Just when I think it’s safe to play #FollowFriday again.

It’s no secret that I hate the Twitter meme of #FollowFriday. I wrote a rant post back in March about why I’m not playing anymore, and I’ve stood by that pretty adamantly. Ari Herzog, who wrote a recent post about the meme, shares the same sentiment as I do, which is,

I recommend Twitter users every day–when retweeting their thoughts or web links, when thanking them for prior advice, or when singling out unique people.

I thought that the madness of the random, meaningless, lists of people to #FollowFriday (or #FF) recommend had ended since I wrote that post in March. I thought that things had calmed down.

So last Friday I dipped my toe back into the Follow Friday meme and posted a #FF recommendation and gave reason as to WHY people should follow that person, as one should. So far, so good.

Today I tweeted that I lost half a cookie in my morning coffee, in melodramatic distraught. Next thing I know, Cookie Monster is following me on Twitter. The Official Cookie Monster (not to be confused with all those Cookie Monster impostors out there, mind you). I felt rather honored that such Muppet royalty would follow me, so I recommended him for #FollowFriday. After all, his Twitter account is hilarious … assuming that’s the real Official Cookie Monster and not some paid personal Muppet assistant.

I was away from my computer the majority of the day. I came back and checked my notifications to find the usual handful of random people following me that I had never heard of. I always check out each individual person that follows me to 1) make sure they’re not a bot, and 2) see if they’re anybody I find interesting enough to follow in the 3 second glance I take at their profile.

One such profile was this, and I took sympathy on the woman to attempt to protect her identity and those of the people in her background:

Pardon my french, but…

WHAT THE HELL?!?!

My 25 Words of Social Media Wisdom

It’s more complicated than we think.

It’s a lot simpler than we think.

We think ourselves in circles out loud, online — everybody thinks we’re crazy.

(Entry for Liz Strauss’ 25 Words of Social Media Wisdom Project.)

The stuff I can’t go without reading every day.

The other day I did something long overdue — I pruned through my RSS feeds and hit “mark all as read.” To you this may not seem like a big deal but to me it felt so liberating — like the geek girl’s equivalent of burning her bra. For weeks I knew I was falling behind on reading all my RSS subscriptions; it got to the point that I was actually afraid of opening up my RSS reader of choice because I knew it would asplode.

Now I’m starting over at Square One with my RSS feeds, but it’s not like I haven’t kept up with things. I always keep up with my email, and there are some subscriptions (mainly newsletters) that I read every day. I post a lot of interesting things to my Facebook, and people I see often in real life tell me that they love the links I post and ask how I find them all.

So I’m going to share with you my daily reads — what pops into my inbox every day that I usually take time to at least skim over to see if there’s anything interesting and worth sharing. My life is about to get a helluva lot busier in coming weeks so I don’t know if I’ll be able to keep up with them all, so if you’re that big of a fan of the information I share, here’s your chance to find most of my sources in one place.

In no particular order:

The New York Times - I’ve been getting their headlines in my inbox for years. In fact, for so long I can’t remember how long exactly. I’m a big fan of The Times.

Advertising Age - In particular, I get their headlines in AdAge MediaWorks, Creativity, Digital, and TalentWorks

Copyblogger – OK so it’s a blog & I subscribe to it via RSS, but it’s one that I absolutely don’t ever want to miss so I receive it via email as well. It’s all about copywriting, content marketing, social media, and full of awesome interesting tips and information. Oh, and it’s a lot of fun.

Lateral Action - also a blog and from the creator of Copyblogger, it’s just as fun and interesting. Per its about page, it “provides tips and techniques that help you focus on doing remarkable things, rather than getting trivial things done or never moving beyond ‘creative thinking.’”

Marketingprofs - I’m not an official paying member (yet) but I’m a big fan nonetheless. I highly recommend their Get to the Point! newsletters. I subscribe to a lot of them, maybe all, I don’t remember. They’re short, sweet little nuggets of marketing goodness that stay true to their name and well, get to the point. A couple of my favorites are Small Business, Marketing Inspiration, and Daily Fix, but I love them all.

Fast Company - words can’t express how much I love Fast Company. I receive their Best of Fast Company newsletter, as well as their Tech Weekly, Leadership Weekly,and their Ethonomics newsletters.

Social Media Today - it’s a weekly newsletter but I highly recommend visiting SocialMediaToday.com for a nice daily roundup of all the most interesting blog posts in the social media world. When I find myself neglecting my RSS feeds, this is where I go to get a nutshell overview of what’s being said in the sphere. If there’s something you’d like to see (or not see) on SMT, tell my friend Ari.

Ragan’s Daily Headlines - news, features, etc. for professional communicators worldwide. I don’t read this one as often as I read the others, but the themes are similar to the other stuff I read.

Help A Reporter Out [HARO] – a brilliant idea from Peter Shankman. The gist – it’s a 3x daily digest of queries from journalists from all over, looking for sources for all kinds of topics. It’s nice and organized into sections of topics/themes, and I don’t always have time to scroll through all of them but whenever I do, I usually find some reporter somewhere that’s looking for somebody I know, so I pass the info on to them to contact said reporter. For example, not long ago, a writer was looking for a feng shui expert for a story, and I whaddya know, I just happen to know a woman who is a feng shui expert, so I passed the reporter’s query on to her. This kind of thing gives you good karma and an insight into the trends that reporters are currently writing about. Also, it continues to remind me that I know some extremely interesting people.

So there you are. This is the stuff I at least skim every day, and where I find most of my news. Do you have any daily reads that you just can’t go without? I’m curious to know if other people are as spongy as I am when it comes to this stuff.

Bunny picture by tm_lv.

What to do when “you’re doing it wrong” goes wrong

Let’s face it — social media consultants/strategists/ninjas/experts/jedis/gurus/swamis/mavens/ringmasters/highpriestesses/whatevers are know-it-alls, even when, as I and many others have pointed out, nobody can possibly know it all. Yet deep down, we (and I say “we” because I admit that yes, I do fall into that sweeping category of “social media people”) really just want to help people who aren’t necessarily the nerds that we are.

Many times, we’re successful and people are glad that we were there to help them out, answer questions, and give them some guidance.

Other times, not so much.

Sometimes, you can reach out to an organization that you care deeply about and offer your help, and give them your time and help, and they won’t acknowledge it. If they acknowledge it, they won’t appreciate it, or they won’t understand why what you’re trying to help them with is important, until their peers are suddenly moving in on the game.

When that happens, it becomes an issue of “keeping up with the Joneses,” and said organization will decide that they have to have all the same tools that they hear about on TV, that their competitors are using, that they feel like they should be using because well, everybody else is and ooh — shiny objects! Never will they stop to assess what their overall goals are, who their audience is, if their target market is even using said tools — they’ll have no sense of strategy whatsoever.

Sometimes, no matter what you say to people, it’s not going to resonate.

No matter if you tell them that there are only 5 people in the entire region active on Twitter (and you know because you’ve met all of them), they’re still going to think they need a Twitter account to “reach out to their local audience.”

It’s not going to matter that you know they need a Facebook page and not a Facebook group to accomplish what they want to do — if they won’t listen to you, if they insist on “doing it wrong,” you can try to convince them that they’re “doing it wrong” until you’re blue in the face.

Sometimes, people aren’t going to listen. And you know what?

You’ve got to let it go.

Walk away. You tried. That’s all you can do.

If people insist on “doing it wrong” — it won’t do you any good to kick and scream.

Sometimes, you have to let people do things “the hard way,” otherwise they’ll never learn.

I’ve learned to do more things “the hard way” in my life than I’d like to admit, but my stubbornness has subsided in recent years. I’ve learned that it’s much easier to keep your mouth shut and ears open if you want to learn something the “easy way.”

But you know what?

Not everybody knows that.

So you have to just walk away and hold your head high knowing that you tried.

(Ever had that kind of situation?)

Introducing a new kind of journalism for a new era

I shouldn’t need to tell you that traditional print journalism, as we’ve known it, has been in trouble for quite some time. Newspapers are ceasing print publication at alarming rates and mass layoffs are announced daily. Magazines are not immune, either — in 2008, 566 magazines ceased publication, and 279 have folded thus far this year (Source: Craines New York). There are many people now finding themselves on unexpected journeys in this economy, whether they’re laid off writers and looking for work, or simply anyone deciding to chase a dream they’ve always had and starting a company of their own. Maybe you’re one of them.

For the past few months, I’ve been involved behind the scenes in a very exciting project that will change the face of journalism forever. It is called uwemp (a conglomeration of the words “you, we, me, empowered”), an open-source media company offering experience-based content in a new concept called “dialogue-based journalism.” Our writers provide feature and profile articles on people and organizations changing the world we live in today. All content focuses on experiences—challenges, setbacks and lessons learned—that have led to sustained success.

The best way to describe it is a social-network-meets-writing-community, where not only do writers have a chance at establishing a loyal readership and the potential to be published in major outlets, but the readers — no matter who you are, where you are on your journey, no matter what it is — get to decide what’s next when they’re finished with an article. Think of it as a magazine full of great stories from inspiring people, but interactive. If you read a story about somebody that you can identify with or just want to know more about them and/or their journey, you can request more information, ask specific questions to the profiled person, or even request that the person be interviewed on video. Really, the end of an article may be just the beginning of the inspiration.

Currently uwemp is recruiting top-quality feature and profile writers from diverse backgrounds for our community.

If you think you’ve got what it takes to profile incredible people with incredible stories, please read our submission guidelines and come on board!  While welcoming a wide range of content, uwemp focuses on high-quality submissions and rewards writers accordingly. With our proprietary writer-ranking system, uwemp promotes the most active and intriguing writers, based on contributing to the community, improving the community, and building a dedicated audience. The more you interact with the reader base and directly fulfill readers’ requests, the higher you will rank. Writers can work their way up to Managing Editor status within a specific topic area and get paid.

Of course, all members of the community are encouraged to contribute, one need not be a professional.

Some of our already published profiles include New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Alan Mullaly, CEO of Ford, and some less-famous, yet still very inspiring people whose stories may hit closer to home, like this guy who started a software company, the cofounder of a brownie company now worth over $8 million, the CEO of a home-care company for the elderly, and the story of a Lebanese immigrant who started a restaurant, then launched a pita chip brand that’s already getting $1 m in revenue. These are just a few, and we have a few articles in the works right now that are so exciting I don’t even know if I’m allowed to talk about them yet.

Are you experienced? Are you looking for somebody that is?

uwemp also has an open forum called the Experience Bank, where you can connect and speak with other members based on areas of interest and where find yourself along your journey(s). Though uwemp mainly focuses on business and entrepreneurship as the basis of its content, we also have other areas and articles of interest in categories such as music, education, writing, politics, sports, etc. and have included those as categories in the Experience Bank, as well as organized by milestone.

So, for example, if I just had a great idea (or so I think) to start a singing midget telegram business and am unsure if I should go for it, I might want to start a topic under “The A-ha! Moment” or “The Jump,” and ask other community members if they’ve done anything similar, do you think this is a good idea or not, should I go for it, and if so, what should I keep in mind? The entire premise of uwemp is to be a destination and a resource to learn from each others’ experiences and get advice on whatever it is we’re working on, wherever we are in life.

The next few months are going to be very exciting for uwemp, as we have lined up some amazing interviews of some amazing people, plus some exciting partnerships to announce. I hope that you will come the join the uwemp family over at our main site, as well as follow us on Twitter and fan us on Facebook. You’ll probably find us elsewhere online, too, if you look hard enough.

I truly believe that our concept of dialogue based journalism is going to change the game, and I’m very passionate about this whole idea of a community based on learning from others’ direct experiences.  The best way to learn is from direct experience, but none of us can do it all, so the second best way is to learn from the experiences of other people, especially in a community format. If I didn’t believe in this, I wouldn’t have jumped on board as Senior Social Web Strategist.

What do you think? Will dialogue-based journalism become the new standard in feature and profile writing? Who would you like to see profiled on uwemp, and what would you ask them?

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