Diane Laney Fitzpatrick

writer, blogger, author and internet socialite

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Quality over Quantity: Why You Shouldn’t Stress Over Number of Followers

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I’m going through one of those Twitter phases where I’m losing followers by the dozens. It’s probably one of Twitter’s regular sweeps to rid the social media space of bots and trolls, fake accounts and scammers. Still, it’s pretty discouraging to check my stats and find that no matter how much effort I put into engagement, how many people I follow, and what I do to get more followers, they’re leaving like I just put Spam on the party buffet.

Should I worry? Should I change my strategy? Is the number of followers even all that important?

No, says Gary Vaynerchuk.

“You can have 10, 10,000, or 1,000,000 followers and all it takes is for one post to be noticed by one person to cause a social media chain reaction. The absolute number does not matter. One retweet, one repost, one link in an email is enough to get the ball rolling,” he says.

What’s important is the quality of your followers. Are they engaged with your posts? If they are spurred to action because of one of your posts, how will that action benefit you? [Read more…] about Quality over Quantity: Why You Shouldn’t Stress Over Number of Followers

If Only I Had the Time . . . Well, Now You Do

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The pandemic has brought us a shift in how we spend our time. At home, with social lives dried up, we’re cleaning out closets, painting rooms, and finally getting around to organizing those old photos.

At work, you might be spending less time handling the normal flow of customers. It’s prime time to use the downtime to clean house and do the projects you never had time for; the perfect time to finally focus on digital media marketing projects. Here are some suggestions, if you find yourself wanting to use wisely the time on your hands.

1. Clean up your Facebook page

Just posting on social media is time consuming. Who has time in a normally busy schedule to do Facebook housekeeping? That cover photo you put together three years ago? Change it. Then go over to Canva or PicMonkey and create a couple cover photos to put in the hopper for the future. Get rid of any duplicate pages that you’ve abandoned. If you have multiple pages for different aspects of your business, consolidate them. Look over your About section and make sure it’s complete, up-to-date and accurate.

Incidentally, Canva has a nifty Facebook Maker, a quick and easy tool for making custom Facebook covers. Choose a template for the layout you want, and use your own photos or choose from the free stock photos in Canva’s stockpile. It’s all included in Canva’s free account.

[Read more…] about If Only I Had the Time . . . Well, Now You Do

Buying My Youth on Twitter

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Twitter-old-school

I’m at an awkward age. Young enough to cringe at fogey talk, but too old to recognize when I’m doing it myself. It helps that I have a husband who, when he reads one of my blogs that starts to enter old crank territory, will yell in to me, “Hey, Andy Rooney! You rock.”

So, yeah, awkward age. I’m not too old to swim in the social media pool, but I don’t look great in my two-piece anymore.

So it was with some trepidation that I decided to take out a small ad on Twitter. I had been Tweeting for a long time and was just starting to get it. Taking out an ad, however, was raising the stakes. It was going to cost me real money. Not a huge amount, but we’re not talking bitcoin here.

I did it, though, and not surprisingly my results were grim. I figured I had done it wrong. I was right. I had set it up badly, didn’t enter enough @words, my ad content didn’t support my goal, and let’s be clear here, I don’t understand what I just wrote there. I wasn’t even sure what my goal was supposed to be.

Then I got an email from Lena, a Twitter ad rep, who said she wanted to talk to me about my Twitter needs. She offered me a free 30-minute phone convo. My first thought was, “Oooh . . . no . . . you don’t want to do this. You’re young and probably really cute and spunky, and you obviously have a really great job. You don’t want to ruin your cool, 20-something-living-in-San-Francisco, working-in-the-tech-field week by talking to a 55-year-old writer who just spent a third of her 2014 advertising budget on a $50 ad.”

I have to hand it to Lena. She never once talked down to me. She gave me lots of great advice, didn’t do a hard sell, and she even ventured outside the sales talk and suggested some ways I could be posting for better results. Best of all, she pretended to speak my language and only used the word “interface” once; “platform” twice.

The conversation made me wonder if Twitter doesn’t have a Middle-Aged Mom Liaison, someone who advises the sales staff on the weird ways of the mom-jeans-wearing part of their clientele. I’ve been pushing for that over at Facebook for a long time and would love to have that job myself. Twitter might just be taking the forefront in dismounting from their high horse and acknowledging that their users aren’t all hipsters or people with oodles of disposable income. Some of us are eking along the best we can, misusing hashtags, spelling out long words, and editing our posts for proper punctuation.

But some of us – not mentioning any names – have five more $10 bills to spend on social media advertising between now and Christmas. You can all get in line, because Lena @Twitter is leading the candidates to pocket it. (Did I use that @ symbol correctly, Lena?)

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Want to read more of Diane’s Just Humor Me columns? She’s been writing them since W was president. Sign up for our weekly e-newsletter and get new blog posts and other neat stuff. And if you like her blog, you’ll love her book, Home Sweet Homes: How Bundt Cakes, Bubble Wrap, and My Accent Helped Me Survive Nine Moves.

Twitter, Go to the Head of the Class

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I’m glad to see that Twitter got some love this week. It wasn’t looking good, when it was announced that the royal wedding would not be live-Tweeted and that an actor in the Facebook movie The Social Network, Armie Hammer’s grandfather personally knew Prince Charles.

Facebook 1   Twitter 0

But then Osama bin Laden got whacked and Twitter got pushed to the front of the social network line, thanks to a neighbor guy who was up late, bored out of his skull, and itching to use his fly-swatter references.

Facebook 1   Twitter Infinity

I’m happy for Twitter, but I’m still not a huge fan. I don’t like #s and RTs and I only barely tolerate @s. Plus Twitter is based solely on mutual back-scratching: Unless you’re famous and funny, no one really reads your tweets. They only follow you so that you’ll follow them. Everyone’s posting and counting followers and no one’s reading. I’d be kidding myself if I thought that PetGroomerie really gives a rat’s ass about me. He follows 1,328 people, a motley crew of personal trainers, singers, marketing execs and a self-proclaimed “guy with a desk.” And me. I’m going to have to tweet the next coming of Jesus to stand out among his followees.

Isn’t it funny that the guy who accidentally Tweeted the raid on Osama bin Laden’s house, Sohaib Athar, now has 102,916 followers? (Woop, just checked again and it’s now up to 103,391.) The raid only took 40 minutes and now he just lives in a regular neighborhood with a mansion that is screwing with the property values. By the time we knew who we should be following, we were left with the scraps. Give him some credit, Athar is really scrambling to make it worth your while – Yesterday he posted a cell-phone photo of a rabbit with this comment: “A guy who used to live in la Den gave this bunny (two in fact) to a neighborhood kid.”

LinkedIn was watching from the sidelines and said, Hey, we can play at this game, too. We’re important! We’re relevant!  On today’s LinkedIn home page was this headline: WHOOPS: HP Exec Spills Huge Company Secret on LinkedIn Profile. But it was just something about cloud computing and block storage, which put me in a boredom coma before I was through the third paragraph. That’s just sad.

Facebook 1   Twitter Infinity   LinkedIn -3

And then there’s MySpace. Whoever took over for Tom appears to have had his headphones on while the world was being turned upside down. The MySpace home page features a photo of Will Ferrell kissing a man, Chris Brown, and Saoirse Ronan (Who? “She just nabbed the lead in a Stephanie Meyer’s [sic] movie.” OK, again, Who?) MySpace tells me to “get your dance on!” What’s Trending? Lindsay Lohan, Justin Beiber, Thor, and Conan O’Brien’s Beard. Breaker breaker, whoever runs MySpace, wake up and pick up a newspaper.

Facebook 1    Twitter Infinity    LinkedIn -3    MySpace …Who?

Bad News Bearers

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I have an on-again, off-again, love-hate relationship with my former employer The Vindicator. I am loyal to the core to all the newspapers who ever hired me, as well as to all things Youngstown, but now that I’m just another reader of that paper, I find myself being – well, just like another reader of the paper.

“Why don’t you put something good in the paper. All you ever put in is the bad news. What about all the good news? Why don’t you report on that?”

Since the first cave man etched the weather report into the common area cave wall, reporters have been hearing that. I alone heard it at least 10,000 times. It was getting so bad, I was starting to loathe coming across a teenager who was doing something worthy, because I knew I would hear: “See? We’re always reading about the bad things teenagers are doing. What about these kids? You never read about these kids.” Hey, happy teens, isn’t there something you need to go sniff?

It’s been years (and years and years) since I’ve been on the receiving end of those harping comments. Now, although I’m not a subscriber, I read Vindy.com every morning when I sign onto my computer, and I follow the Tweets.

And this is where things start to get dicey.

The Vindicator Tweets are kind of a downer.

Big splinter pierces Md. boys abdomen on slide

Concert Sunday to benefit boy with no legs

Paraplegic roughed up by cops gets probation fine in alcohol case

Mailman admits stashing 12000 pieces of mail

Family sues trade school over sons death

Police: Boyfriend set up home-invasion

Painter find human remains under Pittsburgh b

Stocks edge lower as investors pocket profits

Browns fall to Ravens 24-17

You get the picture.

My Twitter page is like Sybil: I’ve got Jim Gaffigan cracking me up with bacon jokes and then The Vindicator bringing me down with its giant splinters and human remains; Surplus Satire brings me back up with posts things like this:  Make-A-Wish Foundation Bankrupted After Cute Little Guy Makes Wish For More Wishes, and then some humorless political nut brings me back down to reality with this: But, know this: this system is destroying the middle class and snatching the very breath and life from the poor.

I found myself thinking, Why are they putting all this depressing stuff in here? Isn’t there anything more upbeat? Why is it always bad news? Why don’t you ever put any good news in the Twitter?

Gah. I’m that lady.

Twitter Tweaks

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I’m trying to keep up, really I am. My husband encourages me to stay abreast of new technologies (he seems sincere, but it’s possible that he just wants to say ‘breast’ in a serious conversation). So in an effort to be hip and not-dinosaur-like, I’ve done the following:

  • I dove into Facebook and have reconciled all my personalities, since I’ve put into one room people who knew me from the time I was 3-years-old to current day. There’s no hiding anything from anyone now. If I told any lies or exaggerated my abilities or puffed up my past at any time, it will come back to bite me now. Photos and other evidence abound. Also, I’ve learned how to do some cool stuff, like use “live feed” in a sentence without sounding like I’m in 4-H.
  • I briefly experimented with MySpace, or what I like to call the eewwy, icky place where I have no business. I only have four friends and Tom is one of them. I need to shut that party down. Today.
  • I regularly update my iLife iStuff, which enables me to build Web sites and do super cool iThings with photos and video. I could probably produce a half decent mockumentary if I could get off Facebook long enough.
  • I looked into Skype, which my friends tell me is a great way to keep in touch with your kids when they leave you for a college that’s too far away in an effort to make the point that they don’t need your meddling, nagging, cooking, help with homework, or the question “are you sure a parent will be there?” If there is live video involved, I’m in. I want to see what my son’s dorm room looks like when his mother isn’t there to gather up the empty Gatorade bottles that litter his floor. And those better be Gatorade bottles, mister.
  • And in a free-spirited, Friday, too-much-coffee mood, I tried Twitter and am still trying, although the caffeine has worn off and on the other six days of the week it just seems pointless. I don’t understand what I’m supposed to tweet.

My Twitter followers/followees are no help. They are a motley crew of: old friends who use #’s and @’s excessively to the point where they may as well be speaking Farsi; my son; writer friends who write about parenting and breast feeding; someone who cooks and posts links to recipes; and the comedian Jim Gaffigan. If we were a baseball team, there would be a heartwarming after-school special about us and you’d root for us to win because we’re mismatched weirdos. Some people who follow me are strangers, which is puzzling. How did they find me and why do they want to follow me and my boring life? Maybe because I don’t tweet that often and I’m not apt to clog up their twitter screens.

Am I supposed to tweet several times a day? Really? Because I am so not tempted to type in, “I am driving to the dry cleaner” because I might get distwacted and get into a bad twaccident.

The most excitement going on in my Twitter world is when Jim Gaffigan writes about something other than bacon or the breast feeding lady gets a huffy look when she whips out a boob in iHop. Or at least that’s what I think happened. I can’t understand what anyone is saying on there.

People who are into Twitter remind me of the Smurfs meet Elmer Fudd and I never was a big fan of either of them.

Anything beyond the above tech advances, I’m not ready yet. I used to watch a technology report in the mornings on local TV news while I packed lunches and I had to stop because I got so overwhelmed with the thought that I could buy my kids tennis shoes that would show me where they were at all times, and the Germans were making a vacuum cleaner that actually picks up dog hair, that making turkey sandwiches seemed barbaric. People are out there doing stuff from Star Trek and I’m spreading mayonnaise on whole wheat bread with a stainless steel knife, like an animal.

So I’m taking it slow and adding one geeky invention at a time. This month: Skype. Next month: the Slap Chop.