#30SecSocial: episode 4, Twitter + keywords

Episode 4 of  ”30 Second Social” explains how to optimize your Twitter bio for search engines. Watch the video, hosted by yours truly, at Chicago Tribune TV: “Twitter: search engine optimization with twitter bio keywords.” Also, Scott Kleinberg and I are sharing special social media-themed Spotify playlists to accompany “30 Second Social” episodes, including this Facebook playlist and this Twitter playlist, both the first of many.

#30SecSocial: episode 2

“30 Second Social” is a new social media Web series from Chicago Tribune TV which  Scott Kleinberg and I co-created. Every week, one of us will host a new episode that explains one idea or action in social media or SEO in about thirty seconds.  In the first episode, “Twitter: how to #FF,” Kleinberg gave overview of the follow Friday concept.

This week in the second episode of “30 Second Social,” I explain how to tag a photo on Facebook. It’s about 30 seconds of focus on one simple action related to Facebook. Easy.

Thanks for watching. We had a great time putting together for first batch and have many more episodes en route.

2012 resolution: rush only when chased

A few weeks ago, while speaking on a panel at an event, I was asked to name my social media predictions for the year ahead. “Who here did not feel like the past year or two was a blur of rushing around?” I started (paraphrased). People nodded. I pointed to sites like Pinterest and 500px and predicted that in 2012 we will see a shift in focus from quantity to quality, from mass volume to thoughtful selection. I, for one, could not be happier about this.

It was along with this thinking that I came to decide upon my resolution for 2012. My resolution sounds about as simple as it gets: no rushing (or, rush only when chased). In theory, it is simple; trade rushing through my day for not rushing through my day. Duh. In practice, though, “no rushing” has its complexities, and that’s where resolutions and resolve come in.

“No rushing,” is more than setting a goal and hoping for the best. That’s not my style. I’m down to do the work to make this into habit. I believe in this because while working under pressure is no big whoop, and while my cool head never fails in (actual) emergency situations, rushing around drives me crazy. It’s not fun. It’s not living, it’s rushing. I’m not at my best when rushing through life, and I doubt I ever will be.  So, my choices are pretty simple: I can get good at rushing around or stop rushing. I chose to stop rushing.

“No rushing,” encompasses more than getting more organized, it is more than simplifying, and far, far more than the teachings of the good-in-theory-but-oft-flimsy “be in the moment” school of thought. My resolution is more than “do more by doing less” (though there are elements of that in the loose plan), and different than getting rid of stuff or saying “yes” or “no” more often.

“No rushing” addresses the “Don’t have time? Make time” adage, and the idea that rushing around like a dervish should be reserved for an actual emergency and not, say, a Wednesday. Rush when chased by a serial killer, fireball or tornado, not, say, to buy pantyhose. I mean really. Enough. Enough rushing around more often than not. Enough over-scheduling. Enough “where did the day go?” (or month, or year). Enough “busy as hell” being standard answer for far too many questions. Enough juggling. Enough.

To 2012: Enough “busy,” more “completion.” More just being. More fun. More action. More “already did that.” More boundaries. More experiences, and better experiences. More bucket list, less to do list.  More living, no rushing.

UPDATE: This post is included in ChronicBabe’s blog carnival of resolutions. Do take a moment to visit and read the other resolution posts, too. 

#30SecSocial: a new Web series with Amy Guth, Scott Kleinberg

“30 Second Social” is a new Tribune social media Web series Scott Kleinberg and I co-created. Each week, we will share a new episode that explains one idea or action in social media or SEO in about thirty seconds.  In this first episode, “Twitter: how to #FF,” Kleinberg tackles the follow Friday concept and quickly explains how it’s done. Simple as that.

Watch “Twitter: how to #FF,” episode 1, season 1 from “30 Second Social.” You’ll see that Scott Kleinberg doesn’t always wear a tie, my drawing skills are pretty ok as long as lettering is involved (lots of practice on lots of school notebooks back in the day), and that nothing is too complicated when you break it into 30 second chunks.

We developed “30Second Social,” of course, along with the help of Tim DesRochers and Michelle Deorsey, our resident video superheroes. And possibly with help from a Klingon. But more on that later.

Cranberry-orange and Thanksgiving tweets

The cranberry-orange relish I make is, in my opinion, perfect. No need for modesty on this one; I rule at making this stuff. Today, I’ve been simmering batches, jarring and sealing, and that makes my place smell unbelievably good. Here’s the best I can do, given that scratch and sniff blog posts haven’t been invented yet:

In other news, keep an eye on Twitter this week, Wednesday especially. Mother Tribune has a lot of cool Thanksgiving content this year. I’ll tweet the highlights from @amyguth.

It’s Business Cat! Granted, I’m working from home today with a fever and sore throat, so admittedly, I may be a bit punchy and stir-crazy, but I found the series of Business Cat images hilarious. And you can create your own. And, and, and Business Cat (actually a darling kitty named Emilio according to KnowYourMeme.com) has the dashing good looks of my Chairman Meow.

Book news: Guth strikes again

My second novel is on the way. Chicago Center of Literature and Photography (CCLaP) is taking it on and we are aiming at next fall for publication.

Amy Guth @ book reading/signing, 2006 (2006? Yeah, way too long to go between books. I'm on it. I got it.)

This book is not one of the ones on which I’ve been working as a follow-up to “Three Fallen Women.” Nope, this is something different and something that will be done a little differently.

I don’t know the title yet. I haven’t even written the entire thing yet. But, I know what it’s about, I know it’ll be available in e-edition and boutiquey hardcover and I know that I’m pleased to be working with CCLaP and Jason Pettus on the project, and that is enough for now.

An update: no big whoop

At least a dozen times in the last month, I’ve sat down to write something about what transpired in while my Dad was in the hospital (my perspective, the take-away), the epiphany I had on the nearby beach on his final day in the hospital, the crazy-ass story of the crab claw that my neighbor flushed that wrecked my building’s plumbing for a few days (soon enough, it’s a scream now that it’s over), news about book #2 (later today!) and all sorts of other good stuff.

It’s the Dad stuff and the epiphany stuff that is holding me up, admittedly. Suffice it to say, in the most positive sense, the experience gave me a lot to think about and a lot upon which to act.

“Last night I dreamt…”

Dream last night: I was in a coffin-sized aquarium, covered with spiders large and small, in a carpenter’s shop. The carpenter had a prosthetic, metal arm and used it to stoke a nearby fire and to bang on the glass and make the spiders angrier and angrier.

The carpenter went out for a cigarette, I banged and kicked on the lid of the container and broke free, then started grabbing anything I could find– string, glue, logs, rebar, a tire– to pile on top to keep the spiders contained. My fear was that the spiders would breed with plants if they were to escape, and bring about a global disaster “like before.”

As I worked, the spiders started to roar and screech (!) and to bang on the aquarium glass to free themselves, which alerted the carpenter. So, I ran, with all of them on my heels, fought them w a rifle I suddenly had strapped to my back and a dagger I suddenly had at my hip.

I fought them off and was suddenly in a serene all-glass-walls house with ocean to the west, mountains to the north, desert to the east and woods to the south. I hung a shadowbox on the wall that contained an antique little gold medal w a symbol on it that meant I “prevailed significantly in face of spider threat” and another symbol that meant I “displayed boldness to protect botanical interests.”

Then I woke up. Interpret? Aaaand, go. (Also: make into a comic or a children’s book or…?)

Printers Row Lit Fest and the social media milestone

Moving my archives over to this new blog, I stumbled across a blog post from the first week of June 2006. Early June 2006, five years ago this week, I was getting ready to see my first book published, planning a book tour in support of it and so incredibly excited for all that was ahead at that moment.

Printers Row Lit Fest was that week as it is this week, and at the 2006 festival, I walked around with a friend, handing out promotional bookmarks to anyone willing to accept one.  They were miserable-looking things, designed and printed in the highest-quality I could manage or afford at the time and by no means a sleek, professional piece of marketing swag. But, the bookmarks had my newly-established Web site URL on them, and watching my stats jump from (ha) 20 uniques a day to 40 was quite exciting in the days that followed.

This is also when social media “clicked” for me. So what if “Three Fallen Women” was my first book and I still had to prove myself, both as a first-time author and a saleswoman? So what if the PR budget was small? So what if my equipment was limited to a MacBook, a flip phone and a digital camera? So what? It didn’t matter that I didn’t have a six-figure PR budget backing me. Social media’s person-to-person business model made sense suddenly, as did a sense of the limitless possibilities social media seemed to be offering. I saw all the potential this new platform held and knew it was important to learn and felt without a doubt, five years ago this week, that I could do anything with social media that I wanted to do.

This morning, I worked with the events marketing team before I signed-off on final proofs of social media signs to be displayed at Printers Row Lit Fest this weekend.  Every word of these signs had to be just right, and as I was paying careful attention to the words, going back and forth over email to finesse the sign copy (“No, we can’t say it that way, let’s say that part this way…”), I realized happily and exactly why it mattered so much:

It sounds impossibly simple, but here on the five-year mark of my own revelation about the intersection of social media and literature, I found myself fussing over the social media signs for Printers Row Lit Fest because these signs exist to help users connect digitally with the festival and to each other, to connect all the bookmark-passer-outers at the festival with each other and the people who will be glad to have read their current and future books. Impossibly simple, but quite true.

AG.