How to Limit Visibility of Facebook Timeline Items

Posted on December 27, 2011 by Maria Langer

Now that it’s easy to go back in time to see what you posted on Facebook, are you sure you want everything visible?

Facebook’s new Timeline feature puts every update, photo, event, and detail in your life that you’ve shared on Facebook into a reverse chronologically displayed listing. Here’s what mine looks like today:

At the top of your profile page is a “cover photo” and your profile picture. Beneath that is information about you, your work, and your relationships. After a box containing a few of your friends, you’ll find every single item you’ve ever posted to Facebook.

To make it easier for someone to zero in on a particular date in your past, they can drag a slider on the right side of the page. So if you’ve been posting on Facebook for a few years, people can go back in time to see the Halloween party photo when you dressed up like a hooker or your rant about your old boss or the details about the honeymoon cruise with your ex-husband. Intermingled with this stuff is details about your new jobs, vacations, check ins, and other life events you thought (at the time, anyway) were important enough to share with “friends” — or the public at large — on Facebook.

With your Facebook history so easily accessible — possibly to the general public (which is Facebook’s default setting for updates) — people can get a real idea of what you’re all about now and in the past. If you care at all about what people think of you, you probably want to examine your Timeline and make sure it shows only what you want to show — and only to the people you want to see it.

If you think you’re revealing a bit more than you want to in your Facebook Timeline, there are a few things you can do:

To limit access to a specific post, click the Edit (pencil) icon at the top of it and choose one of the options that appears. Not all options appear for all items, but you can usually hide an item from your timeline or delete it. It’s interesting to note that if you’ve posted many items on Facebook that you regret — think drunk party photos or emotional rants — you’ll have to find and delete them one-by-one. (Have fun with that.)
To limit access to all of your past posts, go into Facebook Privacy settings and click the “Manage Past Post Visibility” link. Then click the Limit Old Posts button in the dialog that appears to make old posts accessible to Friends only. Doing this prevents random individuals from seeing old posts. Keep in mind that this is not reversible.
To limit visibility to items as you post them to Facebook, use the pop-up menu at the bottom of the Update box to choose the visibility option you want. Public makes it visible to everyone. Remember, you can also limit visibility based on lists that you create and maintain on your own.
To set the default visibility setting for new items you post on Facebook — so you don’t need to remember to choose an option for each post — go into Facebook Privacy settings and select one of the Default Privacy options. If you choose Custom, you can specify which list can see the posts and specify people and lists who can’t see the posts. You can override this option for each item as you post it.

Keep in mind that the best way to keep details of your life private is to not share them at all — especially on Facebook.

How to Embed a Tweet in a Blog Post or Website

Posted on December 16, 2011 by Maria Langer

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Finding and using a new feature on Twitter.com.

Twitter’s getting a facelift. In fact, as I write this, I’m one of a limited number of early adopters who have sped the arrival of the new version by installing and using the iPhone (in my case) or Android app.

The new Twitter is a dramatic change in the interface — one I plan to review in a video for Lynda.com soon. In the meantime, I’m picking out a few new features to explore in detail here in Maria’s Guides.

Exploring the new tweet embedding feature on Twitter.com by embedding this tweet on mariasguides.com.

— Maria Langer (@mlanger) December 16, 2011

In this post, I’ll explore the new ability to embed a tweet — like the one shown here — within a blog post or web page.

On Twitter.com, point to the tweet you want to embed and then click the Open link that appears to open it. (You could also simply double-click the tweet.)
Click the Details link to display the tweet in its own window.
Click the Embed this Tweet link.
The Embed this Tweet pop-up window appears. It has three tabs:
- HTML enables you to embed the tweet in a blog post or website using HTML. You select the alignment option you want by clicking a button and then copy and paste the code at the top of the tab. In this example, I’ve clicked Right because I want the tweet right aligned (as you see above).
- Shortcode enables you to embed the tweet in a blog post on a blogging platform that supports short codes, such as WordPress. Again, set the alignment option you want by clicking a button and then copy and past the code at the top of the tab.
- Link displays a direct link to the tweet that you can copy and paste anywhere you like: email message, Facebook, Google+, comment form, or HTML editor to create your own link manually.
In this example, I simply pasted the code in the HTML tab into the beginning of this blog post, which I wrote in HTML (I’m a bit old-fashioned that way). If you use WordPress and prefer Rich Text mode, you can do the same thing with the shortcode.

That’s all there is to it.

What’s handy about this is that not only does it display the tweet in its entirety with the tweeter’s profile picture and name, but it has live links to follow that person on Twitter, Reply, Retweet, and Favorite. Cool, no?

Let me teach you more about Twitter!

You can watch seven videos from my Twitter Essential Training course for free. Click here to get started.

Seven Tips for Interacting with Companies on Twitter

Posted on November 29, 2011 by Maria Langer

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Your attitude and approach will set the stage for a good relationship with the companies you deal with.

One of the videos in my Twitter Essential Training course on Lynda.com includes a discussion on how you can get customer support from companies that maintain Twitter accounts. In it, I include several real-life examples of how I got quicker results from companies through their Twitter accounts than through normal customer service channels. Since recording that course, I’ve had at least a dozen other similar experiences.

If you want to use Twitter to get support for products and services you buy, you need to have the right attitude and approach. With that in mind, here are seven tips for interacting with companies on Twitter:

Tip: You can use Twitter’s search feature, which is covered in Chapter 7 of the current version of my course, to find Twitter accounts for companies or specific products. Hashtags are covered in the course, too.

When tweeting about a product or company, include its Twitter account name or hashtag in the tweet. This makes it easy for the company to easily find your mention.
Refrain from using foul language when sharing negative comments about a product or company. Many people are turned off by bad language. Your comment will have more impact — and a greater potential for retweeting — if it’s stated in work-safe terms.
When complaining about a product or company, be specific. Saying “Company ABC sucks” isn’t nearly as helpful to the company’s support team or fellow Twitter users as “Company ABC takes too long to process orders” or “Company ABC’s website is difficult to navigate.”
If you have a question about a product or service, use an @mention to direct it to the company’s Twitter account. Ask the question in a single tweet, being as specific as possible. For example, “@CompanyABC Does #ProductA have a warranty?” or “@CompanyABC The manual for #ProductB doesn’t explain how to use it with my iPad.” If the company is properly monitoring its Twitter account, you may get an answer within minutes.
Don’t hesitate to praise a product or company you like. Last night, for example, I had an extra-good shopping experience and tweeted: “Just wanted to say that we got EXCELLENT service at the PHX Camelback @BedBathBeyond store. Advised on a sheet purchase by an expert!” If everything you tweet is a complaint, you’ll look like a whiner that’s never happy. Support staff could hesitate to help you if they feel you can’t ever be pleased.
If a company you complained about satisfactorily fixed a problem you had, tweet a follow-up to let your Twitter followers know they made things right. Many companies really do try hard; don’t they deserve praise when they resolve a problem?
Don’t lie about an experience. Good or bad — people may rely on what you say to make purchase decisions. Do you really want to mislead your Twitter followers?

Of course, if you’re in charge of monitoring a company’s Twitter account, its up to you to respond quickly and promptly to any Tweets that mention your Twitter account or products. I cover that in my Lynda.com course, too.

Let me teach you more about Twitter!

You can watch seven videos from my Twitter Essential Training course for free. Click here to get started.

Comment Moderation: Fighting Spam and Trolls

Posted on November 16, 2011 by Maria Langer

A few tips from a long-time blogger.

As any blogger with even a slightly popular blog can tell you, good comment moderation is an absolute requirement to maintain a good, readable blog.

The way I see it, comment moderation serves two purposes:

It prevents your blog from being an advertising platform for people who don’t contribute real content. I’m not just talking about obvious spam here, either.
It prevents your blog from being a platform for offensive or abusive people who don’t contribute real content. And yes, I am talking about trolls here.

Let’s take a closer look at each of these two points.

Comments by Spammers

There are two kinds of comment spam.

One type — the most prevalent — is mostly automated spam posted by software commonly referred to as spambots. Once your blog gets on the radar (so to speak), automated spam can be quite significant. This blog, for example, attracts more than 500 automated spam comments a day.

This kind of spam is pretty easy to recognize. One type, for example, includes multiple links for things like online gambling, prescription medication, or pornography. The other type puts its link in the comment form’s URL field and then fills the comment field with text that may or may not make sense but has nothing to do with the content of the original post. Here’s an example from my post titled “Five Tips for Composing a More Effective Social Networking Bio“:

I precisely had to thank you so much all over again. I am not sure the things that I could possibly have accomplished in the absence of the entire tricks contributed by you on my problem. It truly was a very frightening case for me personally, nevertheless viewing your specialized manner you handled the issue forced me to leap over delight. I’m just happy for the assistance and believe you are aware of a great job that you’re getting into training other individuals via a site. More than likely you haven’t encountered any of us.

Huh? I get hundreds of comments like this every day.

It should be noted that a lot of this spam appears on posts that may be quite old. This particular one appeared on a post that was 2-1/2 years old. This is one reason why bloggers use plugins to automatically turn off the commenting feature on older posts.

Fortunately, spam prevention tools can detect and catch 99% of this kind of spam. I use Akismet on my WordPress site and it does a great job of catching and corralling this garbage so it never has a chance to appear on my blog. If you’re not using a spam prevention tool and are manually going through this crap, what are you waiting for? Don’t you have better things to do with your time?

The other kind of spam is more insidious. It’s posted by a real person and it looks like a legitimate comment. But its sole purpose is to promote a product, service, or Web site — not to engage you or other blog readers in a conversation about the original post’s topic.

In many cases, the spammer doesn’t put any real effort into his comment. It might contain a sentence or two that’s vaguely related to the post. The spam delivery is in the commenter’s name and URL. Rather than being something like “John” or “Mary Smith,” it’ll be something like “John’s Carpet Service” or “Discount Vitamin Shack.” The URL will be the URL for the site John or Mary want to promote. In most cases, the email address will be something that’s likely fake or never checked for incoming mail — usually a Gmail or Yahoo! account — but sometimes a legitimate-looking email account is included.

To me, this is a gray area — is it a legitimate comment or spam? Considering the content and purpose of the comment should guide you. Your site’s comment policy should help; I’ll get to that in a moment.

Trolls

A far worse problem these days is what many people refer to as trolls. Trolls are people who post offensive or controversial commentary on blogs or discussion forums. Their goal is apparently to make themselves look smart or superior at the expensive of you or other commenters. By posting comments, they’re “trolling” for an argument — much like a fisherman might go trolling to catch fish.

This is where good comment moderation is vital to your blog.

You see, if you allow offensive commentary — including personal attacks on yourself or blog commenters — you do two things:

You discourage legitimate commenters from sharing their thoughts. After all, they could be the victim of the next troll attack.
You encourage more trolling activity by current and future trolls. After all, you let one offensive comment out there, you’re likely to allow others. They see your blog as a good place to troll for new victims.

Is that something you really want?

I have seen too many blogs and forums completely devastated by the comments posted by trolls and the offensive and defensive comments posted in response. Back in the early days of the Internet and newsgroups, we used to refer to this as “flame wars.” There’s nothing useful or productive about the comments by trolls or the resulting flame wars. Why allow them on your blog?

The Freedom of Speech Argument

The biggest defense against firm moderation that would prevent trolling activities is that it’s “censorship” and that you’re violating the commenter’s “freedom of speech.” They often use the phrase “First Amendment Rights.”

Let’s look briefly at the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances. [emphasis added]

Where exactly does it say that I have to put up with offensive commentary on my blog? All it says is that the government can’t make a law abridging the freedom of speech. I’m not the government, I’m not making a law.

So I don’t think “free speech” is a valid argument. After all, should anyone have the right to say anything they want — no matter how offensive — on your blog?

If people want to spout hate and offensive commentary, they can do it on their own blog.

Creating a Comment Policy

One way to fight back against spammers and trolls is to create and uphold a site comment policy. This policy should clearly state what is and/or isn’t allowed in the comments on your blog. Linking to this policy in an obvious place — or even placing a short version of it right above or below the comment form — will make it clear that you don’t tolerate spam or bad behavior.

Want some examples of good comment policies? Here are a few to give you ideas:

An Eclectic Mind. This is the comment policy for my personal blog. It’s a bit wordy — what do you expect from me? — but it does cover all the bases. You might also be interested in another post on my blog, “I Love Blog Comments Here.”
Stonekettle Station. Jim Wright doesn’t put up with crap either. That’s the short version of his comment policy. The long version, which address trolls and free speech, can be found here.
Whatever. John Scalzi’s comment policy. Simple and to-the-point.
Lorelle on WordPress. Lorelle knows more about WordPress blogging than I ever will. Here’s her site’s comment policy. You might also be interested in another post on her blog, “Comments on Comments.”

This topic was also addressed back in 2007 by Lorelle VanFossen in The Blog Herald.

Do you have a site comment policy you want to share with readers here? Post it in the comments for this post.

Maintaining Order

Creating a policy isn’t enough. You also have to maintain it. That means objectively reviewing every comment on your site and deleting the ones that violate the policy.

Yes, deleting them.

My advice is not to edit them, or allow them but reply with a warning, or do anything else. If a comment violates your policy, just delete it.

Don’t even send the commenter an email message telling them that you’ve deleted their message and why. If a commenter lacks the courtesy to be civil and follow your established rules on your blog, does he deserve any courtesy from you?

More important than that is the entire concept of “feeding the trolls.” When you respond in any way to a troll, you encourage more trolling activity. You see, these people just can’t let it go. They see any response as having a victim on the hook and they keep up their trolling behavior.

Ignore them and they will go away. Really.

You need to keep this in mind no matter where you see trolls. If you can’t delete their offensive crap, just ignore it. (Or, if it’s offensive enough, contact the site owner directly and tell him/her what you think and how it makes you feel about their blog/site/forum. A responsible site owner will take care of the problem.)

And if the whole concept of trolls is new to you, I urge you to read the entire “Troll (Internet)” entry on Wikipedia. It’s excellent and it clearly shows how bad these people can be for an Internet community like a blog.

Steps to Take

To sum up, I want to review the steps you might want to take to moderate and control the comments on your blog.

Install and use spam prevention tools. Akismet is the best one (in my opinion) for a WordPress blog. It’s free.
Write and post a site comment policy. Use the ones linked to above to give you ideas.
Set up your blog to require moderation of all comments. On a WordPress blog, you do this in Discussion Settings.
Regularly check for and approve (or delete) new comments. I’ve created a bookmark in my browser to quickly go to the comment moderation panel for each of my sites. I check for comments every morning and sometimes during the day so few comments are ever held in moderation for long.
Resist the urge to respond to trolls on your blog. Don’t respond in comments or in email. You will regret it.
Ignore the comments posted by trolls on other sites and in online forums. Don’t feed the trolls.

Please use the comments for this post to share your thoughts, experiences, and questions about this topic.

2Do

Posted on November 2, 2011 by Maria Langer

Better than Apple’s Reminder app.

I’m one of those people who can’t remember anything unless it’s written down somewhere. (Indeed, I often consult my books to remember how to do something I actually wrote about!) So it should come as no surprise that I lean heavily on my Mac and iOS devices for a to do list or reminders.

Until recently, Apple did not provide any app that synchronized reminder items between iCal on a Mac and the iOS calendar apps. Not content to wait until they added such functionality, I tried two different reminder applications. The one I settled on — and still use daily today — is called 2Do by Guided Ways Technologies Ltd.

2Do App Icon Right from the get-go, 2Do enabled me to synchronize reminder items between iCal and the 2Do app on my iPad and iPhone. It did this through MobileMe, which was very convenient. (2Do now supports iCloud, too.) I could create reminder items on any device, synchronize, and see the items on every device. I could also change or mark an item as complete on one device, synchronize, and have the item change or be marked complete on all devices.

2Do on iPad
In this example, I’m viewing 2Do’s reminder items in my “Air” calendar on my iPad. The grouping is customizable.

What I like a lot about 2Do is that it offers a wide range of fields that you can use to enter information about a reminder item. So not only can I add an item title, description, calendar, and other iCal-supported information, but I can also add fields for a start date, location, recurrence, tags, audio note, and pictures. I can customize the item entry form to include only the fields I use most in the order in which I want them to appear; I can access other fields with a tap. With the location features, you don’t need Siri on an iPhone 4S to take advantage of location-based reminders.

2Do supports three kinds of reminder items: ToDo, Checklist, and Project. A ToDo is a standard reminder. A Checklist is a reminder that includes individual checkable items. A Project is a reminder that includes individual ToDo items. Although I mostly use simple ToDos, Checklists and Projects are especially handy for grouping related tasks that you might need to focus on without creating a separate calendar for them.

2Do’s interface is completely customizable to display specific calendars in the order you want to see them in. You can view reminder items by calendar, tags, or location. If you specify a start date for an item in the future, it will not clutter up your current reminder list.

Reminders App
My “Air” calendar’s reminder list in the Reminder app on my iPhone.

2Do plays nice with Apple’s new Reminders app. When you sync 2Do to iCloud, that data is automatically pushed to Reminders. Likewise, when you make a change in Reminders, that’s automatically pushed to iCloud so it’s updated when you sync 2Do. While it’s true that syncing is not automatic — at least not right now — it is quick and does not require WiFi (as other iOS reminder apps do).

Although folks with very basic reminder needs may find Apple’s Reminders app good enough to meet their needs, I think the power and flexibility of 2Do makes it worth the nominal purchase price. Its additional features and fields help keep me organized, whether I’m planning my next 1200-mile helicopter trip or just trying to remember what to pick up at the grocery store.

Category Feeds Being Removed

Posted on October 26, 2011 by Maria Langer

As part of the site revision process, I’ve decided to do away with the category-specific feeds. These feeds, which cover Excel, Mac OS, Word, and WordPress content, are being utilized by less than 100 people. If you’re reading this message in your feed reader, YOU might be one of them.

Within a month or so, these feeds will simply not work. Delete them from your reader.

If you want to continue receiving content from this site via RSS, please subscribe to the main feed, using one of the following URLs:

Photos from Facebook

Posted on October 13, 2011 by Maria Langer

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Use your Facebook photo galleries on your WordPress-based site.

This past summer, I built a simple WordPress-based website for a friend of mine’s business. A designer/developer wanted $8K to build the site and he just couldn’t see spending that much money. While I know that the site I built for him isn’t nearly as polished as what the designers would have created, it certainly meets his primary needs: to provide basic information about his business to people who need it. You can see and judge for yourself here.

WordPress is an excellent tool for building Web sites. What I like about it is that once the site has been set up with the design and features needed, anyone with Admin access can modify its contents. That means that when he has a price change or hours change or some other change, he can go in and change it for himself. No need to bug me or wait for me to get around to it.

But what’s even better than that is the multitude of plugins available to add or enhance content.

Here’s an example. My friend has had a Facebook presence for some time now and his company is “liked” by a considerable number of people. They frequently check in to see what’s new. Yesterday, I helped him add about 10 photos of some work he’s been doing. The photos on Facebook were a big hit with his Facebook friends. I wanted to add the photos to his website. I poked around the plugin directory at WordPress.org and found one called Facebook Page Photo Gallery. This was even better than I’d hoped: it would take the photos I’d already uploaded to Facebook and present them on his WordPress-based site.

I decided to test it here before I went live on his site. I soon discovered that it works only with public photo galleries on Facebook — which meant it would not work with my personal Wall photos. (It probably would if I could figure out how to tweak the settings on Facebook, but I really don’t think it’s worth the bother.) It would, however, work with the Wall photos for Flying M Air‘s Facebook page. And it worked very well, as you can see here:

Did you notice that when you point to an image, it displays the caption?

This is a huge time-saver for me. Rather than have to re-upload and arrange the photos on the website, I can enter a WordPress shortcode with a few variables and a wonderful image display is created automatically. What else could I ask for?

How to Automatically Post Your Google Calendar Events to Twitter

Posted on August 17, 2011 by Maria Langer

Get those events tweeted automatically when you create them.

I recently helped a friend set up a new Web site for his small but growing winery. I also set him up with Google Calendar and a WordPress plugin so he could create events and have them appear on his site’s sidebar in a calendar. You can see how this looks at BeaumontCellars.com as well as on one of my sites, FlyingMAir.com.

Although he’s not exactly “computer savvy,” he does do a lot of texting with his iPhone. So I set him up with Twitter and linked his Twitter account to his winery’s Facebook page. He can tweet what’s going on and its automatically posted to his Facebook page’s wall. This has been a huge help for him because it makes it so easy to update Facebook, where he has quite a few fans.

The next logical step was to have his Google Calendar events posted on Twitter so they could also get posted on Facebook. After a little bit of research and experimentation, I came up with this method.

Step 1: Create and Configure Your Google Calendar

The first step is to set up your Google calendar for sharing and copy the link for the calendar’s RSS feed.

If you don’t already have a Google account, set one up and log in.
Go to google.com/calendar. You may have to follow additional instructions to create and access your calendar; just follow the prompts that appear onscreen.
If necessary, create a calendar to share events with Twitter.
In the list of calendars on the left side of the window, point to the calendar you want to share and click the menu button that appears. A pop-up menu offers options.
Choose Share this Calendar.

In the page that appears, make sure the check box marked “Make this calendar public” is toggled on.
Click the Calendar Details link.

Scroll down to the Calendar Address area.

Click the XML button. A Calendar Address dialog pops up with the address for your calendar.
Right-click the link and choose Copy Link from the menu that appears. The link is now in the clipboard so it can be pasted elsewhere.
Close the Calendar Address dialog.

Step 2: Set Up the Feed in TwitterFeed

Next, you’ll set up the calendar’s feed in TwitterFeed.

If you don’t already have a TwitterFeed account, go to TwitterFeed.com to set one up and log in.
In the Feed Dashboard window, click the Create New Feed button. The New Feed screen appears.
In the Feed Name box, enter any name you like for the calendar feed.
Click in the Blog URL or RSS Feed URL box to position the insertion point there and press Command-V (Mac OS) or Control-V (Windows)-V to paste in the calendar address you copied to the clipboard in step 10 above.
Click the test rss feed button. A green message “Feed parsed OK” should appear. (If it doesn’t, you’ll need to make sure the link you copied is correct and try again.)
Make sure the Active Check box is turned on.
Click Advanced Settings to display additional options.
You can set these options as you see fit. My suggestions are as follows:
- Choose Title from the pop-up menu in the Post Content area. (Remember, tweets are short; the description probably won’t fit within the 140 character limitation.)
- Make sure the Post Link check box is turned on in the Post Content area.
- Enter “New Event:” in the Post Prefix box.
Click Continue to Step 2.
In the Feed Publishing screen, click the Twitter link.
Choose an account under Authenticated Twitter Account or, if the account is not listed, click the Authenticate Twitter button to log into the Twitter account you want to use.
Click the Create Service button. After a moment, the name of your Twitter account appears beside the Twitter link, along with an checked Active check box.
If you wanted to post to other social networking services, you can use their links to set them up.
When you’re finished, click the All Done button.

Step 3: Test

Finally, test to make sure it works as expected.

Go back to your Google Calendar and, if necessary, log in.
Create a calendar event. Be sure to set the date and time and include a description. If you have more than one Google calendar, be sure to assign the event to the calendar you’re sharing with Twitter.
Sign out of Google. You want to be able to check the event and see it as anyone else would.
Monitor your Twitter account. If you did not make any changes to the frequency setting on Twitter Feed, the event should be posted to your Twitter account within 30 minutes.

Click the link in the tweet. A Google Calendar page with the details you set for the event appears in a browser window.

Conclusion

To me, there’s a huge benefit it being able to post something one place and have it appear automatically in others. Using a tool like TwitterFeed to connect Twitter to RSS feeds is a great way to automate Twitter posting for your Web site or business.

Want to learn more about using Twitter? Learn online at Lynda.com. Recently revised and expanded, my Twitter Essential Training course includes more than three hours of video training material that’ll help you get more out of Twitter. Check it out. If you’re not a Lynda.com subscriber, be sure to visit to try some of the free videos. I think you’ll be hooked.

Twitter Essential Training, 2011 Edition

Posted on June 10, 2011 by Maria Langer

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2011 revision goes live.

I’m very pleased to announce that my latest Lynda.com course, a revision of my 2009 and 2010 Twitter courses, is now online. Here’s the official description from the good folks at Lynda.com:

In Twitter Essential Training, author Maria Langer explains how to use Twitter, a social network for sharing short bites of information instantly with others. This course covers how to sign up for a Twitter account, send and read Twitter updates (called tweets), and build a network of followers. The training also describes how to get the most out of Twitter by customizing an individual profile, setting privacy options, following trending topics, and tapping into third-party resources that make it easier to follow and send updates.

Topics include:

Uploading a profile picture to an account
Setting account options to meet specific needs
Using lists
Sharing photos and Web content with friends
Adding Twitter feeds to web sites
Searching for people and tweets
Following and blocking users
Tweeting by SMS
Establishing a business presence
Understanding Twitter interface changes

Twitter Users Wanted

Posted on March 31, 2011 by Maria Langer

Need active Twitter users for upcoming Twitter course.

I’m getting ready to revise my Twitter course for Lynda.com and, as usual, am looking for about 20 active Twitter user accounts to follow while recording the course. These accounts will be included in the timelines displayed onscreen.

If you don’t mind your Twitter account appearing in the course — or perhaps you’d really like it to appear in the course — take a moment and drop me an e-mail message. I’ll send you the release form we need signed and returned to be a part of this project.

Keep in mind that volunteering to show your tweets does not guarantee they will be shown. Because of the nature of the course material, we need to avoid displaying Tweets that are “R-rated” (or worse), including Tweets with foul language, tweets with offensive humor, or Tweets that include inappropriate images or themes. I hope you understand.

If you’ve volunteered before and would like to do it again, just let me know. I should still have your paperwork on file.

Learn More on Lynda.com

Want to Learn More about Using Twitter?
Learn online at Lynda.com. Recently revised and expanded, my Twitter course includes more than three hours of video training material that’ll help you get more out of Twitter. Check it out. If you’re not a Lynda.com subscriber, be sure to visit to try some of the free videos. I think you’ll be hooked.

How to Disable Hot Linking to Images

Posted on March 6, 2011 by Maria Langer

Roll up your sleeves and prepare to edit your .htaccess file.

Important Note:
Messing with your Web site or blog’s .htaccess file is very dangerous. Indeed, if you make an error, the entire site may stop working. Keep that in mind when using these instructions. I will not be held responsible for any problems that result from using this code.

Hot linking is when another Web site links directly to images or other files that reside on your Web server to embed them in their own Web pages or make them accessible to their own site visitors. For example, someone may like an image on your Web site that he/she wants to show off on his/her own. Rather than linking to the page on your site that displays the image, they might use the HTML IMG SRC tag to embed the image on their own site.

There are two problems with this:

In many cases, because the image actually appears on the other site, visitors are led to believe that the image belongs to that site’s owner — instead of you. Sometimes the other site owner might provide credit or even a link back to your site. But often times he/she does not. In my book, that’s image theft.
Because the image still resides on your server, each time the image is viewed on the other site, your server is required to serve up the image. That uses up your bandwidth. Obviously, if this happens a lot, you might see a slow-down in your site’s response time or your hosting company may begin to charge additional bandwidth fees. In other words, you’re paying to host images on someone else’s site.

The best way to stop hot linking is to modify your site’s .htaccess file to include code that prevents it. In researching this problem, I found several different collections of code. The one that I wound up using as a basis for my final code (shown below) can be found at “How to Disable Hot Linking” on the Online Marketing Blog.

Here’s my code:

RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^$
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://(www.)?<em>mydomain.com</em>/.*$ [NC]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !google\. [NC] 
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !search\?q=cache [NC]
RewriteRule .(jpg|gif|png|pdf)$ http://<em>myotherdomain.com/images/StopStealing.jpg</em> [R]

Here’s how it works:

RewriteEngine on

Enables mod_rewrite.

RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^$

Allows requests made directly for the image without a referrer. You would include this line if you wanted to allow requests from browsers and other sources without referrers. (I commented out this line in my file, but may allow it.)

RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://(www.)?<em>mydomain.com</em>/.*$ [NC]

Allows requests made from your Web site. Obviously, you’d replace mydomain.com with your domain.

RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !google\. [NC] 
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !search\?q=cache [NC]

Allows requests made from Google and search engines. If you don’t want your images to appear in search results, don’t include these two lines.

RewriteRule .(jpg|gif|png)$ http://<em>myotherdomain.com/images/StopStealing.jpg</em> [R]

Prevents images with .jpg, .gif, and .png extensions from appearing on pages with any other referrer. Instead, it shows the image shown here.

If you don’t want to include the image, you can use this line instead to result in a broken image icon:

RewriteRule .(jpg|gif|png)$ - [F]

Keep in mind that using this approach will prevent images from appearing in feed readers, too, so it’s not a good idea if you share your images with others via RSS.

Of course, to add or modify a .htaccess file, you need to know how. That’s beyond the scope of anything I’ll ever write. These instructions assume you already have some idea of how to do this. If you want to learn more about using .htaccess to control access to your Web site, be sure to check out this tutorial.

One more thing…please don’t expect me to help you debug your .htaccess file. Believe me, I know only enough about .htaccess to be dangerous; you would be better off without my help. Good luck!

How Twitter Can Help You Become a Better Writer

Posted on October 15, 2010 by Maria Langer

140 characters or less.

One of my biggest problems as a writer is that I tend to be overly wordy. If a story can be told in 500 words, I’ll take 1000. If a how-to piece for a magazine article needs to be 1500, I’ll write 2200.

The problem is, a writer needs to be able to deliver a message in the desired word count.

And that’s where Twitter comes in. With only 140 characters, it’s often tough to communicate a complex message. While many people resort to cryptic txt world abbreviations, I prefer not to. Instead, I prefer whole words and even whole sentences.

Still other people will use several consecutive tweets to tell a story. This is generally not a good idea — more than two Tweets in a row that tell a long story is generally considered bad Twitter etiquette. Besides, where’s the challenge in that?

A better idea — one that offers good practice for a writer — is to embrace the 140-character limitation. Deliver complete, grammatically correct — or nearly grammatically correct, as I’ll discuss in a moment — thoughts as whole sentences.

And this is what I attempt to do on Twitter.

Tighten It Up

Here’s how I embrace Twitter’s limitation and use it as a tool to practice tightening up my prose:

In Twitter client* software — compose the tweet to say what you need to say.
Check the character count. If you’re under, tweet it as is. You’re done. Skip the remaining steps.
If you’re over the character count, start paring down the text. Here are the things I do in the order I usually do them:
- Reread the tweet. Do you really need to say all of that?
- Look at the long words. Can any be replaced with shorter words that mean nearly the same thing?
- Kill the adverbs. This is basic writing advice that has nothing to do with Twitter.
- Look at the adjectives. Do you really need them?
- Drop periods after obvious abbreviations, such as Mr or Dr.
- Kill the articles. This is where grammar begins to suffer. I have a personal rule: if I kill one article in a tweet, I kill them all, just for consistency.
As soon as the character count gets below 140 characters, re-read the tweet. If it’s what you want to say, tweet it. You’re done. Skip the remaining step.
If your tweet doesn’t relay your message, start over from scratch.

This exercise can be fun if you go at it the right way. Although it might seem tough the first few times you do it, it does get easier and easier. I’ve gotten to the point where I sometimes cut so much out that I can add another short sentence. Not bad.

Are you a writer or just a tweeter? If you’re a writer, rise to the 140-character challenge of Twitter without leaning on txt abbreviation crutches.

*This is nearly impossible to do on a cell phone using txting, so don’t even try.

Learn More on Lynda.com

How to Hide Farmville (and other Annoying Games) from Your Facebook News Feed

Posted on July 18, 2010 by Maria Langer

This should make Facebook a little more bearable for people who use it for business.

I just got back on Facebook. It was a tough decision. What helped make it tolerable to go back to Facebook was my discovery that I could hide posts related to Farmville, Mafia Wars, and other time-sucking games I really couldn’t care less about.

It’s easy:

In your News Feed window, when you see a post about a game you don’t care about, point to it. A Hide button appears.
Click Hide.
The item disappears and is replaced with a series of buttons like the ones shown here. Click the button to hide the game.
A note like the one shown here appears. Ignore it and it will go away.

From that point on, you won’t get any posts related to that game.

Five Retweet Abuses

Posted on June 21, 2010 by Maria Langer

Sure, it’s easy to retweet someone else’s tweet. But are you overdoing it?

I’ve been on twitter for more than three years now and have sent more than 22,000 tweets into the Twitterverse. These are a mix of the usual inane comments, bits of wisdom, meal reports, witty remarks (or my attempts at witty remarks), links to interesting content, and retweets of other people’s tweets.

It’s the retweeting habit of Twitter users that I want to address here.

A retweet, in case you’re not familiar with the term, is a tweet that someone else wrote that is echoed to the Twitterverse. Retweets come in two flavors:

Old-style retweets include the letters RT or via followed by the originator’s Twitter name. For example:

or
Official Twitter retweets appear to come from the originator, but they were retweeted by someone you follow. Thus, they wind up in your timeline from the account of the originator, even if you don’t follow that person. Here’s an example:

I could go into a lecture on which method is better (official retweet, in case you’re wondering), but I’ll save that for another post. Right now, I’m more concerned with how much people retweet and what they are retweeting.

This is where I get into some hot water with some Twitter friends. You see, what prompted this post was the complete retweet abuse I’m seeing on Twitter among a handful of people I follow. I don’t mean to point fingers, so I won’t mention any Twitter names. But if you’re one of the people repeatedly committing one of the following abuses, you know who you are.

Retweeting more than you tweet. If you consistently retweet other people’s content more than you create your own original tweets, take a moment to consider why you are on Twitter. Is it your purpose to simply echo the words and links of the people you follow? There are Twitter bots that can do that automatically and they’re only slightly more annoying. Why should anyone follow you if nearly everything you tweet has its source elsewhere? (And if the rest of your tweets are from Foursquare, do yourself a favor and just drop out of Twitter now, before someone has to kill you.)
Retweeting content that just isn’t interesting to the majority of your followers — or many people on the planet. You may think the latest Latin language release of the Open Source project, thingamabobwhatchamacallit widget plugin, is the most fascinating thing on the planet. But do you really think your followers agree? And if they did, don’t you think they’d be actively following the same sources of information about that project that you are? Retweeting stuff that few people care about only raises the noise to signal ratio on Twitter. And who likes noise? A corollary to this is retweeting local area content when you have only a few local followers. Your 724 non-local followers don’t really care that the corner antique clothing store is having a big sale on Tuesday. Or that your next door neighbor’s cat has gone missing. Or that there’s a fire/flood/tornado/locust warning for your county. If we wanted local area information on Twitter, we’d follow the same kinds of local information sources you follow — but for our areas.
Retweeting other people’s references to your Twitter account. Okay, so @yourbiggestfan tickled your fancy by tweeting about how much he liked your latest book/blog post/tweet/haircut. Do you know how dorky and self-centered you look by retweeting his gushy tweet? Isn’t Twitter narcissistic enough by giving you an opportunity to brag about yourself? Do you really think it’s necessary to retweet the nice things other people say about you, too? Ick.
Retweeting the tweets and retweets of others in a special interest group where everyone follows everyone else. This is especially annoying when you use the old fashioned RT or via method of retweeting. It means that everyone who follows everyone else has to read the same tweet six or seven times. Consider the world of Ninja Yoga Masters, which may only have 20 outspoken master members sharing the same few hundred followers. When each of the masters retweets a fellow master’s comment with an old-fashioned RT, we all have to read that comment again. And again. And again. Do you know how annoying that is? Especially when the retweets appear one after the other in our timelines? It’s like the retweeting crew is singing a chorus.
Retweeting improperly. Someone came up with some words of wisdom or a good one-liner or a link good enough for you to retweet. But instead of doing it properly by using the official Twitter retweet tool (which is now supported by just about all Twitter client software), you paraphrase to shorten or maybe leave out the source. Not very nice, is that? There’s no reason to incorrectly retweet someone else’s tweet. Click the damn Retweet link or button; Twitter does the rest for you, leaving the original in all its glory and properly crediting the source. This helps other people find and possibly follow that source if they find the retweeted content is interesting.

Now I’m not saying that my tweets are perfect. They’re not. There are too many of them to all be good. Indeed, I’ve committed all of these abuses at least once in the past 3+ years. But the growth of Twitter has made abuse like this unacceptable. It’s causing people like me to limit who they follow and to drop Twitter friends because of their annoying retweeting behavior.

What do you think about the retweeting situation on Twitter? Do you have any pet peeves I neglected to include in my list? Don’t be shy! Share them with us. Use the Comments link or form for this post to let us know.

And do me a favor: retweet this post to spread the word. Twitter would be a much better place without so many retweets.

Twitter Essential Training Now Online

Posted on May 29, 2010 by Maria Langer

2010 edition goes live.

I’m very pleased to announce that my latest Lynda.com course, a revision of my 2009 Twitter course, is now online. Here’s the official description from the good folks at Lynda.com:

In Twitter Essential Training, author Maria Langer explains how to use Twitter, an online microblogging service that offers a way to share short bites of information instantly with others. This course covers how to sign up for a Twitter account, send and read Twitter updates (called tweets), and build a network of followers. The training also describes how to get the most out of Twitter by customizing an individual profile, setting privacy options, following trending topics, and tapping into third-party resources that make it easier to follow and send updates.

Topics Include:

Uploading an image or avatar to an account

Setting options to meet specific needs

Using lists

Sharing photos with friends and family

Adding Twitter feeds to web sites

Including hyperlinks in tweets

Following and blocking users

Using SMS

Tweeting for a business

Duration: 3.25 Hours

View the intro movie on YouTube.

There are lots of free videos you can check out on the course main page. Enjoy!

How to Sync Your Firefox Bookmarks to Your iPad

Posted on May 26, 2010 by Maria Langer

Yes, you read that right.

I use Firefox. I think it’s the best browser around — mostly because of its wide support for plugins and its frequent updates.

But I also have an iPad. And iPad includes and supports the Apple Safari Web browser.

One of my first challenges was to get my Firefox bookmarks into my iPad’s Safari browser — and to keep them synced. Here’s what I did.

Step 1: Set Up Firefox Bookmark Synchronization

I use two computers regularly (an iMac on my desktop and a 13″ MacBook Pro) and occasionally use two others (a 15″ MacBook Pro and a Dell Laptop). It was natural to want my bookmarks synchronized between these computers. So years ago, I began using a Firefox plugin that handled synchronization for me. That plugin has evolved over time and is currently called Xmarks Bookmark and Password Sync.

Xmarks Status Xmarks works with a free account on the Xmarks.com Web site. (If you are a more experienced user and have your own server, you can sync to your own server instead.) You set up an account on Xmarks.com, install the plugin in Firefox on all your computers, and configure the plugin to point to your Xmarks.com account. You then synchronize. The first synchronization gives you options to overwrite or merge booksmarks; do whatever you think is right for your situation. From that point forward, Xmarks will automatically synchronize bookmarks when you open and quit Firefox.

Although I’ve been doing this for years now, this became my first step to syncing my bookmarks with Safari on my iPad. If you don’t already use Xmarks, set it up as your first step.

One note here: Xmarks has other synchronization features. For example, as the name implies, it also synchronizes passwords. You can use this feature, too, if you like. And it displays search results with ratings and other features. Explore this on your own.

Step 2: Set Up Safari Bookmark Synchronization

The next step is to get your Firefox bookmarks on Safari. You can do this with Xmarks for Mac OS X 10.6.

Xmarks For Safari Download the installer, run it, and follow the instructions in the Installation Wizard to set it up on your computer. Be sure to point it to the same Xmarks account you use for Firefox. When you perform that first sync, tell it whether you want to merge or overwrite bookmarks. When the sync is complete, your Safari bookmarks should match your Firefox bookmarks.

MobileMe Sync One thing to keep in mind here: if you have multiple Macs and use a MobileMe account to synchronize various Mac OS items — including Safari Bookmarks — you don’t need to install Xmarks for Mac OS X 10.6 on all of your computers. Just install on one and let MobileMe do the rest of the synchronization for you.

Step 3: Set Up iPad Bookmark Synchronization

At this point, it should be pretty easy to figure out how to synchronize your Mac’s Safari bookmarks with your iPad’s Safari bookmarks. There are actually two ways to do this:

If you have a MobileMe account:

Make sure Bookmarks synchronization is turned on on your Mac in the MobileMe preferences pane (see previous screenshot) and sync.
Make sure your MobileMe account has been set up on your iPad.
On your iPad, tap Settings and then tap Mail, Contacts, Calendars. This should take you to the Mail, Contacts, Calendars screen.
Tap the e-mail address for your MobileMe account. This will display its options, shown here.
Tap to turn on the Bookmarks option.
Tap Done.

Bookmarks will now be synced through MobileMe.

If you don’t have a MobileMe account:

Use your USB cable to connect your iPad to the computer you use to synchronize data and install music and apps. Ideally, this computer should have Foxmarks for Mac OS X 10.6 installed on it.
On your Mac, open iTunes (if it has not opened automatically) and select your iPad in the Source list under Devices.
Click the Info tab near the top of the iTunes window.
Scroll down to the Other section.
Turn on the check box labeled Sync Safari Bookmarks. (This check box only appears if you are not using MobileMe to sync bookmarks.)
Click Sync. If prompted to merge or overwrite bookmarks, choose the appropriate option for your situation.

Bookmarks will now be synced through iTunes.

Works for Me

This is my solution. Is it the only one? Probably not. If you have a different (or even better!) solution, don’t hesitate to share it with us in Comments on this post.

Three Productivity Tips from a Long-Time Blogger

Posted on February 15, 2010 by Maria Langer

A guest post for WordCast.

About this Post
I wrote this post to complement my participation in a Blog Productivity panel podcast for WordCast. I was invited by Lorelle (of WordPress fame), and I really enjoyed participating. If you listen to the podcast, it’ll soon become clear that I’m the “odd man out” (so to speak) in that I do things a bit differently than the rest of the pack. The podcast is full of great tips from all panelists and definitely worth a listen if you’re serious about blogging. This post appeared on the WordCast site earlier in the week.

I might not be the most influential blogger you’ve ever heard of — if you’ve heard of me at all. Or the most prolific. But I’m probably one of the most experienced: I’ve been blogging since October 15, 2003.

Still, I was extremely pleased to be asked to join a panel of expert bloggers for a recent WordCast podcast about blogging productivity. The folks at WordCast asked me to follow-up with a blog post sharing some of my tips. I can’t help thinking that my co-panelist’s tips were better, but here’s what I have to offer.

1. Create and Stick to a Blogging Schedule

One of the most important things about keeping a blog is adding new content regularly. “Regularly” is a tricky word. It doesn’t have to mean every day. It just means often enough to keep your readers checking in for more.

For example, suppose your life gives you enough free time that you can post once or twice a day for a few weeks or months. Suddenly, however, life takes as turn and that blogging time is gone — or you get bored with your blog and put it on the back burner. Go a week without posting something new and the folks who check in regularly for your words of wisdom may stop checking.

While I realize this is an extreme example, it does illustrate my point: regular readers will pick up on the rhythm on your posting and expect you to stick with it. When you don’t, they move on.

The way to prevent this from happening is to create a posting goal and schedule time to write. Perhaps you think twice a week is a good frequency. Pick two days a week — Tuesday and Friday? — pick a time that works for you — at breakfast with your morning coffee? — and blog on schedule. Make it part of your routine, part of your life.

I try to get a new blog post out at least five days a week. My schedule has me sitting in front of my laptop with my morning coffee every morning I can. Since I’m an early riser — usually up by 6 AM — I usually get my blog post done before I start my work day.

Got something coming up that’s likely to break your schedule? Vacation? Business trip? Family commitments? Write extra posts when you can and schedule them to appear in the future. This is particularly handy if your topic is not time-sensitive or you know you’ll be unable to blog on schedule in the future. Here are two suggestions:

Long posts can often be cut it into multiple parts with each part scheduled to appear on a different day. Not only does this stretch a single work out to fill a posting schedule, but if done properly, your readers will make sure they come back for the subsequent parts.
Do double-duty and write two posts at a sitting, scheduling one of them to appear in the future. If you’re able to write a lot very quickly, you can actually write a week’s worth of content at one sitting. No one has to know that each day’s new post was actually written some time ago.

2. Take Notes

How do you know what to blog about? One way is to take notes. As ideas and thoughts come to you — either from the workings of your own mind or from something you read online or heard in a conversation — jot them down. If you spend enough time thinking and reading and listening, you should be able to accumulate plenty of ideas.

Call me old-fashioned, but I don’t use software or web-based tools such as Evernote to organize notes and clippings. I use paper. I keep spiral-bound notebooks on my desk and in my computer bag and make notes as things come to me. When I’ve processed the note — blogged about it, made the call, tracked down the Web site, ordered the product, etc. — I recycle the paper. The huge file containing all my thoughts and ideas is my blog.

The point is, it doesn’t matter how you take notes. The important thing is to take them. Keep track of the little ideas that pop into your head when you’re in the shower or driving. Write down the key words of a conversation that’ll help you remember what you found so intriguing. Then, when you’re ready to compose a blog post, you’ll have most of the material you need to get it written.

Don’t get me wrong: I’m not knocking software tools. I just can’t be bothered climbing up the learning curve to use them effectively. Pen and paper works for me.

3. Automate!

There are lots of software tools and solutions out there to help automate tasks. After all, isn’t that what computers are for? To do the work and make our lives easier?

Here are three examples of tools I use to automate blogging-related tasks:

Delicious with Postalicious. Delicious is a bookmarking Web site. You read a Web page, want to remember it, and create a Delicious bookmark with its URL and a description and tags you specify. I’ve been using Delicious for years, since it could be found only at http://del.icio.us. Postalicious is a WordPress plugin that creates a blog post based on your new Delicious entries and the descriptions you provide. It then automatically posts the links entry to your blog at a predetermined time. You can find plenty of examples on my blog. Postalicious also works with other services, such as ma.gnolia, Google Reader, Reddit, or Yahoo Pipes. I rely on this combination of tools to collect and share Web-based content that I found interesting and want to share with my readers. The format isn’t perfect, but it’s certainly good enough for my needs. Oh, and one more thing: I use the RSS feed for my Delicious bookmarks to generate a list of recently bookmarked pages in the sidebar of my blog.
Twitterfeed with Twitter. Twitter is an incredible tool for communicating short snippets of information with other people all over the world. (If you haven’t heard of it or tried it, crawl out from under that rock, brush the dust and cobwebs off your clothes, and join the rest of the social networking community.) Twitterfeed is a Web-based service that scans your blog’s RSS feed and tweets links to your new posts. This is a great, automatic way to tell your Twitter followers about new content on your blog.
Feedburner’s Email Subscriptions. Feedburner is a service that modifies your RSS feed to add features. Although it was started as an independent service, it’s now part of Google, so you need a free Google account to take advantage of its features. The Email Subscriptions feature creates e-mail messages based on your RSS feed and sends them out to subscribers. The subscription list is maintained inside Feedburner, so you don’t have to deal with it; users can add and remove themselves without bothering you. This is a great way for folks who want to read your content regularly to get it on a timely basis without using RSS readers. Best of all, once you set it up, it’s automatic.

Conclusion

When thinking about blog productivity, it all comes down to working smart. Make blogging part of your life schedule. Keep notes about the topics you find interesting so you have plenty of topics to write about when you’re ready to blog. And automate tasks whenever possible.

These are just three tips. Give it some thought — or read the blog posts of my co-panelists here — for more.

About the Author

Maria Langer is a freelance writer who has been writing about computers and the Internet since 1990. She’s the co-author of the first-ever book on WordPress and has since authored three WordPress video titles for Lynda.com. Maria’s also a commercial helicopter pilot and serious amateur photographer. Her blog, An Eclectic Mind, can be found at aneclecticmind.com.

Got a Keyboard? Use it.

Posted on February 13, 2010 by Maria Langer

A blog post should be more than just screenshots of what other people Tweeted.

This morning, as I sat drinking my coffee, I began my usual ritual of checking out some of the links tweeted overnight by the people I follow. One of them was about the iPad. Interested in the iPad as my future ebook reader, I followed the link.

I wound up on a blog post that consisted primarily of screenshots of Twitter. The blogger had posted a question on Twitter about the iPad and then sat back and captured screenshots of the responses as they were tweeted.

I call that lazy blogging.

It was also extremely tedious to read. So tedious, in fact, that I stopped reading after the first scroll down. I did continue scrolling to see if there was some content added by the blogger, but there was so little of it that I wound up simply closing the browser window and getting on with my day.

And then I realized how much it bugged me that there was someone out there passing off screenshots of Twitter responses as a blog “post.”

There is so much crap on the Internet today. Huge quantities of it. I don’t “surf” the net. My Web activity is limited to looking up things I need to know about and following what appears to be interesting links that I receive from friends and business associates verbally, via e-mail, and via Twitter. I don’t want to spend my day wading through the crap online. I want the good stuff.

A blogger should not simply regurgitate what’s readily available on the Web. If I wanted to know what Twitter users thought of the iPad, I’d use Twitter’s built-in search feature — which is also part of Nambu, my preferred Twitter client — and set up a search. I’d then read the results myself. I don’t need to go to a blog to read the same stuff. As screenshots, for Pete’s sake! Hell, if I were at home with my miserably slow Internet connection, the damn page would have taken five minutes to load!

A blogger’s job is to both inform and provide analysis. A summary sentence at the top of 20 screenshots that simply says, “Many people think lack of multi-tasking is a deal breaker,” doesn’t do much for me. And I certainly don’t need to see those 20 screenshots. I get it. You’re not making this up. All these Twitter users said it. I guess it must be true.

And it’s immensely ironic that this post was retweeted. As if it had value. WTF?

My point: if you call yourself a blogger and want to add something of value to the Web, dust off your keyboard and use it.

On Becoming a “Power Blogger”

Posted on February 10, 2010 by Maria Langer

I define a new [to me] phrase.

Last week, I was one of four guest panelists on the WordCast podcast. The topic was blog productivity — tips and tricks for blogging more efficiently — and a phrase I’d never heard before came up in the discussion: power blogger.

Let me take a few steps back before I move forward. Although I’ve written extensively about blogging from the blogger point of view and I’ve also co-authored and authored various WordPress training materials (books and videos), I’m not someone who keeps up-to-date with the world of blogging. I don’t know the buzzwords or phrases, I don’t follow the hot trends. I just obtain the tools, use them the way they work for me, and try to publish new blog posts regularly. Along the way, I provide a sprinkling of advice for bloggers in my own blog posts.

So the phrase power blogger was brand new to me.

And meaningless.

When the question, “What advice can you give to people who want to become power bloggers?” came up, I felt a tingling of stage fright. Surely I’d sound like an idiot if I admitted I had no idea what the phrase meant.

Fortunately, another panelist spoke up. I listened carefully to glean meaning from his response. And what I learned was that he — and the others — considered the quantity of blog posts a major component of power blogging. By their definition — at least one post a day — I was a power blogger!

I sure don’t feel like one.

When it was my turn to speak, I proposed my own definition of power blogger. I don’t remember the exact words, but it went something like this:

The number of blog posts a blogger publishes should have nothing to do with whether he’s a power blogger. Instead, it should be the influence the blogger has over his readership and beyond. What’s important is whether a blog post makes a difference in the reader’s life. Does it teach? Make the reader think? Influence his decisions? If a blogger can consistently do any of that, he’s a power blogger.

I recall comparing Twitter — which is, after all, “microblogging” — to blogging. Someone can tweet dozens of times a day, but if there isn’t any value in what he’s tweeting, what good is it? There are plenty of bloggers out there simply rehashing the same material, over and over, without adding anything new to the mix. They might post five or ten times a day. But if it isn’t worth reading, how can you consider them power bloggers?

And I guess that’s the advice I want to share in this post: If you’re serious about blogging, don’t go for quantity. Go for quality.

Make a difference with what you post.

How NOT to use Twitter for Marketing and Sales

Posted on January 18, 2010 by Maria Langer

An example of social network marketing #FAIL.

I don’t follow many people, but among those I do follow is a person connected to a tourism publication that serves the Phoenix area. As the owner/operator of a helicopter tour and charter company, I thought it might be interesting to see if this person tweeted anything that could help my business grow.

On Thursday, January 14, at 4:03 PM, he tweeted the following:

There is still time to advertise in our annual Spring Training issue – it’s only 6 weeks away. Affordable exposure that drives results.

This is an exact quote. There are a few things wrong with it:

The tweet makes no mention of the name of the publication or the area it serves. So unless you know what publication this guy works for — and its name is not part of his Twitter name — you’d be hard-pressed to understand why this might interest you.
The tweet mentions the “Spring Training” issue, but neglects to identify the “6 weeks away” as the editorial deadline or publication date.
There’s no link in the tweet to take action. I suppose this guy thinks that if you do figure out what this is about and are interested, you’ll track him or his publication down and make contact. A link sure would make that easier.

As a former frequent business traveler, I’m very familiar with the publication. It’s available in all major cities. It might be a good match for my business to advertise in. But I needed more information.

I tweeted back with a direct (private) message about fifteen minutes after his initial tweet, at 4:20 PM the same day:

I’ll bite. Call me with your ad rates: 928/###-####.

(I obviously provided my entire phone number, which I don’t need to reproduce here.)

And then I waited. I didn’t sit around my computer. I had other things to do.

Almost an hour later, at 5:08 PM, he responded:

Maria… I’ll have my partner [redacted] call you – he handles sales, and I produce the magazine, videos & social media :)

But because I wasn’t sitting at my computer and wasn’t checking my incoming messages, I didn’t receive this response for a few hours. I figured I’d reply with some additional information that would help his partner get a better idea about my business before he called. So when I received this tweet a little after 8 PM, I replied:

Tell him it’s for http://www.flyingmair.com/

At 10:37 PM, he replied:

Will do :)

So from the time of his initial tweet about special ad rates to the conclusion of our discussion, more than six hours had elapsed.

By this time, I was asleep. Since he’d received my phone number after 5 PM, I wasn’t expecting a call that day anyway. But I did expect one in the morning.

But I didn’t get it.

In fact, it’s now Monday, January 18, almost four full days since his initial tweet, and I have not received a phone call from his partner.

So in addition to the poorly composed tweet, here are a few other ways this person failed at social network marketing:

When he posted the initial tweet, he was obviously not monitoring Twitter for immediate responses like mine. It took nearly an hour for him to respond.
Although he had my phone number in hand, he didn’t use it to contact me — even to tell me to expect a call from his partner. Instead, he relied on direct messages through Twitter — not even text messaging directly to my phone! — which relied on me checking for such messages. This stretched out an initial contact to more than six hours.
Although our contact was made on a Thursday afternoon, no follow-up contact was made on Friday (a work day) or the weekend. At this point, I don’t think any contact will be made at all.

In short, this person attempted to use Twitter for marketing, actually got a lead (!), and still dropped the ball by failing to follow up in a timely manner. This is a perfect example of a failure to use social networking for marketing purposes.

The result of all this:

I will stop following this person. There doesn’t seem any reason to continue to do so.
If his partner ever calls, I’ll tell him I spent my advertising budget on Friday, when I expected his call.

What marketers need to understand is that in this economy, few people actually need their product. It isn’t enough to make a half-assed attempt at reaching customers and expect them to do all the legwork. And it’s absolutely inexcusable to fail to call a potential customer after that customer has requested a call.

All the tweeted smilies in the world can’t fix that.

I call that #MARKETINGFAIL