Packaging from TwIsTeD order - Retro Love

Welcome to the series Sunday Social Networking Tips. The plan is to bring in folks to share their best ideas about social networking. The next person to write up a tip could be you!

Tip:

Share what you love.

Bloggers blog. Twitter buds tweet.  It’s all about communicating.  One is less spontaneous than the other.  One is much shorter.  None the less, it’s someone saying something.

The problem at first with either is that you’ve been cursed with the desire to shout something to the world. Maybe you can no longer stand the birds outside your window. Perhaps you’ve suddenly become a grandparent.  It could be that car wreck you’re recovering from.  Whatever the reason, you can no longer not share about it.

So you take up your blog, get a social networking account or three and you start in. At first, even with this deep passion, you fumble out your words.  You don’t ‘get it’ at first. New friends come hard right along side the word struggles.

One day though, it happens. You’re writing, communicating, sharing, and the flood gates are open.  You feel like no one can stop you.  A hundred folks follow you online, and a few dozen catch your blog every day. Things are better than you’d have thought even a week before. It’s a slice of heaven.

BAM. They start on you. Oh, trust me, if they haven’t yet, it’s soon to be. It’s the ones that seem like friends that will do the worst damage.  The naysayers, the second guessers, and the ‘experts’ are at your virtual doorstep, and they’ve come to share, “you’re doing it wrong!”

Wow! It hits you. You aren’t making any money with your blog. A thousand folks aren’t following you.  Are you seriously still talking about your grandchild and all of those experiences? Sure you’re getting some comments and links, but you wake up to the fact that those are just fellow grandparents.  They aren’t big wigs in the blogging and soc net world. The question hits you between the eyes, “what am I doing? how did I get to this point?”

I’m here to tell you shut up that talk now. STOP. SHUT IT. STOP ALREADY.

Have you stopped?

No seriously, not stopped the social networking or the blogging, but the beat down you’re putting on yourself. Now breathe.  Are you there yet? I’m going to speak some truth to you.  You need to hear it.

Don’t stop doing what you’re already doing with your blog and Twitter or Facebook or whatever. That’s right. Don’t stop doing it.

What’s happening with those other folks, your ‘friends’ and ‘experts’ is that they are trying to squeeze you into their ‘ideal model’ of what a blogger/tweeter/etc is.  To them you should be the next Gary V, or Chris B.  You’re not.

That’s not a bad thing. Contrarily, it’s a great thing. You’re you, with your unique way to see the world and relate it. Gosh dang, you went from zero followers to hundreds already. If that’s not success, then no amount of adding numbers or dollars will help.

So what if you’re not making a living off of it. Is that what drove you to start a blog or join Facebook or Flickr? HELL NO!

Trust me right now.  If you give that up, at best you’ll always ask why you stopped sharing your passion, at worst, you’ll stop contributing anything meaningful for quite some time, and be miserable doing it.

Put your virtual foot down and keep that shingle out.  Push through. Yep, cliche, but do it. I’ll be here. Your friends in arms that share your passion will too.

If you’ve read this far, and have stopped talking about your kids, your accident, your addiction, then I challenge you to put your fingers to the keys today and go to it.  To heck with continuity. To heck with a plan. Deep passion lives to be fed and only through expression can it be sated.

Hope this helps. Share your good stuff and remember to breathe. And while you’re here, tell me about your passion, share your blog, your Twitter ID and whatever comes to mind.

Yours,

Todd

@tojosan on Twitter

Notes:

1) The photo is of packaging materials for an order we received from TwIsTed. See my recent TwIsTeD review.

2) This post was inspired by a series of emails between Greg, aka @execbp, and myself.  Greg blogs at Greg’s Constant Chaos.

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Let me send you a postcard.

 Welcome to a new series on Social Networking Tips. The plan is to bring in folks to share their best ideas about social networking. The next person to write up a tip could be you!

Tip:

Search.

Last week hdbbstephen shared another great way to connect with folks on your social networks, search.

I like to create do searches for topics that I am interested in on Twitter, to see what people are saying. Then I go look at their Tweets and reply when I have something to add to the conversation. I have found some cool folks this way, and been invited to write guest posts, etc.

What a great method to not only learn what’s being said about your favorite topics but who’s saying it.  The problem is that most folks have never thought to use search.

Let’s see a about one of your choices.  How about searching Twitter.

Twitter can be searched best by using search.twitter.com.

It’s that simple really.  The search will bring up tweets from most recent back. Searching here is forgiving of periods and the like, and does better with words that aren’t imbedded. However it does find links with the supplied search text.  Where I’ve had the most success is finding locals in the St. Louis area.  It’s also been useful to find folks interested in my favorite shows and such.

Google doesn’t slack either for searching on social networks, all tweets are indexed.  However there are other ways to find great discussions and people on Twitter.

Layered on top of Twitter search is one of my favorite tools, Tweetstats.com. Tweetstats Trend page is a winning way to find out what’s hot and from there who’s talking about it. Want to find out who the biggest talkers are on Twitter, then try twitter_stats. It shows the folks with the most replies.

Back to the basics there though.  So you’ve searched, and @sallywhoseit is talking about jumbotron physics, your favorite topic. Now what?  Do you just jump in and say something about the topic? Do you introduce yourself first? Do you tweet about them and hope for the best?

My recommendation is that you take two minutes and do a few things first.  One, check their Twitter profile out.  See if they are perhaps a Jumbotron Physics professor, student, or just like to ride jumbotrons.  This will go a long way to steering future conversation.  Second, check out their recent tweets. Was this a one of joke comment? Do they talk about this often?

A great way to check their history is to go back to Twitter search and add that person’s ID to the search. Bang. You’ll know if they are an expert, wanna-be, fan, or just making a joke.

From there it’s just a matter of making the proper introduction.  Jump in and chat.

Notice I didn’t say follow them, stalk them, or find their email and drop them a note. Just chat. And go away if they get creeped out.

This week, take a few minutes to search for some new contacts by searching Twitter for your favorite topics.  Come back and share or write your own blog post. Either way, please do leave a comment and let me know how it goes, or drop me a line on Twitter/@tojosan.