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5 Twitter Bio Examples That Will Rock Your Socks

by Marian Schembari on November 7, 2011

For the past few months I’ve been making a point to take screenshots of Twitter bios that have made me laugh, think or are just plain brilliant. Bios that find a way to – in 160 characters – sum up a person, what they do and why we should follow them. And I figured it was high time I started posting them here. Every few weeks I hope to update you with more, but for now, take a look at these rad five:

@montoure has found a way to give us the feeling of his genre rather than just telling us about it. This bio could not be more brilliant. That last line gets me every time.

@KatieDavisBurps lists all the things she does, but they’re not boring, overused interests like “loving life” and “eating food”. She’s written a solid, interesting list that ends in a way that’s incredibly relatable and made me want to be her friend. Or make her a pot of coffee.

@jamievaron always cracks me up because every time she opens her little blogger mouth, an absolute truth no one ever mentions comes out. And, without fail, she’s nailed it in her bio while also being crystal clear about what she does. Funny + informative = WIN. (p.s. why hasn’t Entrepreneur magazine bought entreprenuer.com? I can’t tell you how many times I’ve misspelled it in my browser.)

@mariancall not only has a beautiful first name, but her bio makes me want to listen to her music rightthissecond. THIS is how artists should be using social media, y’all. She lets us get to know her with the word “wanderlust”, helps us understand her style with musician comparison and adds a little funny in there to make us like her. Then she tells us to buy her album without actually telling us. I don’t know about you, but I’m sold.

@neilhimself has been on my list of Top Bios since day one. When I was working with authors I always sent them to his profile as a great example to follow. Basically, we all know who Neil Gaiman is; he doesn’t need to list his books or hobbies. Instead, he shows us how passionate he is about what he does and he writes it in typical Neil fashion.

Looking back at the bios that have caught me eye, I’m finding: Humor is always a good idea. So is passion. Lists can be great if you’re creative. And, at the end of the day, show – don’t tell.

Anyone come across a great bio recently they want to share? What do you think about these five?

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Reason #493 Why I Love Twitter

by Marian Schembari on September 12, 2011

I think I actually need to put together an epic list of reasons why I love Twitter. Because every week I read awesome stories (like this one on Healthy Tipping Point) about fun, quirky, useful, life-changing things that happen because of Twitter.

In January I wrote about how Twitter saved my blog. And every day I’m reminded of the power connection.

This past Saturday night I attend a Josh Pyke gig. Now, if you don’t know Josh Pyke, he’s awesome. When I finally got my ass to Australia I knew I had to see him live. As luck would have it, he was touring Sydney during my two week stint here.

Anyway, halfway through the show, Josh paused and said, “Is Chris here?” (can’t remember the guy’s name, so we’re going with Chris). Some dude raised his hand.

Josh said, “For those of you who don’t know Twitter, it’s a thing on the internet. And Chris here mentioned that it was his birthday today.” And so Josh Pyke, one of Australia’s top singer-songwriters, sang Happy Birthday (along with the rest of the audience) to some dude named Chris.

All because of Twitter.

Doncha just love stories like that?  THIS is why I love social media.

Now to jot down the other #492 reasons….

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Won’t You Pretty Please Be My Friend?

by Marian Schembari on August 18, 2011

No one ever warned me making friends was so damn hard.

Throughout the years upon years you’re at school, you have an always constant group of ready-made friends. I wasn’t particularly popular (or well-liked for that matter) in high school, but it was relatively simple to meet people and there a handful of gems I met during my early years who I continue to keep in touch with.

College is the same. The girls I met and lived with at Davidson are my lady soul mates, but we obviously never would have met were it not for college.

When I studied abroad, the guys and girls in my small program became instant friends, both by circumstance and a combined love of travel and London. We still talk to this day.

But the two years since graduating I’ve made maybe one or two new, good friends. The rest have been one-off coffees with Twitter followers or the occasional blog meetup.

Why is it so freaking hard to meet people?

No, wait. It’s NOT hard to meet people. I just had two back-to-back blind coffee dates with friends of friends and have two next week with people I know through social media.

It’s not hard to meet people, it’s just hard to meet them TWICE.

It’s Not You (Auckland), It’s Me

My biggest gripe about Auckland was that people tend to have a group of friends they met in high school and have no desire to expand that circle or get to know anyone new.

In the past week that I’ve been in Melbourne, I’ve been more social, met more people and felt more connected than in the eight months I lived in New Zealand. But instead of blaming Auckland (like I usually do), I realized I was judging too quickly and hadn’t put enough pressure on myself while in NZ. Granted, I still think Kiwis are hard to get to know, but so are a lot of people. One complaint I hear a lot from the friends I stay in touch with back home is meeting people. It has nothing to do with location. It has everything to do with comfort level.

Right now, I’m entirely alone. I just left everything. This trip isn’t like my move to Auckland. Back in December I was with my partner and his family and our friends from London. Here, I literally haven no one. And while that’s scary as all hell, it’s put me in a position of having to grow some damn girl balls. I’m couchsurfing – something I never thought I’d do in a million years. I’m calling up complete strangers and ordering them to have coffee with me. I’m asking anyone and everyone if they have friends in Australia I can meet up with.

Honestly, I feel like I’m dating. Like I’m those horribly desperate women from chick flicks who laughs hysterically at a man’s jokes, just hoping – praying – he’ll like them.

Except it’s with everyone.

And yes, that’s just as horrifying as it sounds.

What’s your experience like with making new friends? Do you stick with your old group? Make a concentrated effort for new ones? Or have you done something similar to yours truly and had to start from scratch?

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What to Say on Social Media When You Have Nothing to Say

by Marian Schembari on August 16, 2011

Today’s post is care of the always brilliant Alexis Grant. Everyone gets stuck for something to say so I know you’ll find this guide incredibly useful.

When I launched my e-guide on how to make money as a social-media consultant, a soon-to-be-uber-successful-consultant emailed me. “What about clients who don’t know what to say on social media?” she asked. “What should those people tweet about or share on Facebook?”

It’s a problem a lot of us face, both as businesses and individuals. If you don’t feel like you’re all that interesting, and you know you’re not supposed to tweet about what you ate for breakfast, then what do you tweet about?

When it comes to sharing via social networks, we often think of original content, usually in the form of a blog. But not everyone has the time or desire to blog. And most of the people who think they have nothing to say on social media don’t have blogs.

But here’s the secret: Not everything you share has to be original content. In fact, it’s best if a good portion of what you share isn’t original. You’ll be more successful at building an online community if you think outside the original-content box.

Here are a few ways to come up with interesting, valuable information to share on your channels:

Embrace the Retweet

Find people who are sharing information you and your audience is interested in, and re-share it. On Twitter, this is in the form of a RT, or retweet, and on Facebook it’s called a share. Not only will this help you have something to say, it will also help you build a community, because the people whose content you share will notice and possibly want to connect with you.

To make your job easier, set up your channels so it’s easy to find information to re-share. On Facebook, create a list of favorites or have your page “like” other pages that often offer content that pertains to you, then browse it daily.

On Twitter, use lists. The easiest strategy is to pull lists that have already been created by other people – find them on Listorious – into your Hootsuite account, then browse that list daily looking for tweets to RT. I like to create my own private lists of people and organizations I hope to RT, so I can have all those tweeps in one place and easily browse their tweets without them knowing it.

Love Your RSS Feed

RSS is God’s gift to those of us who make a living helping people use social media. Why? Because once you take the time to set up your feed, it will spoon-feed you the information you need to thrive. Take a few hours to add blogs within your niche to your Google Reader (or another RSS feed), and check it each morning for posts or news to share with your followers.

Totally confused? Check out this Google Reader 101.

Don’t forget to add Google alerts for relevant and interesting search terms. And make the effort to add new blogs to your feed weeks or months after you set it up. If you get in the habit of adding quality sources of information when you come across them, you’ll always have something to tweet or share when you need it.

Respond to Others

Twitter is all about conversation, so browse tweets from relevant people and look for excuses to respond. Think your response might be interesting to the rest of your followers? Add a period in front of the tweet so everyone who follows you sees it, rather than just the person you’re tweeting. Now you’re not only engaging in conversation, you’re saying something interesting on social media. Woot!

Offer a Look Behind the Scenes

Help followers or fans get to know you by offering a glimpse of what makes you or your business tick. Don’t just tell us what your product is and why we should buy it; tell us the juicy details that went into creating that product. Think TimesCast, The New York Times’ peek behind the scenes.

This is a fabulous opportunity to use photos, which are great conversation-starters and buzz-creators, especially on Facebook. Same for video.

Search

Search by topical #hashtags to find new tweeps to follow, RT and respond to. I like to set up searches in Hootsuite. That way they’re always there, and I can browse them whenever I need fodder.

These are just a few ways I find information to share from my clients’ (and my) accounts. What ideas can you add?

Alexis Grant is a journalist and social media coach who’s writing a book about backpacking solo through Africa. She recently released her first e-guide, How to Build a Part-Time Social Media Business.

{Photo credit}

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Why I Completely Failed at Maintaining 2 Twitter Accounts

by Marian Schembari on July 25, 2011

I’m going to be completely honest with you. I failed epically when it came to monitoring two Twitter accounts.

I would have liked to come back with this massive success story… Shown you all that it just takes a little bit of effort and consistency to build a following from scratch.

Yeaaaahh…. no. It didn’t work out that way.

For those of you unfamiliar with my second-account-saga, I started another blog called This New Town, to chronicle my “adventures” (re: attempts to settle) in New Zealand.

To help promote this blog without annoying my already existing Twitter followers, I started a second account.

Tweets were about where I was going, what I was doing and how I was coping.

To keep this from turning into a book, here’s what I did wrong:

  1. I segmented my audience.
  2. I didn’t know my audience.

Don’t Segment Your Audience

Listen, I’ve said this before and for some reason I ignored my own advice. You are your own brand. Unless you’re a news site or a blog with multiple authors, people come back because of YOU. Your voice, your stories. It’s the same thing with Twitter. Just because you’re a social media blog doesn’t mean you can’t tweet about the weather, your dog or that weird rash. In fact, you SHOULD tweet about your personal stuff. That’s the whole point. Connecting.

Young House Love recently posted about breastfeeding even those John and Sherry blog religiously about home improvement. Part of the same niche? No, not really. Part of their hugely successful brand? Hells to the yes.

Know Your Audience

I’ve avoided writing about this topic since moving to Auckland because it’s a small, cliquey city, but social media is on an entirely new plane here. The group of people using Twitter is smaller, but they use it in such a different way. It’s more about talking to friends you already have, not making new ones.

So I started this new profile, trying desperately to connect with Auckland people, not realizing I wouldn’t get a response out of them because no one had any established connection with me.

It was a long, tortuous, and highly frustrating process.

Point Being….

Because I was so desperate to fit into this niche and so worried my Auckland-centric tweets would annoy my previously-established followers, I segmented myself, therefore alienating really interesting people on Twitter. And because New Zealand tweeting is so different from what I’m used to, growth was seriously limited.

Meaning? Unless you really have to, one Twitter profile is enough.

I’d be curious to hear what your thoughts are, if you’ve had success or failure with maintaining two personal accounts. I might have given up a tad too early, but in my gut it was definitely the right decision.

{Super-secret-secret: There might be some combining of the blogs in the near future. But don’t worry, I’ll poll the shit out of you before I do.}

 

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