With the Kudos booth babes at BlogHer11.

Did we meet this weekend? Or not? Would love to connect with you further here, on Facebook and Twitter. And if you’re looking for my humor, it’s on the other blog: After the Bubbly. Hope to catch up with you soon!

It started before the shuttle left the airport curb on my way to SheCon in Miami last weekend:

“I know you. I follow you on Twitter.”

Once I got over my delighted surprise, I asked her name. It’s only polite to follow back, after all. That’s when it got complicated.

“Well, my name is Cindy Harper but I go by Schnizzle on Twitter, and on my blog I’m Carmen Miranda Flowerbottom.” And from there we moved on to the confusion of avatars.

Despite our differences, I’m crushing on Twitter. Hard. This is how I’m using it now.

Use Twitter Consistently

I’m not talking about a schedule here, although I do recommend having some kind of plan for how you’ll interact with your followers on a regular basis. No, I’m talking about the name, identity, avatar thing. What is the point of your tweets? As I mentioned in my presentation at SheCon, I think Twitter is like a bar (or wholesome-meeting-place of choice). It’s a great place to connect with a stranger, or wave “Hey!” at an acquaintance, but in order to develop those relationships, you need to move it to another platform. This is made exponentially more difficult if I can’t make the connection between your Twitter life, whatever else you’re offering (online or off), and most importantly – YOU the person behind it all. Be consistent. Pick a name and stick with it. And please please please upload a picture somewhere that actually looks like YOU – not the you of 15 years ago, or the you you could afford if only you’d married him instead of him – I want to see YOU.

Use Twitter Often

I admit, I’m tweeting a whole lot more than I was before last week. Part of that is because I’ve made new friends and you know how that is – “No YOU’RE fabulous!” “No YOU are!” Smiley emoticons litter the twittosphere. But it’s more than that. Making these new friends who are so much “better” at Twitter than I am has been enlightening. I’m starting to get Twitter on a whole new level. And I like it. Even though I’ve talked a good game, like so many I have been afraid to really dive into the river. I held onto a false assumption that I’d drown in the current. Not so. I was fortunate to meet social media master Ted Rubin at SheCon. Holy crap – watching that guy work, on the screens and with real live people, was amazing. When I asked him if it wasn’t a tremendous amount of pressure – being available and responsive to so many (more than 50k followers) so often, he said sure, sometimes. He also pointed out that Twitter is a push media. It gets quiet quickly when you’re not putting something out there for people to respond to. Which leads me to my next point.

Use Twitter Pre- and Post-Event

If I thought I had to use Twitter in the same way I have been at the conference and all this week, I might feel overwhelmed. No, I would feel overwhelmed. And I would say, screw it. Can you relate? But stick with me – the beauty of the medium is that I can use it to connect with people quickly who have a shared interest, in this case conference goers. With one or two exceptions, every single person I really got to know at SheCon was someone who I traded tweets with before the conference. Some of us had moved onto the second base of Facebook before the weekend’s events. This helped us fast forward – once we met face-to-face – almost directly to the important stuff, like how we might be of service to one another’s businesses. (What? You thought blogger conferences were all about showing off pictures of Billy with a Binky?)

Use Twitter Casually

It’s always fun to make new friends, and doing so has definitely infused me with renewed energy and fun. Twitter can be fun. And relax, really. It’s 140 characters. How much damage can you do? I’m also using TweetDeck mobile a lot more so I can respond quickly. And I’m trying to use Twitter in a similar way to the way I use Facebook. Don’t get me wrong, I still love my Facebook – and I will still try to convert friends on Twitter to the platform where I feel more comfortable, but Aliza Sherman was correct in her presentation about new social tech: These apps have a way of growing on you.

Image: Funkdooby, Flickr

Come on.

I say be the grown up. Control the phone.

Personally, I love the phone. Taking it away is such a handy punishment. And for the record, my son contributes to his bill, to subsidize all that unlimited texting. What do you think?

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If you like my views on parenting, I am available to speak at your group meeting or conference session.

Anyone interested in freelance writing online should read the NPR story today about the recent change in Google’s algorithm. If you’ve taken my classes or heard me speak about online business or social media, you’ve heard me say that working online means Google owns you. Here’s why: Online content is written on demand, and that demand comes from searchers, like you and me — often looking for how to do something. In theory, Google’s search algorithm identifies the best content and puts it at the top of your search results. Top search results command top advertising rates.

See the conflict? Or, brilliance?

Google controls the search results. Google serves up the ads. Hence, if you rely on Google Adsense for a significant portion of your income (directly from adshare or indirectly because your freelance work provider uses it), then Google owns you.

Google Protects Searchers From Big Bad Content Farms

It’s true that there is a lot of junk online, and it’s true that my own work on HubPages is not particularly insightful, but it delivers information in easily digestible bites and usually provides resources to those who want to dig deeper. While Google may be trying to position itself as wiping out the scourge of evil “content farms” in order to improve quality of search results, that is not the whole story. It’s curious that the change came just before HubPages integrated an easy interface that allows writers to use the YieldBuild ad optimization system on their Hubs. YieldBuild is a Google Adsense competitor created by the founder of HubPages.

HubPages alone is big, over 2 million URLs. Add to that eHow, Squidoo, Suite101 and other similar sites and it adds up to millions of pageviews. Millions of eyeballs. That’s what advertisers pay for. So, speculating, if all the pages on all the content farms used alternatives to Google Adsense, that would be a huge revenue hit to Google. Wouldn’t it? Of course they will penalize the competition.

HubPages was targeted. According to a study by SISTRIX, HubPages’ visibility in Google search results has dropped by 87%. I have not found my traffic overall affected to that degree, but it is down. Articles that used to be on the first page of Google search, even the top three, are now much further down in the results.

Facebook Is Not a Search Engine

Some say that we’re moving toward social media for information recommendations and away from Google-style search. Nobody loves Facebook more than I do. (Okay, maybe Zuckerburg.) I get a lot of my news from links posted by people I trust and admire. However, when I need an answer, I search. I bet you do too. I suspect there will for a very long time be those of us searching for the exact answer we need right now, like where to take a family vacation in the midwest. And my answer will be there. I hope.

It’s Okay to Make Money Writing

HubPages was my first paid writing gig four years ago, and my ad revenue (from multiple sources) on the site continues to be significant. I learned to write online on HubPages. I learned to write quickly and to a topic that didn’t always thrill me. I developed discipline. These are professional skills that I’d argue will improve every writer’s ability to earn a decent wage, but also to improve her craft.

In William Zinsser’s classic, On Writing Well, he advises would-be writers to take a job as a reporter as a year. He says that while you may not churn out the best product, that you will learn and grow in skill, that you can’t help but improve if you are writing every day. To me, that is one of the most valuable benefits of writing online content. It’s on the job training. (And by the way, if you’re diligent it pays a LOT more than an entry level reporting job. I checked.) If I hadn’t cut my teeth on bulk-content writing, I wouldn’t have learned the skills need to become the Editor of ParentingSquad, or the writing experience needed to break into magazines, or the persistence to write enough to publish my first book, Blacklisted from the PTA. I certainly wouldn’t have learned why all those links are important Bottom line: If you’re a new writer, nothing is beneath you, not even content farms.

Publishing is big business. Online publishing is publishing. And the bottom line is that someone has to pay the bandwidth bill for all this and free information and naval gazing. Change is inevitable. If you’re lucky enough to make your living writing, this is the cost of doing business.

Image Credit: plugimi, Flickr

This fun literary event is hosted by Christina Katz, writing teacher/career mentor extraordinaire and author of The Writer Mama, Get Known Before the Book Deal, and the forthcoming The Writer’s Workout, 366 Tips, Tricks & Techniques From Your Writing Career Coach

This is your chance to meet a new mom author every day in May–including me! The theme is creative confidence and Christina will be asking each author a few questions about how authorhood has impacted her career confidence.

To participate–and potentially win the book of the day–just answer Christina’s prompt each day. Everyone who answers the prompt will be added to the daily book drawing. Of course you’ll want to enter EVERY day, but especially on the day Blacklisted is offered!

Make sure you let me know, too! I want to read your responses!

I’m flexible, most of the time. I like to think so anyway. This week Christina Katz wrote about the need for writers to be flexible, yet maintain a backbone. In order for me to be creative–whether that’s expressed in the writing or the marketing or just the way I get it all done–I need a lot of infrastructure. A lot. (And I’m not talking about my Spanx.) There is an intricate matrix of lists, spreadsheets, and yes–Post It’s–holding this show together. There are more boxes and timelines than I’d be proud to show you. But that’s okay. They are creation too.

Sometimes, though, I need more flexibility. I need to break out of the systems that have helped me get this far. I leave the lists behind and let the flow of my days dictate what gets accomplished and when. I give my room, unconcerned with the demands of those constricting lists. This works, for a time. It opens up new opportunities. And then something flips. My life starts to feel like all those post its.  Suddenly I have so much to do that strict priorities become important again, and with them, all those lists.

Plus, I have a love hate relationship with Post Its. Love the ability to capture snippets of ideas to keep at the ready. Hate to have suspended thoughts lying around with no concrete plan for execution.

For me, the beauty of organization and structure is that once I have it in place, I am free to work within it without anxiety and overwhelm. When I’ve taken the time to plan, I can relax, confident that the important things will get done, in time. And by relax, I mean work my ass off on projects I truly enjoy. I work my lists until they no longer work for me, and then I’ll get super flexible again, toss out the old, and get to work creating the new.

To me, that’s flexibility.

What does being flexible mean to you?

Image: GuLangYu Island Life, Flickr

Many writers I know do not want to be bothered by social media sites like Facebook and Twitter. They just want to write without regard to the promotion side. Too bad. If you’re working online at all, or offline for that matter, and you’re not using social media you’re going to be left behind. No question. So let’s address some of the most common objections I hear.

I Don’t Want to Spam My Friends

I hope that you are proud of the work you’re publishing online. If not, maybe you should reconsider your assignments, or what you choose to write about, or the quality of your work. At the very least, perhaps you should be using a pen name if you’re simply churning out crap. But that’s not you, is it? You, who are taking the time to read this article. You’re doing good work, but you don’t want to bother your friends with repeated requests to read your work. Sound like you?

First of all, don’t flatter yourself. You’re one of dozens, probably hundreds, possibly thousands of “friends” your social media connections are exposed to. You may put out 50 updates in a month and your friends only see a few. It’s not like we’re all reading every single one of those status updates and tweets, right? (And if a person really reads every single one then they have bigger problems than being annoyed by your links.) Bottom line, it’s a numbers game.

Second, flatter yourself. Linking to a cool article you wrote that is published on a cool website or magazine is not spam. Your friends really do want to know what you’re up to. And you never know who will happen upon your link just when they have that very topic on their mind, or when they have a friend who really needs the information or the support offered in your piece. So share already. Share!

I’m Too Busy For Social Media

No, actually, you are not allowed to be too busy for social media. Not if you want to be successful. I know it can seem overwhelming to think of getting on Facebook and Twitter once or more per day, to “keep up” with one more thing. But there are tools that make it easy. Well, maybe not easy, depending on your level of resistance, but doable for sure. TweetDeck and HootSuite are popular free applications that allow you to schedule status updates in Facebook and Twitter tweets in advance. Fifteen minutes a week of focused effort can do wonders to establish your online presence.

A sample week’s worth of tweets and updates:

• Monday – a link to an article (past or current)
• Tuesday – ask a question to engage your audience (yes, YOU have an audience!)
• Wednesday – quote or word of encouragement
• Thursday – RT (retweet) someone else’s cool article or comment (this builds goodwill with your peers!)
• Friday  – another link to an article (only two a week – see, not spammy!)
• Saturday – another engaging question
• Sunday – more words of wisdom, encouragement

Not so bad, right?

I have a client, a baby food manufacturer, for whom I handle social media. I manage twice weekly Facebook updates and daily Twitter updates in under an hour and a half a month. I do almost ALL if it at once. When timely things come up I update the social media profiles, but I do the bulk of the updates once a month.

If I Get on Facebook and Twitter I’ll Be Too Distracted to Work

Getting distracted from your work is up to you. If you have a plan similar to the one I described above, you don’t really need to have your social media programs open when you’re not directly working on them. Don’t be held back by this excuse. You must learn to manage the distraction factor of social media (and everything else online) if you want to be successful working out here in the webs, or again – anywhere else.

Fine, But I Only Want to Share Professional Stuff with my Facebook Friends

Here’s how I see the public/private challenge of social media. The medium of online communication has a built in expectation of some personal commentary. Almost all writing online has some “voice,” some aspect of the work that the reader directly connects with. Otherwise, why are they reading you instead of the hundreds of thousands of others who are writing on the same topic in a similar style? The answer is that there is something about YOU that draws them in. It’s not all business, not just the facts.

You have to give a bit of yourself in your social media communication, too. You may not choose to be completely transparent in every way, but you will not connect with readers if you try to keep everything on a purely professional basis. Readers want you to be a real person. There are many ways to manage this, but the fundamental thing is to DECIDE how you will present yourself in social media, whether that means having a writer “Page,” limiting your updates to certain aspects of your life, or creating an alter ego for your “real” friends. These are personal choices and people do it a lot of different ways. Again, don’t let this challenge hold you back.

It’s really not so scary, I promise. More than anything it requires a decision to do it and a level of organization that allows you to “batch manage” your social media interaction. I hope this helps. Feel free to add your two dollars in the comments. We’re all learning, and this stuff changes every day. I’m sure that makes you feel better!

The criteria for this list are simple:

• members aged 25-55
• meet on a regular basis, in need of speakers
• meet in or around Northwest Arkansas

Please leave additions in the comments and I’ll make sure to add them to the list!

Thanks!

• Fayetteville Junior Civic League
• Hispanic Women’s Organization of Arkansas
• Junior League of Northwest Arkansas
• MOMS Club of Bella Vista
• MOMS Club of Fayetteville
• MOPS Rogers
• NWA Playgroup
• Professional Women’s Network, Benton County
• Professional Women’s Network, Washington County
• Tyson Women’s Business Resource Group
• Walmart Women’s Business Resource Group
• Womenade NWA