You know about social media. You know that you’ve got to get on board with it for your organization, or for your own activist work. You may have even signed up for Twitter or Facebook already, but you don’t know where to start. What are the right tools to use? What do I say? Why are other people doing this? And, perhaps, most importantly: how the hell do I know if it’s working?!

View the full event page for the whole description and pricing information, and to register. We’re also offering scholarships for those in need.

WE ARE GOING TO HAVE SO MUCH FUN.

Oh, and speaking of need, I should mention how this idea came about– a lot of people come to Jen Angel (of Aid & Abet) and I looking for a hands-on workshop, but can’t afford to bring me into their organization or event. This workshop will get folks who need it the most, working on the front lines, the skills they need without emptying their budgets.

Based on how things go in SF, I’ll be offering this boot camp in other cities (likely next up will be NYC and DC), and possibly online. If you’re interested helping to host one in other cities, please let us know– leave a comment below or send me an email. And, if you’re interested in bringing me to your organization for a group training or strategy session, drop Jen a line.

Increasingly, I’m getting mentions from people with whom I’m not familiar, asking to click on links to their work. I see this happening to my friends, too, so I thought I’d collect and share my responses to one Twitter user on why this doesn’t work that well.

“	.@gbedard1 ok, time for some free advice. People pay thousands for this (or they just buy my book, haha), so take notes:
	randomdeanna September 9, 2011

“	.@gbedard1 I don’t have a relationship to you or your work, so randomly tweeting me isn’t going to make me click your link
	randomdeanna September 9, 2011

“	.@gbedard1 when I check out who you are, I see you’re randomly tweeting a lot of ppl, so now you kinda look like a spammer. oh noes!
	randomdeanna September 9, 2011

“	.@gbedard1 Twitter isn’t a shortcut to popularity. It’s a means to build relationships.
	randomdeanna September 9, 2011

“	.@gbedard1 So start getting to know the ppl whose attention you want, and let them get to know you. *Then* pitch them shamelessly. :) /end
	randomdeanna September 9, 2011

 UPDATE: I got a little swipe about my ego being too big to click on links. Granted, my ego is ginormous (ask anyone who knows me intimately offline), but for once, it doesn’t have much to do with the situation at hand. I’m just explaining here how important the relationship mechanism is for sharing information– it’s called “social” media for a reason. Tee hee.

In that spirit, here’s some simple advice about how to treat others with respect and still have fun online. The number one rule? Ask first.

Mind-blowing concept, I know! But with the ease with which we can refer to and tag each other on different services, we forget that sometimes people don’t want to be referred to or tagged. Just because someone has a public profile, doesn’t mean they want to be quoted at every juncture! Here are some standard questions I use:

• Can I post what you just said to Twitter and Facebook? Should I credit you, or should it be anonymous/overheard?
• I took a great picture of us–check it out. Can I post it and tag you with it?
• I’m checking into Foursquare for this restaurant. Can I say that I’m having dinner with you?

Not only does this tell your friend that you actually care about their privacy (most people like that), but it also helps spread the reminder that they should do the same for you and others.

The more you do it, the more comfortable it’ll be for both you and your friends. Now, onward with your sharing!

At the beginning of December, Aspen Baker, the executive director of Exhale, wrote me an email. “I’m looking for a social media coordinator and web person for a short-term project,” she said. “Interested?” I’ve always been a fan of Aspen’s work at Exhale — they’re a nonprofit organization which provides the first and only nonjudgmental national, multilingual after-abortion talkline. One of the things I love most about Exhale, which I learned largely through their campaign, is their advocacy of “pro-voice” in dealing with abortion. Every woman’s voice deserves to be heard; women (in numerous political contexts) don’t need to be talked at, shamed, have numbers and percentages thrown at them as much as they need to be listened to, and told that they are loved.

The project Aspen had in mind was exciting from the outset–large with names but fraught with challenges. It turns out that MTV approached them when they decided to do a special on abortion for their program “16 & Pregnant.” Now, if you’re not familiar, MTV has two reality shows about teen pregnancy running; “16 & Pregnant” is one of them, and the other is “Teen Mom.” They’ve both been running for two seasons, and up until this special, neither series showed any teen having an abortion. This is noteworthy because 37% of all teen pregnancies do end in abortion; many have criticized MTV for not showing a large portion of the teen pregnancy experience.

MTV came to Exhale originally looking for women who would be willing to go on the show and talk about their experience having an abortion. Exhale ultimately got the opportunity to help shape how the show was put together, and used this opportunity to do some pro-voice educating with the production team. They wanted to show that it was possible to have an honest, thoughtful, nuanced conversation about abortion that wouldn’t be polarizing and inflammatory. And, most importantly, they wanted MTV’s young viewers who have had abortions to personally relate to the stories shared on the special.

Aspen then wanted to create a social media campaign and website to accompany the airing of the special. It was slated to air at 11:30pm on Dec 28th, just a few days after Christmas, and there would be no commercial interruptions, and no promotions announcing that the show would be on. So, despite the bonus of having a nationwide audience, we ran the risk of no one hearing about it. The other challenge was that we weren’t allowed to announce the show ourselves until MTV was ready, which likely (given their desire to fly this under the radar) wasn’t going to be until right before the show.

HOW WE BUILT THE CAMPAIGN

I quickly enlisted the help of Sonal Bains, with whom I work often: we split client work quite nicely, with me on the strategic development and technology end of things, and Sonal on the implementation and media relation end of things. Both of us come from strong offline organizing backgrounds, and this informs our style of work and collaboration. (Plus, Sonal’s hilarious.) The takeaway here is that as you assess your campaign, it’s helpful to write down what your strong points are, what you bring to the table. I know that I don’t have the relationships with bloggers and journalists that Sonal does, for example. If you’re working within an organization, get your key players together and write down concrete skills and time availability as part of your campaign brainstorming. On Exhale’s side, their Director of Programs, Jovida Ross, played a critical role in the implementation of the campaign and was a great partner for Sonal and I. We had a small yet mighty team of high-functioning, excellent communicators.

Aspen’s campaign idea was to create a digital safe space where the women who decided to tell their stories on the show–and by extension, all women who’d had abortions–would feel loved and supported. Central to this space would be a website where anyone could submit a message of love or support. Any political messages (from any corner of the debate) would not be accepted; Aspen’s vision was a zone free of typical advocacy posturing, and wanted it only to focus on the women. Why? In Exhale’s extensive counseling experience, they have found that political rhetoric can shut down women seeking emotional support after abortion. This would be a space where we wouldn’t allow that to happen.

It was important to me to give the campaign a catchy name that had emotional resonance. I rejected our original names that were things like “Your story matters” and “You are loved.” They were all vague, emotionally absent, and just didn’t hit on the enormity of what we were trying to pull off. I asked our group to think of names that were plays on the title of the show, allowing us to capitalize on the already-popular brand; it was Aspen that landed “16 & Loved.”

ELEMENTS OF THE CAMPAIGN

• Set up metrics and analytics to track how the campaign performs
• Build a quick ‘n’ dirty website to capture submissions of love
• Rename the Twitter profile from “xhaleisprovoice” to “ExhaleProVoice” and use the hashtag #16andloved to capture the conversations about the campaign
• Build the Facebook Page for Exhale as an organization, and use it to share the love, and updates about the campaign.
• Involved the reproductive justice blogging community by organizing a private, embargoed call before the special airs, and inviting people to participate in a live blog during the show.

METRICS

I’m a big fan of Rowfeeder for my social media tracking needs. I work with individuals and small organizations, so we pretty much can’t afford tools like Radian6, which is one of the more popular services in the non-profit sphere. For $35/month, Rowfeeder lets us track up to 3 terms on both Twitter and Facebook. On top of providing interesting metrics reports that you can tweak and do fun things with in Excel (if you’re that kind of nerd; not that I know anything about that), it also dumps all the mentions/posts it finds into a Google doc for you, so that you have the raw data.

We chose to have it track #16andloved, ExhaleProVoice and xhaleprovoice (in case there were tons of people using the old Twitter handle). In retrospect, I should have chosen 16andloved without the hash sign; that would have also captured mentions of the website where neither the hashtag nor Twitter handle were used.

WEBSITE

We purchased 16andloved.com and set up hosting with LivingDot.com (their “One” plan for $10.95/month). We installed WordPress, and chose the Therapy theme from WooThemes for $75. I recreated the “16 & Pregnant” logo to read “16 & Loved” by hand using my Wacom Intuos drawing tablet.

For the submissions and posting, we used a few WordPress plugins. The submission form was created by Contact Form 7, and we had to sent to a special email address that we hooked up to Postie. Postie turned the submission emails into draft blog posts, and we checked regularly and approved/discarded the posts. We also used an extension for Contact Form 7 that captured the submissions and added all the info to a table in the database that could be exported. We also used the Really Simple CAPTCHA to keep out spam/bot submissions.

I installed the WP Supercache plugin in case the site got really popular and crashed (it did once). For social sharing, we used the Facebook Likes It plugin (this seems to have been abandoned; I can’t find its install page anymore), and the WP Tweet button plugin.

TWITTER

Before we got word we could talk about the special, we started working on building the community engagement by joining existing abortion conversations, following and engaging with influential folks that we identified, and also posting a few teasers about having Exciting News! to share very soon.

Once we got the go ahead, we launched the website and started soliciting submissions. We received several dozen on the first day, and tweeted some of our favorites. We continued to solicit, post favorites, retweet others’ Twitter posts, and respond to inquiries. Because of the short time period for the campaign, we didn’t do as much curating as I normally advocate for. That’s not to say that we used Twitter as a broadcast tool (a big no-no!); we still maintained a very conversational focus. It’s just that for this case, most of the focus was on “16 & Loved.”

We also used Twitter to promote airing of the show, watching the live blog we were putting together, and to continue to curate responses.

FACEBOOK

Prior to this campaign, Exhale had a Page that they didn’t use, but they did have a Cause with ~1,000 members. My experiences with Causes haven’t been overly fantastic; I feel like it takes a lot of time and resource investment to get minimal material return. Especially for the purposes of our campaign (promoting submissions to the site, and getting the word out about the show), I feel like a Page would serve our purposes much better. The biggest thing is that status updates and links from Pages are more likely to appear in a fan’s news feed, and that was absolutely critical for us.

I asked 25 friends quick to Like it before we even did that much with it so that we could land a username, making it easier to share the Page with the wider world. We chose http://facebook.com/ExhaleProVoice. We then started posting periodic updates to the Cause, asking people to Like the page so that they could stay in touch with Exhale and its Very Exciting News! that was coming.

After that, we used a similar posting strategy as to what we had going on at Twitter.

BLOGGER CALL AND LIVEBLOG

Sonal got to work right away on putting together a conference call for the blogging and journalist communities. She contacted about 10-12 people who write about abortion issues and women’s rights on a larger scale. The Friday before we launched, we hosted the call just using FreeConferenceCall.com. We scheduled a short talk with Aspen, a few words from a spokesperson who had had an abortion. We stressed that the information we were sharing was embargoed, and we would let them know as soon as we could when they could share with their communities. We had a few key asks: 1. to see who wanted to participate in our live blog, 2. to see who was willing to write about the show and our campaign, and 3. to stress the importance of the pro-voice angle of our movement, and ask that they respect that as much as possible. We then opened it up to Q&A, and altogether, we spent about an hour on the phone together.

Five or six of the bloggers on the call volunteered to participate in the live blog the night that the show aired. In addition, the Women’s Media Center offered to create a “watch-in,” and they shared it with their community. How that worked: They created a Facebook event in which people were invited to watch the show (in their own homes) and voice their opinions about it.

For the liveblog, we used CoverItLive. They make it very easy to get a group of approved panelists, as they’re called, to come together and chat live. You can embed the CoverItLive tool in any website very easily, and we encouraged our panelists to do so, widening our reach. I monitored the comments from the community and approved appropriate messages as the show aired. Sonal worked on monitoring the new submissions to the website. After the special was over, people could also re-read the liveblog.

RESULTS! (That’s what you’ve been waiting for, right?)

The straight-up numbers*…

• Website: ~9,000 visits, with most of those happening between Dec. 22nd and Dec. 30th. Users spent an average of 2:26 minutes on the site, and visited 2.1 pages while they stayed. 200+ submissions.
• Twitter: Followers increased from 235 to 465; 548 mentions of @ExhaleProVoice (from 12/20/10, that’s ~27/day); 1563 mentions of #16andloved (from 12/20/10, that’s ~78/day)
• Facebook: Fans went from under 25 to 616; 617 likes of posts with 1,152 active users; Dec. 29th was the most popular day for likes and comments; 86% female fans; 62% are 18-34
• Liveblog:  During the show, we maxed at ~120 viewers at once, with a total of 422 viewers. 175 panelist comments were published; 234 reader comments were sent (98 were published). Since then, the live blog has been replayed over 900 times.
• Media: About 25 blog posts and articles, including feminist strongholds of Feministing, Feministe, Jezebel; independent media such as Salon.com, Change.org, and Care2; mainstream media such as ABCNews, NY Post, Washington Post. Two weeks later, an article on the campaign appeared in the NY Times.

Were these good numbers? All told, yes! We were very happy with them. Moreover, we were even more thrilled with our qualitative metrics, which for me are the real measure of a social media campaign: The overwhelming messages of love and support often left us emotional and speechless. We received very few negative submissions (less than 5), and very few negative comments online. (There was a minor campaign by a conservative blogger, but it never caught traction.) All around, a huge, huge set of cultural wins for the pro-voice movement.

* Exhale agreed to let me publish these numbers. Normally, all quantitative and qualitative metrics are kept private as part of my contracts.

THE INTRO

For background on the #dearjohn campaign, check out these posts from Sady Doyle and Amanda Marcotte.

If you’re not on Twitter, but you’d like a helping hand through the sign-up process, go here.

If you’re new to Twitter, and want an introduction to basic concepts– retweets, hashtags, and mentions, oh my!– go here.

THE GOODS

One of the more attractive social media tactics when it comes to creating a stir is to use hashtags. Hashtags, in the case of campaigns and politics, can be useful to:

• collect all the tweets about a particular topic in one place;
• put pressure on public figures to respond to a topic (because of the above);

What’s a hashtag? It’s an agreed-upon keyword preceded by the pound sign that’s added to your tweet. In this case, we’re using #dearjohn. No special skill is required–just type it into your tweet, or copy and paste it.

Tweets with the #dearjohn hashtag should convey one or more of the following:

• A sense of urgency about sexual assault and reproductive rights.
• A personal story–storytelling is what gets to people, not isolated facts and figures.
• Deep conviction. You don’t have to tell your story to be authentic, but your words should be your own.

UPDATE: Check out Sady’s newer post for content ideas and guidelines.

Consider also monitoring the #dearjohn hashtag (how to do that is explained below) and retweeting posts that you agree with. Amplifying powerful messages and diverse voices goes a long way towards building critical mass.

It’s also helpful to include the Twitter handles of people that you want to hear your message. House representatives who are sponsoring the bill should be considered first–start with @SpeakerBoehner himself. A list of the rest of the co-sponsors–all 173 of them!– can be found here (click on “Co-sponsors” under Representative Christopher Smith). You can use GovLuv to find the Twitter handles of the representative you wish to mention. Consider also sending messages of thanks to representatives who are speaking out and standing up for women in this fight. UPDATE: Amaditalks on Tumblr compiled the whole list here.

You might also think about starting (or joining an existing) an act.ly petition to collect #dearjohn tweeters in yet another online location.

A word about decency/politeness: You don’t have to be nice in your tweets when confronting folks that support HR3. But calling names, making false or libelous accusations, etc., only hurts the rest of the movement. Be outraged, but keep your head on straight.

A word about trolls: If you’re new to this kind of thing, you might not have had much experience with trolling behavior. Basically, a troll is someone who actually isn’t interested in having a productive discussion, and only posts extremely inflammatory comments to derail the entire conversation. Ignore them. Block them. Do not, repeat, do not respond in any way, shape or form–do not even tell them that you’re blocking them. Trolls are vampires: they are emboldened and strengthened by any response to their antics, and you will inevitably be weakened. I know it’s hard to ignore them. But trust me, it is the only way.

To see the running log of all #dearjohn posts, you can do a few things:

• Keep coming back to this post and clicking on #dearjohn
• Look at the top of your Twitter page–there’s a search box. Enter #dearjohn into it, and when you see the search results, you’ll notice a button at the top right of the results–”Save this search.” Click that. Then, to find it again, look at the top of your Timeline for the “Searches” link. Click on it, and you’ll be shown a list of your saved searches.
• For more advanced options, you can perform an advanced Twitter search here: https://search.twitter.com/advanced

I’ll continue to update this post as the movement builds and evolves. Have a tip for me? Feel free to @me on Twitter, or drop a line.

So, you’re ready to sign up for Twitter! Sometimes the signup process can be a bit daunting, so I created this short guide showing you what you need to know. Let’s get started!

Go to http://twitter.com/, and you should see a screen like this. Click the yellow “Give it a try” button on the right.

STEP 1: Create your account

You’ll be taken to a screen where you’re asked to fill out your information. Fill in your real name, your username (what you’ll use to log in, and how other Twitter users will refer to you), a password, and your email address. Along the way, Twitter will tell you if each of your entries is valid or not.

There’s also a checkbox that reads “Let others find me by my email address.” This means that if someone already knows your email address, they can use it to find and follow you. Twitter never reveals your email address to anyone who doesn’t already have it, though.

I generally uncheck the “send me email updates” box, and then click “Create my account.”

Then Twitter needs to make sure that you’re a human. You’ll see a CAPTCHA box; type in the words that you see. Here’s an example:

STEP 2: FINDING YOUR PEOPLE

Twitter helps you find people that you think are interesting—either because you like the topic that they tweet about most often, or because you know them.

You’re first shown a screen where you are offered a series of topics, and if you click on the topic, it’ll show you people Twitter suggests for that topic. Click the “follow” button to the right to start following them.

Note that you don’t have to follow any of these people, and you can choose to stop following them at any time.

Click the blue “Next step: friends” button in the lower middle of the screen to move on. You’ll be taken to a screen asking you if you want to search any of your online contacts from Gmail, Yahoo or AOL. If you have an account with any of those services, and you use the address book there to store information, click on the service you belong to. (If not, click the blue “Skip import” button in the bottom middle.)

You’ll then follow the steps your email provider uses to connect with Twitter—I’m showing Gmail here. Twitter doesn’t store or save this information; it’s a one-time deal.

It then takes a few seconds for your contacts to load, and you’re shown a screen that it’s working on it. When it’s done, it shows you a list of everyone in your address book that are already on Twitter.

You can click on “follow” next to the people that you want to appear in your feed. If they haven’t allowed themselves to be found via email, you’ll see a message that says so, and you can request to follow them. You’ll be notified if the request was approved.

When you’re all done, click the blue “Finish” button in the lower right. You’ll then be asked to send an invite to all the other people in your contact list who aren’t on Twitter. Skip this! Don’t do it.

You’re now shown your home screen, with all of the tweets from the people you’ve chosen to follow in reverse chronological order (newest on top). You’re also asked to confirm your email address; do this right away to get rid of that nagging message.

STEP 3: FAMILIARIZING YOURSELF WITH TWITTER’S FEATURES

Let’s take a quick tour of the home screen.

1. This is the main navigation for Twitter.
   • Home:brings you back to this screen
   • Profile: shows you a screen of your own tweets
   • Messages: Private messages sent only to you; also called Direct Messages or DMs. Only people that you follow are allowed to send you DMs.
   • Who To Follow: brings you to the stuff we covered in Step 2
   • Click on your username for additional items: Settings, Help, Sign out
2. Here’s where you’ll enter your status update, in 140 characters or less. There’s a counter in the upper right of the box to tell you how many characters you have left.
3. This area shows you information about yourself. Click on any of the numbers next to followers, following, favorites and lists for detailed information about each.
4. Here’s your list of tweets from the people you’re following. This is called the Timeline. (Some people also refer to this as their Feed.)
5. This section is where you can look at how you’re interacting with the rest of the world.
   • @Mentions. Click here to see if people have mentioned you.
   • Retweets. Click here to see tweets that have been passed along by others in your timeline. You can also see which of your tweets have been retweeted by others.

STEP 4: ADJUSTING YOUR SETTINGS

Click on the Settings link in the main navigation. The first screen you’re taken to has things like your email address and time zone; adjust these if needed. Click on the “Profile” link in the Settings’ navigation, just below where it says, “yourusername’s settings.”

You’re taken to a screen where you can update how you appear to other Twitter users.

It’s important to fill these out as accurately (and un-ironically/un-sarcastically) as you feel comfortable with, so that other users who are either searching for you or who discover you will see quickly who you are, and what you’re about. You should also use a picture that’s you, a close approximation of you, or is otherwise distinctly recognizable as you. (I don’t recommend those avatar generators, for example; they produce generic looking cartoons that make it hard for people to distinguish one from the other.)

Let’s go back to the Home screen and have a look at two important conversation features.

STEP 5: LOOK WHO’S TALKING (WITH YOU)

At the top of the timeline, click the @Mentions link (in section 5 from step 3). This shows you a screen of everyone who’s mentioned your username, with the newest on top. It’s important to check these “mentions” regularly and respond accordingly. If you hover over any tweet, two links appear: “reply,” and “retweet.”

Click on “reply” to respond to the person; click on “Retweet” to share the content of that tweet with whomever is following you.

STEP 6: SEARCHING AND SAVING

If there’s a particular topic you’re interested in, Twitter allows you to search for that word (or words), and save the searches to your account. This is a good way to monitor tweets mentioning your organization’s name, topics in the kind of work that you do, or other things that interest you.

Way up top, there’s a grey box with a magnifying glass next to it. Enter the term you’re searching for, and click the magnifying glass. You’ll be given a screen of search results:

You can then save the search to your account, so you don’t have to keep reentering it every time you want to look, by clicking the “Save this search” button at the top of the search results. Then, to find it again, look at the top of your Timeline for the “Searches” link. Click on it, and you’ll be shown a list of your saved searches.

That’s pretty much it for the basics! Feel free to visit me at http://deannazandt.com/twitter-guides for more information.

Here are the tips I shared with Nancy:

• Backtweets. Enter any URL and see who’s tweeted it, no matter what URL shortener they used. Especially handy if you don’t have access to analytics of a particular site. (RSS feed of results available)
• Favstar. See who has favorited your tweets, and also new-style RT’ed your tweets. (RSS feed of results available– handy for seeing a old tweet that was recently favorited).
• Advanced Twitter search. The search function at the top of Twitter home page doesn’t seem to have all of the results when referencing users. Go to http://search.twitter.com/ and enter your username preceded by the @ symbol (i.e., @randomdeanna) and hit enter. You should see results of when someone else new-style RT’s something with your username in it. (RSS feed of results available)
• Other Twitter searches. I also have saved searches for deannazandt, which brings up both mistaken username mentions (people sometimes forget I’m @randomdeanna), as well links to my website, deannazandt.com. Plus a saved search for “Deanna Zandt,” when people read something I’ve written, but don’t know my twitter handle.

Got (free, easy) tips of your own? Feel free to share them in the comments!

(*UPDATE: Nancy reminded me to share with you that she is “the most selfless, confident, least ego-driven person you’ve ever met and would NEVER dream of checking my RT thread to reassure myself that people like me or are actually reading my work :)” OMG NANCY ME TOO)

Choosing a topic and title

What is absolutely critical from your area expertise that this audience needs to understand? Don’t just think that because you’re an expert in bilateral African swallow evolution that everyone at your conference should know about every nook and cranny. Ask yourself some questions: what are new, key findings that they might not know about? How can a piece of your expertise help the larger conference community grow? Remember that you’re not blessing the audience with your infinite cosmic power; you are providing a service that you want them to benefit from.

Next: choose a title that’s going to rope them in. Don’t be obvious, in most cases– again, think about your audience and what they’ve come to the conference to learn. One of the most frustrating things I see on the political conference circuit are poorly titled token panels like, “Why We Need Women to Win Elections.” First of all, boooooring. Second of all, the people who actually need to hear that message aren’t going to go to a panel called that.

I used the following example from my past as an RA on campus recently. I was responsible for the sexual assault awareness programming for my quad, and I knew that I wouldn’t get students to attend something called “Sexual Assault Awareness Night.” Instead, I stole the idea from a training I’d attended, where we took the name of a popular game show at the time (who remembers “Singled Out“?) and made all of the questions and answers about sexual assault awareness. Yes, it’s tricking people. But sometimes people need to be tricked into getting educated.

Copybloggers’ headline writing series also applies to panel naming in many respects, if you need extra help.

Choosing panelists

This can be challenging for most of us. We’re pulled in several directions: we want to get famous people onto our panel so that people will come; we want to promote our friends and their work; we want to have people that have interesting ideas. (I was lucky for my Netroots panel, since my panelists fit many of these bills, haha.)

Before you get to the famous and the friends, though, I want you to think about some other questions. First, who’s not just writing smart things about your topic, but who can actually explain them in an engaging way to an audience? Honestly, many writers and academics make terrible presenters. The panelists don’t have to be the most fun or funniest, but they should do more than drone on as they read a prepared statement.

Next, who do you know that has something challenging to say on your topic? You don’t just want panelists who will congratulate each other; you’ll want them to interact and play off each other. That doesn’t mean they have to be douchey or mean, just willing to be a little different if it’s called for.

On the topic of famous people: yes, having one on your panel is extremely helpful for getting people to choose it from all the other panels that are available in that time slot. It’s true. So, if you choose a famous person, maybe consider choosing someone else who’s not so famous, but meets other, stronger criteria above, so they get some elevation out of the process.

Last, but probably most important: Choose people from different genders, races and backgrounds. I’m not saying this to be nice, or even as an ethical argument. People from different backgrounds make for a more interesting panel. It’s like DNA– see this post I wrote about it, which also plays a major role in my book.

Preparing for the panel

Depending on how in-depth your panel is, anywhere from a few weeks to a week before the panel, email your panelists and lay out what you need from them. Come up with 3-4 questions for them to choose from as a guide for what you want the panel to focus on. Make it clear that you want the audience to take away clear, concrete ideas and action items–this is not just story time.

Give them a time limit that they are supposed to work within (generally 7-10minutes is about right for the average panel), and warn them that you will cut them off if they go over.

Tell them that if they are presenting case studies as an illustrative example of how things work or should work, the case studies must be replicable. Too often (especially on panels about social media and blogging), a case that is unbelievably outstanding is presented, and key points about what really made the success–such as participant’s relationships with key influencers–are left out. This is so damaging to the wider community: When people think that all they have to do, for example, is come up with a nice charity idea and ask their friends to help, they become disappointed and turned off of social media when it doesn’t work.

I also advise against using any PowerPoint presentations, unless you have strong images or graphics. (I myself go for the TED-style of PowerPoint, with just large images and one or two words on each slide.) It’s too tempting for a presenter to just read what’s on screen and not engage with the audience at all.

If there are heavy-duty materials that need to be shared, determine ahead of time a place online where you can share each panelist’s materials: a blog, a wiki, SlideShare, etc.

On the day of the panel

Ask your panelists to meet a half-hour before the panel starts and discuss quickly what each person is going to talk about. Confirm that there are no egregious overlaps in topic. Determine the order that each panelist will present in.

Make sure all your AV is working, and if there are going to be lots of social media users in your audience, choose a hashtag for your panel. (Try just adding a single word to the conference’s main hashtag– for example, we used #nn10rock.)

Get a 2-sentence bio from each of your panelists. Their full bios are either in the conference program or on the conference website, so don’t worry about using the whole thing.

During the panel

Give an overview of the panel topic: Set the stage for your panelists based on what you know they’re going to present, and ask your audience a few questions about the topic that they can answer with a show of hands. Introduce your panelists with the short bios you gathered.

Let your panelists present, but keep to your promise to cut them off when their time is up. Take notes for questions while they’re speaking.

Start the Q&A period of the panel by asking a few pointed questions based on the notes you took. Ask them to explain one interesting detail further.

When it’s time to open the questions up to the audience, warn them of one very big important point: You will not tolerate anyone who gives an entire history of the project their working on, and then asks a random question at the end. We know you’re just there to self-promote, and we’re interested in having a conversation. Using up a lot of time to ask a question does the whole community a disservice. Instead, say your name, that you’re working on [name of project], and you want to know x. Anything more than that will find you cut off.

I know it sounds harsh, but it’s the only way to get through a lot of questions, and to have a productive Q&A session at most conferences.

Following up

At the end of the panel, remind people where they can find the materials online, and then actually gather and post those materials within 24 hours, if possible. Share the materials with wider audiences on Twitter, Facebook and blogs. Invite comment and critique, and improve your panel stylings based on that feedback.

(note: You can look at the slides and text here; here’s the video.)

A week and a half ago, I received an email asking me if I’d be willing to do an Ignite talk for the March 4 NYC event, part of Global Ignite Week. If you’re not familiar with Ignite, here’s the deal: You have 5 minutes to give your talk; you create a PowerPoint presentation to go with the talk, but here’s the kicker: You must do 20 slides, and the slides will advance automatically every 15 seconds. Talk about creative restraint inspiration! Not only is it an amazing challenge and a great place to flex your speaker muscles, but the Ignite platform also reaches far and wide into multiple communities, and can be a huge opportunity to reach lots of audiences with your message. Was I up for it? Sure.

Then the panic set in. Oh my God, what I have I signed myself up for?

Tikva Morowati, one of the organizers of the event, said she needed my topic and description by later that day. Yeep. I knew I would have a hard time getting this all together on my own, so, like any good social citizen, I went to my community. First thing I did was email a listserv I belong to, where I knew many of the women had given Ignite talks before, for advice. The takeaways:

• Practice. A lot. 5 minutes goes by fast, but those 15 seconds go by faster.
• Don’t use the slides to make your point. They can add humor, etc., but as the organizers say: they should be icing.
• Leave padding for both your own potential stumble and laughs/heckling.
• Know your audience. Igniters tend to come, at least in NYC, from the tech/startup community.
• Be smart. Don’t dumb anything down.

Next thing I did was beg the most entertaining stage performer I know, Baratunde Thurston, to spend a few minutes with me that day. I needed a crash course in both topic generation — how to create a message that was going to be true to how seriously I take my work, and be engaging/fun — as well as pointers on how to set up the talk itself. He generously took time to have a little lunch and run through some ideas. His advice? Make sure you tell a story people can insert themselves into. Also, consider giving counter examples to what you want to illustrate.

I knew I wanted to talk about how social networks are shifting our cultural consciousness, a huge chunk of what I cover in Share This!. Baratunde and I came up with the idea to base it around a pop song, make that the hook of the talk. On my way home from our meeting, I scrolled through my iPod looking for songs, and landed on, “It’s Not Easy Being Green.”

Of course! The Muppets! And who better to be my model social citizen than Kermit himself?

I quickly drafted a title — “What Would Kermit Do? How Being a Muppet on Social Networks Can Change the World” — and a description, and got to work on the actual talk. Now, a word about my prep: I’m a recovering overachiever. I was that kid in school that would do the most outrageous OCD acts to learn material and concepts inside out– think Tracy Flick for academics. I’ve been in recovery for a number of years now, but Ignite made me relapse. (In a good way, I hope.)

Melissa Pierce, who’s making an unbelievably awesome film called “Life In Perpetual Beta,” offered to bounce ideas around with me. I can’t stress enough how much the buddy system helped, here–throughout the process, every panic was eased by checking in quickly with my buddy. She sent me this great video, “Why and How to Give an Ignite Talk,” which stresses storytelling as the basis of every talk.

I looked up how many words a 5-minute talk was, and most sources agreed that it was somewhere around 700-800 words. So, I drafted a 750-word piece around what I wanted to say. Melissa and I moved things around a bit, and then I set to timing myself reading the whole piece and editing it until it was just under 5 minutes. Then, I timed out where the 15 second breaks roughly were, and broke up the talk in my document editor.

Then came the fun part. I knew that I wanted the visuals to be strong, and the words to be few. Thus, I set about to watching the Muppet Movie (which was the focal point for the whole talk) and finding stills that would work for each slot. Because I knew the movie inside out (I’m talkin’, nearly word for word), this part was easy. Once the stills were gathered, I dropped them all in Photoshop and added the text for each–I don’t like the way PowerPoint does text; Photoshop gives me much more control. All in all, this part probably took me 6-7 hours.

I also landed on doing the idea of a tshirt — playing off the “Jesus is my homeboy” meme, I created “Kermit is my homeboy.” The kind people at Neighborhoodies.com, just up the way in DUMBO Brooklyn, let me know they could have it printed by Wednesday. Yay!

The overachiever then kicked into high gear. This was a technique that I’ve used to memorize all kinds of things since I was probably 10 or 11 years old– scripts for acting roles, texts for oral exams, you name it. I made an MP3 of me reading the talk, and started listening to it whenever I could. On the train, walking around, etc. But the craziest part, which really seems to work for me, is that I listened to it on loop while I slept every night, from Monday to Wednesday nights.

I spent most of my waking practice time–probably an hour each day this week–trying to memorize the talk without looking at the presentation or my script. I made 20 index cards with 3-4 keywords to help me keep going when I’d start to stumble, and each time, I found myself using the cards less. By Wednesday, I was able to get through most of it on the train. Over Wednesday evening, I started measuring it with the presentation timing, and it was pretty much spot-on. Doing that part over and over showed me where I was likely to run long, and where I had room to futz. I even made myself a cocktail and practiced it a little buzzed, just in case I went on stage last.

Thursday, I had a whirlwind day of other speaking gigs, so I didn’t get that much time to practice during the day. The hour or so before the show, though, I went over to the Bowery Poetry Club. I used to work there, so as long as there’s no one using the stage, friends are sort of allowed to use it for unofficial practice space. This helped me get used to the lights, as well as the distractions of people walking around, talking, etc., through my spiel.

By the time I arrived at Galapagos, my brain was pretty much fried and I found it impossible to keep practicing. Thus, I unleashed my nervous energy being super chatty with my fellow speakers (thanks to Noel and Andy for humoring me, heh). I also found out I was going on first– this panicked me initially, but then I realized I could (a) get it over with, and (b) not have to worry about following someone truly spectacular. (And whew, because there were some rockstars last night!)

Then, the big moment came, and there I was onstage. Once it got going, I was shocked to find it rolling out of my mouth. I worry that it sounded *too* rehearsed at times, but mostly, I’m really pleased with how I did. People laughed at the things I hoped they would, and many have reported back that they really enjoyed it. Looking forward to sharing the video with you all!

I griped a little yesterday about this, and Elana over at Wellstone Action asked me what advice I’d give candidates running for office. Here’s a quick, handy-dandy list of pointers for candidates, from the position of a voter:

• Talk with me, not to me. Twitter is a media platform for conversation, not broadcast. A rule of thumb that’s used for organizations also applies to candidates: only about 20-30% of your tweets should be about you. The rest should be about what your community cares about. Which leads me to…
• Find out what your community cares about. Read what your followers are tweeting and respond with helpful information. It doesn’t just have to be related to the office you’re running for, either… in fact, it’s better if you mix it up a little. For example, someone you follow tweets about heading to a restaurant you love. Respond and say you go there often, too, and be sure to try the blackened sea bass.
• Stay on top of hot topics. Look for people talking about issues you care about with Twitter search. You can either save them as saved search in your Twitter app (Tweetie, Tweetdeck, Twitterific, etc.), or as an RSS feed for your news reader (Google Reader, Netvibes, etc.) Then respond to those tweets, even if you’re not following each other.
• Give back to the community. Retweeting others’ ideas and suggestions is a great way to show appreciation, and to spead the good word.
• Use your own, authentic voice, not a press release voice. I’m a voter, a human, and I want you to be a human too. Robots don’t do so well in the voting booth.
• If you don’t have time, assign a staff person to monitor and respond to items — just make sure they’re clear that they’re your staff person, and not you. For example, NYC mayoral candidate Reverend Billy Talen has a personal account, as well as his campaign staff’s group account. If your staff person uses your account, ask them to note that they’re a staffer.

In short, act like a normal person who cares about the people around them, because we know you do!

–

Note: Bill de Blasio was the only public advocate candidate who responded to my gripe, and he gets extra Twitter points for both that and at least retweeting people once in a while. Go Bill!

Here’s some links to the presentations and workshops that I led and co-led all week; thanks to the participants who took killer notes. There’s tons of incredible info on, and being added to, this wiki, so check back often:

• Inspiration: Social Networks (midway down the page). Day one was all about showing our participants the myriad of tools at their disposal and some successes that others have had. [PowerPoint preso here]
• Measure THIS! Social Media ROI. How to think about metrics for social media work. [No session notes yet, but PowerPoint preso here.]
• Engaging business leaders and decision-makers through social media, led with Eric Squair.
• Twitter for Individuals and Organizations. (shocker, right?)

I talked in pretty simple terms about some different approaches in “The non-fanatical beginner’s guide to Twitter.” With this post, I’m going to flesh out some of the nitty gritty and help to answer some of the tougher questions.

It used to be said with one of the very first popular online social tools — email — that you shouldn’t write anything in a message that you wouldn’t want to appear in the New York Times. Few people ever followed that rule, thank goodness. How boring would our lives be if we all subjected ourselves to Grey Lady standards of information sharing?

Nowadays, new tools make it easier to share as much of ourselves as we want, and especially if you’re just getting going, it can be difficult to know what’s okay to post and what isn’t. A flat-out easy beginner’s guidepost comes from the illustrious Susan Mernit, who told participants in a workshop we led: “If you’re wondering whether you should post something or not, you probably shouldn’t.”

The genesis of this proverb comes from a key principle of social media: Authenticity is king. That word is being thrown around quite a bit these days (“authenticity,” not “king,” heh).� Social media “gurus” and “mavens” often slip “authenticity” into smarmy marketing posts. Ignore them. They are not the guides you are looking for. But authenticity is.

First of all, let’s make it clear that despite technology’s best efforts, we still have multiple authentic selves. We are the same person, for sure, at work and at home, but the mix of personality components we use is at least a little bit different in each setting. Social media makes the mix slightly more transparent, thus we have to think more about which parts we present, as well as when and how. But just like our personalities in the offline world, it’s those different parts that make us unique — and our perspective and experiences interesting.

One of my cousins, who’s a therapist in D.C., told me recently about a model of thinking about intimacy in relationships as a stereo equalizer, where things like reliability, trust, availability, etc., are the main components. Skew one of those bands outta whack, and the whole mix is off.

Social media authenticity works much the same way. It’s a mix of personal insights, professional announcements, expertise (whether it’s a job or a hobby), general passion, lots of opinion, and often humor. (Question to advanced users: What other bands would you add to the equalizer?) It takes some experimentation to figure out what mix sounds right to you. This is why Susan’s advice is so dead-on: What you perceive to be good, what you feel comfortable with, that’s what people will pick up on as they share in your experiences. For people who are largely private folks who don’t want to tell the world about the silly stuff their kid just did, that’s fine. Share more about what you thought when you read an article related to your work. It also doesn’t have to be your most familiar voice, either, if that doesn’t make you feel comfortable. You can maintain a fairly professional tone in social media (though do try not to be emotionless) and still provide value.

It’s all about the mix that’s going to make your voice sound good — to you and others.

For some people, it’s easy to share personal news and events. Me, I have no bones about tweeting funny things my mom says, details of a party I’m at, or (loads of) pictures of my dog. It’s a way for me to keep a running log of things that are important to me. That said, my guidepost is to not share things that would make me feel vulnerable, like details of my dating life. I share things once in a while about my health, either to reach out for help or to show solidarity with others, but I consciously keep it to a minimum … simply because that’s what feels right to me.

The experimentation can be uncomfortable to start with, but know that it’s okay to make mistakes here and there; social media is quite a bit more forgiving than more traditional forms of media (and I would say, also more forgiving than blogging). Worried about it all being Out There? Jaclyn Friedman made a great point recently in a workshop I was leading about how our perception of social media is rapidly changing, similar to how our perception of tattoos has changed in the last 50 years. Think about the attitudes toward a person who got a tattoo in 1959, versus attitudes now. It’s the same with social media. Ten years ago, someone getting a swig of TMI via Google might have had an adverse reaction, versus today, when seeing something a little off-topic in a Twitter stream is no big whoop.

That said, I do want to mention that there are some folks in jobs where more attention needs to be paid to privacy and security (you know who you are). There are different parameters to work with when establishing your mix, but you shouldn’t keep yourself out of social media altogether. Almost all of us are, in some way, already represented online. Social media sites generally appear within the top 10 search results; you should do your best to influence how you appear, even if it’s to show that you’re largely a very private person.

In a really big picture sense, I see all of our social media voices combining into this huge, glorious mix that has a real chance to change our cultural perceptions and values. (Note: this is the premise of the book I’m writing this summer for Berrett-Koehler.) All of this social technology has a humanizing effect on our digital interactions. Much like everyone getting tattoos, if we’re all presenting our authentic selves and experiences — versus relying on gatekeepers to tell our stories — we stand a chance to cause a tidal wave of change and inject our values, finally, into a culture that has long ignored too many of our experiences.

I’m tapping away furiously on my Blackberry as a friend arrives to join me for coffee. “Whatcha working on?” he asks.

“Just updating my Twitter,” I say. “Two secs.”

“Twitter, huh? I just don’t get it, I guess.”

“Oh, my. Allow me to get you to ‘get’ it, my friend.”

This is a conversation I have often, and while it might make some diehard Twitterers cringe, I relish this moment to expound and explain this little phenomenon that’s happening around Twitter and services like it. I’ve clearly drunk the Kool-Aid of the micro-blogging revolution, and I’d love to walk you through some of the ways people are enjoying it.

Wait, what is it?

Twitter is a service that functions like a giant bulletin board where anyone can stick a short note — 140 characters or less. These posts are called “tweets.” You can choose to read other people’s tweets (called “following” them), and other people can choose to read yours (these are your “followers”). Some people choose to keep their tweets private, and approve each request to be “followed.”

The most basic way to use Twitter is via the website, where a list of everyone’s tweets appears once you log in.� If you belong to Facebook, it’s similar to the home screen there (aka, the “news feed”)– which features a list of your friends’ recent activities. The main difference between the two services is that while all your friends’ activities appear in your news feed (though this is tweakable; another post on that another day), only people you choose to follow appear in your Twitter feed.

How do people use it?

There are two main groups of twitterers, and I want to address them separately — individuals tweeting on their own behalf, and organizations and business who are on Twitter. There’s some overlap, for sure, but have their own ends for which Twitter is the means.

Individuals: I am tweeting, hear me roar

Or purr, if that’s the case. Many people are on Twitter for some pretty basic reasons:

• Conversations. Twitter, as I mentioned in my beginner’s guide, is a two-way street with many lanes going in both directions. Everyone has the opportunity not just to express what they’re thinking/feeling/doing at any given moment, but to respond to what others are thinking/feeling/doing. I like to think of it as a water cooler in the break room, where I stop in periodically and see what people are talking about. This is especially helpful for freelancers, web workers and other folks who aren’t in traditional work environments. It gives us support and creates community.
• Expertise. People love to get and share advice on Twitter. It’s a great place to receive quick, immediate feedback on an idea, put out a link to a new blog post or article, or advertise yourself as a leader in your field.
• News. Lots of media organizations now have Twitter accounts, and use them to automatically publish links to new stories as they become available. Many people find it convenient to get breaking news there — and to report it themselves.� More individuals are now using Twitter to provide eye-witness accounts and to point out what’s missing from the news coverage. Both the Hudson River landing and the Dutch crash were first reported by everyday people on Twitter.
• Stay connected with friends. Our so-called digital lives, yes indeed! Twitter is a great way to� peek at what your friends and colleagues are up to. This certainly doesn’t mean you have to be responsible for reading every tweet (see my post on Twitter overload), but it’s a great way to casually be aware of what’s happening with folks you care about.
• Share interests & find others who share them. Are you a locavore? Would you love to share that passion with other locavores? Twitter makes it easy to find and follow others– check out the search function and use “hash tags” (see the beginner’s guide for the how-to) to track conversations and topics of interest.

Organizations: It’s so much more than outreach

Sure, you can push out information all you want, but there are a lot of other ways for organizations to connect with their constiuencies:

• Spread the word, connect the dots. There’s the obvious — post your own news and events — but there’s also huge value in giving your followers related info. If you’re an environmental organization, don’t just send out press releases from your own group. Use Twitter to link to articles relevant to your work, as well as share links to sister organizations.
• Have conversations with your community. Have I mentioned that Twitter is a two-way street? There’s a fantastic opportunity for organizations to listen as well as talk, on a very direct level. It’s a great tool for organizing as well as providing customer service.
• Give your work a human voice. Prior to tools like Facebook and Twitter, it was hard to make the work we all do at the organizational level feel personal and real. Take this opportunity to let your humanity shine through, and don’t sound like a robot when you’re tweeting for your org. Twitter is more about connecting humans to humans.

A little story

This is one of my favorite, illustrative moments in for how Twitter humanizes our digital interactions: Last fall, I was visiting my parents after participating at a media symposium at Ithaca College. My mother knows I have a thing for shoes, so while we were shopping, she decided to mess with me. We were at a store with rows and rows of discounted awesomeness, and she called across several aisles, “Come look at these! Should I get them?”

I was greeted by a blinding set of cream-colored, bejeweled, pointy-toed, gold-stilletoed boots on my fashion-conservative mother. We fell over with laughter, and I sent this picture to Twitter with the question, “Should my mom buy these boots?” (Best response came from @rit, who said, “That depends. Is your mother Dolly Parton?”)

A few days later, I was on the phone with Pete Leyden to discuss a potential project. We played phone tag for a few days while I was traveling, and I was excited to finally hear what the project was about. “Before I get into it, though,” Pete said, “I need to know: Did your mom buy the boots?”

It was one of those moments that allowed this entirely personal — but not necessarily intimate or vulnerable — connection between me and a potential client. We had a great laugh over it. Following me on Twitter gave him a fairly rounded picture of the type of person I am, and it let me know that he’s appreciative of the level of silliness that often invades my brain. It humanized each of us in what otherwise is a connection governed entirely by ones and zeros.

What else to say?

Attention, Twitterati: what else is there? Tell me why you Twitter in the comments. Two great resources that I’d like to share before we go:

• There’s a great video from Common Craft that explains Twitter in a jiff.
• Tara Hunt has a great post on tweeting for companies. It focuses on for-profits selling things, but I think much of it is applicable to non-profits, and maybe even individuals, as well.

Later this week, I’ll� follow up with a post on the big picture of Twitter, and what it ultimately all means. See you then!

Edited 1/3/2010 to include updates to Twitter interface over the past few months.
Note 11/9/2010: This was written/edited/updated before Twitter’s redesign in September 2010. I’m hoping to update certain bits in the coming months, but for now, know that some references to the interface might not make so much sense. Sorry!

Thanks to a bunch of mainstream media coverage, a lot of folks around me are becoming more interested in participating in the Twitterverse. “All right, all right,” they say. “You’ve convinced me. But how do I get started?” It’s almost like walking into a giant party for the first time: You’re not sure where your friends are, the bar is on the other side of the room, and the bathrooms are anyone’s guess. Allow me to be your party guide.

Sure, sure, you could also just Google “beginner’s guide to Twitter” and read a any number of other guides that have been written. Problem is, I feel like most of them focus on two niches: how to be a fanatical Twitterer, and/or how to be a really obnoxiously popular Twitterer. What I’m aiming for here is more for people who want to experiment a little and connect with other folks on a pretty direct level. We’ll talk later about different ways you can participate, but for now, let’s just get the basics down.

Grammar and vocab

First, it’s good if you can get some of the lingo down before jumping it. Pretend you’re visiting a foreign country where you don’t speak the language– there are always a few basic phrases you want to have in your back pocket.

• Following. These are the people whose tweets you’ve selected to read; their tweets appear in your “feed” or “stream.”
• Follower. This is someone who is reading your tweets.
• The @ symbol. Put this before any other Twitterer’s username to refer to them. Why? It creates a link to their profile automatically, which is handy for your followers to track conversations or look at people you’re referring to. @Replies will likely show up in that person’s Mentions page.
  Note that if you reply to another person using the Reply arrow button on Twitter, though, that only people who follow that person will also see that reply in your feed. It’s kind of a drag; more on this here.
• Rt, RT or rtwt. These stand for “retweet.” If you read someone else’s tweet that you think people following you should also read, put this before copying and pasting the whole thing, including the original tweeter’s username. Here’s an example, where I retweeted something that Nancy Scola posted: “rt @nancyscola: isn’t there something uniquely DC about 1/5 of Politico’s “top 10″ DC Twitterers not actually tweeting? http://ow.ly/qmy”
  Update: Also, you can use “via @username” to attribute something that you saw with another user, but aren’t directly quoting word for word. (thanks, @nezua!)
  Update #2: Twitter now has its own built in retweet function (the circular arrow button). Many people don’t use it, though, because those retweets don’t show up in Mentions, and it throws off their user’s own feeds by displaying the icons of strangers.
• The # symbol. Words that follow # in Twitter are called “hash tags.” It’s a way of assigning a keyword to a tweet so that so that others can follow the topic. For example: When folks were attending the WeMedia conference this week, they would tweet information about the conference and put #wemedia somewhere in the tweet. That way, everyone else interested in news from the conference could easily find and track them.� Tracy Van Slyke of the Media Consortium said this, for example: “#wemedia. Twitter wins game changing award! @biz says best thing: twitter isn’t about triumph of tech, it’s about triumph of humanity.” And you can see lots of other tweets from that conference here– by searching for the hashtag. If you see a hashtag in use and don’t know what it means, try checking out “What the Hashtag.“
• URLs that look like is.gd, tinyurl.com, bit.ly, etc. These are URL shortening services that take very long links and squish them down to fewer characters. Why? Because on Twitter, you only have 140 characters to get your thought out, and this leaves more room for your words.
• Direct messaging. This is a way of sending a message to someone so that only they can see it– like sending a txt message. The person has to be following you in order to receive messages from you, though! (No DMing Jane Fonda or Henry Rollins unless they’re following you, ya hear?) To do this, you can either go to the person’s twitter page (aka, their profile page), and click on the “message” link in the left sidebar. Or, if you’re using another device or application besides the Twitter website, you can type the letter d, the person’s username, and then your message. I.e., “d randomdeanna let’s go to happy hour at abilene later”
  

Finding your people

OK, you’ve got your phrasebook, now it’s time to wade in. Let’s start with the technical aspect of finding people to follow. Twitter makes this stunningly easy by providing a “Find people” link at the top of the website. Click on it, and you’re taken to a screen where you can select different ways to connect with other people you know. Click on “Find on other networks,” and then select your email provider and search for contacts already on Twitter. Twitter lets you choose who you want to follow from the list of people that it finds. It also recommends that you invite everyone else not on Twitter, but you can definitely skip that. (Please — it’s considered spam!)

What if you’re not on any of those email services? I actually don’t use my Gmail account for regular contact, so I exported my Mac’s Address Book (I used A to G), and then imported it into my contacts. You can do this with any of the providers listed; I’m pretty sure they’re all free. (I do find Gmail easiest to navigate, though.) Then you can come back to the Twitter screen and move along.

Finding people who might be your people

Consider looking for Twitter folk who you don’t already know, but who you might find interesting. The most effective way is often the organic way: Watch your friends’ @ replies to other users you don’t know. Click on those names. Scan through their tweets. Find them interesting? Follow.

Additionally, you can also browse through self-maintained directories of Twitter users. I don’t use these too much myself, but I know for a while TwitterPacks was pretty popular. If you have a favorite list or site, leave ‘em in the comments.

One last thing I want to mention is to pay attention to certain hashtags on certain days, particularly #FollowFriday (where every Friday, people tweet lists of their favorite Twitterers), and #Women2Follow on Wednesdays — awesome women from all over, Twittering away.

Getting people to find you

“But how will others know if I’m on Twitter?”

Well, you might want to start by telling them. You could go old school and send an email to people you think might be interested, though not that many people do it. I added my Twitter page to my email signature as a subtle way of “announcing” it. Note that the people you choose to follow likely have their profiles set to get an email or other alert every time someone new follows them, so you don’t have to tell them. You can also post a note to your Facebook profile, if you have one, telling folks that you’re Twittering.

Update: Two other points made to me about making sure people can find you:

• It’s a good idea to use your real, full name in your profile so that if people are searching for you, or if you come up in their list of contacts when they do the email address thingie, they’ll see you. (Thanks, Cos!)
• Another good idea is to change your icon right away, so that you get rid of the ugly brown default Twitter one. One, it’ll help differentiate your tweets in your followers’ feeds, and two, it’ll help people recognize you when they’re looking for you. Many people advocate for using a real picture of yourself, but I say as long as it’s something interesting and unique, go for it.
  

Setting your settings: web, email, phone, IM — oh my!

One of the best things about using Twitter is that it’s available from any number of devices. You can read and post on the Twitter website, sure, but you can also set up your cellphone to be able to send and receive messages — go to Settings –> Devices to see how to do that. I don’t get every tweet sent to my phone, because it’d just be too much. I have my phone set to receive direct messages only, so it’s an additional way to get txt messages from my friends.

You can also download any number of applications to use Twitter on your phone– I use UberTwitter for my Blackberry Bold, and it’s sort of bare-bones, but it gets the job done. If you’re on an iPhone, there’s about a jillion apps to choose from. It’s hard for me to keep up with what the hipsters are using now, so, iPhone users: What’s your favorite Twitter app? Leave it in the comments.

You can also keep your Twittering private. In the Settings page, at the bottom, there’s a checkbox that reads “Protect my updates.” Select this if you only want people you approve to read your updates.

Another thing to consider is that you can have your tweets also update your Facebook status. Most folks are split on whether this is a good idea or not; I’m a more the merrier kinda grrl, so mine are hooked up. You can do this by adding the Twitter app to your profile and adjusting your settings there. Or check out the extremely awesome Ping.fm service. This bad boy updates all of your social networks at once, using whatever type of communication you’re most comfortable with. Last, there’s another app for Facebook that lets you selectively post from Twitter– it’s conveniently called “Selective Twitter.”

There are also tons of applications that you can download for your computer, but that’s a whole ‘nuther post on its own. Currently, the popular apps seem to be Tweetdeck, Twhirl, and AlertThingy. I liked Blogo (which is a combo of blogging and microblogging software) myself, for a long time. Tweetdeck had just a little bit too much going on for me, and while Blogo isn’t as robust as far as features go, the interface is so clean and Mac-fluent that it just makes me feel good. I’m now mostly using Tweetie for Mac because of a keychain problem I had with Blogo that never got resolved.

But what do I say?

Well, just about anything, really. Okay, we’re probably not going to be interested in your belly button lint… but here are some methodologies you can try out:

• Pure professional. You’re an expert in your field and you want to share this with the world. Pick a couple of “beats” and focus your twittering on those beats. Find other folks tweeting about these topics and have conversations with them.
• Pure personal. Your cat is hilarious, you’re thinking about moving to Wisconsin, you’re on your way to Miami for a much needed vacation. You get the idea here, but do try to keep your audience in mind as you post some of your life’s minutiae. I’m guilty of posting weird stuff, for sure.
• The blended model. This is the way to go, and what ultimately makes Twitter so interesting, in my opinion. If I wanted to know people’s political analysis only, I’d go read their blogs. There’s a humanizing effect of reading about a distant colleague’s child’s first words, or seeing that people you think are on top of the world have bad days, too. It creates empathy and insight. When I tweeted that I’d had a really rough, emotional weekend once, I was surprised to see which followers spoke up to say, “Hey, we’re with you.” And it helped further complete a picture of me for them, as well.
  

One of the biggest things to keep in mind about Twitter is that it’s a conversation. I generally dissuade my fellow Twitter gurus from making blanket statements on how to use Twitter, but it’s clear at this point that one of the joys most everyone gets out of it is talking to one another. Reply often (remember your vocab? the @ symbol is your friend!) to your followers and people you follow. Twitter is a two way street, with many, many lanes going both directions.

What if I don’t like the people I’m following?

Stop following them.

No, really. If people are irritating, or tweeting so much that your stream/feed is overwhelmed and you’re missing other stuff you find more interesting, stop following those people. It’s okay. Manually check their pages every once in a while (this is what I do), or friend them on Facebook to follow their updates there, if you want. Or just walk away altogether.

This is all too much!

Check out my post on Twitter overload.

In closing, there are a few final wrap-up points:

• Twitter should be used how you feel most comfortable using it– don’t let anyone tell you that you’re doing it wrong.
• It takes a while to get the feel of Twitter. Commit, if you can, to trying it a couple times a day for two weeks or so. At the end of your little trial period, assess how you feel and how you think you’ll use it.

I’d love to hear from folks who are just starting out with Twitter: Does this clear anything up for you? Did I miss anything? And you hardened veterans out there, of course feel free to leave your $.02 in the comments as well.