The Rules

When I was growing up my father would counsel me in moral matters by saying “do the RIGHT thing*” without really explaining what the right thing was. It was expected that by watching what he did and following along (and running in the opposite direction very quickly if I didn’t) I would KNOW what the right thing was.

As I have grown older I have seen what I think is the “right thing” change, mutate and I hope, mature, as a result of life’s lessons. I have gone from wanting to do the right thing by everyone else, to wanting to do the right thing by myself.  This sometimes gets me into conflict with others who have opposing views when it comes to pleasing the herd.

So when I saw today that Tim Ferris has advised that you should write your blog posts like you have had a couple of drinks and are speaking to a friend (rather than being all prissy and trying to please everyone) I cheered.

I can hear the opposition to this comment already. “Of course HE can say that, he is rich and famous” “What would he know, he doesn’t really talk to normal people like US”. Thing is, many everyday people communicate in our blogs like we are at a church picnic with complete strangers. We mind our manners, mouths and thoughts and completely crush who we really are.

Yes there will be people that don’t LIKE who we really are. This is the internet and if you aren’t disliked by at least ONE person then you aren’t being heard. Take it as a compliment if you have ruffled someone’s feathers with your blog posting about which way the toilet roll should go on the spindle (paper over the top!). As long as you are not going out of your way to be deliberately nasty to an individual, or group, for no other reason then you get a kick out of it, then I accept you have an opinion and demand you do the same for me (some things you should demand, not ask for, and reciprocity of rights would be one of them).

So when it comes to blog posts about how to blog post, or how to Twitter, or how to be a man or a woman, or how to Social Network then BAH I say to you.  There are no “rules”, there is only doing what you feel is right.

*funnily enough that became an anti-litter program slogan in Australia for a while… “do the right thing” was followed by “put it in the bin”

No Mucking Around

It is nine whole days since the end of the 30DC. In that time I have buried my ex-husband, consoled my heartbroken children, gone back to work after compassionate leave and taken a germ of a business idea and made it reality, just like *that*!.

Today saw the first whisper on Twitter announcing the “launch” of the Secret Women’s Business Network.

Now I haven’t done it all by myself (that would have been absolute madness!) and my partners in crime Barb, Lisa and I have a HUGE amount of work still to do, but it goes to show how quickly and painlessly one can do this kind of thing on the internet. How to achieve this sort of result will be part of the curriculum when we fully open the doors (exciting!).

Don’t expect one of those huge hoopla launches, the SWBN is working on the snowball principal. That our environment and content is so good that word of mouth will keep our membership growing at a steady rate. Also, we are totally committed to ALWAYS making our announced dates.  Nothing beats great project management (another part of our curriculum) and we will be eating our own cooking as they say, by demonstrating this as a cornerstone of owning a “real” business.

I had a huge rush of adrenalin this morning after making that one simple twitter post, all of the work in those 9 days was now a reality! My passion has become a reality and I am writing this grinning like a crazy woman.

Look out world, here we come!

Do Not Be Offended

Do not be offended if I don’t follow you,

It’s not because I don’t care

Do not think I don’t see you

Or the important things you say

Because I do

Just not there.

Do not think that I am rude

If i don’t answer straight away

(or at all)

The noise is deafening sometimes

Shouting accross waterfalls

is seldom successful

Maybe you need to whisper in my ear.

Do not think that I ignore you

that is not true

Say something that is relevant to my interests

And I will be reading, watching, listening

(image acquired from here! )

The Stuff Of Dreams

I have my Twitter set up to SMS me when there is a direct message. This works great now that Twitter has their stuff back under control. What I forget is, I have Twitter friends who live in very different time zones.  So this morning the iPhone buzzed me awake around 4am with a direct message. (It was a great message by the way).

Luckily it woke me right in the middle of a dream I was having. The dream was about how I will distribute my book and the extra electronic things I want to go with it.

Now dreams for me are a rollercoaster ride where I have no control over the action. I am totally immersed in the experience and I am unable to suspend disbelief during it (unlike my partner and kids, they can lucid dream at will) so most of my dreams are crazy mashups of daily events and complete randomness. This dream however made, and still makes, perfect sense to me.

My dream even went through a debate that i would have sat down and thought about anyway. The result was a perfectly reasonable conclusion and I happen to agree with my dreaming brain self on the outcome.

What I will need to do is sit down and flowchart how it will all work and then figure out where to get the solution. I am sure it is feasible, just need to ask around the place on what.

Now This Looks Interesting

If you are a bit of a trend seeker like myself (that is not trend setter, I am as fashionable as a red setter) you will be interested in ferreting out information about what people are thinking, doing and saying. This would explain my infatuation with FriendFeed and today my love-at-first-sight meeting with Twitscoop.

This thing is awesome (and is probably not unique) as it shows you in cloud form what words are “big” right now in the Twitterverse. I happened to take a screen shot earlier today after the announcement of Yves Saint Laurent’s death. Can you see how the news was suddenly a HUGE topic on twitter.

You can see that everything else being spoken about is dwarfed by this discussion. Hover your mouse over the words and the last 5 or so Twitters on the subject are displayed. Click on the word and they are all displayed in chronological order.

I was a little late catching the Thirty Day Challenge broadcast hype screenshot, being about an hour into the broadcast I missed the lead up, but this gives some idea.

Ok that is pretty cool but what else can it do? A couple of things that I can see that are useful…

You can save specific clouds, which I am guessing might be a vanity thing, but would be great for when you see something interesting but don’t have time to investigate.

You can search for terms and look at the trend over 1-6 hours - 3 days. I can see using this for launches as a hype meter, research into how trends pass through twitter, and monitor how the rise and fall.

Here again is “Yves Saint Laurent” search term over today

And then there is the search term search which I love in web page format. For niche research it is a beauty! Killer use - type in “question” and see people asking all sorts of things. ” I have a question blah blah blah” “Can someone answer my question”. The view is over a three day period maximum, but still that is fertile ground to dig into for ideas. For those people in the Thirty Day Challenge this could be a pretty handy tool to use

I was able to tell Jason Moffatt that only two people had mentioned Goji Juice (his pet thing) over the last few days. Only two in how many people?

Oh and what is that to the left of the cloud? Why it is the recent bigger hitters in Twitter about every two hours. Now if that doesn’t give you ideas I don’t know what will!