Orange is not a colour, it's a state of mind

Moving a little beyond the 101 getting-started-with-Twitter posts about what you might say or why you might want a Twitter account and the practicalities of using it, here are some 201-level Twitter tips I’ve learned along the way managing company and personal accounts.

• If you manage more than one account, ALWAYS check you’re tweeting from the right account – I still do this after 3 years. Every tweet.
• Damn-you-autocorrect can also play havoc with your tweets – read before you tweet! “Not sure who you ate – what’s your email address?” isn’t good when you mean “Don’t know who you are …”
• Check your links!! Especially where you’re reusing a shortened link posted by someone else. The dropped http:// off the front of mycool.url doesn’t always translate well.
• To give you that split second chance to have a doubt re 1, 2 or 3 above, check how your Twitter app publishes tweets – many of them have a feature to disable submit on click. Means you don’t accidentally hit the return key and prematurely tweet.
• Learn where your mentions are people! (That’s when someone uses @yourtwittername in their tweet.) It’s especially important when the tweet starts with @yourtwittername because that’s basically a question or comment directed at you so a lot of times it should get a response, or at least be read. If someone doesn’t respond to me when I @mention them I often go look at their Twitter stream, and what do I see? A broadcast list, all tweets from them or RT’s, no responses to people. This is low engagement. Fine if that’s what you’re after but I do find it rather rude to leave @mentions with no response. And on that note – if you start at tweet with @theirtwittername – only people who follow you both them will see it. If you want everyone to see the tweet, start it with some other word, one that doesn’t being with @
• RT (re-tweet) – think about how this works and how you want the tweet to appear in your stream. Sometimes if it’s important to be associated with the Twitter account that tweeted it, like you got mentioned by a big brand, don’t edit it or fiddle with it, just RT it so that THEIR logo ends up in your stream. Otherwise it’s your face, again.
• Don’t plagiarize. I realize this isn’t a regulated medium but I recognize my tweets. Passing them off as yours with no reference might make you feel busy and important but it makes me feel used. We’re all trying to build our brand and being seen to follow or read or have an association with a brand might do you just as much good as seeming to have an original thought or comment about something yourself. It’s a doggy-dog retweeing world out there!
• Be wary of scheduled and automated tweets and make sure you use this as it makes sense for your company. Scheduled tweets can backfire – even if they work, you don’t know what’s gone on in the night when your tweet goes out – if people are having issues with your app or some major news has broken, your ‘yippee vote for us we’re so cool’ tweet doesn’t look good. We’ve all read the stuff about being personal if you want to have a successful brand on social media, so be present to be personal. Clocky or some other timezone calculator is your friend – you can catch your followers in all timezones if you’re smart about it. If you auto-tweet something, perhaps blog posts or status updates, think about how the title or snippet that’s auto-tweeted stands alone. In the case of a blog, your post title in a stream doesn’t have the benefit of the full post or even first paragraph to further explain the title. To increase readership, re-tweeting and engagement, make the title interesting. Mystery and intrigue is good, but you have just a moment to get someone to click on a link so make that title count!
• What is it with all the # tags? The idea of a hashtag is to build a stream or common topic that people might follow, saving them from following all the people that might be tweeting about the topic. Think of a hashtag as a keyword and build momentum and engagement for something by being consistent. If you’re at an event or conference definitely use the hashtag – again, don’t underestimate the power of your brand popping up in an event stream. #every #other #word in a #tweet isn’t really helpful and is actually #really #hard to #read #imsocoolimadeupaniftyhashtag.

I know you shouldn’t judge a book by it’s cover but that’s pretty much what you have to do with a tiny 40-40 pixel graphic on Twitter when someone’s tweet pops into your stream. (Avatar = identity graphic.) Obviously you can attempt to see what makes the person tick by reading their stream but if you have a busy account and you’re in a situation where tweets in your stream need more than a passing read, they need a comment or help, it’s hard not make a first impression based on the avatar.

I try really hard not to and for the most part do a good job of remaining neutral, but it has got me thinking about how people choose to display themselves in tiny form – with a tiny image and a tiny sentence of 140 characters. I spend a lot of time on Twitter and have come across my fair share of avatars, and not just in passing, where I actually have to converse with the tweeter. Sometimes your impression of their avatar turns out to be exactly right, other times not.

Here are my tiny identities – personal & work:

What does your avatar say about you? Is your avatar

• your happy smiling best this-is-the-real-me family snap
• a professional agency shot with lighting and smooth skin
• a drunken cuddle-buddy photo
• a porn star boobie or other body shot
• something from your corporate photo session
• a serious face
• a really angry finger-pointing or know-it-all self portrait
• someone else’s face
• pics of your kids or pets or a cat pic downloaded from the internet
• a company logo
• an arty something or other – what kids think electricity looks like or a heart beat or something
• a landmark or national monument or tree or flower or fruit (ha! I’m in this group)
• the faceless Twitter egg
• a cartoon or mask
• some other inanimate object – a car, a plane, a rocket … in fact what could we read into that choice?

There’s definitely no right or wrong, I just think it’s interesting. I have to say it is harder tweeting in response to someone with an angry face vs someone with a smiling face!

I don’t really think of myself as a go with the flow type of person – too highly strung and definitely need to be in control, second guessing every situation so I’m not surprised. Recently I was watching a trailer at the movies when the voice-over guy said ‘there’s a moment when you know everything will change’ and that got me to thinking if I have any of those moments in my life. Moments I haven’t necessarily had control over. That bring about some kind of change. I think they’re different for everyone.

So I’m trying to think of moments I’ve had when I knew everything would change, or even moments that define me, it’s actually quite hard. I remember lots of things big and small but those that bring change and have a profound effect on who I am and what I do?

• That moment I caught sight of my mother when I was in my early teens, crying to a family friend about how her life had turned out, I think then I realized that parents don’t necessarily have an easy time of it, that they’re human too.
• When I was being fitted for a bra in my 20’s and the sales assistant asked me if I was still feeding. If I didn’t already have self esteem issues, I now have them for life.
• When my cat got run over.
• When I opened the door one March evening and Craig was standing there in a suit, holding an orange rose, I knew he was my one true love.
• When I saw and felt my best friend take her last breath.
• When I learned and experienced that physical sickness can be brought on by stress – in my case a boss who played me.
• When I signed papers at the bank to take out a loan to put money in with 5 others to start Xero.
• When the night ended on my 40th birthday – I was with the one I love in the place I loved. I felt great that day, that things would be different – that I’d grown up and didn’t need to question and prove myself and be everything to everyone any more, that I’d made it. Nothing changed.

This might be a strange exercise to do in this format but after going to a Community Management workshop recently and hearing a stat that Community Managers usually burn-out after 18 months, I realized that I’ve been doing this for 3 years and either coping remarkably well or have burnt out and just don’t know it. Although I thought burning out meant you couldn’t function much any more or spent a considerable amount of time in the corner or under your desk crying or eating way too many Advils. I thought about some of the things discussed at the workshop and how some traits of the job which turn out to be common to Community Managers all over the world define us and some mechanisms for coping.

12 steps to avoid Community Manager burnout

1. admit you are doing it all on your own, that you have been for too long, and that this might not be the best thing for your company. Dedication to your job doesn’t have to equal no sharing and unhealthy, unsociable, stressful behavior
2. try to do one thing at a time, like dealing with emails in turn, oldest to newest, people will phone you if it’s urgent
3. see the funnel, be the funnel … realize that it’s OK to not know all the answers to all the questions, your job is a funnel or more likely one of those Willy Wonka contraptions for collecting and getting information from one place to another and connecting people or questions with the right people or answers
4. create a system for keeping up with who you’ve asked for more information from
5. believe, really believe, that asking for help or an assistant is not admitting failure, and ask for it
6. look at your book or your husband as the last thing you see before you go to sleep at night, not your iPad
7. identify something you can do for yourself – actually doing it probably occurs in the next 12 steps! But identifying it is half the battle.
8. walk to work or walk to get your coffee, fresh air is your friend
9. make a connection or friends with another Community Manager
10. call your mother
11. accept that just because you don’t get praise very often that you’re still doing a good job, your peers just honestly can’t see all the work that goes on behind the scenes to keep a community busy and happy
12. book at least one day’s vacation, even if that’s a weekend day.

Saw this article in SF Gate recently – You know you’re a real San Franciscan when … and that made me think of a few things myself.

You know you’re real a San Franciscan when you …

• Have a back door channel for what’s going on in the city via the Bay Bridge twitter account and are on a first name basis with him
• Can walk up 5th Street and avoid an encounter with a homeless and/or crazy person
• Can cross the road without being tooted at
• Don’t walk up Powell Street unless you have to, like if that Walgreens is actually closest
• Don’t ride on the open-sided street cars that have camera laden tourists hanging off the side of them
• Know where the nearest Post Office is
• Know where to buy envelopes and posting material, because you can’t get them from the Post Office
• Don’t stare at same sex couples holding hands
• Don’t take pictures and gasp and point when you see someone with a Twitter, Facebook or Square logo on their laptop sleeve, backpack or t-shirt
• Ignore naked people in the street
• Have a Clipper Card
• Use Luxor or Uber cabs and have an app for that
• Know what holiday ‘420’ is in celebration of
• Go to the Ferry Building over Pier 39 or Fisherman’s Wharf
• Know the sweet spot for avoiding long lines at the Ferry Building at various times of the year

I’m sure there are more that I’ll realize as time goes on – perhaps I’ll keep this as an open list.

Woke up this morning to this lovely tweet. For all the hard days, this made me feel great, for one day at least!

Took a couple of great snaps this weekend – it was unusually warm for this time of the year.

Orange tram outside the Ferry Building

Bay Bridge on one of the hearts in Union Square

This arrived outside our office in San Francisco while we were in New Zealand – a mobile garden, known as a parklet. It has a little bench seat on it and everything. Not sure I’ll sit on it facing the parking spaces outside the building next to our office but you never know!

On Friday we received our first invitation to an American football party for yesterday, when the San Francisco Giants were playing for a place in the Big Game, which I think is the SuperBowl. I think the whole country comes to a standstill for that. We umm’d and aaah’d a bit about going. The invitation came through a Xero investor and we don’t really know him socially that well but it was a good chance to change that and meet some of his friends. The Mister was reasonably interested in seeing the game, a really big deal for San Francisco, so good to watch it with a bunch of people. Obviously I had no interest, but I packed up my knitting and figured I could amuse myself for 3 hours. THREE HOURS.

It was the second day of rain for the winter yesterday so we got on the bus with several other soggy fans heading to friends houses with pots of chilli and packs of beer. We discovered our friend lived very close to Matching Half so I was allowed to stop for a coffee to ready myself!

The house was full of shouting lads all in their football colors, wives and girl friends at the fringes, some in there shouting, one looking after some kids. There was beer, there were homemade chicken wings (apparently the deep fryer was purchased just for game day) and there were some seriously delicious hamburgers. Our friend has previously owned restaurants and enjoys food and cooking so no wonder his burgers were so delicious. The Mister was wedged on the couch between some boisterous lads and no-one used a knife and fork … that was rather interesting for him! I flitted between chatting with girls and leaning in the kitchen watching the burgers. I only got my knitting out to show someone who was interested to see it otherwise I had enough new people to meet and survived the 3 hours quite well! I didn’t ask what was going on. I didn’t ask if the game was nearly over.