Miss Nicole Jensen

Hello, readers! How is everyone today? Just a general update of the awesome things I’ve been up to lately.

Last week I was lucky enough to score a free ticket to Creative Drinks. My dear friend Hannah Suarez of Brisbane Creative Industries was the speaker of the evening and did very well. Her presentation is on SlideShare here and includes some helpful networking event tips.

Tuesday I was also in attendance at my favourite Brisbane events company Iceberg Events‘ Networx, Working the (Real & Virtual) Room. Director of Paragon Associates, Lisa Butler kick-started the evening with information on busting networking myths and emphasised that anyone can learn to network effectively. More friends of mine were speaking on the topic of working the virtual room (specifically Twitter) – in fact, the whole panel trio of Darryl King, Clare Lancaster and Greg Lexiphanic! Ignoring the occasional train screaming through South Brisbane, discussions of Twitter and social media run amok against a background of a Twitter projection of the #networx hashtag.

Yesterday I attended ANZ’s Small Business workshops discussing online marketing (specifically Google’s AdWords and social media) and brand awareness. The day was a good one and I met various new people interested in learning more about their businesses online. I was even outed as a secret live-twitter bug, which was a great example to those wanting to understand the scope social media can have. There are more ANZ Small Business workshops happening all around Australia until around November, so get in quick to enrol (they’re free too)!

Lastly, things are rolling faster and faster for Brisbane Twestival Local. Committee positions are being snapped up fast, bands and artists approached, venues scoped. We are hoping to gather the support of the voted-in beyondblue: the national depression initiative as our charity of choice to support, a charity I have long been a fan of.

Phew! I think that’s about it. Oh! And the BTUB Wine Night was a complete success as well. My first paid event as a freelancer. Feels good, man.

Looking for full-time employment has unfortunately taken a back seat to these activities. It’s a shame I’m having so much fun… well, no. Not really.

We’ve all done them. You’re hosting a little shindig at home when you’ve realised you don’t have Fred’s new phone number and that you’ll probably just get Julie’s answering machine for the next few days again. What do you do? Facebook it.

Sure the effort of doing so isn’t a lot, but how effective are they in actually gaining a successful guest list? In my experience, you could always assume the social network addicts would sign up first, if not immediately, then slowly the numbers creep up until you’ve got the record player set to Hottest 100 Party Tracks as guests shyly arrive.

Well, anyway, I asked fellow Twitter addicts how they use Facebook events. Next week, I might ask the neighbours, but they’ll just look at me strangely and offer a cup of sugar instead.

“I think they are fantastic, except not everyone is on FB. Good marketing ploy of theirs though” – @kirstywrites

Attendance

Clearly diminishes 20% on average. Due to lack of interaction with the host? Possibly. As Facebook ages, less people are taking their RSVPs on the website seriously.

Personal Touch

The main argument many people I speak to have against Facebook is the lack of face-to-face communication. No Twitter respondants actually mentioned this!

Time frame

Clearly you’re unable to post a Facebook event for the same day. A week might suffice depending on the size and nature of your event, also on how active your guests are on the social network which can be quite a lot of assuming. Four weeks or even more for a major celebration or fundraiser is ideal if you have this time frame available.

Then there is the “Maybe” RSVP option. Dreaded by event hosts, loved by attendees:

“I can reply ‘maybe’ to events & they still show up in my timeline, so I can decide to go closer to the time.” – @scarlettjen

Diary Management

@ccake, like @iusebiro and @brentoe, syncs FB events with other calculators and also chooses to have e-mail notifications turned on for when the invitations come in, much like @kissability does.

“I do use Facebook events and I have email notifications turned on for invitations. I find it very useful in my busy schedule!” – @kissability

“Handy for knowing about harder to find things (house show parties, gallery openings) new facebook keeps it more hidden though.” – @vivzilla

“[I] check my requests (incl event invites) daily, a bit spammy but still quite useful.” – @djackmanson

“Events is my primary use of Facebook- I use it constantly as my social calendar. Find it incredibly useful.” – @glittertrash

“I use it all the time, both as an attendee and organiser. Very handy.” – @sleepydumpling

“I rely heavily on my Facebook events. I’m very forgetful, so having them display in ‘coming up’ on my homepage really helps.” - @hellyeahkate

Authenticity

Having only a Facebook event for an invitation, do people trust these or seek verbal confirmation of the event? @brentoe doesn’t seem to think so, but @erikveland has other ideas:

“I rely on it to track my events. Unfortunately event spam has made them useless as a source to send out REAL invitations…Because of event spam, most people will just ignore invitations altogether unless you specifically bring attention to them.” – @erikveland

“I use them and so do nearly all of my friends. Event isn’t “official” until it’s on FB” – @brentoe

Suggestions for Facebook

Option to lose the ‘Maybe’ RSVP. That would be my main suggestion. What do you think?

“The “no chance” ones can be annoying. It’s OK to be invited once, but multiple times?! We need ”never invite me” op” - @divabat

“If FB used microformats for events it would be a great improvement. Otherwise I rarely check events” – @zuzu

In closing…

I’m having a house party next weekend, which I’m very excited about, and the Facebook event went up a week or so ago. Let’s see how many make it, but in the meantime, what are your views on Facebook events usage?

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.

Just a quick one:

• I suggest sitting to the back of the room if you are using a notebook computer. This means others will not be distracted by what’s happening on your screen.
• Like everyone else, make sure your laptop bag or case is not blocking any pathways. Feel free to use the seat next to you to spread out, but pay attention if it looks like someone needs that seat.
• Type quietly and only when necessary. Others may not be able to hear the presenters if they are sitting nearby you.
• If you cannot say something nice, don’t say it at all. No one on the Internet really cares if the presenter needs to stop for a glass of water, puts up the wrong slideshow or trips over a cord. You’re covering content, not the tiny incidentals of a presentation.
• Regarding the event itself, offter only constructive criticism, and take preference to in-person, rather than blogged if it can be helped. Feedback should always be welcomed by organisers and so if the food is cold, let them know now, rather than tomorrow on your website.
• No solitaire or WoW! If you don’t want to listen to the presenter then get out of the theatre and go home. Seriously.

Do you have any pointers for event bloggers?