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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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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Twitter’s “recommended” list… isn’t
The problem is, that from Twitter’s website, you’re not given much more than the “Recommended Twitterers” list of about 20 people, mainly big celebrities.  And frankly, big celebrities are very low on my list of people I want to interact with on Twitter.  Ashton Kutcher’s social calendar just doesn’t intersect with mine all that often.  I’d far sooner find people who actually share my interests, or my geography, or even who are at a similar stage of life, and I’ll bet that you feel the same way, too.

So here are my suggestions for tuning your Twitter radar, and finding some actual signals amongst the noise:

What’s your purpose on Twitter?
First, ask yourself why you want to use Twitter.  If it’s so you can follow Oprah’s doings between shows and magazines, then by all means, follow @oprah.  But if you have a local business and you want to engage your customers and other local people, you’ll need a different strategy than following Twitter’s recommended list.  You may need a different strategy again if you want to discuss issues with people further afield.

It’s not what you know – it’s who you know
So start with what you know.  Or who you know.  Twitter makes this easy by offering to go through your contact list – provided you can supply it on Gmail, AOL or Yahoo.  Not on any of these?  Then I suggest you get an account with Gmail and import your contacts just so Twitter can search it.  You may never use Gmail again – though in my opinion, it’s a much better email interface than anything else on the market, and you might just be converted – as I was.  But I digress.  If you find people you already know on Twitter, you probably have things in common with them already.

Friends of friends are good, too
Next, take a look at who your new-found Twitter contacts are following.  Chances are, it’s more people with interests you share.  Twitter has just made this research much easier by giving the location and the latest tweets on both “follower” and “following” lists.  Where you find things in common, add them to your list.

Third, do a Twitter search of key words that are important to you.  You’ll find people who are talking about those subjects.  This is great if you are a designer looking for other people in your field, or a realtor, or a social media fanatic.

Call in the reinforcements
Fourth, use an application like TwitterLocal or Twellow to find people in your geographic area.  Twellow lists the most active/prominent Twitterers first, while TwitterLocal feeds you a geographically defined Twitter stream in real time.  Both these functions are pretty useful!

Finally, start talking about the things that make your heart beat faster.  If it’s window coverings, tell people about the best way to manage all this hot summer sunshine.  If it’s a conference you are planning for this fall, talk about who is planning to be there.  People will search for these things (hey, you are rarely alone in your interests!) and they will find you.  Then follow them back.  It’s the Twitter way.

When will you have enough people?  When you have a Twitter party taking place on your computer, and it feels like you need to call the fire marshall.  More on managing the crowd in another post!

* OK armchair grammarians, I know that correct English usage would be “whom” do you follow, but really… does anyone speak like that any more?

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Cute illustration by Brandon Reese

Well, here it is: Follow Friday. Or as I should write it, #followfriday or even #ff. If you are new to Twitter, Follow Friday is both a blessing and a curse, because really – the fun doesn’t start until you have enough people you are following to make it feel like a party. So you want to follow good people, and by that I mean real, interactive people, not just the sales blasts masquerading as people.

A typical #followfriday tweet looks like this:

@wordspring: #followfriday @kk @robcottingham @hummingbird604 @mynameiskate @miss604 @awsamuel @trishussey @raincoaster @gillianshaw

Not pretty is it? Nor do you have any idea that these people are very active part-time or full time in Vancouver’s social media scene. We’ve got bloggers, reporters, teachers, software geeks, and actual full-time social media community builders on that list. But how would you know? Are these the best ones? The most “famous” ones? Or just the ones I’ve followed the longest? Nothing there to tell you, except their names.

You can click on a name or two, visit their profiles and see what they have to say. Then decide if they are a good fit for your Twitter stream. But wouldn’t it be easier if you had a little bit of context from the sender?

To that end, and because I live in Victoria BC, where the social media community is beginning to blossom, here is a more full introduction to just 10 of the dozens, even hundreds, of people active on Twitter right here in #yyj (which is just a short, airport-y way of saying Greater Victoria, and not getting it confused with Victoria TX, or the Australian state of Victoria)

Why ten? Because I would be here all week if I tried to make a more comprehensive list. Because 10 people is enough to follow in one shot if you are new, and because I can do 10 different ones next Friday, if I am inspired.

1. @mikevardy – Works at the Victoria Film Festival, is just back from his long-delayed honeymoon, is very funny and creative, and has the good sense to show us all a slightly warped persona of himself – Mike Vardy, the CEO of Effing the Dog and an “eventual productivity expert”.

2. @cpudan – Dan Parks is a transplanted Californian who thinks that Victorians are so laid-back, we are on a par with Hawaiians. His mind works at warp speed, and he comes to morning Tweetups with a hundred new ideas and at least a dozen new apps to try out. Bring a pen and a notepad. This guy shares good stuff. Full of joy, too.

3. @claytonstark – The VP of – hmmm, is it engineering? at Flock’s development office, Clayton is funny, passionate, very very bright, and turning me into a huge fan not only of Flock, but of Clayton Stark

4. @tpholmes – can’t forget my dear friend Paul (not to be confused with my dearly beloved Paul, who stays far far away from Twitter) He is amazingly proactive at learning and spreading about Social Media’s many business uses – see www.paulholmes.ca for details. And together we are boosting the Social Media Club which promotes media literacy, ethical behavour and best practices.

5. @lacouvee – Janis is a force of nature! She is Twitter’s welcoming committee in our city, and loves to connect people and resources. If you want to know where to find an elephant, or ANYTHING else, talk to Janis

6. @gilnamur – I’ve only known Gil on Twitter a week, but love that he is doing the “make the world a better place” thing you see a lot on Twitter… with the important difference that he isn’t just rehashing other people’s stuff. It’s his own wisdom and generosity coming through. Check his blog, www.synaptici.com, for more good stuff.

7. @b_west – Another fella! Really, I’ve made more male friends on Twitter than I have since I was treeplanting with a whole bunch of rugby players in 1984… but I digress. Chris Burdge is the social media mojo behind Suburbia Advertising. He’s been waving the flag for authentic interaction on the corporate web for at least a couple of years longer than most of his clients realize. Now they are starting to wake up and listen. When Chris has something to say, I pay attention, because it is always of value.

8. @vic_toria – By day, she is a hardworking government employee. But Victoria Klassen pushes herself way beyond those cozy publicly-funded walls. She’s running half-marathons, volunteering to teach spin classes at the Y, climbing mountains, or at least mountain-like structures. And that’s just her workout! More important, she is an excellent writer and communicator, and has her finger on the pulse of social media. Follow her, and try to keep up.

9. @yuleheibel - Many people in Victoria have seen her columns on urbanism in Victoria’s Focus magazine. And how many of us even knew there was a field of thought and study on urbanism until Yule returned to her hometown about 5 years ago? Yes, she’s been a prof at Harvard. Yes, her whole family’s brainpower could light a small city for a month. But be neither fooled nor intimidated. Yule and her husband @wernerbahlke (slipped a bonus one in there!) are good listeners, thoughtful conversationalists and humble at heart. And community spirited, too!  Check their amazing Victoria blog aggregator, www.metrocascade.com I’m very glad to know her, and hope to get back to the Ogden Point Open Coffee groups soon. Like, a week Tuesday.

10. @jodie_nodes I’ve only known Jodie Gastell for about a week too, but I sense some major common ground between us. She has given over a whole room in her townhouse to teach blogging, with 10 netbooks and a super business plan. She also has one of the best avatars on Twitter. I’m going over for a tour and a chat next Tuesday, because really – Twitter is just a jumping off point for more extensive conversation and community building where you can do it.

There you are, new-to-Twitter people! I challenge each of you to get blogging on a 10-person sample of your Twitter stream. Tell me when you do it, and I’ll come read it.

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Around Tuesday, people started discussing a tweetup for Friday morning at the Shoal Point Moka House.  Yesterday, CHEK TV asked either Vikki Flawth or Tim Ayres (or both) if they could send a camera person to see what the heck we Twitter people do at our tweetups.   The answer was “ok”

Problem #1 – no clear organizer of event.  It’s a tweetup, for heaven’s sake.

People showed up at 8 am to a mainly empty coffee shop and made their way to the back corner.  By the time I showed up at 8:20, one person was already saying goodbye to the eight others gathered there.  Believe me, it was not a rowdy crowd, though certainly when you get 8 people at one table there is cross talk.  Eight gabby twitter people, doubly so.

Problem #2: Maybe the Shoal Point Moka House isn’t used to gabby people before 8:30?

At the same time as me, a guy from CHEK TV showed up with his broadcast-quality camera and a tripod.  No big lights, no boom mic.  He talked with Tim Ayers for about 15 minutes while the rest of us yakked away in the background. We couldn’t have been that noisy because we didn’t want to overpower the interview happening behind us.

Around 8:45, a man holding a “to go” coffee mug stands beside our table and asks who we are.  I thought he might want to join us, actually until I took a second look at his face and it was clear he was none too pleased.  He said he was OK with a group of people having coffee, but definitely NOT ok with the TV camera.

Problem #3: Yes, someone should have given the owner a heads-up about CHEK.  But that’s related to problem #1.  Perhaps we could have gone somewhere else.

Here’s the part I don’t get.  If I owned an establishment as large (and as empty) as the Moka House, I would welcome the free publicity.  Yes!  Come in and enjoy the coffee, the wireless internet and the room for socializing!  Business people with a penchant for sending each other tweets are welcome here!

We felt like we had done something very wrong for even being there.  And that’s where the bad feelings set it.

Hope that helps the people following the grumpiness on Twitter today.

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You’ll be glad to know I’m not “reblogging” something boring or useless – here’s an excellent quote from the blog of Social Media Club Phoenix, on how to know if your social media consultant “gets it”. 

“How do you know your social media vendor really knows what s/he’s talking about? It’s simple. Look at his/her portfolio, the same way you would look at a photographer’s or a designer’s. That portfolio is on the web, and should be easily searchable. Start with Google. Google your vendor’s name. No matter how much you don’t know about social media, you can do this part. Do you see your vendor on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, other social sites? That’s the bare minimum. Read your vendor’s blog or his Tumblr, or his comments on the blogs of others. Is s/he a valuable member of his/her community? Engaged? Respected? Thoughtful? Social media is a very quickly evolving space, and new tools come out every day.”

Just so you know, that was a very simple drag-and-drop. What’s more, Zemanta’s Reblog tool is taking care of the attribution and the backlink.  That’s pretty important in this day of easy theft of intellectual property. 

Looks like we’ve killed two birds with one stone – a quick and easy product review (yes, Zemanta, I’ll be using your stuff again).  And a very short lesson on how to know if your social media professional gets it.

On the second topic, if your professional unafraid to experiment in public, as I just did, you can probably trust them to be authentic in their treatment of your material as well.  And authenticity is a very good thing in the social media universe.

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