognized brand in itself. As a communications professional engaged in social media, I’d like to visit chapters in other towns. Are there great people visiting Vancouver who are missing connections because they don’t know where to look?

Since Paul Holmes and I founded the Victoria chapter (the first in Canada!) six months ago, I have been continually amazed by the quality of discussion and the building of community that takes place when we meet.  We’ve gone from 15 people to nearly 40 at the last event, and the momentum keeps building. We’re preparing for a very big event Sept 22nd, when we welcome n2y4 award winner Joe Solomon to talk about “Movement Building in a Connected Age”.  That deserves its own post, so expect to see more here about that talk this week.

At the same time, meetups, tweetups, an Open Coffee group and DemoCamp all add to our knowledge base and our contact files.  (For people who spend a lot of time behind screens, we sure like to meet!) At each event I’ve been to, I’ve come home feeling like I’ve shared a lot and learned far more.

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Like much that is Twitter, or many other forms of human intercourse, the rules aren’t written down – you pick them up from the other kids on the playground. That can be tricky when you are new. So here are the “retweet rules”, as I have learned them. Please feel free to add your take on them in the comments.

1. Please acknowledge the source tweet. The first example is the standard form, created by many applications that give you a one-click retweet.  If you are using Twitter in the Twitter.com web format, copy and paste the tweet, and type “RT” at the beginning. RT stands for retweet.  Like this:

Wordspring: RT @yyjtwestival Tickets now available online for #yyjtwestival http://www.amiando.com/YYJTWESTIVAL.html

Or, if you want the news to come first, massage it like this:

Wordspring: Tickets now available online for #yyjtwestival http://www.amiando.com/YYJTWESTIVAL.html (via @yyjtwestival)

Failing to quote your source is intellectual theft and plain rude.  ALWAYS acknowledge where you obtained your information,  even if you have to adapt the wording a bit to make it fit into 140 characters.  More on that below.

2. If it’s a quote, use the source of the quotation as well as the source of the tweet.

Wordspring: An opinion should be the result of thought, not a substitute for it. – Jef Mallett (via @hummingbird604)

Or this:

Wordspring: RT @hummingbird604 An opinion should be the result of thought, not a substitute for it. – Jef Mallett

In that case, I retweeted @hummingbird604 quoting another source who isn’t necessarily on Twitter, or even alive.  I see a lot of Winston Churchill and Oscar Wilde on Twitter, and I suspect they would have taken to the medium like Barack Obama and Stephen Fry, respectively.  But I digress.

3.  It adds personality to append your own comment, particularly where it isn’t just a “ditto”, but adds more information. I frequently see people using arrows –>  or ~, or something else that says “my comment”.  Like this:

Wordspring: RT @yyjtwestival Tickets now available online for #yyjtwestival http://www.amiando.com/YYJTWESTIVAL.html ~ I’m going!!

Or this:

Wordspring: Got mine! –> RT @yyjtwestival Tickets now available online for #yyjtwestival http://www.amiando.com/YYJTWESTIVAL.html

4.  When it’s a retweet of a retweet, things get a little more complicated. You can include the middleman (person?) or not.  I like to thank the messenger with an acknowledgement if there is the room.

Wordspring: RT @jodie_nodes @cpudan @lacouvee Announcing the 1st family friendly #victoriatweetup Sun Sept 13 1pm Witty’s Lagoon. #yyj (via @mikevardy)

But if that is getting a little bit crazy, and you feel you are losing the message in so many acknowledgements it’s beginning to read like an Oscar acceptance speech, I’d go with the one closest to the message:

Wordspring: RT @lacouvee Announcing the 1st family friendly #victoriatweetup Sun Sept 13 1pm Witty’s Lagoon. #yyj <– The Twitter grapevine is working hard today!

See how I slipped a comment in there that basically says “a lot of people are talking about this”?  That’s a lot friendlier to read than the grocery list of chatty Victoria twitterers.

5.  You can adapt and retweet – with caution. At times, somebody has written a tweet that you like, or that contains good information, and it’s just too darn long to fit into your 140 characters along with their name.  This is where the “adapted retweet” comes in.  Be as true as you can to the meaning of the tweet, edit and send.  But beware.  If you mangle someone’s meaning, it’s better to leave it alone.  Here’s one that is 10 characters too long when I just press RT:

Wordspring: RT @Veribatim I am amused at how many comments I get on Facebook whenever I mention alcohol. I’m writing this down as a black-hat optimization tactic.

Some shortening is in order!

Wordspring: RT @Veribatim Amused at how many comments I get on FB whenever I mention alcohol. Writing this down as a black-hat optimization tactic.

You can also shorten links with a URL shortener.  It can turn http://www.amiando.com/YYJTWESTIVAL.html into http://bit.ly/2RESR Dozens exist, and you can access them on their own websites – Paul Holmes has one at tweeting.ca, or you can use the ones that come with the large variety of Twitter applications out there.

I hope I don’t need to add how WRONG it would be to switch someone else’s link to one that points to your stuff, or ANYTHING other than the original link.  That is called link hijacking and it ought to mean the end of your Twitter career if you ever do it.

There you are – the subtleties of the retweet!

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I’m surprised it doesn’t mention the big social networking sites (Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, etc.) – but whether you produce your own media on your own channels, or hang out on the larger social networking sites, his analogy still holds.

What do you think?

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