CNN's Anderson Cooper

Ever yell at people on TV? Come on, don’t lie.

Does it ever do anything? I doubt it.

Ok, maybe you’re calmer than most and just want to ask them a question. How’d that work out? It’s not too often your message actually gets to them, yet alone gets a response.

Until Twitter.

Twitter makes it possible to reach out to those who were once unreachable. Professional athletes, actors, journalists and more can now be messaged 140 characters at a time.

But this isn’t an article on the pluses and minuses of Twitter; it’s about what happens after one of these celebrities retweets you.

. . .

Late last month I was watching Anderson Cooper 360 while checking Twitter just before bed when I noticed that Anderson Cooper was responding to tweets during commercial breaks. Cool!

I looked back through his @andersoncooper Twitter feed and realized he only responded to those he could with a simple one or two word answer. Hmmm, so what should I ask him?

Nothing was coming to me. I was struggling to focus because of all the crazy political ads that were running over and over and over again.

Wait, that’s it! So I tweeted:

I watched a few more minutes until it went back to the crazy commercials. That was enough. I turned off the TV and went to bed. A few minutes later and I was nearly asleep. Then my phone buzzed. And buzzed. And buzzed. What the hell? Who’s calling me?

I picked it up and saw several Twitter notifications to @andersoncooper and myself. What just happened? Oh crap, Anderson Cooper just retweeted me to his 1.5 million followers!

In less than a minute I received over 20 replies in response to Anderson’s tweet. Over the next several hours I got 40 more! And don’t forget the 27 retweets.

In short, what happens after a celebrity retweets you? You don’t get much sleep.

Ever been retweeted by or exchanged tweets with a celebrity? Share your story in the comments!

12/22/11 Update: I changed to Embedded Tweets from static screenshots. Much cooler!

Photo credit: Al Pavangkanan

The following is an article I originally wrote for the Woodmark Times, a company newspaper distributed quarterly to 3,000-plus employees.

Tell me you know nothing about social media and I’ll quickly disagree with you.

In fact, I’ll bet most of you regularly use social media. How many of these sound familiar: LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Wikipedia, blogs or forums? They’re all under the social media umbrella.

What is social media?

Ask Google what social media is and you’ll get 131 million answers. It’s a phrase that means many things to a lot of people, but it doesn’t have to be that complicated. Quite simply, social media is the use of technology to shift communication from a one-way to a two-way street.

Amazon’s true value

Let’s look at an example you might not have thought of: Amazon.com. They are an online shopping site that sells hundreds of thousands of items at fair prices, but that’s not what sets them apart. The real value isn’t what they provide–products that buyers can find anywhere–it’s what their users provide: Reviews!

By allowing users to review products and provide feedback, true value is created for everyone involved. Amazon learns which products people like, manufacturers learn ways to improve, and potential customers learn whether or not they should buy.

Technology can’t do it all

While technology can do a lot, it can’t make decisions for us (yet!). Remember to communicate with people, not at them, both on social media and in the real world. But you already knew that.

Told you so.

What’s your definition of social media? Was Amazon a good or bad example? Let me know in the comments!

Photo credit: Jeff Milner

It’s that time of year where I relaunch DJLein.com. Last year I made the switch to Tumblr and, well, it sucked.

Not that there was anything wrong with Tumblr itself, but transitioning from WordPress left me missing a lot. So I’m back to WordPress. And I’m awfully excited.

Look for DJLein.com to be under construction for the next week or so.

Photo credit: Dirk Loop, www.dirkloop.com