One of my best friends ever, Thana, launched her first Kickstarter campaign last week. She’s one rockin’ songstress and I’ve heard this girl sing her little heart out since she was ten years old. And now? She’s about to record her first album.

Today, she reached 50% of her funding goal. And I want to help get her the rest of the way there.

Not only would her record be a great gift to the world (I’ve already heard one of her songs, Ghost Hawk, which was written for her late brother, Niki), but she’s compiled some of the most creative, generous gifts for her backers. She’s offering up everything from a private concert to drum lessons with the great Antonio Sanchez. It’s one of the best Kickstarter campaigns I’ve ever seen and it’s clear she’s put her heart and soul into the project.

So do the world a favor! Give a little love to Thana here on Kickstarter. Both she and I would be enormously grateful.

I was a little late jumping on the Kony bandwagon. Mostly because a 30-minute YouTube video is my idea of torture, but also because, even if you make your living attempting to understand and abuse social media, it’s surprisingly easy to let things fall through the cracks.

When I finally did sit down to watch the video, I felt a little bit of everything: inspired, judgmental, exhausted, motivated and skeptical.

In case you, like me, live under a rock, “KONY 2012 is an international campaign by Invisible Children, aiming to bring Joseph Kony to justice.”

(Joseph Kony is the head of the Lord’s Resistance Army in Uganda and is riling everyone up for his abduction of children to turn them into child soldier and sex slaves.)

The director of the KONY 2012 film, Jason Russell, managed to get 83 million video views (and counting – when I watched on Friday it was at 79 million views).

The purpose of his movie was to get as many people talking about Kony as possible. That one of the biggest problems was that no one knew or cared about the man.

Russell – clearly – succeeded. What he’s done has been nothing short of incredible. While I’m still in shock that so many people sat through a half-hour YouTube video, Russell’s efforts to get as many people sharing the video as possible paid off.

If you go to the KONY 2012 website, he’s made it as easy as possible to share everything about the campaign. My personal favorite part is his attempts to get us contacting “culturemakers” and “policymakers”.

This post isn’t about the campaign though. It’s about controlling social media. Something I think Russell and Invisible Children has done an extraordinary job of doing. By creating a powerful video that was shared by celebrities and everyday folks alike, the KONY video is the most viral video of all time and has been trending on Twitter for well over a week.

On April 20th, the video tells us, we’re supposed to paper the world with images of Kony, further spreading the knowledge of this man’s atrocities.

I’m waiting with bated breath to see if it happens the way the video presents – young and old alike spending the darkest hours of the night covering cities with posters, banners and messages. I can’t lie. It’s a hugely powerful idea – that a video, powered by social media, can incite real-world action. It makes my heart tingle.

Here’s where it gets interesting though… as powerful as this whole idea is, I fear Russell is now getting more than he bargained for.

Just the other day, Russell was arrested for public masturbation.

And thus, #horny2012 was born.

It’s sad. And also a little bit hilarious. Don’t judge me.

Point being, as much as I admire Russell for taking social media by the reigns, I very strongly believe you CANNOT control social. You can nudge something into going viral. You can make a difference. But once it’s gone viral, it’s actually gone. It’s out of your hands.

A Message from Ryan Gosling

For those of you not in New Zealand, this next story is going to seem really, really weird. And yes, I live in a very odd (but enormously endearing) country.

Last week, an Auckland store tweeted that Ryan Gosling (*le sigh*) had just been in their shop.

Now, no one comes to New Zealand. We’ll occasionally get a celebrity here on location or a musician on tour. And when they do come, it’s a big.freaking.deal. The country goes ape-shit. Everyone wants to know what said celebrity thinks about New Zealand. Even Kiwi celebrities – people who have become famous outside of New Zealand like Flight of the Concords, rarely come back and when THEY do it’s like a national freaking holiday.

Point being, Auckland went crazy. One mistaken sighting resulted in #NZGoslingHunt trending across the entire country. People tweeted photos with Gosling superimposed into images of the city. I also read some of the funniest tweets of my life on the fake-locations of the super-sexy-superstar.

It also brought into my life my new favorite blog, Hey Girl, I Love New Zealand, which is a collection of “Hey girl” pictures targeted at weird Kiwi-isms that only 4 million Kiwis (and the people who love them) actually understand. Because, well, why the hell not?

What does this have to do with a Ugandan child-abductor? The fact that nothing and no one can control what ends up going crazy on the Twitters. One simple tweet about Ryan Gosling and for days Auckland women had their panties in actual braids. Not because anyone here necessarily believed he was in Auckland (like I said – no one comes to Auckland), but because everyone wants to be a part of the trend.

It doesn’t matter if you’re a gorgeous, blond, celebrity who looks like Jesus with his shirt off or a Ugandan war lord. Twitter doesn’t give a crap

This is a guest post from Emma Cunningham, who knows how much I love a good social media success story. Read below for the ins and outs of how she landed not one, but two great roles using online networking. Booyah!

I knew I wanted to work in digital publishing within days of starting my post-grad certificate in publishing. I love the rapid pace, the constant feel of “shiny and new”, and the small-world atmosphere.

My goal was a job at romance publisher Harlequin, so I followed their Twitter feed, as well as the personal feeds of some of their digital employees. I did a little freelance work for them. After graduation, I chatted up the assistant manager of digital content and social media, Amy Wilkins. Our coffee date was supposed to be a chance for me to pick her brain, but it turned into a recommendation for a six-month contract as a Production Coordinator on their digital content team.

Around the five-month mark, my contract was renewed for another seven months. Shortly after the extension offer, I got pregnant. I knew I wanted to stay home with my baby until she starts school, so I planned on seeking out freelance work once I finished my year of maternity leave.

I decided to ask for LinkedIn recommendations before my last day to make sure people had my work fresh in their minds. A lot of people use LinkedIn to post their resumes, but many are nervous about asking for recommendations. They don’t want to impose on their colleagues or call in favours. I can tell you, though, from personal experience, that making that request was one of the smartest career moves I’ve ever made.

Within moments of asking Croco Designs’ Creative Director Frauke Spanuth – who does cover art for some of Harlequin’s digital imprints and websites for several of their authors – she wrote back asking if I wanted a remote position with flexible hours as the Content and Social Media Manager at Croco Designs.

Frauke was looking for a native English speaker who was familiar with the romance and genre fiction markets, and had digital PR experience. She’d communicated with me enough via e-mail to have a sense that I could be a good fit personality-wise, and she’d seen my various social media platforms which gave her an idea of my areas of expertise and skillset.

“I didn’t even have to think about my job hunt”

I didn’t even have to think about going on a job hunt. The offer came months before I even went on maternity leave. All it took was a strong online presence and the guts to ask for that LinkedIn referral. Now I work with authors to keep the copy on their websites fresh, entertaining, and search-engine friendly. I also help them build up their Twitter, Facebook and blogging skills. Best of all, I get to work with NYT bestselling authors, fresh new debut authors, and everyone in between—all from my laptop in the living room. Getting a job this perfect was almost too easy.

Networking has always been the best way to score your dream job. All that’s changed is that it’s now a hundred times easier to schmooze with your future boss.

Emma Cunningham is an ebook geek, digital marketer and publicist, and avid reader. She currently acts as the Content & Social Media Manager for Croco Designs, helping authors develop their online content for maximum impact. Her blog helps authors navigate the complex worlds of publishing and platforms.

Note from Marian: Do you have a cool story about how social media saved your bacon? Shoot me an email by clicking here and tell me all about it. I’d love to feature you on the blog.

Okay. Whew! That was interesting.

Let’s just jump right into it, shall we?

First, this happened: I wrote a post about Stephen Fry and the broadband issues in New Zealand.

Then, this happened: Stephen Fry saw the post, READ IT (God bless that beautiful man) and retweeted it out to his followers. (Then had the gentlemenly quality to thank me.)

Because of that, this happened:

Yes. You read that correctly. That would be over 70,000 clicks in 24 hours.

But because that happened, this happened:

Gotta love, Bluehost, huh?

I almost started hyperventilating. Every blogger dreams of getting their writing found – to have something go at least a little viral. Well, not only did things NOT go as planned (hellllo Database Error!) but I had no idea this would be the post that finally “made it”. I wrote it on a whim at midnight because I was so infuriated by New Zealand’s reaction to Fry’s tweets about our broadband. It wasn’t – how shall we say – the nicest, most non-stereotypically American post I’ve ever written.

Thankfully, reader response was surprisingly positive. I was impressed at the lack of trolls and angry Kiwis. It was pretty awesome seeing so many people agree with what I thought was a privileged-American-girl (or British celebrity) problem.

An since most of you regular readers are also bloggers, I thought I’d take you through a tour of this blog’s undercarriage so you can see exactly what goes down when something so stunning happens.

Exactly What Happens When an Actor with 4 Million Twitter Followers Shares Your Post

Number one: Clicks. Obviously. Lots of them. As of right now there are 295 retweets and counting. The majority of clicks obviously came from Fry’s 4 million followers, and this totaled to around 70,000 clicks on the first day.

Number two: Traffic. Unfortunately, my site crashed (or, as the internets like to call it, my site got “Fryed”). My host was in no way prepared for the influx of traffic and my site continues to have issues and keeps crashing on me. On the first day I received 13,238 visitors. The second day, 15,497. See below for a screenshot of my Analytics. The 300-700 views per day I was getting before? Insignificant compared to what Fry did in seconds.

Number three: Revenue. (Sort of.) I made a whopping $18.06 from Adsense during the past two days. For someone who averages out around $0.20 on a good day, $18 is pretty damn impressive. Now what shall I spend it on…?

Number four: Subscribers. Even with tens of thousands of new visitors, my subscribers only went up by 31. Because people tend to subscribe only when they’ve been to a blog a few times, I’m not hugely surprised, but it’s definitely an interesting non-development.

Number five: Twitter followers. I received 127 new followers in the past two days. It usually takes about 1-2 weeks for me to accumulate that much “organically”.

Number six: Klout. My score went up by eleven points after Fry shared the post.

What They Don’t Tell You

It’s been pretty cool to see all my traffic and stats go up. HOWEVER. The bounce rate on my site is now beyond high. time spent has decreased by over a minute so it’s now it’s at an average (average!) of 30 seconds. Clearly I’m not immediately impressing people with my charm and dashing good looks.

Basically, it was a nice bump in traffic that’s done wonders for my ego, but the lesson here is that just because you get mentioned by an “a-lister” (or Stephen-fucking-Fry in this case) doesn’t mean it will help your site long term.

There’s no real moral to this story other than: here’s a look into what really happens when someone awesome links to you. Pretty interesting, huh?

p.s. Mr Stephen Fry, you’re my new hero. A hat tip to you, kind sir.

Ever since arriving in New Zealand I’ve been developing this chip on my shoulder about the internet. When I first arrived I had been freelancing, which meant spending a lot of time out of the house working at coffee shops and libraries.

Not in New Zealand.

I quickly discovered coffee shops here don’t have free wifi, but the general internet is total crap. Not only slow, but expensive. And dysfunctional anywhere outside cities. And, oh, wait, LIMITED.

What is limited internet?

At the risk of sounding like a first-world whiner (which, let’s face it, the majority of this post is going to be just that), I had no idea what limited broadband meant until moving here.

Essentially it means you can only pay for and use a certain amount of data. Activities like checking email don’t eat much. Updating software, using Skype, watching YouTube videos, uploading photos…. those do.

In New Zealand, that data costs a lot. For $200/month living with five people we received 20GB of data each. In New York, my roommate and I paid $22 total for unlimited internet. You do the math.

Broadband Issues Bad for New Zealand’s Economy

I’m currently working for a start-up in a young industry. I meet a lot of professionals and entrepreneurs who are invested in New Zealand’s growth as part of the global economy. Over the past year I’ve been to many conferences on that very topic – a major event at the University of Auckland Business School, a digital conference run by MSN, a program hosted by Google…

Want to know what all these events had in common?

None of them had wifi.

Someone please explain how you can attend a conference for digital professionals about the growth of New Zealand’s international economy AND NOT HAVE THE FUCKING INTERNET.

But wait! It gets better…

Enter: Stephen Fry

Stephen Fry, master of all that is humorous and national treasure of England, is in New Zealand. And I was giddy with joy when my 15-month-long annoyances were justified when I saw this tweet:

The full story is, apparently, Fry was doing lots of “high-bandwidth activities” like uploading photos/videos. He went over the limit and Telecom slowed his speed to dial-up, which is what happens here if you exceed your limit.

(As someone who does this every month, I can assure you it’s quite the treat.)

What shocked me though were the tweets following Fry’s rant. New Zealanders are a defensive bunch and even if everyone here hates the limits, there was no way in hell they would allow an outsider to insult their country.

One guy tweeted that, well, “maybe internet is slow here but at least it stops people from tweeting too much” (!). Another called Fry an asshole. And, of course, many brought out The Earthquake Card, saying Kiwis who have internet “should be thankful for what they have.”

NZ publications and even the damn government is responding to this issue all wrong. They’re responding as if Fry has had an out-of-the-ordinary experience. I can assure you, he hasn’t. Fry’s issue is representative of a bigger problem in New Zealand.

Dear NZ, You’re 10 Years Behind. Again.

Fry later posted a series of tweets that have made me fall in love with him even more. He said (edited for clarity), “Comcast-style throttling is disastrous for the economy. For visitors and for everyone. It won’t stop illegal torrenting and makes as much sense as closing a lane of traffic because there’s congestion. Yes, Kiwi Land is remote, but if Avatar can be made here and they want to keep its reputation for being the loveable, easy-going, outdoorsy yet tech savvy place it is, then pressure @telecomNZ into offering better packages. Kiwis travel. They know 20MB is routine in Europe and the UK is rolling out ultra fast fibre-optic. Come on, New Zealand, you’re world champions at rugby and film-making. Pressure the providers to stop being a digital embarrassment.”

This has nothing to do with Fry going over the data cap. Or choosing the wrong provider. There is no other provider. There are no real competitors to Telecom. It’s called a monopoly. And it’s not okay.

And, to clarify, most first world countries don’t have data caps. As per usual, New Zealand is about ten years behind. In the words of one commenter, its policies are “primitive.” One traveler even said that as much as he loved it here, the broadband limitations means he “could never work or live here permanently.”

So BRAVO, Stephen Fry. B-R-A-V-O.

You know that obnoxious habit when you mention something new to a friend and they respond with “yeah, I heard about that ages ago” and you want to punch them in the mouth for being such a know-it-all? Well, everyone who’s been using Pinterest is starting to feel that way (re: we are the annoying know-it-all) now all the big marketing blogs are talking about it like they’ve discovered the Americas. (p.s. I’m not going to explain what Pinterest is. Go here if you want the details.)

Even though I work in marketing, I’m getting increasing frustrated at the industry’s new perspective of Pintrest…

• Like this article that tells us “everything we need to know” but only actually tells us how to pimp your content to increase traffic.
• Or this TechCrunch post that says Pinterest hasn’t yet reached its full potential because the audience is mostly women. (I wish I were kidding.)

And I’m not the only one. Pinterest lovers are annoyed because they’re all addicts. We’re all addicts. And I’m getting increasingly worried about sponsored pins, spam and generic crap being regurgitated into the webisphere.

That said, a) there’s nothing you nor I can do about it and b) there is opportunity because Pintrest is the best thing to happen to the internet since The Evolution of Dance. So I’m hoping with this post I can help the world use Pintrest for good instead of evil.

Here are some examples of companies on Pinterest, including what they do perfectly and who could use some work:

Modcloth

If Modcloth were a woman these boards would be everything she’d pin, making it as personal and personable as possible. It’s easily the best example of a brand on Pinterest.

Favorite Board: Behind the Stylebooks

Everyone loves a little behind-the-scenes, but Modcloth stands apart by showing what inspired their stylebooks, including typography, copy and vintage advertisements.

HGTV

A SparkNotes version of their website with awesome projects, design and food inspiration. While I’d usually consider this much HGTV content spammy, skimming through their projects in Pinterest-format is easier to digest.

Favorite Board: Mint Green: Color of the Month

This board gives you design ideas they might never have thought of under the umbrella of creative color.

The Travel Channel

What’s more inspirational than travel photos? The Travel Channel have organized their boards into different locations, with a few behind-the-scenes from their shows.

Favorite Board: Travel Finds

Travel Finds is a mash-up of inspirational travel quotes and nifty gadgets. It’s not too refined or particularly extensive, but that’s what I like about it.

Serious Eats

While the Serious Eats account is filled with gorgeous photos and dish ideas, they could do an even better job if they created other food-related boards like kitchen gadgets, restaurants, reviews and products they love.

Favorite Board: Booze-free drinks

Serious Eats organizes their boards  just like a cookbook! They have boards like Pasta and Noodles, Mexican, and Cocktails, as well as boards for events like Valentine’s Day and St. Patrick’s.

Kikki.k

Again, too product heavy, but stationery company Kikki.k does a decent job showing products in action. Their board featuring gorgeous workspaces makes me want to run right out and buy all their products. Nicely played, Kikki.k. Mission accomplished.

Favorite Board: Journal Prompts

Based off Kikki.k’s popular journals, this board features writing prompts. I love the concept, but the photos aren’t sexy enough to get much traction. If they really wanted to get some attention, they should use a kick ass graphic designer to mock up the prompts with some simple and unique typography.

So how do you use Pinterest without ruining it for those who adore it?

First of all, don’t jump on the bandwagon just because Mashable tells you to.

The one thing keeping me sane about the Pinterest explosion is that if you start spamming people or your content isn’t pretty enough, you’ll never getting your stuff repinned. Meaning right now (for now) its hard to game the system.

So since the site is mostly used for inspiration, if you have a blog about blogging you might be shit out luck. While I might create a board for my travels or the books I’ve read just to test it out, if you ever catch me trying to pimp my content you have my full permission to take me out back and shoot me.

What do you think, are your panties in a knot over brands finally discovering Pinterest? Have you ever even heard of it before? Could you care less?

It’s shocking how rarely I come across a Twitter bio that inspires me. Most are blank, bland, irrelevant or say almost verbatim what I’ve seen a million other times on the interwebs. But sometimes I come across bios that are snappy, witty, laugh out loud funny and make me immediately want to follow said tweeter (and be their Bestie 4 Life).

Like these five…

I clearly have a thing for writers, but they obviously know how to clearly and cleverly talk about themselves. The bio of @akharlamova just so perfectly describes the life of an author in so few words. And it also does a great job showing that she’s dedicated, consumed and in love with what she does. Nicely done, Arina.

It would have been so easy for @showmethesun to have written, “Book lover. Works in Publishing. From Melbourne.” Instead, she eats books for breakfast! She’s a curator instead of just a blogger. She doesn’t just work in publishing, she loves it. She doesn’t just live in Melbourne, she’s happy there. I feel like I know her already.

I love it when a major corporation isn’t afraid to add a little humor in their bio. What @Staples does is genius in that they quickly sum up what they do, then tap into the joys of every office worker on the planet. Like starch.

@KatjaPresnal clearly has a lot going for her. She tells us why she’s great, what she’s up to, what she does for living, then throws her personality at us in full force. This is a girl I could be friends with. And “carpe the shit out of diem” obviously needs to be my life motto. (Thanks to @aodt for sending this bio my way!)

I’m in love with @IsaChandra and think her loud and clear voice on this bio coupled with such simplicity is pretty unique. Sometimes (aka “all the time”) you just don’t need to over-explain. For Isa, four words is all she needs. I like her style and for those of you who eat more than just meat and potatoes can also appreciate her location quip.

Takeaways

1. A few choice words can make all the difference. Take a page out of Steph’s half-eaten book (see what I did there? I crack myself up) and stay away from over-used descriptions when talking about yourself.

2. What’s a really obvious stereotype about your industry/job/passion? Are you an accountant? Poke fun at the fact that you’re not absurdly boring. Social media strategist? Mention you’re sure as hell not a guru/ninja. Make like Staples and stand out from the crowd by being good-natured about the judgments surrounding what you do.

3. Do you have a specific writing style? Do you swear a lot? Have a rad vocabulary skills? Write poetry? Translate that strong style à la Isa Chandra so that voice shines in your bio!

Want more Twitter love? Read parts 1 and 2 here. And if you’ve seen any great bios lately, please share them in the comments!

This is a brilliant guest post from my friend David. It’s the email he wish he’d sent to a to a generic LinkedIn connection request. Hope this guy learns his lesson.

Dear Guy-who-sent-me-a-generic=LinkedIn-request,

You sent me an invitation to connect on LinkedIn, even though you don’t really know me. Of course, I know you, or at least know who you are. With about 7,000 Twitter followers, blog, Facebook profile and fan page, YouTube channel and Flickr account, you’re kind of a big deal in the Chicago social media scene. People I interact with regularly know you or have heard of you. You come up in conversations. I’ve run into you at networking events and even tried to introduce myself. You were too busy being social with friends instead to talk to me (instead of actually, you know, networking).

Your LinkedIn invitation consisted of the generic text provided by the network: “I’d like to add you to my professional network on LinkedIn.” How lazy and impersonal. Why don’t you send me an auto DM on Twitter while you’re at it? I thought everyone who knows anything about LinkedIn knows this is the ultimate faux pas. Perhaps I’m wrong though. You list “Social Media” among your specialties.

The invitation also says you’ve indicated I am “a Friend.” I recognize “Friend” is a relatively loose term when it comes to social media. People who have never met in person are Facebook friends. If you have no other connection and want to get around having to look up an email address, “Friend” is the viable only option on LinkedIn. But aside from knowing the same people, we aren’t really that chummy. Perhaps you’re using the term “Friend” just a bit too loosely in this case.

Your LinkedIn invite would have been more effective if you had said something like this:

Hi David,

We seem to operate in similar circles.  Why don’t we connect?  Perhaps we’ll meet in person sometime soon.

Regards,
________

That probably would have resulted an acceptance of your invitation. For the time being, though, my response is, “You can do better.”

David Salkover works in the Meeting and Events industry. He’s passionate about tradeshows and conventions, and is never without a good book to read.  Far from being a social media guru/ninja/expert, he’s more of a social media nerd. David tweets about whatever happens to be on his mind at twitter.com/dbsalk. 

Welcome to part 2 of Twitter Bios That Will Rock Your Socks.

After publishing last month’s post I realized the majority of the people featured were writers. Apparently writers can write well. Go figure.

While authors may have the upper hand in crafting short, sweet and memorable bios, I did try to avoid that “mistake” this go around. I even feature a company or two!

Alright, so maybe @joelharperfit was a client of mine back in the day, but his bio is still a work of genius. It establishes him as an expert (re: impressive clients) while also showing he’s not snobby about it (re: 10 year old kids). It subtly hints at a product you can buy without shoving it down your throat (re: FIT PACK) and then makes him relatable and easygoing with the dessert comment. Pretty much the perfect bio.

I featured @AuckTransport recently and for good reason. Every Aucklander without a car (and sometimes with) can relate to the ridiculous inefficiencies of Auckland’s public transport system. What I love about this bio in particular is that it starts off almost like it’s an official account, then throws you the “shit” curveball. (And I’m nothing if not a girl who loves her potty language.) Finally, they round it out with an extremely identifiable quip about transport delays. Genius, I tell you!

@RedheadWriting (aka Erika Napolentano) makes me think, cry, laugh out loud and is one of my favorite bloggers of all time. So it comes as no surprise that her bio is both impressive and self-deprecating. She makes other Twitter-lovers feel some sort of connection AND it says what she does while giving us an idea of the kind of writer she is. She’s a digital girl without looking like every other digital girl.

Food blogger (and another personal favorite of mine), @joythebaker has such a simple and perfect bio there’s not a lot else I can say. This fits her online personality and makes me want to immediately make a batch of her cookies (a recipe I most likely found on her blog).

Yeah, it shocked me too when I found myself screenshotting the profile of @BNZBank. But come on, how great is this bio? Very simple, to the point and clear they understand how Twitter works. They’ve managed to combine their long history (150 years of banking) with new digital technology (140 characters). Plus, when a bank give us a glimpse of humor they become a-okay in my book.

Another company profile I just had to include. @threadhelp is so great because they walk the walk. I had a question the other day and they responded within the hour. They’re true to their word and while this profile is nowhere near as fun as the official Threadless account, it serves such a great service and you can feel the smile coming right out of your screen.

Takeaways:

1. Relatability is huge. Make people feel like they know you and have had similar experiences.

2. Be impressive. Highlight your mad skills, but don’t get cocky. Feel free to list a snazzy award, column or hot client, but don’t forget to round it out to point #1.

3. Sometimes you don’t need to list all your hobbies, job titles, URLs, etc. Sometimes a simple sentance that sums up your Great Passion is enough to grab our interest.

A few months ago I made a video tutorial for the subscribers of my newsletter. To be honest, I never really liked making “exclusive” content so the newsletter is now defunct and I’m re-purposing some of the good ones that went out last year.

As you’ll see below, this tutorial is a demonstration of how I use HootSuite and keep it organized. While I’m a big proponent of “different strokes for different folks”, I personally love taking a peek into the quirky ways people use things. While my setup below is by no means unique or all that creative, it does work hugely well for me in terms of keeping up with searches, conversations and not losing my life entirely when I sign in.

Enjoy!

For those of you who aren’t into the whole video thing, here’s a quick summary:

1. HootSuite is more awesome than TweetDeck because it’s web based and there’s more flexibility in terms of organizing followers, topics and events.
2. Use the “pending tweets” stream to start scheduling posts to go out so you can reach as many followers as possible.
3. I organize my main tab with my home feed, @replies, sent tweets and pending. This way I can see everything at a glance and avoid sending a post out more than once.
4. Go through your home feed every morning and see if there’s any conversations you can jump into.
5. If you have a blog, organize a separate tab to include people who regularly comment/retweet so you can return the favor and stay in touch!
6. Use well organized and highly specific lists so you can keep tabs on interesting people in your industry, coworks, real-life friends, etc.
7. Set up a tab for any Twitter chats you join. Create columns for mentions, the hashtag and the moderator’s username so you don’t miss any questions or important comments in the flurry of the chat.

Any questions, don’t hesitate to ask below in the comments. And if you have any tips for me/us or if you’ve found different aspects of HootSuite useful, please share with the class!

Update: A few of you have asked to embed this video on your own sites and you’re more than welcome! A link back as credit would be a nice, but isn’t required.