Winnipeg Folk Fest: My Favourite Temporary Community

July 14, 2015

Hello everyone!

It's been a while, hasn't it? I've been away for the past week or so at the Winnipeg Folk Festival and I'm just getting back into the swing of things today.

For those of you non-festival-goers and non-Winnipeg locals, the Winnipeg Folk Festival is a massive four-day music festival which takes place in Birds Hill Park, one of our beautiful provincial parks. Some people just go for the day, but many of us (myself included) make the trek 45 minutes outside the city to be able to camp in their massive, sprawling campground.

Going to Folk Fest feels like coming home. Every year as I haul my camping gear up the trailhead and see the wide expanse of the festival, with it's multitude of tents, signs, posters, bikes, and decorations my heart starts to flutter and I feel so at peace.

It got me thinking about the beauty of temporary communities.

In university I read a fascinating paper called "In Search of How Societies Work: Tribes - The First and Forever Form" by David Ronfeldt that has always stuck with me. It was one of the first papers that I'd read which got me thinking about how, even in our digital age, we still network and search for "tribes" online that we can connect with: we find Facebook groups, join Twitter chats, and customize our subreddits to help us find communities that we can connect with and which give us a sense of belonging.

As a content marketer, communities are my game. I nerd out about community-building and people coming together to share positive stories and experiences online on a daily basis, and being able to apply that same sense of wonder and excitement to a going camping for a few days is a truly unique experience.

From the moment I set foot in the campground, I feel like I'm among friends; my own kind, who are all there to enjoy the summer, the music, the campground festivities and activities, and each other. We're all friendly, respectful and kind to one another; it's not uncommon to wander by a campsite and join in for a few songs, or make friends while waiting in line for some wood-fired pizza at the food vendors, or simply to wave and say 'hi' to someone whose costume makes you smile.

I'm part of another community at Folk Fest as well: the volunteer crew. Every year over 3,000 volunteers handle everything from security, to environmental clean-up, traffic, first aid, making and distributing food... you name it, there's likely a volunteer to handle it. We spend time training together, getting to know one another, and sharing in the long nights and blazing hot days of our shifts. We make friends with our crew members and the campers are so incredibly kind to us when we're on our shifts; it's not unusual for a random camper to shout out "you guys are doing a great job!" to us as we walk around the campground making sure everyone is having a safe and positive festival experience.

I've been to a handful of festivals in my lifetime but none of them have the same sense of shared respect and camaraderie that I feel at Folk Fest.

The anticipation of going makes me part of another community, as well: many people (myself included) see the festival as one of the highlights of our year, especially here in Winnipeg where our climate can be extremely harsh. Our winter temperatures can plummet to below -40 celsius and stay that way for weeks on end, and our summers can soar to over +40 celsius as well.

We truly experience the full range of seasons here, and many a long winter night is spent daydreaming about warm temperatures and, for many of us, the experience of camping at Folk Fest. I'm not kidding when I say that people live to go camping at this festival and take part in the temporary community that exists for a few short days each year:

People haul in all sorts of weird stuff and set up the weirdest camps, from a temporary tattoo parlour which will create custom designs for you, a Jurassic Park themed camp with huge dinosaurs and torches, a Peanuts themed camp complete with Lucy's psychiatric help booth, to freakin' Bel-Air with a Fresh Prince mannequin, people really do go all-out in order to contribute to this magnificent, temporary community. The sheer amount of effort and love that they put into making the campground experience a unique and positive one for everybody is truly inspiring.

In addition to all the amazing communities that I get to help build and watch grow as part of my work, my day-to-day activities online, and this blog (thank you for reading, as always!), being able to be a part of the multitude of communities at Folk Fest always leaves me feeling so inspired and, of course, dreaming up ways that I can contribute next year!

Do you have any favourite communities (online or offline?) If so, I'd love to hear about them!

Twitter for Beginners Part 3: Finding Your Voice, Curating, Chatting & Analytics

July 6, 2015

Welcome back to the third installment of my Twitter for Beginners Series!

• Some basic Twitter terminology
• How to set up your profile
• Finding and gaining followers
• Tweeting, replying and starting conversations
• What to do if someone is harassing you (muting & blocking)
• Making the most of Twitter's Tailored Trends feature

This final chapter will go more in-depth about how you can build your brand on Twitter, how to find and share great content, defining your tweeting 'style', and building a kickass network of people and brands that care about you.

So without further ado, let's get started!

Develop Your Voice

Whether you're tweeting from a business account or just trying to grow your own reputation online, what you say and how you say it will play a defining role in your success. Because social media can seem very simple to do, many people start blindly and try to develop their voice as they go.

While this is certainly okay, it's much more prudent (and time-saving) to sit down and ask yourself some basic questions about who you are, and how you can best convey that information online.

Some questions to ask are:

• Who are you?
• What are your goals?
• How do your Tweets support and further the above statements?

My answers would look like this:

• Alyson Shane, kickass content marketer & copywriter
• To grow my audience, work with great clients, and have a positive impact
• By sharing interesting content, engaging with my community and putting a heavy focus on local events and causes

If you're a small business owner yours might look like this:

• Babe McBaberson, DIY wizard and crocheter of charming baby clothes
• To drive traffic to my new website and generate sales
• By connecting with influencers, bloggers and other DIY-ers like myself to build a strong public profile

You get the point. The key to developing a strong voice online is to know who you are, what your goals are, and how your tweets help you further those goals. Your tweets and the content you share are a reflection of who you are, so always be mindful of what you say.

It's okay if you don't know this stuff right away. It might take a few days, weeks, or even months before you really have a solid idea of how your tweets can be the best that they can be, but the trick in the interim is to keep tweeting. Don't be paralyzed by indecision! When in doubt, be conversational, kind, polite, and share your work.

Curate Your Content (and Find Interesting Stuff)

Churning out interesting, funny, retweet-able content on a regular basis might seem like a breeze, but if you're just starting out it can seem like an insurmountable mountain of websites and jpegs.

Of course, sharing your own work and website content is important, but the trick is to pepper it in-between tweet replies, retweets, and sharing articles and images that help your followers get a sense of who you are. The aggregate of the content you tweet out is how people will start to develop an understanding of who you are, and that's what will make them care about you (and your product or business).

Here are some tips to get you started:

Maximize Lists:

Twitter has a great 'List' feature, which allows you to separate people that you follow into public or private lists that you can quickly scan for new content. The difference between a private and public list is, of course, than other people can see your public lists, but Twitter will also notify users when you add them to a list, as well.

By organizing people that you follow into relevant groups (eg: affiliate organizations, local businesses, influencers, etc) you can scan huge swaths of people that you follow quickly and easily, and reduces the likelihood that you'll miss an important tweet from someone you care about.

The downside to lists is that it can be a slow, manual process (believe me, I've curated lists for myself and various clients more times than I can count) but the time that your future self will save is 100% worth the effort.

Use a Curation Tool

Many people choose to use a content curation tool, which allows them to collect a variety of different content (blog posts, videos, images, etc) and publish it in a single place at once. This can accomplish a few different goals: it can tell "stories" which are centred around a particular theme, it can work as an aggregate of a variety of different topics in a newspaper-style format.

The upside to using a tool like this is that you can organize content as you find it and the tools will provide up-to-date versions for your audience to access. You can also use these tools to publish daily "newspapers" of content, such as with Paper.li, which will @mention people whose content you've included in your collection.

There are a few different flavours of content curation tool, but here are a few popular ones:

Paper.li: You may have noticed that some of your Twitter followers will have tweets that read like: "The So-and-So Daily is Out!" - this is a tweet created using Paper.li. This tool allows you to create daily or weekly "newspapers" with content from Twitter users, you and the people you follow, or certain hashtags. Paper.li publications aren't permanent, however.

Storify: This platform features live story updates from content sources selected by you using a drag-and-drop editor. The single-editor experience works okay, but when you purchase their enterprise plan (surprise, surprise) the multi-editor experience becomes a lot more useful. You can add your website as a custom 'source' which includes your site's content in your Story.

Upcoming: Twitter recently introduced a 'Curator', a single platform for live engagement, real-time trends and displaying Tweets which isn't open to public use, yet. I'll be covering it in an upcoming post once it's available publicly and I've played around with it a bit!

Lean on Curation Sites:

This is one of the best tricks I've picked up since I started taking content marketing seriously. It can be extremely time-consuming to troll around various websites looking for content that's relevant to you or your brand, and checking these sites a few times a day can save tons of time and effort.

Here's a list of a few that I like:

• PopURLS
• AllTop
• HackerNews
• Reddit (You can curate customized subreddits specific to different topics)
• Inbound
• BloKube

While these might not be perfect for you (some are obviously a bit more tech-related than others) ones like PopURLs, Reddit and AllTop have a wide variety of topics and flavours to suit whatever you're looking for. Using these sites to quickly and easily find fresh content to share is such a huge time-saver!

Make the Most of Twitter Chats

Like the name implies, a Twitter chat is a large, group conversation hosted on Twitter. There are thousands (at least) of Twitter chats which range across a wide variety of trends, topics, and ideas and are organized by hashtags, which we talked about in the first post in this series.

Moderators who organize the chats generally ask questions to the people participating, who then reply and respond to each other, but there are less formal versions of Twitter Chats which can simply be organized around a central theme or topic.

In order to actively participate in the chat you must include the chat-specific hashtag in the body of your tweet. This allows other users who are participating and searching that hashtag to see your replies, and to respond if they want.

Here's an example of a question/reply from a Twitter Chat I participated in a while back:

Twitter Chats allow you to access vast networks of other people in your industry, or who are interested in the type of work that you do. It's a super easy easy to find out what other people are thinking and feeling about different topics, to gain insight into issues relevant to what you do, and simply to find new people to follow.

You can find chats relevant to your interests by using tools like Tweetreports, TweetChat or simply following industry leaders who host them, or ask others that you know what chats they like to participate in.

Customize Using Third-Party Tools

One of the great things about Twitter is that it's been around long enough that there are a lot of different options, both on desktop and mobile, to help you manage your content. However, there are a lot of options for different operating systems, so here's a list of a few of the popular ones out there:

Twitter App: Standard, regular 'ol Twitter, available across all platforms. This is great if you're just getting started and don't need a lot of customizable features. It has account switching, so if you're managing more than one account you won't feel left out.

However, you're also at the mercy of promoted tweets, changes to the chronological listing of tweets, pictures appearing in-stream by default, and a multitude of other things that can get annoying if you're spending a lot of time on the platform. However, as I said, it's great to just get your feet wet.

Here's what's available on each platform:

On iOS: Tweetbot, Übersocial, Tweetlogix, or Janetter.

On Windows: MetroTwit.

On Linux: Choqok, Birdie or Polly.

On Android: Übersocial or Janetter.

On Blackberry: Übersocial.

I also use a web-based program called Hootsuite, which helps me organize and schedule tweets in advance. This tool (or a similar competitor, Buffer) allows you to organize what you want to see into columns and to schedule tweets, which is really helpful if you know you have content that needs to be promoted in the future, or if you've got a lot of content that you want to distribute over an extended period of time.

Pay Attention to Your Analytics

So now you've found your voice, your community, and you're tweeting, sharing, and participating in chats on a regular basis. Great! But it doesn't mean anything if you don't understand how to leverage what you're saying.

Analytics can help you determine a variety of things, including:

• How many times you tweeted in the past 28 days
• Total tweet impressions, and impressions per tweet
• If interaction with your followers has changed
• What types of content gain the most interaction
• When your followers interacted with your content
• Who your top followers are
• What your followers are interested in

The tweets dashboard is your hub for understanding how your outgoing tweets are doing. You can quickly see your most popular tweets, how many people they reached, and the level of interaction each tweet received. You can also see your daily tweet activity as well as how many follows or unfollows you had in a single day.

By paying attention to the days which showed the best performance you can which tactics to apply to your tweet schedule, and which days are the most effective. You can also compare previous months to see how your tweets do over time, determine the best types of content to share, and so much more.

Twitter analytics might seem overwhelming at first, but it's your best tool for understanding how and when to connect on Twitter.

Your turn!

In the span of three blog posts we've learned how to understand Twitter, how to get started, and how to use this powerful social network to grow your online profile and attract attention and interest to you and your business.

Make sure to follow me on Twitter so we can stay connected, and if there's something else that you'd like me to cover, or a burning question that you'd like answered, drop me a line! I'm planning tons of content like this series and if I can cater it to what you need, even better!

Happy tweeting!

Alyson S.

This post is part of the three part series on Twitter for Beginners. Make sure to read part one and part two as well! The entire series can be found here.

Crowdfunding Crash Course: 5 More Lessons Learned

July 3, 2015

The Crowdfunding Crash Course is chugging along and I'm amazed at the overwhelming response from participants and readers alike - I'm learning so much, and am loving the journey of sharing interesting and innovative projects with all of you.

With that in mind, let's review some of the key themes that have emerged over the responses so far and see what we've learned:

1. Organize your team before you start

Kelly Stacey of SoLight, who funded their product SolarPuff on Kickstarter, mentioned that keeping up-to-date with backer questions and special requests was especially taxing. "We had a lot of people asking a lot of questions and getting back to all of them (and we did) was very time consuming" she says, and she isn't alone: every single person I've interviewed has mentioned the tremendous level of organization required to run a successful campaign.

Randy Hoyt, who successfully funded two tabletop games, Relic: Expedition and Lanterns: The Harvest Festival on Kickstarter, took the first and last day off work to make sure that he was available to handle all questions and issues that might come up. "The first and last days of your campaign are the busiest" he says.

The takeaway: if you don't feel like you can handle the planning and execution of your campaign, hire someone or organize a team of people to help you with it. Even things as seemingly simple as responding to backer emails, or interview questions can take up a lot of time, and by delegating and being organized you can make sure you're focusing on what matters: making sure your project is fully funded.

2. Tap into your existing audience

Randy Hoyt from Foxtrot games use the momentum from their first tabletop game, Relic: Expedition to build momentum for their next game Lanterns: The Harvest Festival. They had an existing mailing list from the first Kickstarter which they used to spread the word to people who they already knew were interested in tabletop games, and who had already helped fund the earlier project. Meg from Po-Mo, who funded the interactive projector Lumo on Indiegogo, also tapped into her existing email list to spread the word about their campaign.

When Nils Karlen launched his Kickstarter for Simon Stålenhag's two art books Tales from The Loop and Swedish Machines, Lonely Places, he knew that Simon already had a tremendous following online that they could tap into in order to get funding. Fria Ligen used their own networks to promote the project, but what put them over the top was that Simon leveraged his social media channels and his Tumblr to promote it.

The takeaway: if you have an existing audience, or are working with someone who does, reach out to those people first and let them know about your project. If you don't, spend the time before you launch to build an email list, Facebook page, and Twitter following so that people across multiple social channels can stay up-to-date with your progress.

3. Turn funders into contributors

During his first Kickstarter for Relic: Expedition, Randy Hoyt was hesitant to share the script and rough storyboard for the video with his audience. The second time around, he says, he "realized that feedback was so important" and posted the rough storyboard on YouTube and shared it on Twitter and Facebook so that he could get people's feedback. He also allowed backers to vote on different variations of artwork for Lanterns: The Harvest Festival, which increased engagement and excitement about the project.

The takeaway: By offering backers the opportunity to give their input on things like artwork and design you give them an added incentive to back your campaign: not only are they getting a cool product if your campaign meets its goals, but they also get to participate in the creation of something that interests them.

4. Plan your pledge levels for greater success

Nils Karlen mentioned that during his research for Simon's books that they found that having a very low pledge level (a dollar or two) was an important step to get the campaign started because Kickstarter's metrics consider ever pledge, no matter how big or small.

They also used early bird pledges to incentivize people to start donating early (an early bird pledge is a limited pledge level that is strictly better in terms of price than a comparable level.) By offering limited-time options it mobilizes backers early on, and it also gives you opportunities to promote the campaign by appealing to this sense of urgency eg: "only two more days of our Early Bird $10 option!"

The takeaway: It might seem tempting to only offer pledges at higher dollar values because it will feel like getting closer to your goal faster, but remember that everyone who contributes to your campaign will likely spread the word about it, as well, and you don't want to alienate potential backers by only offering expensive options. Try to create a pledge system with rewards and dollar amounts that appeal to everyone.

5. Don't get discouraged

There will be slow days, no-news days, and days when everything feels as though it's come to a grinding halt. This is normal. What's important is to stay motivated and think realistically, and use those "down" days as days to find other ways to stay motivated and positive about your project.

Tamar Swartz, who used Indiegogo to fund her project Journey to Creative Surrender, mentioned in her interview that she had to remind herself that contributions come in waves, and just because there's a lull doesn't mean that there's a reason to get discouraged, and Mike Raven mentioned in his Traveling Book interview that he also struggled to stay motivated in between donations.

The takeaway: Don't let a slow day get you down! It's totally normal to get stressed out or feel anxious if your project isn't funded within the first few days, but as long as you stick to your promotional schedule and continue to do things like respond to emails, send out updates and stay active on social media you'll soon see another surge of backers.

This post is part of the #CrowdfundingCrashCourse series. You can find the entire series of interviews and summary posts here.

Twitter for Beginners Part 2: Tweeting, Discovering & Making Connections

June 29, 2015

Welcome back to my Twitter for Beginners series!

In the first post we discussed how Twitter works and became familiar with the terminology behind what we'll be discussing in this post, so let's get into the real nitty-gritty of starting to build a presence on a social network:

Your Account

Most people join Twitter for personal reasons: to connect with others, promote a business, make friends, etc. Some people join up and create parody accounts, which can revolve around themes or celebrities, but for most of us (and for the purpose of this series) let's just assume that you've signed up to Twitter because you're trying to connect with others and promote your business.

With these goals in mind, your profile should include a recent photo of you, as well as a short bio with links to any work or webpages that you want people to associate with your account.

Here's what my Twitter bio looks like, for example:

It's clear who I am, what I do, and gives potential followers an idea as to what they can expect if they follow me. I've also got a link to my website, because it's one of the places that I want my followers to visit. Try to avoid using too many @mentions or links in your Twitter bio, because it can look messy and disorganized. Try to be direct and use bit.ly to shorten your links if necessary.

Following & Followers

I've described in past posts as being at a party: there are lots of people around, everyone talking in smaller groups about topics that interest them. Like a big party, Twitter can see really daunting when you first show up: who do you talk to? How do you find like-minded people to interact with? What do you say?

Like a party, the easiest way to start talking to new people is to start with the people that you know: follow friends, colleagues, and people whose articles or posts you read online. Once you follow some people you know or are familiar with, take some time to go through their Follower and Following lists and check out the bios of the people they connect with (this is why bios are important).

Following someone doesn't automatically mean that they'll follow you back, but if people keep seeing you pop up in their feed as part of other conversations, or if you keep initiating conversations and participating with the same groups of people, it's likely that they'll start to follow you. The more interesting the content you share, the higher the likelihood that people will want to subscribe to your feed.

Once you've started following some people Twitter will be able to start sorting out your interests based on the people you've chosen, and will start making suggestions based on shared connections or interests. On Twitter's current desktop layout you can find this suggestion bar on the top right corner:

Remember: just because someone follows you doesn't mean that you have to follow them back if you don't want to. Twitter is about curating the kinds of conversations and information that you want to see, and just like how you can leave a conversation if it starts to get boring or uninteresting at a party, Twitter gives you the same option.

Try and be mindful of your Following to Follower ratio: this sounds frivolous, but if you're following a high number of people and have very few followers it looks desperate. When you're starting out, try to keep those numbers about even, but as you gain more followers try to keep your 'Following' number less than your 'Followers.' Public perception can go a long way online.

Tweeting & Connecting

Now that you've spent some time building a list of people to follow, it's time to start participating! While it might seem easier to start sending off 140-character thoughts or observations, the key to growing your Twitter community is engaging with others, especially at the start.

The best way to do this is to hit 'reply' to a Tweet that catches your eye. Maybe a friend shared a cool article, or made an observation you agree with. It's as easy as saying "yeah, that article about goats was really interesting!" or "I also enjoyed the fish tacos at that truck stand on Broadway" and you're off to the races.

If people on your feed are participating in a larger conversation their tweets will be connected by a thin line, like this:

If there are more than three messages in a conversation, Twitter will display a "view conversation" button, which will allow you to see what's been said previously, to give you some context of what's been said. In my experience, this is the thing that trips people up the most: they don't feel comfortable "entering" a conversation and adding their two cents.

Just start talking to people. If you see a conversation that you think is interesting, or is taking place between two people that you want to talk to, just @mention them and say your piece! Twitter is generally a pretty friendly place and nobody is going to judge you, think poorly of you, or (in most cases) be mean to you for simply joining a conversation.

Engaging with a variety of people increases your exposure. The people you're tweeting to might reply to you, which means your twitter handle will show up in their reply, or ReTweet (RT) or Quote you, which will share whatever you've just said with their network of followers. When other people see people they follow interacting with someone, they're more likely to start to engage with that person, too.

The key to tweeting is consistency: you need to be an active member in order for people to see your twitter handle on a regular enough basis that they want to start connecting with you. Try to tweet several times a day, at least, and be as varied with your content as possible: share news articles, photos, quotes, as well as reply and comment on things that others have shared.

Here are a few daily Twitter goals to help you grow:

• Tweet at least several times a day
• Have some variety in what you share: include links, photos, gifs, RTs and Quotes whenever possible.
• Follow at least one new person a day
• Participate in a conversation relevant to your niche with a trending hashtag (#)

Muting & Blocking

'Muting' someone on Twitter means that a specific Twitter user's tweets won't show up in your timeline. The muted user can still see your content, favourite it, and send you mentions or @replies (though you won't receive a "push" notification when they do.) You can mute someone without unfollowing them and without notifying them, which can go a long way if a colleague isn't that interesting or you don't want to offend a friend by unsubscribing to their slew of hockey-related tweets.

Blocking someone takes things to the next level. If someone starts harassing you, bothering you, or you simply don't want to interact with them anymore, you have the option to block that account from seeing your Tweets, and you from seeing theirs.

If you block someone they can visit your profile page and see that they've been blocked, whereas if you mute someone they will assume that it's business as usual because nothing will appear to have changed on their end. Try to be mindful of who you block or mute, but at the same time don't put up with any abuse - if you feel like someone is harassing you, or posting inappropriate content, report them to Twitter and block them immediately.

No amount of social clout is worth staying connected to a bully or someone who makes you feel uncomfortable or unsafe online

Tailored Trends

If you're using Twitter on your desktop you might have noticed a tab to the left of your feed called 'Trends.' This can be a really powerful tool for finding share-able content and keeping on top of conversations which are relevant to your interests.

By clicking on the "Change" button inside the Trends box you can begin tailoring what you see to your location (in my case it's Winnipeg) or larger, more popular trends on across Twitter's communities. By following and tweeting about popular topics within your network or niche you increase the likelihood that someone else with the same interests will see it and add you to their network.

Understanding what people are talking about you can make sure that you're able to add your voice to the conversation and be heard; you'll know which hashtags to use and which topics they refer to, so your tweets can be consistent and clear.

Now you're tweeting - congrats!

You're started getting your feet wet with Twitter; you're tweeting a few times a day, following new people, and starting to become more comfortable with a 140 character limit.

That's great, but there's still lots to discuss:

How do you define your 'voice' on Twitter?
What the heck is a 'Twitter Chat"?
Should you use third-party applications? Which ones?
Is there a benefit to using Lists?

and more, which will be covered in the final instalment of my Twitter for Beginners series:

This post is part of the three part series on Twitter for Beginners. Make sure to read part one, part three, and the extra credit as well! The entire series can be found here.

Twitter for Beginners Part 1: Getting Started

June 25, 2015

I get asked a lot about my preference of social media platform; namely, which one do I feel is most effective for getting your voice out there and starting to build an audience for yourself.

My favourite, hands down, is Twitter. I love Twitter.

The problem is, I often find that I'm the only one. When I tell people that I love Twitter above all the rest their eyes usually get big and they something like "I don't get Twitter" or "Twitter is too hard!"

So with that in mind, I'm going to be doing a series of Twitter for Beginners posts about this topic: we'll focus not just on how to use this important tool, but also why we should be using it, and best practices for first-time tweeters.

Twitter Terminology

Twitter has a lot of terminology and rules specific to its platform, which is one of the main reasons that so many people steer clear of using it (or don't use it effectively). Here are the basics:

Tweet: a tweet (like the bird logo, get it?) is the body of your message. It can be text, numbers, or characters but it has to remain under 140 characters in total. This is what a lot of people struggle with, because it can be tricky to boil your thoughts down to such a narrow limit.

This, however, is what makes Twitter such a valuable tool. Because you can't ramble on forever and are forced to be concise, the conversations on Twitter flow a lot more quickly and the focus is more on sharing a link to a separate, longer article or thought piece than about making a single statement.

Twitter handle: this is your username on Twitter. It refers to the name that you've chosen and the @symbol that precedes it. For example, mine is @alysonshane.

The @ symbol before your name is how Twitter recognizes that the name or words of your handle are associated with your account.

Mention (@mention): a mention is when you post a public message on Twitter and include someone's Twitter handle in the body of your tweet. When you @mention someone, they receive a notification and (in theory) will begin participating in the discussion.

So if I wanted to tweet at you I would type "hey @yourtwittername, hope you have a great week!" and Twitter would know that because I typed a @ followed by a user name, then I'm tweeting at someone, which is the Twitter equivalent of initiating a conversation with them.

Best practice here is to only @mention people who you know, or who are directly related to what you're tweeting about (eg: article authors, people involved with an event, etc). Tweeting randomly at people is a Twitter faux-pas, and should be avoided (we'll go into more of this later).

Twitter Feed: Your 'feed' is the aggregate of posts from people that you follow, which is displayed on your home page. By paying attention to your feed you can see up-to-date posts in chronological order, which helps you keep track of who said what and when.

ReTweet (RT): A ReTweet is creating a carbon copy of someone else's tweet, which gets shared on your own timeline. This serves as an easy way of sharing links, content, or otherwise showing that you agree with whatever is in the body of the tweet.

Twitter also allows a "Quote" option for ReTweets, which allows you to write your own tweet while including a photo (and link to) the original tweet in your post.

For example, here is a quoted retweet of mine that includes my own comments as well:

Hashtags (#): A hashtag (or # symbol) is a tool for participating in a conversation. A hashtag instantly connects a social media post to a group of others about the same topic, and connects the person sharing it (you) with other people talking about the same topic in real-time.

Brands, companies and individuals all use hashtags as a way of talking to a larger group of people, or of promoting themselves. For example, the sports equipment company Nike frequently includes #justdoit in their tweets. "Just Do It" is Nike's slogan, and helps people understand that what they are sharing is part of a larger narrative.

For more detailed info on hashtags and how to use them, check out my longer, more detailed post on it here.

Direct Message (DM): A Direct Message is a 140 character private message between two people who follow each other.

Most people believe that two people need to be following each other in order to message privately, but there's a feature under Settings > Security & Privacy called "Receive Direct Messages from anyone" which, if selected, allows you to (big surprise) receive messages from any Twitter user even if you don't follow them.

Keep in mind that while still technically "private" a Direct Message can still be saved as a screenshot and shared elsewhere, so be wary of what you DM to your fellow Twitter users. Don't become the next Anthony Weiner!

So we've gone over the basics and you're ready to sign up and start tweeting!

But what do you say?
Who do you say it to?
How do you attract new followers
What can you do to help them find you?
How do you use all of the tools that we've just discussed effectively?

We'll be going over all of that in greater detail in the second installment of this series:

This post is part of the three part series on Twitter for Beginners. Make sure to read part two, part three, and the extra credit as well! The entire series can be found here.

Crowdfunding Crash Course: Stacy Kelly - ​​SolarPuff: A Unique Little Solar Light

June 23, 2015

Stacy Kelly is a Co-Founder and Chief Operating Officer of Solight Design. She has the dual role of being responsible for managing the manufacturing and shipment of our products while also developing strategic business relationships, and used Kickstarter to fund the SolarPuff, an inflatable solar-powered lamp.

Can you briefly describe the SoLight SolarPuff?

SolarPuff: A Unique Little Solar Light. It’s a patent pending light-weight solar powered lantern that packs flat and easily pops open. It is made with recyclable material, it is water resistant and it floats. Great for camping, boating and outdoors, as well as disaster relief, emergency lighting and ambiance.

Supporting My Community: MBCouldBe and Pride 2015

June 17, 2015

Somehow on a random Wednesday I found myself wide awake at 5am. As I was lying in bed cuddling Toulouse and listening to John snore softly (it's adorable, seriously) I started thinking about community, how important it is to make the time to make your values known, and to support causes that you believe in.

This past weekend I volunteered at #MBCouldBe, a policy summit put on by Manitoba Forward. I volunteered with John and Luke Jacob, and we spent the day listening to various speakers and panel discussions and tweeting from the Manitoba Forward twitter account (as well as our own, of course).

(All of us setting up for a busy day of Tweeting.)

When I arrived I wasn't sure to expect; what sorts of people would be there? What would their views be? Was I just walking into a giant, one-sided political discussion?

What I found surprised me: I met a diverse group of individuals and speakers who were all interested in actively discussing ("actively" is putting it lightly in some cases) the ways in which Manitoba could work towards being a more successful and vibrant province. I was impressed at the variety of speakers at the event: some were obviously very centre-right, some much more liberal in their views, and the discussion that took place was positive and informative.

What impressed me the most, though, was the sheer amount of people that came out on a warm June afternoon on a Saturday, while events like Jazz Fest were going on and patios were abound, to sit in an event centre and discuss Manitoba's future.

This was important to me for several reasons, the largest of which is that as a Manitoban I was raised with a very healthy sense of self-deprecation, which I've written about before. Manitobans can be snarky and we can be cynical, especially about our own hometown and our province. We're raised with the belief that Winnipeg, and Manitoba on a larger scale, simply isn't worth the energy. Why put time into improving our local economy or starting a small business here when we can just run off to Toronto, Montreal, or Vancouver?

I used to have that mindset. Not so long ago I was dead-set on moving to Toronto, where I have some family. I was going to leave Winnipeg in my dust and make it big in Ontario. Then something changed: I took a class at the University of Winnipeg called (appropriately enough) "The History of Winnipeg" which completely changed my views.

When I started spending time getting to know the complexities of the city and the province where I grew up, I started to develop a deeper understanding of why our issues were unique, and for the rich, beautiful history we have here and the strong, creative, interesting people decide to spend their lives here. I fell head-over-heels with Winnipeg, and decided that I wanted to stay and invest my time, my business and my life to helping make it a better place.

Many Manitobans still have that negative mindset, unfortunately, but among the people that I spoke to and who participated at #MBCouldBe I didn't hear a single dissenting voice. Instead I heard a ton of local pride, and even when we discussed ways in which we could be better, it was always with hope and with a fierce sense of dedication to making Manitoba an even better place to work and to live.

--

Another way I experienced local pride this weekend was the following day, when I marched in the 2015 Pride Parade. New Media Manitoba sponsored a banner in the Pride Parade and I tweeted about it and marched with my friends in support of the LGBT community.

There were over a thousand people who showed up in costume and with banners and floats, and the outpouring of love and support for the LGBT community is what makes Pride one of my favourite annual events - I've been going since I was allowed to start taking the bus downtown from the suburbs where I grew up.

Someone once said to me "we march in the Pride Parade so that one day we don't need one." As in, by raising awareness and support got the LGBT community with the parade, eventually they hope that society will become accepting of those individuals to the point where a parade is no longer necessary. The whole point of the annual Pride week is to mobilize support for the LGBT community and to show people that there are people who support the rights and freedoms of others to express themselves and to be who they are, regardless of what (if any) gender they identify with.

--

This morning, while watching the dawn creep into my bedroom it struck me that half of showing your support is simply showing up. It's very easy to play Armchair Activist (and we all do, to some extent) but by taking the time out of our daily lives to physically show up and show support for our local communities -be they political, social, sexual, whatever- we help make the world a better place because we add our voices and our bodies to causes that matter to us.

I spent my past weekend, almost in it's entirety, lending my time and my energy to causes that I believe in and it felt amazing. It was a terrific reminder that, really, all we need to do to start making our communities a better place is show up and get involved.

Have you attended any local events in your community lately? What were they for? I'd love to hear about them!

Crowdfunding Crash Course: Tamar Swartz - Journey to Surrender

June 12, 2015

Tamar Swartz is a Canadian mixed media visual artist following her creative intuition in painting, drawing and collage. She used Indiegogo to fund her art project Journey to Surrender: The Art of Letting Go.

Can you briefly describe Journey to Surrender: The Art of Letting Go?

Journey to Surrender: The Art of Letting Go is a creative project currently being developed during a 6 month artist residency in Budapest, Hungary. It’s about following your own creative intuition and allowing a piece of art to emerge and breathe, like any living organism would. It’s about trusting yourself and embracing the creative process while releasing conceptual and intellectual approaches to art making.

Journey to Surrender is a three-part project. Part one is my own mixed media visual art practice and walking the pathways of Creative Surrender. Part two is collaborating with other artists to find Creative Surrender together. Part three is facilitating workshops for local participants to experience this form of expressive visual art making.

Once the project is complete, my experience will be integrated into the Intuitive Art workshops that I facilitate. You can read more here.

Why did you feel that the crowdfunding model was the best way to promote the project?

A large part of the project is to have other people involved and engaging with expressive mixed media visual art and Creative Surrender. Crowdfunding seemed like an obvious choice to spread the word and build momentum about realizing Journey to Surrender. Additionally, once the artist residency is completed, I will be integrating what I have learned into my Intuitive Art workshop facilitation.

Why and how did you choose Indiegogo over other crowdfunding options available?

I looked at Kickstarter as an option, but wasn’t completely sure about the all/nothing model for Journey to Surrender: It seemed like a big leap of faith.

I was also under the impression that my project would have to first be approved by Kickstarter before the campaign launches, a process that takes time. I was on a short timeline and ready to start the campaign. Indiegogo has a really easy to navigate platform and their customer service is very helpful.

How big was your budget before you launched your crowdfunding campaign?

I’m not 100% sure how to answer this question…are you asking about the financial resources that were needed to make Journey to Surrender happen, that I had before starting my campaign? If so, $0. Or, are you asking about how much money I spent building/marketing my campaign? $0 but a lot of time, energy and creativity.

How far along was your project before you felt ready to launch a crowdfunding campaign? In hindsight, would you have preferred to be farther along, or to have crowdfunded earlier?

Journey to Surrender did not officially start until I landed in Budapest, so my Indiegogo campaign was a “pre-project” campaign. Within the week that I received confirmation that my residency application was accepted, I started building my campaign. I drew on my Intuitive Art facilitating experience (2 years) and all my art from my own creative practice. It was now-or-never for me.

Can you explain how you prepared for and managed your campaign?

It took about 2 weeks building my campaign. I spent a lot of time making sure it clearly said what I wanted, adding photos that represented Intuitive Art, and designing perks at different price levels. I asked a few close friends to check it before I launched and got some valuable feedback. Also, these friends were “cheerleaders” throughout the campaign and helped me spread the word about Journey to Surrender.

I also made a timeline of my campaign and set up a schedule of when to send out invites and reminders to participate in the campaign. I was successful in not spamming people. I also made funding goal targets, which turned out to be flexible.

What tools did you use to market your campaign? Do you feel like you did so successfully, and if not, what could you have done differently?

I mostly used social media and personal social networks to market my campaign. I posted on my Facebook, Twitter and Instagram accounts. Hashtag everything!

I also sent a lot of personal emails and Facebook messages to friends, family and acquaintances who I thought would be interested in knowing about my project. I received a lot of positive feedback.

Out of all the generous contributions, only 2 were received from complete strangers. Next time I would like to know how to crack that line between friends/family/acquaintances and complete strangers.

In retrospect what were your best assets for running this successful campaign? On the other hand, what would you do differently?

My best asset for this campaign was my enthusiasm and a really compelling combination of a written pitch, images of my art and perks that were appealing. I received a lot of positive support from friends and family!

I think that having a campaign video could be fun for next time. But, I realized that for Journey to Surrender it wasn’t completely necessary.

What was your biggest challenge during your campaign?

Holding faith that it would be successful. There are days where no one contributes or seems to be talking about it, which is feels like nothing is happening. But, even on those days I had to remind myself that contributions come in waves. It was really incredible how in the last 42 hours people really rallied and funds were literally flowing in. Journey to Surrender ended up being 135% funded! There’s something about the pressure of the campaign ending that motivates people to contribute.

What’s the most valuable advice you could share with aspiring crowdfunders?

Really pour all your passion about your project into your campaign. People can feel your enthusiasm and authenticity, and will want to contribute not only to the project but to you. Be open to surprises! Sometimes the people who you expect to contribute don’t, and the people who weren’t even on your radar do. Don’t take anything personally and always always ALWAYS practice gratitude. Even the smallest contribution is important. Also, be mindful that sometimes contributions are not monetary.

This post is part of the #CrowdfundingCrashCourse series. You can find the entire series of interviews and summary posts here.

The Case for Knowledge Sharing

June 9, 2015

The other week I attended the Winnipeg Game Jam, a weekend-long event where local developers, artists and the like got together to spend a furious weekend creating an indie game together. Mostly they worked in teams, but there were also a lot of people who walked around and offered to help other teams when they had some downtime, which I thought was really interesting.

The more I thought about it, the more I felt that what I saw at the game jam was representative of the type of positive, collaborative spirit that I've discovered in Winnipeg. I frequently get the sense that "we're all in this together," and that we're all working towards common, shared goals of lifting each other up and working together towards success.

In the short time I've been involved in our community I've learned a deep appreciation for sharing knowledge and collaboration through attending events like the Winnipeg Game Jam, and with that in mind I'd like to discuss why I think sharing knowledge, experiences and resources is something that we should all strive to do.

Why should we share what we know?

First things first: I wouldn't be doing what I do without the guidance, advice and knowledge of dozens of people who happily shared it with me - over a coffee, over a glass of wine, whatever. The fact that I've been able to meet tons of helpful, knowledgeable people who have been giving with their time has allowed me to grow my business and, in turn, start helping others grow theirs as well.

As a result of these experiences and the help I've had, I've come to believe that knowledge is a powerful tool to have in your arsenal, and considering information economy in which we live, I'd argue that knowledge is more powerful when you share it than when you keep it to yourself.

Here are a few reasons why I think it's good practice to share what you know:

Sharing knowledge makes you a thought leader & an expert in your field

This is something that I've had to repeat to several of my clients who have been wary of posting blog content or articles which they fear will give their competition an advantage. Spoiler alert! Anything you know can be found with a quick Google search... but that isn't the point. By being open and giving with your knowledge people will have a greater respect for you - not just because you know what you know, but that you have the ability to articulate it and the desire to share it with others and help them.

Let's use Paul Graham as an example. For those of you not familiar with his work, Paul Graham is a programmer, venture capitalist and essayist (whose essays you should definitely read) who developed Viaweb, the first application service provider (ASP) which eventually got bought out by Yahoo! and allowed Paul to go on to found YCombinator, one of the most well-known and respected seed funds in the world.

Do thousands of entrepreneurs and businesspeople who apply to YCombinator think less of Paul Graham because he gives away his knowledge for free in essays and in meetings? Of course not. They eat up his words and try to apply his insight to their own lives and challenges, and when he speaks, they listen.

This is because people don't come to you just for your knowledge; they come to you for the judgments that you make based on that knowledge.

Sharing knowledge builds relationships

I've had a variety of coffees and hang-outs with local content-marketing types like myself where we've chatted about our various projects, struggles we're having, and how we can provide better service for our clients. I've received advice and doled it out in kind - but what's important in those interactions is that we've moved from being internet strangers to real-life acquaintances (in fact, if we're lucky maybe we can even level up to being friends, who knows?)

Everything in life is about who you know. This applies to both online and offline relationships, and if you position yourself as someone who isn't willing to take the time to help other people then it's very likely that, in turn, people won't take the time to help you.

Especially in this digital age, the more people you know and develop healthy, positive relationships with the better off you'll be. Gone are the days of lone-wolfing it and trying to alienate everyone for fear that they might use your knowledge against you; by surrounding yourself with a vibrant community and constantly working at growing your network by sharing what you know and helping one another you set yourself (and everyone you help!) up for future success.

Sharing knowledge can change the world

By working together and sharing ideas, information and experience we can make really great things happen.

Case in point: open source software. The PHP language, which powers about 60% of websites, or Wordpress, which powers about 30% are both, open-source. Huge, world-changing websites like Facebook wouldn't exist without open-source tools like PHP and MySQL. Linux, which is the open source code behind Android, powers most of the phones on the market today, and it's creator, Linus Tovald also created an open source tool called Git, which has changed the way that millions of developers work and build collaboratively.

Open source is my favourite example of the benefits of knowledge-sharing and collaboration because it hasn't resulted in mass unemployment or people losing their job prospects because they taught someone else what they knew. In fact, it's only strengthened the developer community and allowed them to make amazing things together.

Why does this matter?

It matters because the world is rapidly changing, and having a mindset of scarcity is something that, collectively, we're moving away from. People are starting to realize that there is in fact room for everyone to be successful, and by lifting each other up we all benefit from it.

I've seen it firsthand at events like the Winnipeg Game Jam, and at local events held by groups like RampUp Manitoba, Skullspace, New Media Manitoba and AssentWorks (to use a few local examples). By sharing knowledge and resources our communities are growing and flourishing, and by helping other people we become more powerful, ourselves. Giving away knowledge doesn't diminish how much of it you have, and we all benefit from a community of people (in whatever profession) who are willing to contribute and make that community the best that it can be.

Why you should share:

Know what the best part in all of this is? Helping people feels good. The feeling that you get when you do someone a favour, introduce them to someone who helps launch their career, or even give them a hand in navigating a sticky situation is so rewarding, and that person will remember you for what you did for them and will be more than willing to help you in the future.

Sure, there are exceptions to this rule -some people are just jerks- but going around assuming that everyone is trying to screw you over or waste your time is a pretty sad and lonely way to go through life, and pretty much guarantees that nobody will want to work with you once your true colours show through (and believe me, they always do).

The world is changing. Like I said at the beginning of this post: we live in an information economy, and knowledge is power - especially when you have a lot of it and share it readily. When you take the time to share what you know with people it guarantees that you will be successful in your endeavours because people will want to work with you and help you. It also guarantees that you will be more respected by your peers, more well-liked, and that you'll be a happier person overall because (and this is really the most important part, at the end of the day.)

What is the most important piece of knowledge that someone had given you? I'd love to know!

The Power of the Hashtag

June 3, 2015

In the last few years the use of the "hashtag" (the # symbol - previously called the 'Pound Sign' if you're a fossil like me and used a push-tone phone growing up) has exploded in popularity. Unless you live under a rock you've likely been bombarded with the hashtag symbol everywhere - on commercials, billboards, on social media, on clothes... these days the "hashtag" is one of the most pervasive and powerful symbols of our digital age.

Despite seeing hashtags everywhere, most people don't understand their importance or how to harness their power to help them convey their message across social media platforms. A simple hashtag can improve your reach, drive brand recognition, and easily engage in large-scale conversations online.

#Why?

If you're a business owner or someone hoping to expand their social media influence, a hashtag should be an important part of your social media strategy. This is because a fitting hashtag can help drive brand recognition, drive customer loyalty, and help spread the word about your idea or product.

A hashtag instantly connects a social media post to a group of others about the same topic, and connects the person sharing it (you) with other people talking about the same topic in real-time.

What this means is that you can include a simple hashtag in your social media post and immediately have it seen by anyone else looking for that hashtag. Here's an example using Twitter:

Above is a tweet that I just created which includes the #SocialMedia hashtag. When I tweet something that includes a hashtag, the hashtag works like a link which allows people to click on it and find other tweets relating to the same subject.

When I click through on the # link Twitter takes me to a page filled with other tweets which include a "#SocialMedia" tag. The "live" feed (people using it in real-time) looks like this:

As we can see, my #SocialMedia hashtag allows me to connect with other people who are tweeting about the same subject, and for others to find my tweet as well. Twitter also offers search options to refine what you want to see from that topic.

Hashtags first started to become commonplace on Twitter as a way to link ideas and conversations in the way that I just described, but other social platforms like Facebook and Instagram have also adopted using them as well.

#How

Even if you know why a hashtag is important, it isn't going to do you much good if you don't know how to use it effectively. In fact, when misused you can actually drive people away from your message because too many hashtags feels spammy (more on that in a second.)

Here's are some ground rules for making sure you're using hashtags to their full usefulness:

• Use the hashtag (#) before relevant words or phrases to categorize posts and help them show up in a search (like in my previous example).
• A hashtag can be included anywhere in the message - they don't have to be stuck at the beginning or at the end if you can work them into the body of your message.
• A hashtag won't appear in a search if your profiles are protected or private.

#Etiquette

Don't #spam #with #hashtags.

(via Google. I have no idea who this poor soul is)

Don't over-tag a single post. Twitter's best practices recommend no more than two per tweet, and in addition to being visually unappealing it also dilutes your message. Using too many hashtags dilutes the meaning of your message because you're trying to appeal to too many ideas at once.

An exception to this rule is Instagram, in which photos with at least eleven (yeah, 11!) hashtags get the most interaction. This is because Instagram doesn't have a character limit for captions on their photos, and because hashtags are the easiest way for its communities to connect with one another

The trick do doing this effectively, however, isn't to include a million hashtags in your original photo post, but rather to include a comment with your wall of hashtags afterward. This ensures that if you're sharing your photo on other social platforms the people seeing it there aren't bombarded with a dozen messy-looking hashtags. That way you're still able to connect with your Insta-communities, but are also saving some face on any other social networks your photos might be sharing to.

What can you do?

Pick a specific hashtag. If you want to start using hashtags to raise awareness for your product, brand or project, pick a specific hashtag and use it exclusively, or with one other hashtag in the body of your post. Make it unique, relevant to what you're talking about and easy to remember.

Start a Twitter Chat. If you're active on Twitter, another great option is to start Twitter chats using a hashtag specific to the theme you want to discuss. These chats operate like live Q&A's on Twitter which are organized around a specific hashtag. For instance, I participate in a Twitter conversation with other Canadian bloggers every week called #blogchatca - the hashtag is easy to include and remember, and allows me to find other people participating in the conversation and respond to them. By including the hashtag #blogchatca I know we're all participating in the same conversation.

Pick something obvious. Make sure that your hashtag is short, easy to remember, and (if possible) unique to whatever you're discussing. For example, this past weekend I participated in a game jam where the official hashtag was #GameJam. This is great because it's easy to remember and find, but it's a pretty widely-used hashtag because many game jams happen at the same time. As a result, many people tweeting about the game jam I attended started using #PegJam to indicate that they were at a game jam in (you guessed it) Winnipeg. This way everyone could find each other easily and see what others were sharing and discussing.

Do you have any tips on hashtag use? Anything you'd avoid doing? I'd love to hear your thoughts!