My first reaction was, “Drop out, then. Nobody says you have to use Twitter, and if it isn’t fun, it isn’t worth doing.” I’ve certainly had days where I felt like I’ve had nothing to say to Twitter, and vice versa. In fact, I had a whole burn-out year where I rarely went near Twitter, and basically stepped back from all social media activities except some personal use of Facebook.

Ultimately, however, I’ve decided that there is much in Twitter that is worth keeping, and there are some simple ways to get rid of the parts that annoy you. Here are a few things you can do on a Sunday afternoon to make Twitter suck less, 7 days a week.

1. Use lists to improve the “Noise to Signal” ratio
If the tweets in your twitter stream are more annoying than edifying, you need a way to filter out the junk. I’ve classified people into lists through third-party Twitter management decks (like TweetDeck, HootSuite and Seesmic) and Twitter started this function a couple of years ago, as well. With lists, you can group the tweeps you follow into whatever works for you – close friends, news sources, music, fitness – and just look at Twitter through those filters. Much better than trying to wade through hundreds of tweets, some from people you followed back months ago and you can’t even remember why. That brings me to my next point.

2. Unfollow annoying twits.
If you aren’t getting value from the tweets that show up in your stream, turn down the volume. “Unfollow” is just a click away. If you take the first step, above, and put your favourite Twitterers into a list, you might get so used to the customized view that you never have to unfollow because you don’t look at that home stream anymore. But frankly, I still look at my “main” stream often, so it’s nice to just not have to deal with incessant marketing messages or self-centred drivel.

3. Spend less time on Twitter – while still posting to Twitter.
I’m thinking of the terrific, engaging posts this friend puts onto Facebook, and how they would work equally well on Twitter. Linking the two is only a step away, in her Facebook account settings. Better yet, she can choose which Facebook updates to share with Twitter by using one of those management tools I mentioned above. I like the ones with multiple columns for your favourite lists and search terms, with scheduled tweets so you can have a creative thought at 2 am that people might see at 8:30.

4. Don’t try to stay on top of it all
One of the most potentially annoying things about Twitter is when you try to read everything that comes across your screen. Can’t. Be. Done. What’s more, it’s way more input than anyone needs. Cut back to a couple of times a day, for just long enough to see if there are any good posts to your lists, and to respond to any mentions. If Twitter only takes 5- 10 minutes a day, it’s far less likely to annoy you. And on those days where the communication is better than you expected, you can take longer, much as you would an important email or phone call.

That’s not so bad, is it?

I’ve been using Klout with my personal account, @catherinenovak, for over a year.  The result has been largely reflective of my use of social media – I was heavily involved in 2009, almost inactive in 2010, and have returned to the “industry” if you could call it that, in 2011.  (I agree with Mat that recognized credentials in social media are almost non-existent at this early point in time – more on that in another post).  So yes, I have a large network of influential contacts, and my score has been rising again as I have spend more time online, communicating and being a “thought leader” (man, that strokes my ego, lol).

Being quite happy with what I thought to be an accurate reflection of my influence, I decided to hook my new “work” profile up to Klout and see how far I needed to go to catch up with the “rest of me”, so to speak.  This is where it gets tricky.  It was easy to connect @NetscribeCath on Twitter to Klout, and then it asked if I would like to hook Facebook up as well.  So I thought, “Sure, why not?”  Klout responded with a dialogue box that asked, “Another account is using this profile.  Are you sure you want to merge?”  I went ahead anyway, and sure enough, this bumped my work profile way up.  I didn’t realize that this would disconnect @catherinenovak from Facebook.

Turns out that Facebook can only influence one Klout account at a time!  I have a problem with this, in that my work life and my personal life have a fair degree of overlap.  Many people whom I consider friends are also great business connections, and vice versa.  Why should I have to choose which account gets to connect with Catherine Novak on Facebook?

As Mat mentioned, it’s not “done” to obsess about Klout scores with other social media pros.   We’re supposed to be above that, all the while helping our clients to boost THEIR influence.  So long as our score is above [insert your own "acceptable" threshold here], it really doesn’t matter, right?

Thing is, it does, and it doesn’t.  It’s complicated.  My Klout score stagnated when I  took many months away from this line of work.  However, my base knowledge did not disappear.  Connections made did not go away.  And in the meantime, “newbie” @NetscribeCath brings with her the same knowledge and connections that @CatherineNovak has – they just aren’t showing up online yet.

At best, our Klout score is a snapshot in time – like the display on a digital clock, where what we want is probably a larger set of more “analog” gauges.  The best indication of someone’s influence needs to be viewed over a longer period, and in their offline accomplishments as well.  I believe that both my Klout accounts should be able to share the history that my Facebook account brings with me.  And people who use a Klout score to sum me up in two digits had better look deeper – check my LinkedIn profile, my blog posts, and yes, my Google + record, which won’t be connected to Klout until later this year.  Get to know me.  Take me for coffee.

Personally, I would never make a hiring decision about  someone based solely  their on Klout score, as Amber Naslund has reported on Google +.   I’d take it into account, but it’s very important that we don’t make it an “easy out”.

What’s your take on Klout?  How have you heard of people using it?

However, the time is right.  First, I took a very long break from social media work altogether.  My blog fell asleep, my tweets dwindled to practically nothing, and I rarely looked at my Wordspring page on Facebook.  Now that I’m back in the field, I’m working for other companies, rather than trying to run my own business.  My Wordspring “brand” is less important.  And being myself is far more important!  Since I have Twitter accounts for the places where I work, I can use my personal account for personal purposes.  Seems like something I should put my name to.

I’m glad to say that I’ve been in the social media “scene” in BC long enough for people to see beyond the Wordspring brand to the Catherine Novak behind it.  What’s more, I have always used some semblance of my own face as my profile picture.  So I should  not have too much trouble with losing people due to lack of recognition. Besides, I’ll be unfollowing a lot of people/brands/spammers that don’t have a personal relationship with me or give me great information. My personal account has long had a stream that goes by way too fast for me to make much sense of it.

Then at work, I’ll follow people and develop a following more based on the activities that I do at work.  You can find me already at @gowestgroup, and I just started tweeting as @NetscribeCath today.  Follow me in both places if you think I have something of value to say.  And friends, I am funnier, more irreverent and risk taking after hours than I am at work.  But you already knew that, didn’t you?

Netscribe's "Twavel" app

Tomorrow is my second “official” day at Netscribe Web Communications.  I think I said on Twitter earlier that I’m doing happy dances on the inside.  Between Netscribe and my work with Melinda Harris at Go West Design Group, that puts me firmly back in the land of social media/interactive web.

I think my favourite aspect of this turn of events is that I actually have worked at Netscribe already – five years ago.  At that time, I was newly back into the full-time work force, having spent 8 years mostly with very small children, though I always kept a bit of contract writing work on the side.  Netscribe was a much smaller company a few years ago, and I was on contract.  So at some point we gave each other hugs and kisses, and I went to seek my fortune elsewhere… and where I went in the meantime is a whole other story that doesn’t matter much right now.

Jump to 2011 – Netscribe is a thriving web apps firm, bursting at the seams with desks, computers and smart staff.  And Steve and Stella were looking for a social media person.  They managed to track me down at Social Media Camp Victoria, and I feel like we just picked up where we left off.

I’ll be doing writing, social media consulting and training work for clients in government, as well as managing the social media for Netscribe itself.  I guess I’ll have to set up a Twitter account for me with my Netscribe hat on – it’ll be very transparently me at the keys though.  Should I change my user name from Wordspring to NetscribeCath?

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.

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?

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!

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?

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.

Then at noon today, Paul Holmes of IdeaZone.ca and I are going to give a topic on – guess what – Using Social Media in Your Business – to the Greater Victoria Chamber of Commerce.  It’s sold out!  But we’ve produced a handly little “action plan” for those who want to take some concrete action.  And I’m sharing it with you here.

Also, I now have a venue to teach social media classes starting this summer!  They are going to be “roll up your sleeves and get going” classes in Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and blogging with WordPress.  More platforms available on request.  Let me know if you are interested, and what days of the week and times work best for you.