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What Do You Look Like Online?Social Media, Social Media Writing, Social Media Writing Part, Social Media Writing Part 3, Best Lengths, Hesitation Generation, screen name, Happy Holidays, Relentless Pace, Cyber Infidelity, Podcasting, Neurotic Writers, Social Media Balance, Social Media Perfection, Losing Control, Social Media Tips, Employee Passwords, Look Like Online, social media, Social Media Platforms, Promoting Writing, Social Media Marketer, EditMe Webinar, Demand for Social Media Jobs, Stumbleupon surpasses, Less Conversation, Snapchat Settles with FTC, Quickly Boost Results, Hype, Auto-Service Economy, Sharing Less, Social Media background check, formatted, Four Important Social Media Stats, Cheat Sheets, Seduction, social back, Social media background check, Collaboration, Wikileaks, Editme Webinar, Cyber Legacy, Campaign 2012, Demographics, ways, Time-saving tips, Campaign 2012, Happy Holidays, Neurotic Writers, Sharing Less,

What Do You Look Like Online?

Published by Janet Gershen-Siegel on September 3, 2024

So, What Do You Look Like Online?

This post is a riff on a rather old post, Do You Know What You Look Like Online. Essentially, the question is, if you were searching for someone (someone just like you, perhaps), what sorts of judgments would you make? What seems off? What’s being suppressed, which should be promoted, and vice versa? Is the picture clear or fuzzy?

The gist of that article is, take control of your information, keep it as a uniform brand and check it every month or so. The corollary to this is one from Shama Hyder Khabani, which is, essentially, don’t spread yourself too thin. Concentrate in only a few places.

My Own Information—What I Look Like Online

Absolutely agreed. When I google my own last name, 77,1600 hits come up. And, fortunately, my own website is on page 1 (Yay, SEO!). My Entrepreneur profile (writing I do for work) comes up on the first page of results. So do my Twitter and LinkedIn profiles.

Also on the first page are my Facebook profile, and my Amazon author page. Get to page 2 and there’s my profile on YouTube.

Another Angle

Putting my last name into quotation marks yields 14,000 hits. All of the same usual suspects come up on Page One of the results. And nothing is too weird or scandalous. Even MuckRack, which essentially just scrapes for your name, doesn’t have anything bad. Hey, Bartleby published me!

How Accurate is the Information?

To my mind, checking and rechecking every single month might just be a bit excessive. Is there a need to keep your profile accurate? Sure. Flattering, or at least not damaging? Yes, particularly if you are looking for work. But to keep it sterile and perfect, as you scramble to make it perfect every moment of every day? Eh, probably not so much.

My own profile is the product of just doing a lot, and it being published. It’s easy to find flattering info on me. What I look like online is competent more than anything else. There’s nothing radical. As for less flattering stuff, well, let’s just say that I am glad the internet wasn’t around when I was in high school.

Yikes.

But…

I would like to think (am I naïve? Perhaps I am) that potential clients and employers will see the occasional typo and will, for the most part, let it slide unless the person is in copyediting. I am not saying that resumes, for example, should not be as get-out perfect as possible. What I am saying, though, is that this kind of obsessive and constant vigilance seems a bit, I don’t know, much.

Will the world end if I accidentally type there instead of their on this blog? And, does it matter oh so much if I don’t catch the accident immediately? Even when you consider that I’m a writer. After all, I should know better, yes?

I mean, with all of this brushing behind ourselves to cover up and/or perfect our tracks, and all of the things we are leaving behind, where’s the time and energy to make fresh, new content and look in front of ourselves?

Clean Up Your Presence

To me, there is little joy in reading a blog post or website that looks like the person who put it together was barely literate. But there is also little joy in reading sterile, obsessively perfect websites and blog posts. A little imperfection, I feel, is a bit of letting the ole personality creep in there. Genuineness – isn’t that what the whole Social Media experience is supposed to be about, anyway?

I refuse to believe – I hope and I pray – that a bit of individuality never cost me potential jobs or the company potential clients. And if it is, then that saddens me, to feel that, perhaps, people are paying a lot of lip service to the genuineness of Social Media but, when the chips are down, it’s just the same ole, same ole.

Genuineness is great. One you can fake that, you’ve got it made? Please, say it ain’t so.

And don’t get me started on AI.

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The Cyber LegacySocial Media, Social Media Writing, Social Media Writing Part, Social Media Writing Part 3, Best Lengths, Hesitation Generation, screen name, Happy Holidays, Relentless Pace, Cyber Infidelity, Podcasting, Neurotic Writers, Social Media Balance, Social Media Perfection, Losing Control, Social Media Tips, Employee Passwords, Look Like Online, social media, Social Media Platforms, Promoting Writing, Social Media Marketer, EditMe Webinar, Demand for Social Media Jobs, Stumbleupon surpasses, Less Conversation, Snapchat Settles with FTC, Quickly Boost Results, Hype, Auto-Service Economy, Sharing Less, Social Media background check, formatted, Four Important Social Media Stats, Cheat Sheets, Seduction, social back, Social media background check, Collaboration, Wikileaks, Editme Webinar, Cyber Legacy, Campaign 2012, Demographics, ways, Time-saving tips, Campaign 2012, Happy Holidays, Neurotic Writers, Sharing Less,

The Cyber Legacy

Published by Janet Gershen-Siegel on April 16, 2024

The Cyber Legacy

What’s your cyber legacy?

Introductions

So you find a new site. You look around. And you think – this looks like a place I might like. Therefore, you take the plunge and you register.

And it doesn’t really matter if it’s Twitter, or Facebook or Able2know. If it’s big enough, it scrolls and leaps by so fast that you can barely get your arms around it. And in the beginning, that can be incredibly exciting.

However, after a while, it’s a bit too much. So if you want to hang around and have a more meaningful interactive experience than complaining about the weather, you end up finding yourself some sort of an enclave. I’ve covered this before, actually.

Life Online

You find your niche, whatever it is. And you start spending time with people. It doesn’t matter what you’re doing, be it playing fantasy sports, or comparing notes as new mothers, or trading rumors about the next season of Doctor Who. What matters is, you’ve found your peeps.

And that’s when it can get kind of complicated.

Transitioning to the In-Person Experience

My husband and I once met a fellow we had know for a few years from online. He was passing through Boston on his way home from Maine. And one thing he mentioned was – my online friends and my offline friends are pretty well-integrated. I like that.

After all, consider some of my closest friends who I didn’t meet online. Most of them either attended school with me at some stage or another, or they worked with me. In some fashion or another, we hit it off. However, the same is true of the cyber world, is it not? You meet someone, and you hit it off with them, and you thereby become friends.

No great mystery there. The only remarkable thing is that the lines are being forever blurred between people we met physically first, and people we physically met later, if at all. And we care less and less about how we met our friends, these days.

Cyber Mourning

With cyber friendships – as with all friendships – there can be loss. And we all know that it is going to happen sooner or later. A voice will be stilled, a timeline no longer updated. We may or may not know the correct or full name. We may never have heard that person so much as speak on a video or on the telephone. Yet we feel a sense of loss just the same.

I have found that, as this has happened on Able2know (and it has happened several times now, a function of both the size of the site and its skew in the direction of more elder demographics), people have wanted to rally around. It is not necessarily a formal obituary type of posting or topic.

Instead, it can be a topic that’s more like a wake in its layout, verbiage and intent. There is no real template for this. You just go with what works. And recognize that there are people who grieve in their own ways. There may even be hostility (“You were never kind to him until it was too late!”) or one-upmanship (“I got to meet her in person!”).

Internet Afterlife and a Cyber Legacy

The If I Die app allows for a final status update once three people (you choose them) confirm to the service that you’ve shuffled the mortal coil off to Buffalo. It almost seems like a video will, where the rich uncle leaves everything to his parakeet and, while the cameras are rolling, also tells the assembled family that they’re all wastrels.

But it’s not just that. It’s also – look at the data that’s out there. What sort of a legacy are we leaving for future generations?

A tour through Facebook reveals an awful lot of appreciation for cute cats who can’t spell, George Takei and political soundbite memes.

And if future generations only look at that (which might happen, as it could very well be the only thing that survives long enough and is complete enough), they might just that cyber legacy and feel we are rather shallow people indeed.

Forums Tell a Different Story

However, if they dig into communities, I think they’ll see a rather different picture. A picture of real caring. Of reasoned and impassioned debate.

Or of rabid fandom. Of people who help each other by answering questions or offering advice on things like repairing a fan belt on a ’68 Buick or ridding a computer of spyware. And of some fall on the floor humor as well.

So, what footprints and fingerprints will you leave behind for your cyber legacy? And what digital fossils will await future archaeologists’ discovery?

What will the people of 3024 think of us? What’s your cyber legacy going to be?

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Why Use a Screen Name?Social Media, Social Media Writing, Social Media Writing Part, Social Media Writing Part 3, Best Lengths, Hesitation Generation, screen name, Happy Holidays, Relentless Pace, Cyber Infidelity, Podcasting, Neurotic Writers, Social Media Balance, Social Media Perfection, Losing Control, Social Media Tips, Employee Passwords, Look Like Online, social media, Social Media Platforms, Promoting Writing, Social Media Marketer, EditMe Webinar, Demand for Social Media Jobs, Stumbleupon surpasses, Less Conversation, Snapchat Settles with FTC, Quickly Boost Results, Hype, Auto-Service Economy, Sharing Less, Social Media background check, formatted, Four Important Social Media Stats, Cheat Sheets, Seduction, social back, Social media background check, Collaboration, Wikileaks, Editme Webinar, Cyber Legacy, Campaign 2012, Demographics, ways, Time-saving tips, Campaign 2012, Happy Holidays, Neurotic Writers, Sharing Less,

Why Use a Screen Name?

Published by Janet Gershen-Siegel on April 11, 2024

Is There Any Good Reason to Use a Screen Name?

So, a screen name – good idea, or no? Particularly in the age of Facebook and the real names requirement.

I was inspired by this post in Angela Connor‘s blog. If you don’t know Angela Connor, I urge you to check her out; her blog is extremely insightful and is still one of my favorites.

Her ideas make a great deal of sense, and I think some of this is why the Blizzard forum experiment in real names for users was such an immediate and egregious flop.

Masks

The ’net, like it or not, is for many people a place of masks. You pretend to be younger and thinner than you are. Or you pretend to be unmarried. You pretend to be a Klingon. Or you’re a teenager and pretend to be an adult. Or you pretend to be another gender or richer or lovelier or more conservative or whatever.

And the masks can be freeing to many. Perhaps they were freeing when the ancient Greeks donned them while performing Oedipus Rex for the first time. I think there is more of a place for them than perhaps we’d all care to admit. Because there seems to be a value to being able to spread war paint (or lamp black) on one’s face, or wear a Halloween costume.

Screen Name Unreality

And this is not the same as our reality. It is related but not identical. Maybe the librarian who goes out for Halloween dressed as a dance hall girl wants to be known as someone who takes risks (and maybe foolish ones, at that). But when the morning after rolls around, she’s back in the library helping others do research.

A Screen Name Allows for (Somewhat) Anonymous Commenting

This kind of anonymous commenting allows for something like this. Because the sympathetic guy who’s really seething inside gets to call people out. He gets to be a bully and be an all-around racist jerk (I have worse names, but don’t wish to besmirch my blog) behind one screen name.

But then he surfs to a different site where he can chat up the ladies with his sensitive New Age guy demeanor, all behind another screen name. And then when the time to log off comes, he goes home and kisses his wife and plays with his children. And this is all one guy.

Facebook and Screen Names

To comment openly through a full, correct name (usually) medium like Facebook would be to cut off the dance hall girl. And it would stifle the racist jerk, the ladies’ man, and any number of other secret selves in favor of a drab and ordinary world. Even on a news site, which is pretty much the definition of drab unless there’s some sort of a hot story, the jerk, the dancer and the Romeo all want to be free.

Still, Facebook has been a runaway success. But some of that is still screen names. A person with Au at the end of their name is identifying to all and sundry that they are on the autism spectrum. I have seen last names like Lionchaser and Orange and Juneberry. The chances are extremely good that none or most of these are real.

But does that actually matter, in the grand scheme of things?

Who’s Real?

But we shouldn’t take their opinions as seriously as the real people. Because, even though those personae live in real people’s skins, it’s the real people who vote, marry, pay taxes, work, make the news and are members of our real society.

The trouble is telling them apart and knowing which one is real.

Can you always tell? I bet you can’t. Not always.

ChatGPT Adds to the Confusion on Screen Names and More

Beyond whether the name is real, are the posts real these days? A friend who runs a writing contest just had to jettison a few entries because they were written by AI.

AI is only going to get better and better—and more unnerving—as time marches on.

We may very well look back on questions about screen names as being a quaint little hiccup. You know, right before the Apocalypse.

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Risks of a Community Without ManagementCommunity Management, Scale. Freshening, Get Together, Love, Small Things, Without Management, True Community, Party Started, Terrible Netizen, Snakes, Circle Game, Look, Netizen, Corralling, Wandering off Topic, Facebook versus Forums, Superstar Users, Analytics, Community Roundtable, Community Management Haikus, Life of a Community Manager, Social Media Job Descriptions, Superstar Users, Community Roundtable 2010

Risks of a Community Without Management

Published by Janet Gershen-Siegel on August 3, 2023

The Risks of Having a Community Without Management

Is yours a community without management?

The post is a riff on The Community Roundtable’s 5 Risks of Having A Community Without Management.

The author comes up with five good ones:

  1. A Ghost Town
  2. Land of 1,000 Flowers
  3. Drama Central
  4. A Circling Storm
  5. A Clique

Ghost Town

Here’s what they mean. A Ghost Town is, essentially, either a more or less empty community or one without deep engagement. People may come in after an initial push and then just abandon the place.

Now, the converse to this is people who hang around forever and never seem to convert to paying customers of any sort. In a commercial enterprise, that’s no good, either.

But definitely you need for people to hang around, at least a little bit.

Land of 1,000 Flowers

Land of 1,000 Flowers is where there’s perhaps a little bit of everything but there is little connectivity. Some of the problem could potentially be alleviated with a very good search engine, e. g. if people see that the question about who wrote Peter Rabbit has already been answered, they might just go to that answer, rather than asking it again.

Of course the downside to this is converting potential participants right back into lurkers.

Drama Central Without Management

Drama Central, ah, yes, this bit of juvenalia in a community without management. This is a byproduct of having a smaller community/one that is not too active. If there are 100 members, and one acts out, that one will loom large. With 1,000 members, that person’s impact diminishes.

And with 1,000,000 members, they barely register as a blip on the screen. And, even in a smaller community, if there are 100 members but also a good 1,000 topics are created every month, the one Drama Queen’s attention-grabbing me me me topic can be more or less swept under the rug.

However, if your users create only five or so new topics every month, guess what’s gonna be front and center?

A Circling Storm

In A Circling Storm, there are a lot of entrenched factions, hostile to one another, when your community goes without management. Even in a well-moderated community, this can still happen in a Politics section (and, to a lesser extent, in a Religion section).

Hence people form strong opinions and don’t want to back down.

How to handle it? I say let them argue, for the most part, but intervene if newbies are being chased off or it becomes too personal.

A Clique Without Management

A Clique, of course this is a niche or fringe group that grabs and hogs the spotlight. This can be whiny teenagers (you know who you are), organic gardeners, birthers, I dunno.

They can absolutely create a self-fulfilling prophecy, e. g. if the only people they welcome are from Omaha, then those will be the ones who stick around.

And then eventually people from Poughkeepsie or wherever don’t stick around and suddenly your board is filled with Nebraskans.

What to do? Well, it may seem obvious, or it may not. Manage the site! Don’t just leave it to chance!

Light Touch with Management

However, don’t go overboard with management. Heavy-handed community management can stifle. So find a balance, and do your best to follow it, all while respecting the community and its interests, but nudging it in the proper directions if it threatens to go off-course.

You don’t just have to let the boat go wherever the currents take it but, at the same time, you also need to leave the dock.

Years Later…

I still agree with a lot of this. But at the same time, the experience I have been having with Facebook has taught me that there are a lot of places where someone will just plain step up.

There are, for sure, times when the inmates really can intelligently run the asylum. And don’t get me started on Twitter. Excuse me—X. Gahhh.

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Social Media: Hope, Hype or What?Social Media, Social Media Writing, Social Media Writing Part, Social Media Writing Part 3, Best Lengths, Hesitation Generation, screen name, Happy Holidays, Relentless Pace, Cyber Infidelity, Podcasting, Neurotic Writers, Social Media Balance, Social Media Perfection, Losing Control, Social Media Tips, Employee Passwords, Look Like Online, social media, Social Media Platforms, Promoting Writing, Social Media Marketer, EditMe Webinar, Demand for Social Media Jobs, Stumbleupon surpasses, Less Conversation, Snapchat Settles with FTC, Quickly Boost Results, Hype, Auto-Service Economy, Sharing Less, Social Media background check, formatted, Four Important Social Media Stats, Cheat Sheets, Seduction, social back, Social media background check, Collaboration, Wikileaks, Editme Webinar, Cyber Legacy, Campaign 2012, Demographics, ways, Time-saving tips, Campaign 2012, Happy Holidays, Neurotic Writers, Sharing Less,

Social Media: Hope, Hype or What?

Published by Janet Gershen-Siegel on March 23, 2023

Social Media: Hope, Hype or What?

Hype? Hope? Now, this subject has probably been done to death but, here I will do it all over again. Perhaps (hopefully!) my perspective will be fresh and/or of some value.

First of all, this post is inspired by The ABA Journal’s take on Social Media. As in the online magazine for lawyers. And they went on about Social Media, much like I have and others have, as well.

Hype Feeds Itself

And I can’t help feeling that that, in and of itself, is feeding the ole hype machine. Is Social Media hyped? Well, let’s put out an article about just that, and we’ll rev up the hype machine and get the word out and and and …. Suddenly, there’s hype about the hype.

Ai chihuahua.

However, there is, perhaps less of a hype issue than there is one of unrealistic expectations. I suspect that most people, if they give Social Media more than a passing glance (and, in particular, if they need to touch on it for business), take one look at it and think: free. Ooh, goody!

This marvelous free thing will supplement (and perhaps eventually supplant) all of the things I have to actually pay good money for! My wealth will increase, in an incredible and exponential manner, because I can put my advertising and marketing dollars elsewhere, outside of traditional (read: expensive) channels, and instead shove it all into some investment that catches my eye. Llama ranching, perhaps.

Traditional vs. Social Media Marketing

Okay. Let’s back up. The real thing is, Social Media marketing isn’t really an apples to apples comparison with traditional marketing. It’s more like holding a town hall meeting and seeing what people have to say about your product. Or like doing community outreach (e. g. having your company send people to work at a soup kitchen or build a house).

It’s like a million networking events. In short, it’s that dreaded, over-used term: relationship building.

And creating relationships is hard. And messy. Plus it’s not necessarily terribly free, at all.

Hype and A Sense of Entitlement

Because I have seen, in many instances, when software on a website changes. And in particular with community forums, people tend to freak out. They have a mislaid proprietary interest in a whole lotta sameness. Or they want the site to be the same from day to day, because that’s familiar to them.

Hence moving the post button from the left to the right, or changing its color, is akin to moving their cheese. So it tears at them.

But, ultimately, they figure it out. And they give it a chance and come back, and pretty soon, so far as they’re concerned things have always been the new way, and were never the old way. Because for them, it’s not about the tools; it’s about the people.

And the same thing should be true for you – and that should knock the hype right out, and for good. It’s not about the tools. It’s not about Twitter, or Facebook, or TikTok, or Groupon, or Yelp, or AirBnB, or MySpace (back in the day), or LinkedIn or StumbleUpon or Snapchat or a billion others. Instead, it’s about the people.

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… And Facebook for All Your Account SettingsFacebook, advertising, account settings, Profile Page Part, Home Page, Working, Facebook, Rest, Facebook versus Forums, Company Pages, offsite sharing, Facebook Page, demystifying Facebook, Facebook Video Ads, Facebook to Allow Users to Login with Less Info, Facebook video ads, Facebook Ads vs. Google, Organic Reach Decline,

… And Facebook for All Your Account Settings

Published by Janet Gershen-Siegel on November 17, 2022

… And Facebook for All – Your Account Settings Explained

… And Facebook for All – Your Account Settings – in Facebook, how to do you change your account settings? When you pull down on the Account section of Facebook, you see a few choices but they change.

Keep in mind that Facebook is continuously testing its format. What worked a year ago might not work now, but these are pretty close to being right although some of the parts have moved around on the page or might now have new names.

  • Privacy
  • Notifications
  • Account Settings
  • Security and Login
  • Ads
  • Support Inbox, and,
  • Videos

Privacy Settings

Control some aspects of the sharing experience here. So this includes who can see your photographs, religious and political views, etc.

Notifications

You can decide on which notifications you get, with separate settings for desktop and mobile. Which is rather helpful.

Account Settings

This is a part of Facebook that always seems to be changing. It is entirely possible that, by the time you read this blog post, these instructions will be obsolete. I’ll keep everything at a high level and won’t get into too many specifics. So it is divided as follows:

  • Name
  • Contact
  • Ad Account Contact
  • Identity Confirmation

Security and Login

This section indicates if you are using Facebook Protect. It shows if you have two-factor authentication set up. You can also change your password here, and see if there have been any unauthorized login attempts.

Account Settings: Ads

This isn’t to run Facebook ads. Rather, it’s to make it clear what your preferences are. If you keep getting ads for stuff that you don’t care about—or find offensive—you can take action here. Is it a perfect system? Of course not. But the more signals you can give Facebook about what you want, the more likely you will get an experience you love.

Support Inbox

This area is undoubtedly going to continue to evolve as questions come up and the increasingly complicated Facebook system breaks in all sorts of interesting and as-yet unexpected ways. Here, you can see the status of anyone or anything (such as a group) you’ve reported.

You can also get to their Community Standards.

This kind of section used to have a space for questions. And it may have such a space in the future.

But keep in mind: Facebook won’t answer 99%+ of any questions you have for them. Why? Because they are running an enormous site with a surprisingly tiny number of employees. Hence many of the judgement calls come from bots.

Account Settings: Videos

In this section, you have some control over the quality and volume of videos you see on the site.

Accounts Center

All the way at the bottom (currently), click on it and you’ll be able to manage connected accounts, such as on Instagram.

And … that’s it.

For now.

Want More About Facebook?

If this article resonates with you, then check out my other articles about the largest social media platform on the planet.

Facebook Features:

Next article

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Almost Everything But the Tweet – Conquering Twitter (offsite connections)Twitter, Twitter Stream, offsite connections, visual elements, Twitter followers, Optimizing Twitter, Professionalism, Demystifying Twitter, metrics, verbal elements, Amazoncart debuts, Optimizing Twitter, Professionalism, metrics, verbal elements, Bruins denounce Twitter hate, Twitter bigots, lost dogs, using Twitter to track, Shift in Twitter Trends

Almost Everything But the Tweet – Conquering Twitter (offsite connections)

Published by Janet Gershen-Siegel on November 10, 2022

Almost Everything But the Tweet – Conquering Twitter (offsite connections)

Are offsite connections possibly via Twitter? The semi-surprising answer is: yes. Because Twitter is so bare bones, any number of applications have sprung up around it in order to help you manage it and become as great as you can be.

Understanding the people you tweet with is, of course, a great way to determine if offsite connections are going to be worth it. After all, offsite connections that are hundreds of miles away are not likely to be easy, cheap, or even possible.

Other Software

Here are some more sites to check out:

  • HootSuite – a tweet scheduling service (and more) whereby you can track stats and import your lists.
  • Social Oomph (formerly TweetLater) – time tweets and gather simple metrics on shortened urls. You can set up more than one account this way.
  • Tweet Stats – a graph of, among other things, daily aggregate tweets, your most popular hours to tweet and who you retweet.
  • Tweepsmap – analytics and info on who unfollowed or followed you.
  • Twopcharts – look up clout, followers, etc.
  • Twiends – ways to grow followers responsibly
  • Legal Birds – find lawyers on Twitter.
  • Twitter Packs – find like-minded Twitter users (since this is a wiki, it depends on users to keep it up to date).

Offsite Connections: The Upshot

As Twitter continues to mature as a business tool, I predict that more and more of these off-site services will spring up. But understand that a number of older ones from just a few years ago are gone.

The most successful one will, in my opinion, combine the best features of all, coupled with ease of use and an ability to show trends over time.

And finally, Twitter changes things almost as much and as fast as Facebook does. So keep in mind, these instructions may need some tweaking.

Oh, and if you do actually see or even meet your Twitter connections, you’ll get to see if their imagery accurately reflects who they are!

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Almost Everything But the Tweet – Conquering Twitter (verbal elements)Twitter, Twitter Stream, offsite connections, visual elements, Twitter followers, Optimizing Twitter, Professionalism, Demystifying Twitter, metrics, verbal elements, Amazoncart debuts, Optimizing Twitter, Professionalism, metrics, verbal elements, Bruins denounce Twitter hate, Twitter bigots, lost dogs, using Twitter to track, Shift in Twitter Trends

Almost Everything But the Tweet – Conquering Twitter (verbal elements)

Published by Janet Gershen-Siegel on August 16, 2022

Almost Everything But the Tweet – Conquering Twitter (verbal elements)

Verbal elements? Twitter is, of course, utterly verbal. It’s just about all text. But not all of that text is tweets.

One piece is the profile. There isn’t a lot of space here. The good news is that these verbal elements are searchable. If you want to make it clear that your company is green, you can put that here. Separate short messages with delimiters like pipes (|) or asterisks (*). Don’t use semicolons as they can end up being converted to code.

This is an easy section to change, so consider changing it as needed, perhaps as special events come up. Just keep track of the older wording so you can more readily recreate it if you ever need to.

Another area is the site URL. In order to be better able to track traffic coming in from Twitter, how about using a unique URL here, say, https://www.yoursite.com/twitter? That page could contain a customized welcome message to Twitter users. This is another readily editable area of Twitter, so why not switch it up as circumstances change?

This is also a useful way to help to better segment your audience. Anyone using the /twitter link is bound to have some sort of affinity with the microblogging service.

Your location is another verbal area. Of course it need not be a real place, but for a commercial Twitter account you can’t get too whimsical here.

However, if you’ve got a multi-state presence (and want to get that across but not create separate Twitter accounts for each state), there’s nothing wrong with making your location something like United States or New England or Great Lakes Region.

Verbiage: Names

Another area is the name behind the account. This is a searchable field. A company can add a tiny bit of additional information here, such as the general company location. Hence the user name could be Your Company but the name behind it could be Your Company, Cleveland.

Yet another area is the name(s) of list(s) that your company uses to follow others. Does a company need Twitter lists? Not necessarily, but you can still use them to make certain accounts stand out.

What about lists like customers or distributors? Perhaps not very imaginative, but these could prove useful in the future if Twitter ever makes it possible to send certain tweets only to certain lists.

Finally, although it is an issue to change it, the username is another nugget of non-tweet verbiage. Instead of changing it, what about creating a few accounts to cover different eventualities? Able2Know used to do this well (although some of these feeds are abandoned these days).

Years ago, Able2know used to split off a few feeds as follows:

A user was able to follow any or all of these and see a different slice of that site. The individual user names for the accounts make it abundantly clear which cut of the site you’re following.

But that was dropped, and I am not 100% certain as to why–although automatic tweeting meant we were tweeting spam and porn before the moderating team could zap it out of existence.

Takeaways

So, what do you want to get across? I mean, really. What image do you wish to project? Peripheral information can support or obfuscate your message.

Make certain that the content and social media people (if not the entire marketing department) get a say in the wording. They may find things that you missed. Or at least they should be able to help you spot typos.

Choose what you really want your verbal elements to say. And then, say them!

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… And Facebook for All – Your Profile Page, Part IIFacebook, advertising, account settings, Profile Page Part, Home Page, Working, Facebook, Rest, Facebook versus Forums, Company Pages, offsite sharing, Facebook Page, demystifying Facebook, Facebook Video Ads, Facebook to Allow Users to Login with Less Info, Facebook video ads, Facebook Ads vs. Google, Organic Reach Decline,

… And Facebook for All – Your Profile Page, Part II

Published by Janet Gershen-Siegel on July 12, 2022

… And Facebook for All – Your Profile Page, Part II

It’s something Facebook members have seen hundreds, if not thousands, of times. It’s your profile page.

Let’s talk some more about your profile. Here’s mine.

In addition to the basic tabs at the top, it also contains:

  • A space for your profile picture
  • Information on any mutual friends you might share with anyone peeking at your profile
  • A small subgroup of your friends
  • Your likes
  • also, your photos
  • Your links
  • A share button, and,
  • Some ads

NOTE: Facebook continually A/B tests, and so buttons and features move, change, are resized, added, or can disappear altogether. Your neighbor can sometimes see a rather different version of Facebook versus yours. And this is normal. But these elements have been there for quite a while. It’s a safe bet that many of these account settings will stay on your FB profile page.

Let’s look at these in order.

A Space for Your Profile Picture

No one is stopping you from putting up a picture that is not, actually, of you. As a result, I’ve seen dogs on Facebook, scenery, people’s children, and cartoon characters and more. Hence it’s a place to be somewhat expressive.

However, recognize that, if you’re using Facebook at all for your business (or if you’re simply looking for work), you’ll need to tone this down.

If you want to go fairly conservative (which I personally think is best but opinions differ), go with a headshot or a head and shoulders shot that’s fairly recent. And, do make sure you’re smiling.

Mutual Friends

If someone surfs in and finds your Profile Page, they’ll probably be drawn to whether you’re really the person they’re looking for, and whether you have any acquaintances in common.

If you’ve got a somewhat common name (e. g. Gregory Cole), then it’s really going to help out people if they see anyone who you know is in common with whoever they know.

One way I’ve used this information has been in locating High School friends, as we tend to have the same mutual friends.

If I see that Jane Smith is also friends with John Jones and Dave Brown (names are made up, of course), then I realize, aha! Chances are good that Jane and I attended High School together. Or, at least, she’s from my area.

However, sometimes it just means that Jane is a local (if John and Dave stayed in the area after graduation). Or it might mean she’s a younger or older sibling of my classmates. Hence it’s an imperfect system.

A Small Subgroup of Friends

So this is six friends (fewer, if you have fewer than six friends, of course). And it used to be you had control over this, but apparently not anymore.

As Facebook gets larger and larger, aggregations like these start to go the way of the dodo. Why? Because Facebook is really just a big, honkin’ database. With 2 billion daily active users, all these displays, with their sortings and re-sortings, are going to get memory intensive rather quickly.

It will never, truly, be a bare bones platform a la Twitter. But you can expect to see some aggregative niceties to go away over time, or to be aggregated even further.

After all, how many times have you seen only the so-called “most relevant” comments instead of all of them when you click on a post. That, my friend, is saving Facebook some valuable memory.

Your Likes

Whenever you click Like on a group or page, it can show up here. A few show up at a time, and they rotate. To take something out of rotation, un-Like it. Much older and inactive pages and groups show up less, as Facebook follows social signals in this area, too.

E. g. pages and groups that appear inactive or even downright abandoned will lose precious visibility time and space to groups and pages that are up to date and lively.

Photos on Your Profile Page

So here is where your profile picture shows up in all its glory, and bigger than on your Home Page. Therefore, make sure it looks good here as well as on your Home Page. What I said above bears repeating.

If you’re using Facebook for business (or if you’re looking for work), make sure your profile image is a flattering photo clearing showing your face. It need not be full-length (and, if it is, it’ll be smaller on the Home Page, but here it’s all visible) and, for God’s sake, smile!

Plus, photographs also show up on your wall if you upload them and agree to publish them to your wall.

Your Links can go on Your Profile Page

So put a link in your status, or post it to your wall, and it will convert to something clickable. And if it comes from Youtube, it’ll even embed the video. And like most things on Facebook, any link can get comments or “Likes”.

A Share Button

Actually, there are several of these. Pretty much everything on Facebook can be shared in one manner or another, and even off Facebook.

Bottom line: your Profile Page is your face to the world. It is clickable, shareable and somewhat searchable. Don’t want people to know something about you? Don’t put it on your Profile Page.

Want More About Facebook?

If this article resonates with you, then check out my other articles about the largest social media platform on the planet.

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The Conquest of LinkedIn – Last Little BitsLinkedIn, inmaps, Profile Page, Resume, Network, Meeting Offline, Facelift, Last Little Bits, Q & A, Social Media Specialist

The Conquest of LinkedIn – Last Little Bits

Published by Janet Gershen-Siegel on April 28, 2022

Let’s Look at the Conquest of LinkedIn and its Last Little Bits

What sort of last little bits? Now, there’s more to LinkedIn than what I’ve already covered. And, truth be told, the number and diversity of add-ons and features is only going to keep growing. As with any other truly viable online business, LinkedIn keeps adding new bells and whistles, and constantly A/B testing. It is already a far different site from the one I joined a few years ago. And, by the way, I have never gone Premium. I think it’s a waste of money, particularly for job seekers who are often watching every dime.

However, there is an appreciable difference between making and keeping your page lively and interesting, versus making it too busy. I don’t think that you need everything. Really. I think a bit of restraint is in order.

Connections List

Your connections list is not as granular as it once was, possibly a function of LinkedIn getting larger. After all, by 2025, LinkedIn is projected to have over a billion users. Hence the demands of data, and server speed and size, mean that they aren’t going to give you as many opportunities to add metadata about your connections.

Instead, the site offers groups. Create a group, and invite likely people to join it. Your High School’s graduating class, or your sorority chapter might be good choices, as your High School is probably already represented and your sorority might be as well. But these groups provide more specificity. Of course, not everyone you invite will join one of these groups, but it’s worth a shot. Still, LinkedIn is no longer trying to be like a CRM system. That’s, I feel, for the better, as it gives the site more focus as a networking platform.

Events

Another tool that is gone is events. A pity, in some ways. But again, the site is looking to focus itself better. That includes eliminating some of the fat.

Following a Company

LinkedIn provides the ability to follow a company. If you are in charge of your company’s LinkedIn profile, you can help to stimulate this information stream by listing comings and goings, promotions and transfers. Got an event going on, with an interesting or attractive look to it? Take a picture and post it!

Profile Page Shortcut

The shortcut to your profile page is an easy way to make yourself stand out a bit more. Just select a reasonable shortcut for yourself. Mine is my last name, because it’s unique.

Last Little Bits on Your Profile Photograph

The last, and perhaps most important bit is your profile picture. To add, or not to add? I say, add it. It’s not like you’re going to hide your race, your age, or your gender if you meet someone. So you may as well come forward so that, if you meet in person, they can recognize you. Use a recent, clear headshot, and for God’s sake, smile! Look professional and approachable, and try to keep it current. That reminds me; I should probably update mine.

Last Little Bits and Some Takeaways

There will undoubtedly be more changes  and last little bits as LinkedIn dreams up new ways to connect business persons. Perhaps virtual reality is in its future. Stay tuned – I may blog more about LinkedIn and its last little bits as it continues to reinvent and improve itself.

LinkedIn is constantly changing. These might end up not being the last little bits after all.

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