Follow Friday: Twitter Blogs Worth Reading

Micro-blogging is the latest way to express yourself. I’ve read it a dozen times this week. But when I got to Twitter (and I Tweet) what I see is not micro-blogging, it’s a lot of self-promotion—micro-flogging more than micro-blogging. I’m for that. You can’t express a full concept in 140 characters, although you can do a good job of teasing an article, sending along a quote, and posting an idea.

Online, then and now

On Twitter, Fridays are the days you praise the people you like and hope that others will follow them (put them on their list of people whose comments you want to read regularly). It’s called Follow Friday.

Because Twitter allows no more than 140 characters, it’s hard to tell people why you are recommending someone.

So this week, I’ve moved my #FollowFriday to my blog. Here are some recommendations of blogs that are consistently well written and well thought-out:

Maria Schneider , or on Twitter, @mariaschneider explains about  #fridayflash on her blog today. Maria explains a community of fiction writers who all write at least one piece of fiction a week, post it on Friday, then let others know. Sure it builds readers, but even better, it builds writing muscle and self-confidence. It’s one of the few times I’ve wished I were a fiction writer, but I’m non-fiction. We build writing muscle and self-confidence other ways.

Maria  helps us, too, because she shares useful information: Here are 25 people to follow if you are a freelancer.

Here are 25 more people to follow if you are a writer who needs to figure out the ropes to make a book come together.

Ken Robert is Mildly Creative. I’ve recommended him often, because his writing is damn good. In this article, he tackles the spiky topic of what to say when people ask you to remove something from your blog because they don’t like it. I had that happen last year, and the consequences were pretty drastic for me when I refused. So I caved. I still feel ambivalent, because I caved and got the retribution anyway.

Here’s the quote from his blog post “Blogging on Eggshells.”

Please understand, it’s not my intention to offend anyone, but this is a blog about living a creative life. If I start removing anything that bugs someone, it’s tantamount to me telling you to unleash your creativity, to be authentic, and to freely express yourself as long as it doesn’t upset anyone. Goodbye, Inspiration. Hello, Puritanism.

He’s right. I’m proud of him. I wish I’d said that. Follow Mildly Creative on Twitter.

Other people worth following: Diana Adams of Adamsconsulting is a literate geek. She could bore you to tears, but she never does. Her posts are thoughtful, informative and interesting. Her website needs flash to view, but it’s graphically well-done, and her marketing makes you feel smart. All marketing should do that. Follow Adamsconsulting on Twitter.

BeCreative2Day browses creative sites so you don’t have to. And you want to follow her recommendations. Here’s an example, unique matchbook designs.  Read BeCreative2Day’s  (Cory Fausz) blog, too. The photos alone are worth it.

CopyBlogger  (Brian Clark) helps you market online. In a way that doesn’t make you want to take a shower afterwards. And he allows himself to be 3-dimentional on both his blog and on Twitter.

Alyson B. Stanfied is @abstanfield on Twitter. If you are a freelance artist interested in learning business skills, you should read her blog. Following her on Twitter is also a good idea.

Ali Turnbull is Fit to Print. You will find her links reliable, and if you are a writer, necessary. If you want to expand your general knowledge and have fun at the same time, follow FitToPrint on Twitter. Here’s why she wants to delete the word “try” from the English language.

Paul Sloane’s blog today demos why corporate brainstorming doesn’t work.
Follow Paul and his lateral thinking skills on Twitter.

Want to know more interesting people to follow? Drop by any site above and see who they follow. Smart people follow other smart people.

—Quinn McDonald is a life- and certified creativity coach. She teaches people how to write and give presentations. She also  manages four journals that travel the world. You can follow me on Twitter, too.

Image: ths.gardenweb.com

Theme Thursday #13: 8.20.09

Time to surf so you don’t have to! This Thursday’s theme is creative humanity–what we can do to live authentic, creative lives every day. These websites help:

Morse-code of cups (c) Quinn McDonald (c) 2009

Ken Robert is Mildly Creative. I’ve mentioned him before, now I’m checking in all the time. He’s calm and thinks things through. Here’s his post about Seven Things He’s Deleting From His Life. You might want to lighten your load, too. I love his ink drawings on the site, too. They go with the tone and voice.

I’m a big believer in micro-work. Very different from micro-managing. Micro-work is doing the smallest possible step toward creative work. The tiny steps brings us closer to doing creative work and allows us to approach the work without the negative self-talk getting so loud we give up. Here are two steps to micro-creative work.

The Art of Dramatic Living is a blog that has their Theme Thursday on Friday. Her blog is far more intellectual and thoughtful than mine, and you will find a whole community of authentically-striving artists there. Well worth visiting every Friday.

If you like taking notes and want to keep your loose-leaf notes in a journal, check out Ple Designs’ leather pouch for loose-leaf journals. Or, simply put your journal in the pouch with a pencil or pen. Check out their sales page as well.

And just for fun, here is a link to creating anagrams of your name. It’s not one of those quizzes that makes you give up friends’ names. It’s just a link that’s fun. You don’t even have to use your own name. I have it set to John Smith.

Shameless self-promotion: I’ll be teaching secret codes and private language journaling at Changing Hands in Tempe on Saturday, 8/22. Details: http://tinyurl.com/dmqexz

You can join in on Theme Thursday: post three links to sites you love or blogs you follow. You can do it on your site or in comments here.

Five Most Recent  Theme Thursdays:  * * *  Creative Play 8/15/09 * * *   Creative Play 8/6/09 * * * Creative Play 7/30/09 ***Creative Play 7/23/09 * * *Creative Play 7/16/09 * * *

—Quinn McDonald is a life- and certified creativity coach. She teaches people how to write and give presentations. She also  manages four journals that travel the world.

Theme Thursday #12 Falls on Saturday This Week

Last Thursday I was distracted by personal scheduling issues, so the Creative Play of Theme Thursday appears on Saturday this week.

The lead article today is about Linked-In–the professional equivalent of FaceBook. Neal Schaffer is a smart

Raven Coil journal by Amanobooks, listed below

marketer, good writer, and sharer of solid information. So you can ignore his uber-busy website with zillions of distracting typefaces, sizes, colors and feed links and focus on the article on how to avoid big mistakes on Linked-In, you’ll find Linked-In a useful tool.

Gabi Campanario used to live in Spain. Now he lives in Seattle and does amazing illustrations. He just started using Issuu, a website that lets you turn PDFs into books. He has an example of some sketches he turned into a video book for his son. Clever idea, well executed!

Gabriel is the one who started Urban Sketchers, which you’ve seen in Theme Thursday more than once. Urban Sketchers is an invitation-only blog of people who sketch scenes of where they live or travel. On this page is the report of a great event called “Shut Up and Write,” organized by Mary Ann deStefano, who runs Mad About Words. Writing with a friend is easier than writing all by yourself.

Amanobooks is amano my own heart. He makes interesting, functional journals for a variety of uses. His website opens your head to what can be created creatively and used practically.

You can join in on Theme Thursday: post three links to sites you love or blogs you follow. You can do it on your site or in comments here.

Five Most Recent  Theme Thursdays:  Creative Play 8/6/09 * * * Creative Play 7/30/09 ***Creative Play 7/23/09 * * *Creative Play 7/16/09 * * * Creative Play 7/2/09 * * *

—Quinn McDonald is a life- and certified creativity coach. She teaches people how to write and give presentations. She also  manages four journals that travel the world.

How to Make Twitter Work for You

Twitter annoyed me at first. I didn’t get it.
So brainless, so thoughtless. Who cares what you are eating, wearing or listening to? But wait, that was just the people I was following.

One tweet

At first, I followed everyone who followed me. That seemed polite. It also seemed like third-grade behavior after about three days.  People follow you for a variety of reasons not having anything to do with intelligence, humor or excellent sources. It took a few peculiar people (women with numbers after their names) following me to figure that out. They had a huge number of followers, followed as many, but had no updates (posts to the general public at Twitter.) I found the website of one of these woman, and I hope that no one investigates my computer in the near future, because it will be hard to explain why I was looking at such a variety of ummmm, exotic images involving preternaturally blond women and animals.

Many twitter

Back to Twitter. Here’s how I found people to follow: Three times a day, I’d go to Twitter and read what various people said. Anyone who wasn’t helping got removed. “Wasn’t helping” included people who posted 40 tweets, each 15 seconds apart; used incomprehensible sentence fragments; hyped their own ability as experts in Web marketing; posted links to their own Websites that required registration or giving up private information. Those were obvious as were people whose purpose on Twitter is to get 10,000 followers. It simply wasn’t what I was interested in.

Before I removed them, I’d click on some of the people they were following. (Each person has a visible list of people they are following.)  Often, I’d find interesting people to follow. I concentrated on people who do what I do–write, coach, speak professionally, create art, read books.

In other words, I started with what I knew, and branched out from there. I add people as I find them through others Re-Tweets, I drop others who aren’t helpful or interesting.

I started out following 50 people, and slowly built it to about 200 people or organizations who were thoughtful and posted good links and information, explore areas I know a little (or a lot) about. They are not carbon copies of me, but they are in my field. Another name for this is networking. Not a bad idea, overall. I’m not interested in numbers, I’m interested in quality. Just like before Web 2.0.

And it works. Is everyone a genius? Certainly not. But you get ideas that work for you, and that’s the point.

And here’s a good article about using Linked In if you are a freelancer. One of the people I follow on Twitter wrote it.

Other articles on finding the right people to follow on Twitter:

WebWorkerDaily includes Twello, a yellow pages for Twitter fans.

CreativeWisdom also talks about Twello, but has some other great ideas.

TechLifeWeb uses a method like mine, but it’s funnier.

—Quinn McDonald is a writer, life coach and teaches writing and communicating clearly. She also teaches people who can’t draw how to keep an art journal through raw art journals.

Twitter: The Good, The Bad, The OMG!

If you don’t use Twitter yet, but have a burning desire to know about it, maybe I can help. Maybe not. By the time I click “Publish” on this post, everything may be different. Still, I’m going to try.

Twittering magpie

Twitter is a website on which anyone can write about anything as long as it takes up 140 characters or less. (A character is a keystroke.)  Posts are called tweets. People who use Twitter are called Tweeple. Twitter users are a real slice of life–there are serious business people, scammers, stoners, intelligentsia, cat lovers, event-goers, and at least one mature writer-coach-trainer-artist. (That’s me.)

It’s true that no matter who you are (or how old, or how fast you can type with your thumbs) there is a lot of Twitter you won’t care about. Before you sniff snobbishly, let me remind you that the same is true of TV shows, the interwebs, the library, and your extended family. In other words, you can pick and choose who shows up for you on Twitter.

Unlike Facebook, you can follow people on Twitter without being friends with them. Following them means you can go to their home page on Twitter and read what they post. You can also post.  And if someone isn’t what you wanted or expected, you can simply take them off your list without “unfriending” them.

You can run Twitter on your computer or on your cellphone or mobile PDA or all three. If you want to control your connection addiction, run it solely on your computer and check in with it periodically or post when you have something useful to post.

How do you know whose posts to read? Twitter has a search engine, and you can look for topics that interest you or people that interest you. Pete Harbeson (follow him at twitter.com/pharbeson) who comments here frequently, made a great suggestion: in the beginning, follow a lot of people. Trim down the list when you figure out what you want to read.

You can also use Mr. Tweet to make suggestions once you get a start–Mr. Tweet bases your suggestions on your description of yourself and your follow- and following-list.

What’s the difference between Twitter and Google? Google looks back on the contents of documents and arranges it by how many people looked at it. Twitter plugs in to what people are talking about right now.

I promised you the good: Twitter is fresh, you can find out what interests large groups of people, news buzzes, and updates of events you can’t attend.

I promised you the bad: Twitter is the e-version of the cool kids’ cafeteria table when you were in the seventh grade. You will never be cool enough, but you can carve out a niche.

. . .and the OMG!: Right now, “SXSW” is on almost every post. It means South by Southwest and it’s a media, film, and music festival happening in Texas March 18-22. After the 22nd, SXSW will vanish for something else.

Not OMG! enough? OK, here is a random post–a lot of people seem to like to post what they ate for lunch. I’ve left out the name to protect the guilty: “me to matt: what did you have for lunch? / Ramen Noodles / That’s not very nutritious / well, I had cookies too.”

Follow me on Twitter at: http://twitter.com/QuinnCreative

Next: hashmarks, who to follow, and some links to other articles that demystify Twitter.

–Quinn McDonald is a trainer, life- and certified creativity coach. She is on Facebook and on Twitter. She was not one of the cool kids in seventh grade, but has carved out a niche.

Reconsidering “If it ain’t broke. . .”

You’ve heard it for years, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” And in a throw-away culture, it seemed to work. The days of throw-away culture are over. The money we were throwing away took flight on its own and is gone. Suddenly, we are holding on, recycling, making do.

The big, important elements of your life–your marriage, your career, your house, your car–demand daily work and tinkering. You can’t leave them alone until they break. The consequences are too costly.

“if it ain’t broke. . .” never considered maintenance care. Keeping up with career skills, developing new ideas, contributing to your team collaboration is all maintenance work. Waiting until your job is “broke”–and you are laid off–is a harder choice. Fixing something generally leaves scars, or at least proof of mismanagement, is costly, either emotionally or financially, and takes more time than maintenance. Marriage counseling, for example, lasts months and saves marriage. A divorce is expensive, damaging, and forever. I speak from experience.

Maintaining your car keeps you in it and driving. Ignoring the owner’s manual, the dash lights, and that funny sound will not result in a miraculous cure. I’m often amazed when people call into Car Talk and describe a noise or vibration that they have ignored for months thinking it might go away. Sometimes it does go away, only to be replaced by something far more expensive, starting with a tow truck. Even Tom and Ray offer  ways to recession-proof your car and it includes regular maintenance.

Maintenance on your marriage, career, and car aren’t all fun and aren’t all cheap. But taking a look at small things long before “it’s broke” is a way to a longer life, a happier one, and a fatter wallet.

—Quinn McDonald is a writer, life- and creativity coach who teaches people how to communicate clearly at work and in a journal.

“Soft Skills”–Necessity in Hard Times

Mention that you teach writing, a key business skill, and a software instructor will say, “Oh, a soft skill. I don’t teach those–I teach software.”

The generally accepted belief is that software requires an instructor with special knowledge, but skill like listening, writing, presenting, running a meeting or solving problems come naturally, or can be picked up by being in an office.

Soft skills are hard to come by without instruction. Soft skills need practice and support. You don’t learn them by listening alone; you learn them by practice. As with most change in life, the people who surround you are not eager to have you change, because it demands change on their part, too.

Learn a computer program, and something happens on the screen. It’s easy to see, and if you want it to happen again, you repeat the process. What you learn is the keystroke to create the desired result.

Soft skills don’t work that way. You learn by doing, and each time you take the action it feels more natural and the results get more obvious. Practice counts in soft skills. Practice involves making mistakes, learning how to fix them, moving on.

Soft skills are hard. I think soft skills don’t get respect because of their name.Look at the power in words that have ‘hard’ in them–hardball is playing tough, hardcore is uncompromising, hardshell it tough and protective. Hardheaded is single-minded and persistent. Hard news is important, soft news is cheap, starchy filler. No one wants to be soft-headed, softhearted, or an old softie.

But the very skills called “soft” are the ones desperately needed when the few are pressed to do the work of many. Listening skills and problem solving aren’t taught in school, but they make businesses successful. And the results of listening and problem solving are often presented in writing.

Judging from the number of unintelligible emails, confusing instructions, unclear requests, and rambling directions I’ve read in the last two years, there are a lot of people who need to learn how to write, and write clearly.

Before you think “soft skills” are not important, think about the power of writing–almost all Web content is writing, after all. Writing clearly and concisely is a vital business skill. Make it a “must have” on your training schedule. It’s a portable skill that you can’t do without.

–Quinn McDonald is a writer who develops writing courses for businesses. She teaches Writing for the Web; How to Write A Good Article, Beginning to Publication; Writing and Giving Powerful Presentation and other, well, soft skills courses. See her work at QuinnCreative.com

–Image of soft-serve ice cream: www.cactice.com

Tutorial: Speaking to Your Co-Workers

Public speaking is usually thought of as delivering a speech to a large group of people. But public speaking is also having a business conversation with your supervisor, persuading your spouse to go to the movie you want to see, speaking up at staff meeting and asking questions about the menu in a crowded restaurant.

Most people are afraid of public speaking because they don’t want to look stupid, sound scared or make a fool of themselves. Mark Twain, the American author of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, said “There are two types of speakers: those that are nervous and those that are liars”.

Here are seven tips for improving your speaking skills:

1. Public speaking doesn’t come naturally. You have to practice. Even something as simple as persuading your spouse to see the movie you have been wanting to see gets better with practice.  Lenny Laskowski, a professional speaker and member of the National Speakers Association points out that Proper preparation and rehearsal can help to reduce this fear by about 75%.

2. Don’t rehearse in front of a mirror. That’s not what you’ll see when you are speaking. Rehearse by speaking the words you want to say out loud. You can do this while driving, in the shower, or while doing dishes. You’ll want to say the words out loud to hear how they sound, to work on breathing and to gain confidence.

3. It’s not about you. You are doing the speaking, sure, but the point of your speaking is directed at an audience–strangers or co-workers. How can you reach them best? What phrases are they familiar with? What examples will they understand?  I once wanted to make an important point, and chose to emphasize it with a classic Greek quote from the poet Homer, who wrote The Odyssey. I spoke the quote with all seriousness, then saw, to my panic, that no one had ever heard it before.  “It’s Homer,” I said, hoping to make myself clear. A young woman in my audience looked at me quizzically. “Homer Simpson said that?” she asked. Use words, examples, metaphors and references your audience knows.

4. Ask questions. Often speakers think they have to have all the answers. If you are speaking to your supervisor, you may need information. This can be uncomfortable, as you have to risk admitting you don’t know something, maybe something you should know. Instead of starting out with “I know I should know this, but I don’t. . .” start with, “I’d like to ask you a question about the marketing plan you mentioned last month. . .” People like to feel like experts. If you give the question context up front, your supervisor will be able to follow along and answer your question.

5. Speak briefly; start with the main point. A common mistake people make in staff meeting it to start with a long explanation or background. The audience becomes impatient waiting for the punch line. The room gets noisy with coughs and people shifting in their seats, or rattling papers. That makes the speaker nervous and defensive. Saying something like, “I hate to keep asking this, but. . .” doesn’t help you get heard. It tells people about your insecurity.

• Start with the main point, “I have a question about our budget.”
• Then put some context in. “On page 4, the second paragraph says that we may be laying off people. . .”
• Finally, frame your specific question. “Will this affect our department?”

Then wait for an answer. If you want someone specific to answer your question, ask the person at the beginning of the question, not at the end.

If someone asks you a question, break eye contact and give yourself a few seconds to think through the answer. This avoids space fillers, such as “ahhhh” and “ummm,” or even poor answers like, “Why would you ask me that question?”

6. Don’t use the word “why.” Asking someone why they used that PowerPoint presentation, gave their article to the webmaster, or other specific questions make people defensive. Avoid saying “Why did you do that?” or “Why did you think that was a good idea?” Instead, say, “Could you tell me more about that?” or “How did you get to that decision?” Asking for more information or a specific point without the question “why” will get you more information and less anger.

7. Prepare for small speeches and big ones. This article started with that suggestion, and I’ll end with it. Practice at least three times. The first time you practice, you’ll discover words you don’t want to use. The second time, you can hear where you need to put in more proof statements or examples, and the third time builds confidence.

Speaking in public takes practice and patience, but it pays off quickly. Try one of the tips above at the next meeting and see if you don’t do a better job of speaking. Now you are on your way.

–Quinn McDonald is a life- and  certified creativity coach who helps people develop and deliver speeches.

The ABC/XYZ Theory

Ever gone on a date and thought you both really clicked, and then the promised phone call never came? Or had the perfect job interview, accept the job and find yourself looking for a new job within a year? Have the perfect solution for a client, only to have the client hate it right after delivery? What’s happening? Why do situations that seem perfect suddenly go bad?

It’s the ABC/XYZ theory at work. When faced with something new–a date, an applicant, a solution–it’s easy to slip into the ideal world. Your date behaves in the ideal way, mirroring your fondest characteristics. The HR person describes the ideal company with big vision and lots of creativity, exactly what she has always wanted the company to be. The client hears a good solution and is relieved. It fixes part of the problem, and the client approves it. In each of these cases, you have your hopes raised. Your date is perfect, the job the HR person is describing matches your expertise, and the client seems pleased with your idea. You feel accepted and perfect.

At the next step, reality sets in. The date realizes that it is too hard to keep up this ideal. He loved your snort/giggle on the first date, now it seems to embarrass him. The human resource person does not want someone who thinks outside the box. With the box open, there is too much yakking, too many choices, too much money being spent on ideas instead of results. The closed box is looking better. One with the lid nailed shut. Reality is XYZ. And it doesn’t ever match the ABC.
The client who at first liked the solution realizes that it doesn’t mesh with the corporate culture. It won’t solve every problem in the company. It’s not a Superman solution, just an ordinary one. Another XYZ.

The shadow of the tree was lovelier than the tree itself. Shadows don’t need to be watered, or trimmed, or repotted. The shadow, which looked so lovely in the glow of artificial light, fades when the sun moves away.

ABC and XYZ are at opposite ends of reality. ABC is the ideal, the hope for what might be. XYZ is what works, the reality of daily life. What seemed to be perfect in the ideal sense isn’t a good fit in the real, ordinary, scruffy world. It may be just what the client asked for, your resume might be a perfect match with the description HR sent the headhunter, you may match every request in the online dating search engine.

But the ideal will fade and reality will set in, and ABC will never be XYZ. No matter how much you’d like it to. It’s a good idea to learn the whole alphabet and use it, so you won’t be stuck at either end.

–Quinn McDonald is a writer, certified creativity coach and artist. See her work at QuinnCreative.com