Miss Nicole Jensen

On the eve of International ‘Correct Every Spelling Mistake You See on Facebook’ Week I thought I’d take the time to share with you a few of my favourite online locales for the sarcastic and humourous correction of basic, written English.

Facebook Groups

Let’s get the Internet’s bumper stickers of the way straight up. I’m just going to nominate one that covers so many others out there: The correct usage of “You’re”, “Your”, “There”, “Their” and “They’re”. Surely you know a lot more and are part of a few!

The Oatmeal

Aside from kicking Justin Bieber’s arse, this site just knows the grammar. There’s comics on how to use an apostrophe, a semicolon;* ten words you need to start getting right (and an email response to it) and a quiz on your spelling on Twitter.

Hyperbole and a Half

This fantastic humour site gives you a few coping strategies for the spelling and grammar fails of others. Meet Alot; he is helpful in a number of ways:

So the next time you are reading along and you see some guy ranting about how he is “alot better at swimming than Michael Phelps,” instead of getting angry, you can be like “You’re right!  Alots are known for their superior swimming capabilities.”

d-e-f-i-n-i-t-e-l-y.com

In case you ever forget, this is the classic and original spelling snark.

Synonyms for “Said”

A while back I posted a massive list of 234 other words you can use instead of “said.” I don’t know where it originates from, but I like it anyway.

How to Write a Passive Aggressive Note

Slashspot.com has an infographic posted from Column Five Media which can help resolve your lame-o house mate problems.

And that’s it. Do you know any great resources that should have a mention here? I’d love to hear them!

*and I hope I got that right!

Welcome to the fourth installment of my Twitter for N00bs series. You can find the intro post here.

My fourth blog of the series is balancing out my previous on giving to the Twitter community, now I’m making a list of useful resources you can use to find interesting stuff on the network. Afterall, there’s no point in tweeting if you’re not  getting anything out of it!

• Search the Twittersphere! – Just check out what people are saying on Twitter. This is helpful for keeping track of conversations, events, people… anything! I was showing my father over my holidays how to look up industry activities on Twitter. He still hasn’t a Twitter account, but my mum was interested in how to look up “gardening tips” for sure!
  
• Hashtags – Mentioned in my last blog, these things are so useful! A bit tricky to get a grasp on at first, you’ll be using them in many, many tweets from now on. To quote from a recent reader, “If people are looking for tweets about the TV show ‘Lost’, they probably aren’t interested in someone talking about their lost cat (though they possibly should be). So people use #LOST to show the tweet is specifically about the show.” Excellent way of putting it!
• Twitter User Groups – A little self-promotion here, but I cannot stress enough the helpfulness of your local community. Find them, follow a few and ask away! Using the hashtag for your city (e.g. #Brisbane) is a good way of finding local information too. Another way to find local tweeps is by visiting Nearby Tweets. (thanks @jendudley for the reminder!)
• Wefollow – A category-based user directory. Put yourself up there by nominating three categories and ye shall be sought!
• Twellow – This one I feel is a bit outdated, but it’s still a good one for finding tweeps with common interests.

Bonus cleaning mentions

These are the two sites I tell tweeps about when they’re complaining of issues managing followers.

• FriendorFollow – Just as the name says, this one lists who is following you, who you’re following and who is a mutual friend. I use it when I’m jack of following uninteresting people
  
• Twitoria – Best. Ever. This one shows who the slack tweeps are you’re following. Someone hasn’t tweeted for a few months? Few weeks? Easy clean-up!

Well, I hope I’ve delivered on easy-to-use resources for finding interesting things on Twitter. And just for the marketing gurus who are looking for something a little specified: How to Use Twitter for Marketing & PR

(So, Paul… still think we’re lonely? Stupid?)

Welcome to the third installment of my Twitter for N00bs series. You can find the intro post here.

Today’s (well, yesterday’s really. I had a day off.) is all about proving yourself to the Twitter community once you’ve done that other stuff I’ve talked about.

• Be concise. Obviously you’ve only got 140 characters to work with, and if you’re hoping or expecting (you cocky thing, you!) people to retweet you, leave 20-30 characters space so they can credit you without altering the content.
• Variety. It’s cool that you’re linking to your blog, but don’t do just that; interact! Ask questions. Share a joke. Share a picture. Just don’t do only one thing (unless you’re a specialist account for a particular company or reason, but even then they’re pretty boring after a while). Even @MyToaster pipes up occasionally!.
• Show your stuff. You know a whole lot of stuff about law? Construction work? Kittens? Show it! There’s a phrase called “thought leadership” which is quite relevant here in that you can make a name for yourself by being the go-to person for your passion or area of expertise. Share what makes you tick.
• Hashtags are awesome! This is the aspect of Twitter which I am most asked about; “what are those damn hashtags all about?” I don’t even  fully understand them myself, but there are plenty of places about which will tell you. Just don’t use too many in one tweet. It’s annoying.
• Know how to Retweet (RT). I am tempted to write a whole blog about this entirely, but I won’t because it’s over-thought. The commonly accepted format of a retweet (crediting someone with content) is:

RT @username: CONTENT

not

CONTENT. (RT @username)

Feel free to use “via” in place of “RT” when you are not quoting them word-for-word. And please take out extra usernames if there is a chain happening. Usually the username closest to the content is the original author.

• Ask yourself: does anyone really care? It’s as simple as that.
  

Okay, I’m done; this is my simple list. Any more to add? Come on, people! I’ve only just wet your tongue with this stuff!

Welcome to the second installment of my Twitter for N00bs series. You can find the intro post here.

So after you’ve set up your account and started checking out the scene, now you can pay a bit more attention to how you’re doing this.

• Twitter as IM: Do not use Twitter as an instant messaging service. That is what direct messaging (DM) is for. The rest of us don’t care about what you and your house mates are organising for dinner, BUT if you are making a public point of questioning someone in order to incite action (much like you would at a forum or press conference I guess) then go ahead, embarrass the company or body into responding. Also see Oprah’s web 1.0 mistake of using the caps lock… LOL at “feeling really 21st century!”
• Multi-in-One @Replies: If you want to reply to a few tweeps at once, you can! Instead of tweeting “@bob Yes! I agree!” and then “@lucy But it was delicious pasta” you could easily fit both into one tweet. And both of these could even just be DMs.
• Link Love: Sure, link to your blog (once a day at most if you’re sharing new, helpful content) but never demand people look at your site/blog/band/company/ebook/anything. Do this repeatedly without any other use of Twitter? Then you are a spammer and deserve to die a horridly painful death according to many tweeps.
• Be Honest: If you’re tweeting from a company or association account, be upfront about why you’re using Twitter. You can bet on your mother’s old bedsocks that people will despise you should you appear a spam account while claiming in your one-line-bio to be all about interaction. Accounts like that are hilarious in my books because they just don’t understand Twitter. They should be reading this blog.
• Follow-Refollowing: You’ll get attention by doing the ol’ follow-unfollow-follow-unfollow, but it most likely will not be positive. It announces to others “please follow me, my existance on Twitter depends on gaining your affections!” Kinda needy.
• Automated Connections: Automatic direct messages are probably one of the top ways to get a quick unfollow and bad rap from the community. It is nice to automatically thank people for following you, but try just doing it yourself? You’ll avoid being tempted to include a link to your site and if they unfollow and follow you back again… they’ll get the same DM and realise pretty quickly how insincere you are.
• Multi-Social Network Platforms: People who copy their tweets to Facebook updates annoy me, but I’m now able to hide the Selective Twitter application there. It’s up to you whether or not you decide to do this I think.
• Be Cool, Bro: If you can’t say something nice, don’t say it at all. This is a rarity online as many feel they shall never meet the person they are arguing with (debates on the Internet; hurrah!) and many feel that they do not need the world to agree with them. It’s great that you feel that confident about your stance, but you may still be offending people which is never cool.
• Spell Check: Correct spelling and grammatical mistakes via DM. Unless you’re really, really annoyed and believe they should definitely know better. Which isn’t exactly being nice, but at least they’ll learn, right?
• The Billboard Theory: Lastly, abide by that faithful social media saying that you should not put anything out onto the Internet that you would not like a billboard made out of or say to your grandmother. I’m not a fan of this saying really because otherwise I would not be able to discuss many, many topics out of the fact that I’d be explaining things right down to “What is a computer?” over corned beef.

This is just my quick list as there are so, so many articles on playing it nice on Twitter and I myself could rant on for hours about using Twitter politely. Got any other Twitter mannerisms you’d like to add? Tomorrow’s topic? How to be useful to the Twittersphere.

Welcome to the first installment of my Twitter for N00bs series. You can find the intro post here.

1. Get an account. You need a username, password and e-mail address. That’s it! Make your username look as less spammy as possible. Everyone was laughing at @Rove1974 for a bit because he looked to be a spammer, instead of a a multi Gold Logie Award winning Australian media personality. But don’t worry, you can always change your username later. Don’t be afraid to use your real name as you’ll most likely be using Twitter for a number of reasons, which may include looking for work or connecting with fellow employees. Depends on your goals!
2. Picture. Bio. URL. Do this before you are tempted to write your first tweet if you do not wish to look like the millions of other Twitter n00bs. Head to the Settings of your account and you can fill out the basic details I’m talking about there. This step is important as it is the coat you wear to the party, the name tag people can identify common ground with you through. And please avoid calling yourself the ultimate leader or guru of something. I’ll talk about “social media experts” later this week.
3. Feel free to have an interesting first tweet instead of “checking out Twitter.” You can choose to have this cliched first entry, fine by me, I just thought you’d like to start your usefulness early while hiding the fact that you are “totally new at this.”
4. Follow no more than double figures at first and follow people you know or find useful. That is, don’t appear to be a spammer. 
5. Wait then until you’ve tweeted an even amount to the people you follow, then gradually follow more. Think about location, areas of interest, humour, usefulness and even novelty connections.

Tomorrow’s entry will be a short list of P’s and Q’s to mind with conversing with other tweeps. Cute, huh?

Even before the most recent hype about Twitter, the microblogging network was already growing rapidly in popularity, as reported by Mashable in January.

What I love about Twitter requires a new website entirely, but I shall paraphrase quite simply here; It is my social life. After the dissolving of my maiden serious relationship, I felt I could not return to the social circle I had once shared with this person so easily, and so I turned to my online networks. I have a strong passion for event management, and so found the Brisbane Twitter community open to many new ideas from creative souls. And events we have!

For the many of my “in-real-life” friends who have not made the move into the confined, simplicity of the intelligent network (and are still fapping around with Facebook News Feeds), I am running a series of blog entries on how to kick arse on Twitter. That is, on:

1. getting started,
2. basic Twitter etiquette,
3. being useful to other “tweeps,” and
4. finding the information you want from the Twittersphere.

You’re all certainly doomed to be tweeked!

Edit, 12th May: I came across this post yesterday on Ten Twitter Mythconceptions and just had to share. Such a good one.

A mate’s 21st birthday party is coming up late June and she’s a tad frazzled over how to go about finding a venue amongst the diamonds of possibilities in Brisbane. So I made this list!

1. Determine your budget. Are your parents paying? Awesome! Now pay attention to this fact and ensure they’re part of the decision-making process.
2. List possible venues. It’s all about your favourite places to be and favourite people to be around, so think about the crowd you’re inviting and the suitability of the venue. I had my 21st last July at The Plough Inn, Southbank because I was inviting college friends, new friends, old friends and family members. The relaxed atmosphere was great for comfortable discussions and the service was superb. I loved it! Other cute 21sts I’ve attended have been at house parties, alleyway cocktail bars and more. Sure, be imaginative; but match your guests, not vice versa.
3. E-mail for quotes. Take note of how quickly they can return the details. Don’t feel compelled to do business with someone you do not like, but this depends on how much you’d love to party at their establishment.
4. Shortlist. Try to get it down to about three, but this depends on how much time you have on your hands to look around.
5. Venue test run. Go for a drink, meal, dance or whatever activity you’re planning for your big gig. The aim here is to get a feel for the atmosphere. You wouldn’t buy a pair of shoes without trying them on now, would you?
6. Formal visit. Chat to the functions manager about what you require, who will attend, any special needs you have. Be specific and they’ll be able to offer you better service.
7. Negotiate. Do feel free to state that another venue is willing to do XYZ for a better price. If they want your business, they will do their best to accommodate. And don’t forget to check with the parents.
8. Confirm! In writing of course. Pay all deposits, etc as soon as possible too.

So that’s the planning done of seeking a neat party venue. One last thing is to thank them after your 21st for their hospitality and perhaps even leave them a testimonial which they can use later on. But I know you’ll all do that because you’re a smashing party host!

Happy hunting!

I am still craving this! Unbelievably scrumptious and perfect for afternoon drinks over a game of croquet.

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