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TEDx St. John’s: Pitch by Lorne Pike

Lorne Pike — Sun, 15 Apr 2012 00:30:15 +0000

The video below is my pitch to present at TEDx St. John’s, to be held May 25, 2012.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FwX0KZYm9Fs

While it focuses on one concept in particular, it actually touches on two possible presentations:

“Not Your Father’s Adversity”

and the main presentation:

“Adrift on the Ice… Grenfell and You”

Looking at the Grenfell concept, there are three main points:

1. You will make mistakes, but you can still survive.
Grenfell made a couple of mistakes that could have been fatal — traveling alone even when urged to travel with a guide, and then taking a shortcut across the bay even when it was April and ice would be getting soft.

2. Be prepared to make sacrificial sacrifices.
Grenfell cut away his sled, abandoned the first ice floe he was on and swam in the icy water to a better one, and killed three of his dogs.

3. Build a network around you by caring for them first.
Grenfell was alone on the ice, but he was never truly alone at all. He had people on the shore who were desperately looking for them and even willing to risk their lives to save him, because he had done the same for them. Without their help, he never would have made it back to shore.

The overall tone of the presentation is fast-paced, but mixed with periods where we step back and say, “What just happened? How does that relate to us?”

In one sentence, the overall message is that you do have what it takes to overcome adversity, but the better you prepare yourself before you need to, the better you’ll be able to survive anything.

Do you have what it takes to be an entrepreneur?

Lorne Pike — Mon, 19 Mar 2012 22:38:47 +0000

EDIT: Within a few minutes of publishing this post, I received some great input from contacts on LinkedIn and Google+, as well as by Skype, email and the comments below. Thanks to each of you! I have now updated this post to reflect your suggestions, rather than have two versions floating around. So while you will now actually be reading my second draft, please still feel free to add any suggestions; I’m more than happy to write a third!

____________

I have been asked to speak at a local high school tomorrow for their Career Day. My topic… being an entrepreneur. Looking forward to it; I always enjoy giving a presentation, and the realities of being an entrepreneur definitely hit home for me, since I’ve been one since 1989.

As I’ve been getting ready, the following just kind of fell into place. This is obviously not meant to be all-inclusive; I’m just trying to give them a more rounded understanding of things to consider about being an entrepreneur.

Knowing me, I’ll change this 300 times between now and tomorrow morning, but here’s my ~~first~~ second draft, spelling crimes and all. I’d love your thoughts on this, especially if you’ve been down the entrepreneurial path…

Four important truths of being an entrepreneur

1. Your product is important.

What exactly will you sell or do as a business? What will people pay to get from you?
Your product is not just the item you sell or service you provide. It’s the feeling it gives to your customers, and the solution it gives to their problems. If you can’t give people peace of mind that you’ve solved a problem for them, you won’t keep them as customers.

2. Your customer service is importanter.

Companies with mediocre products but great service are a lot more likely to survive than companies with great products but mediocre service.
Yes, there will always be some companies that somehow do well or even thrive despite terrible service, just like there will also always be a 110 year old woman somewhere who says she stayed alive by smoking a cigar a day. But the healthy way for any of the other 99.9% of us to stay alive as a business is to take very good care of our customers.

3. Knowing your customers and what they truly want? Even more importanter.

This is where your marketing can make you or break you. You may be the best dooflickly maker in the world and have absolutely amazing service, but if no one wants a dooflicky, or doesn’t see the value in paying for yours at the price you want — or even if someone does really want one but doesn’t know you exist — you’ve got a serious problem.
You’ve got to not only be seen, but be seen favorably. People are not looking to buy your product. They are looking for whatever best meets their most pressing need. The better you can show how you can do that, the more successful your business will be.
Your customers include people you’ve never thought of. They are the people who need your care and attention at any given time. Yes, they include your actual customers, but sometimes will also include such people as your suppliers, your family, whatever association or government agency sets the regulations in your industry, and the Canada Revenue Agency (or IRS or whatever your local tax agency is called). You need to keep all these customers satisfied, so it’s important to understand who your customers truly are!

4. Your attitude and passions are importantest of all.

Are you doing this because you truly love making dooflickies, or because you figure it’s a way to make money? The more you truly love your business, the more likely you are to truly succeed at it.
Are you willing to work long and hard, but also recognize that it’s going to take time? That ability to give it all you’ve got day after day is an essential element of any entrepreneur, and one that not amount of talent or money can replace. It’s the reason why you have to be sure you love what you do, because you’ll be doing it a lot.
Are you comfortable with failure? Thomas Edison once said that he failed his way to success. It’s a great way for us all to view our failures. They’re not actually failures at all; just lessons learned. And the more comfortable we are with recognizing and maybe even embracing failures along our way as valuable learning experiences, the more likely we are to taste success in the near future.
Be prepared to deal with the unknown, and with change. A lot of it. There are few safety nets when you’re an entrepreneur, or few paths that you can follow with certainty. You will need to be comfortable with constant change if you really plan to live the entrepreneurial life. Your ability to make solid decisions with as much knowledge as you can gather — but never as much as you’d really like to have — will be a huge factor in your efforts to grow your business.
Don’t compromise the ones you love. Being an entrepreneur is a wonderfully rewarding but also long, hard road in many spots. You’ll need love and support way more than you think you will.
Don’t sell your soul. Successful entrepreneurs often talk of how they look back at times when they walked away from what seemed like a great deal, simply because that “deal” didn’t feel like the right thing to do. They often see such decisions as the best ones they ever made.Know what your standards of right and wrong are, and don’t compromise on them.

There you go… my ~~first~~ second draft of what it takes to be an entrepreneur. What points did I miss, or which ones of these seem off to you? What entrepreneurial advice would you want to share with a class of eager high school students?

How social media and the Internet improve life in Romania and here.

Lorne Pike — Sat, 17 Mar 2012 18:08:49 +0000

We are all unique. We are all the same.

Every country has its own unique challenges, yet it is striking how similar our struggles can be from community to community, country to country, and even continent to continent. The more we recognize those similarities, the better we can apply solutions that worked in one area to others. What’s happening in Romania right now is a prime example.

Paul-Andre Baran is Romania’s new Director of Biblionet, a five-year program to facilitate free access to information for Romanian citizens by fostering the development of a modern public library system in Romania. He was recently interviewed by Neelie Kroes, Vice President of the European Commission, about recent programs that have improved life for families — and women in particular — in rural Romania. Poverty is rampant in these areas, with Internet access — or even computers — simply not being available in many homes. In fact, only 50% of Romania’s population is online. To combat these challenges, local libraries were set up to be the digital hubs of their communities, and the program has been changing lives and altering centuries-old perceptions:

Farmers previously had to travel to their county capital to apply for subsidies they needed to survive and to operate their farms. A new program now allows them to apply online from a local library. The result? Some 17,000 farmers have saved over 50,000 man-days and 300,000 euros by being able to apply online locally for their subsidies.
Some two million Romanians have migrated to Italy, Spain and other countries to find work. In many cases these were parents and even both parents of children who were left in the care of grandparents or other family or friends. These families were left with no means of communicating, and the result was a rise in school dropout and suicide rates among the affected children. Biblionet partnered with agencies in Italy and Spain to arrange times when children could go to their local library to Skype with their parents. These times have been rebuilding family ties and even allowing parents to reconnect in meaningful ways, such as doing homework together.
Local librarians were taught how to help others learn basic skills such as writing and uploading a proper resume, and handling job interviews. The librarians then trained 400 people, and 32 of those trainees then got jobs within three months of the program’s start. It was estimated that, even if they all only received minimum wage, the program generated — in just those first three months — at least eight times as much money as it cost to implement.
The librarians — who are mostly women — have increasingly become known as gatekeepers and knowledge leaders in their communities, a far cry from the times when information and power were often kept from women. The fact that they now had these elements of power and were even willingly sharing them has been changing the status and respect levels in these communities for not only the librarians, but all women.

It’s an interview well worth watching, and you can see it right here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EARIEH0e4MY

As I watched, I kept remembering how a program with some similarities was implemented where I live, on Canada’s east coast in Newfoundland and Labrador. Back in 1995, in the earliest days of the Internet when few homes had access or even computers, community libraries were promoted through Industry Canada‘s Community Access Program as places for people to connect online. That increased access gave people new ways to communicate and improve their lives.

Newfoundland and Labrador has also seem a situation similar to Romania’s, where many parents have had to go looking for work in other places. The ability for those families to stay in touch through Skype, Facebook, and other platforms is helping keep family connections stronger than would ever be possible otherwise.

Perhaps most noteworthy of all, one new program, SmartForceNL, now gives every resident of Newfoundland and Labrador access to:

Thousands of free online courses on the most important workplace topics to improve their skills and career prospects;
A CoursePark Lifelong Learning Profile to share with colleagues and employers;
Career development tips and various online communities for professionals;
The ability to build their own courses and sell them to the world; and
For every business and not-for-profit, the ability to have a training solution for their staff at no cost.

SmartForceNL is a partnership between Bluedrop Performance Learning, the Newfoundland and Labrador Association of Technology Industries (NATI), and Newfoundland and Labrador’s Department of Advanced Education and Skills.

How about where you live? How are the Internet and social media in particular solving problems and improving lives?

Getting started on Twitter: 7 steps for following & being followed back.

Lorne Pike — Fri, 24 Feb 2012 20:12:39 +0000

I remember reading a book when I was way, way younger, about a puppy that wandered around meeting all sorts of other animals, and plaintively asked them, “Will you be my friend?” The other animals always seemed too busy, and so he kept going from page to page, asking the same question over and over. I just don’t remember how the story ended, but I’m guessing it was a wonderfully happy conclusion. It was, after all, a children’s book.

We’ve grown up, but many of us ask that question over and over again today in places like Twitter, not to mention Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+, and lots of other strange new places. And sadly, like in much of the adult world, we may not be finding anywhere near as many friends as we want.

If that sounds like you, don’t walk away with your tail between your legs, but don’t keep doing the same thing over and over either. If you’re having trouble, it’s no doubt for a reason. Here are seven steps to getting new followers on Twitter. Even better, here are seven steps to making new friends…

1. Know who you are.

Why are you on Twitter? What do you want to accomplish there? Meet new business contacts? Keep track of the latest news about a hobby of yours? Have a few laughs? Just see what all the fuss is about? All great answers, and Twitter should be able to help you fulfill those wishes and more. But the better you understand what you want to do, the better you’ll be able to identify the types of people you want to follow, and who are more likely to follow you back.

2. Complete your Twitter profile.

Every new profile has a picture of the Twitter egg. Your first act on Twitter should be to replace it with the picture that will come to signify you. Nothing makes you look more like a spammer than leaving this undone. Your next act should be to tell us a little something about the part of your life that best fits your reasons for being on Twitter. Just a sentence or two is all you need, but you do need them. Because you can’t really expect us to follow you when you won’t even tell us who you are.

3. Deliver some value. And be nice!

A lot of interesting things are happening on Twitter, but we’re all constantly searching for more. If you generate interesting comments or even if you just sound like a nice person, chances are good that we’ll follow you back if you follow us. If your tweets are especially interesting, there’s a good chance that others will soon be retweeting you. However, tweets like “Please follow” are virtually never welcome, and give a very poor first impression. Generate some real content and be nice to the tweeps you meet, and you’ll have trouble getting people to not follow you.

4. Use Twitter Search to find people who interest you.

This is where it’s easy to lose heart on Twitter.You’ve heard it’s a fun place with lots of things happening, but here you are staring at a blank screen with nothing happening whatsoever. Or you may be following a few people who were suggested to you, but they’re not saying much to win you over. It’s time to find the people that you want, and that’s actually quite easy to do on Twitter.

Up at the top of the Twitter screen you’ll see a search bar. Type in some words that interest you and hit Enter. You’ll see a number of recent tweets that contain the word you entered. Click on the photo or name of any of the people shown, and you’ll see more tweets from that person. If he or she seems interesting, click “Follow” and you will then see that person’s tweets whenever you are on Twitter.

For a more advanced search, just click on the cogged wheel to the right of the search field. You can then search for specific people, phrases, or hashtags, or tweets from whatever location you choose. Within just a few clicks, you should find yourself following exactly the types of conversation or people you’ve been dreaming of.

Don’t stop there though. Hold your cursor over the tweets you find interesting and click on Reply to send them a tweet of your own. Not everyone will reply back, but if you are polite and conversational, most will, and you are now well on your way to being hooked on Twitter!

5. Don’t run up your follows.

This may be the easiest mistake for beginners to make. There are lots of interesting people to follow on Twitter, and if you’re just starting out it’s tempting to start following them all. That can create problems though. Someone who is following 800 people but is only being followed back by 80 is clearly not generating enough interesting content to attract followers. The rest of us would feel it’s not likely you’ll be interesting enough for us either. So don’t rush things. Grow slowly. Build some relationships. It generates better results, and is a lot more fun for you… and the rest of us too.

6. Don’t auto-tweet and don’t auto-DM!

I know you’ll find lots of people telling you you can “turbocharge” your time on Twitter by using programs that automatically send tweets or Direct Messages to people on Twitter. It may even sound tempting and logical. In reality though, it’s a huge turnoff for lots of us, and many people will unfollow you as soon as you send them a DM, especially if you have a link tucked in there. And don’t try to make it sound all wonderful by calling your link a gift or special way of saying thanks. Talk to us in the Twitter stream; that’s more than enough thanks for us to keep following you and helping you feel right at home here on Twitter.

7. Share and reshare.

Once you’ve made a few friends on Twitter, start offering your own thoughts or links to articles that you like. If you’re a blogger or business owner, avoid the temptation to continually promote yourself. Twitter is a social event, and people are there to share and learn, not to have people push things at them. If more than one in every five of your tweets can be seen as a sales message from you, chances are good you’ll be losing followers before you know it. Just tweet and retweet things of genuine interest, and you won’t have to look hard to find new friends on Twitter.

_____________________

The best news is that you can apply these principles in virtually any social media platform — and in real life too! — and start seeing some real results pretty quickly. So take heart, and take action. And hey, if you want at least one more friend on Twitter, you’ll find me right here.

Does your company need social media?

Lorne Pike — Wed, 15 Feb 2012 23:54:46 +0000

A lot of people have been talking about social media for quite a while now. You keep hearing about Twitter and LinkedIn. You may have your own Facebook account, and even browsed through Pinterest. You can see how some of it would be interesting. But still, is there anything in all of that stuff for your company? Can social media do anything for you and your customers?

Yes, it can. Consider this. If your eyes are the window to your soul, then social media is the window to your company’s soul. People can peer in to see what’s going on inside and gain a better understanding of what makes you tick. They’ll be better able to decide whether or not they like and trust you… and want to do business with you. There’s nothing trivial about social media.

There’s more though. Just as important but often overlooked is that fact that, like any window in your office, social media lets people look in, but also lets you look out. You can learn a lot about the people who would otherwise just stroll by. If they’re on social media you can also see inside their worlds and understand their likes and dislikes. Eventually, if you’re doing it well, you can even build relationships and nurture long-term loyalties that go way beyond anything companies ever thought would be possible before social media came along.

Should you wait until you’re completely ready?

Given the importance of all this looking and learning and sharing and showing, social media is not something you want to ignore any longer. Depending upon your type and size of business and the skills you already have in-house, you may even find social media is not that big a step away from your normal communication style. The same principles of listening and responding hold true, although there will certainly be many elements and techniques to be mastered before you make the most of social media. But you certainly don’t need to know all those before you start. In fact, if you try to be “good” before you get out there, you’ll probably never reach the point where you’ll feel ready to make the leap, because the entire structure of social media is constantly changing. We’re all learning and evolving with each passing day, and that holds true for everyone from the industry experts to the smallest corner store, and the person with just one Facebook account.

When you’re starting though, be sure to resist the temptation to hand the new work down to whoever seems to have the most time to spare. Your posts and tweets will almost certainly be seen by more people than anything your executive team writes or says. Whether you really thought of it this way or not, their words will become your words in the public’s eyes. And while it’s important for you to review major initiatives and promotions, you’ll crush the momentum of your social media activity if you say you need to approve every post and tweet that goes out. You need a trusted voice that intimately understands your corporate vision. Don’t let the new kid in your office be the voice of your brand.

How much time or cost will be required?

Unfortunately there are no set guidelines. For example, a call center will often compete head-to-head with centers around the world. If a business in New York or San Francisco wants to outsource its customer service calls, it may look for possible providers on Google, Twitter, LinkedIn, or any other channel as part of their research. Within seconds they’ll be able to find plenty of centers in India, the Philippines, Latin America, and every corner of North America, as well as others within an hour’s drive of their office. In that kind of marketplace, strategic social media and SEO can turn an unknown company into one of the ones that are more easily seen, for significantly less cost than any traditional global marketing campaign could have cost. However, the level of effort required will of course be far higher than that needed for a bicycle store in St. John’s or a restaurant in Halifax.

Are there any companies that won’t derive any value from social media? Yes, certainly. For example, a corner store in a small community, with a very finite population base to serve and few or no competitors, is not likely to bring in much new local business through social media. But that’s a pretty extreme example of course. For most businesses, social media will open up new ways to build customer loyalty, bring in new customers, identify new operational and marketing ideas from other companies, and quite possibly even create opportunities to expand into new markets or market segments. Even the remote corner store mentioned previously may well find that social media will open doors for them to start exploring new markets, whether through online orders or establishing a name for themselves in new territories, just to mention two possibilities. The opportunities are as boundless as the imagination and aspirations of each business owner or employee.

Does your company need social media? It all comes down to whether or not your company wants to grow, in every sense of the word.

What’s Love got to do with Blogging?

Lorne Pike — Mon, 13 Feb 2012 13:30:00 +0000

Are you in love? In a serious, long-term relationship? Tough, ain’t it!

You’re either nodding your heart in agreement or completely offended by that comment. Of course it’s not tough when it’s going well. Nothing on Earth could possibly be sweeter than being in love and being loved in return.

But hey, the truth is in any long-term relationship there will come a few days, sooner or later, when it’s not quite as sweet as you’d like it to be. Those are the days when your relationship can see its finest moments. You dig deep to find all that’s good and true in yourself, and to help bring it out in your partner.

As much of a leap as it may seem, blogging is not much different. There will be those blissful days when your words find an appreciative audience and even — could it possibly be true?!? — positive comments at the end of your post. But there will also inevitably come, sooner or later, days when your words go unanswered, and even unheard. There will even be those dismal days when your words go unwritten, no matter how hard you try to bring them to life. Those, my friend, are the days you and your blog may either find your finest moments… or the first of your final moments.

What’s love got to do with blogging? Everything. Like any relationship, blogging will take you through the full range of emotions. Recognize that before you start. Prepare yourself for all that lies ahead, and make sure your heart understands that there will be days when it will need to soldier on without feeling much in return. After all, if the truth be told, there will be days when you yourself just don’t put as much into it as you know you should. You’ll likely be forgiven for such days in the long run, as long as you work hard to do the same in return.

Being in love and being loved by another can be one of the most wonderful experiences of your entire life. Being in love with your blog? Probably not quite so much. But hey, a blog can still be the source of a lot of pleasure, and the giver of much wisdom and character. It may even be the deliverer of new customers for you and your business. But to stick with it until that happens, you need to show some love. So tell yourself right from the start that you’re in it for the long run. You may be surprised by just how rewarding a run it can be.

Writing lesson for bloggers: two great Super Bowl stories.

Lorne Pike — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 21:18:03 +0000

In the locker rooms and stadium hallways after yesterday’s Super Bowl, some stirring stories were being told. The triumphant New York Giants were exultant after another heart-stopping comeback. It was elation beyond words.

In the locker room of the New England Patriots, the air was so thick with defeat that words could scarcely be pushed out. If you had watched the season, and especially if you had followed the teams since their last Super Bowl contest, you knew this had been a legendary match. One of the great Super Bowl games had just been played, and what happened on the field would be the stuff of chats and posts and tweets for a long time to come.

However, for those who didn’t watch the Game, or who had no interest at all in the NFL, the whole thing seemed like silliness. A waste of time. Some decried it as a barbaric match between overpaid men who should find something better to do. Just as the two teams had battled inside the stadium, in the arena of public opinion two sides would go on sparring long after the final whistle had blown and last bit of colored paper cleared away.

It’s not unlike the debate that many of us see each day in our work or our other pursuits. We have passions that run deep, and are puzzled or even horrified by those who see things another way, or who don’t see your cause as one even worth considering. If it’s your mission as a blogger or marketer to win over others to your point of view, you know that trying to change even one person’s opinion can sometimes seem hopeless. A heart is never an easy thing to sway.

That’s why, in the flurry of today’s articles about yesterday’s big game, I couldn’t help but be struck by a few writers today who bridged a gap that other writers hardly seemed to know existed. They showed a deeper side to the Super Bowl and its players and coaches. Poignant may not be a word that first comes to mind when you think of the NFL, but these writers captured poignancy and laid it bare for all of us, whether we love or loathe the game.

Take a look at these articles as two of the main players deal with the crush of defeat. Feel the emotion and look at the attention and symbolism given to so many elements that might have been so easily missed. The meeting of the opposing players in the hallways. The stone silence of the locker room. The awareness that there is a big party going on just a few rooms yet a million miles away.

Tom Brady in postgame daze of disappointment after another Super Bowl loss to the Giants

Wes Welker’s dropped pass might have sealed the Patriots’ fate, and he knew it

In my mind, these are not only great sports stories, but real lessons on how to blog; how to sway the human heart. It’s not about statistics or mightiness or power or winning. It’s about opening the soul of the reader and filling it with genuine emotion and insight. The advice has often been given that the best way to capture readers, win audiences, and build markets is not with fact but feeling. Whether buying a car or home or ticket to a ball game, we will be pulled in far more by the emotion we attach than the pure performance or specifications or statistics that may be trotted out by those who wish to win us over. For some the appeal may lie in the fun fervency of the painted faces and bellies. For others in the personal stories behind the players, and their growth through past and present victories and defeats. For others still it may be the physical endurance and outpouring onto the field with each game. As these writers and the players themselves make clear, however brutal and physical a game it may seem, football is first and foremost a game of heart and passion and caring.

As is your blog and your business.

Or at least that’s how it should be.

Getting started on Twitter: Your very, very first steps.

Lorne Pike — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 15:15:21 +0000

You’ve been hearing about Twitter for a long time now, and you’re thinking it’s finally time to make the leap. Maybe someone has suggested you should be there for business. Maybe you want to become good buddies with Ashton Kutcher. Or maybe you’re just curious. But it all seems like a bit too much to take on by yourself. You hardly even know what Twitter is, let alone how to sign up for it. If that sounds like you, you’re in the right spot. By the end of this post, you’ll not only know the basics, you’ll have your very own working Twitter account.

The Basics

First, to truly start at the beginning, let’s touch on exactly what Twitter is. If you’re familiar with people texting on their phones, then you’re familiar with Twitter. It’s just sending and receiving text messages that are no more than 140 characters in length. That may not sound like a lot, but it actually gives you plenty of room to put together a thought or two. Or three. The sentence that you are reading right now is 140 characters in length and as you can see, I’ve managed to squeeze a full 28 words into it. If u use a few shrtcuts u’ll find u can evn fit plnty mor in there! But we’ll save that for another discussion.

The first thing many people think when they hear about Twitter is, “What would I say? And what does everyone else say there? I don’t want to read about what someone is having for breakfast!” Me neither. But the topics on Twitter are as varied as they are in the rest of your day. Tweeps — that’s a nickname for anyone on Twitter — will talk about work, share great moments in their lives, be silly, ask for help on every topic imaginable, and coordinate anything from surprise parties to protests on the streets of Egypt. Single moms will share their struggles and victories. NFL and NHL and talents from every other sport imaginable will give you a glimpse of life from the sidelines or on team flights. Movie, TV and music stars will share highlights from their storybook days and their Hollywood nights. And there’s more and more and more to be found on Twitter.

One incredible aspect of the site though is the ability to not only see what others are saying, but to join right in on any discussion. Unlike Facebook or LinkedIn, anyone on Twitter can follow and talk to anyone else, unless someone has a protected account set up. Most accounts are wide open though, making Twitter the easiest way to see and be seen by some very interesting people. The key thing to remember is that everyone on Twitter can see every single thing you say there, unless you do decide to have a protected account. On Twitter, it’s all about sharing, and that open environment makes it a great place to meet new people and expand your network, but it does require you to always remember how public your words are.

Like a good board game, Twitter can be incredibly simple to play, but can also entail very complex and multi-layered strategies if you’re there for business. Don’t let the potential complexity of Twitter intimidate you though. It can be as simple and rewarding as a chat between friends, so just keep your expectations at that level for now. There will be plenty of time for learning more complex stuff as you go forward, if you ever do decide you’d like to.

Setting up a Twitter account

We’ve covered the basics, so why not actually set up your own Twitter account right now? It’s completely free, will only take a few minutes, and you can always just delete the account afterward if you decide you don’t want it. All you need is an email address that has not already been used to create a Twitter account, and enough imagination to come up with a name that will be your username.

Username?

Yep. Everyone on Twitter has a name that they chose for themselves, and no two people can have the same username. Given that there are now over 100 million people on Twitter, that means that a lot of the “good” names are gone. If you’re lucky enough to have an unusual name, you can use that or some variation of it, but you’ll probably need to think up a nickname of some sort. You can run words or numbers together to form your username, or you can separate them with an underscore, but no hyphens or other special characters are allowed.

We’ll come back to your username in a few minutes. But you’ve been wondering about this long enough. It’s time to make the surprisingly easy leap into Twitter!

Here we go. First, open up Twitter in another tab by clicking here. Got it? If for some reason it didn’t work, just open a new page or tab in your browser, type in www.twitter.com and then hit Enter. You’ll see one of several welcome screens that Twitter uses, looking something like this:

[NOTE: If someone has previously accessed Twitter on your computer or even left their account open, you may see another screen. If there is no place for you to fill in your full name, email, and password, look in the upper right corner for either a a Sign In option, or the silhouette of a head. If you see the head, click on it and pull down to Sign Out. You should now see the welcome page.]

On the right side of the page, you’ll see, “New to Twitter? Join today!” After that will be spaces for your full name, email, and the password that you’ll use whenever you sign into Twitter from now on. None of these will be the username; that comes later. So just fill in the blanks, and if you prefer not to use your real name, you can make one up for yourself. I always do recommend that people use their real names though, or at the very least a real first name that your friends will recognize. Once you’ve done all that, click on Sign Up, after which you’ll see this:

This screen lets you confirm that everything is going okay so far. You can review the name and email address you already gave, and if your password was too easy for someone to guess, Twitter will ask you to enter a better one. And below that, you’ll see the spot to enter the name you’ll use on Twitter. You’ll be able to change your username later if you want, but it’s nice to get a good one right from the start. If you come back later, you may find someone else has grabbed the one you were saving. So take a few minutes now to think of what you want your Twitter name to be. You can use uppercase or lowercase letters if you want, but they won’t make any difference. People will find you no matter which case they use to spell your name.

As an easy way out, Twitter will suggest a name based upon the real name that you gave yourself, but it’s not likely to be terribly catchy or memorable. So give it a bit more thought. You can use a pet name or as silly or mysterious a name as you want. The biggest challenge will be finding one that’s not already taken. Oh, and try to keep your Twitter name as short as possible. Even though we’ve seen you can say a lot in 140 characters, you might as well leave as many characters for your messages as possible. A long name is going to eat into how much room you’ll have for what you want to say, and will also make it harder for people to remember and type your name without an error.

Just in case you hadn’t realized it yet, you’ve probably seen lots of Twitter names already on posters, ads, business cards, Website pages, and maybe even a tattoo or two. Twitter usernames always have an “@” in front of them, with no space in between. For example, my Twitter name is @lornepike. Russian President Dmitry Medvedev’s is @MedvedevRussia, and Zooey Deschanel’s is @zooeydeschanel. Dmitry, Zooey and I don’t get together much any more, but those were good times.

Alrighty, at this point, I’ll assume you managed to come up with a username that Twitter agreed was not already used, and you’re ready to get started. I always recommend you read the Terms of Service that are there on the page. Or you may prefer to just skim through them since it’s Twitter and they already have a tenth of a billion people who have agreed to those terms. But for the record, it was recommended to you that you read them.

Done? Okay, here we go. Click on Create My Account, and you’ll be whisked to a page that will look something like this:

This gives you a preview of what your Twitter page will look like. [Hats off to Twitter. They've improved these first few steps a lot in recent years.] Click on Next and you’ll go through the first of three pages where they suggest a number of tweeps to follow. Read the examples they provide, and select five you find interesting. You can also type in some names if you have a few friends on Twitter or a favorite celebrity you want to find. Click next, and you’ll go through a couple of similar screens. If you select five each time, you’ll be following 15 people. If you want to skip any of these steps, just click Skip This Step, under the white box in the left column. But be sure to follow at least a few, or else you’ll end up with a blank screen, which is no fun, even on Twitter.

Sending your first tweet

If you’ve done everything so far, then congratulations… you’re on Twitter! Read what people are saying, and try searching for some favorite sports or entertainment stars or a few political or news people you know. Click the blue Compose New Tweet box in the upper right corner to send out your first tweet. Or click here to find and then follow me on Twitter, and feel free to send a tweet saying hello!

When you get a moment, edit your profile by adding a photo and some information to help friends recognize you when they find you. Check back here for an upcoming post, taking you step-by-step through that process. In the meantime, check out some popular Twitter terms to help make your tweeting even easier.

If you know of any friends on Twitter, let them know you’re there, and ask them to follow you. The more friends you have, the more enjoyable your time on Twitter will be.

Leave a comment below to let us know how you’re doing, and check back here for more posts on how to make the most of your time on Twitter.

Happy tweeting!

Top 50 Social Media Power Influencers. Who’s yours?

Lorne Pike — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 22:11:29 +0000

Forbes Magazine unveiled its list of The Top 50 Social Media Power Influencers just a few days ago. I find these lists worth reading for a few reasons. First and most obviously, it’s interesting to see how the industry changes from one year to the next. What new faces are there? Who is rising? Who is sliding down or has dropped off entirely? Kind of like the nerd’s version of the red carpet at the Oscars.

Fair enough. But to me, a list of the social media powerful is very different from such lists for any other industry or activity. Social media has been one of history’s greatest levelers, spreading power to the masses in a way that is completely unprecedented. Traditionally, the media and decision-makers were small groups of powerful people, and the rest of us had to do whatever we could to get noticed or be heard. We’d write releases. Perform crazy publicity stunts. Hire a PR consultant or publicist. Do our best to find or build personal connections or generate groundswell of support for our talents or our causes. It wasn’t easy.

Social media changed everything. Suddenly we didn’t need a stamp of approval from a news director or station manager. We became broadcasters in our own right, getting our messages directly to the masses. For some with great talents, that was all that was needed to shoot right to the top. For most of us, it didn’t propel us to fame, but it certainly made us more visible than we ever could have been otherwise, and opened some doors in those traditional media channels and power circles that would never have been unlocked for us without our newfound Internet presence.

Best of all, social media opened up two-way channels for each entity struggling to get noticed, not only to those media power brokers, but to the rest of the common folk who would inevitably start to clump into groups of fans or haters or those who just remained oblivious. Most of us probably don’t look at a list of top movie stars or recording artists or business leaders to see how many we’ve chatted with in the past year. We see such people as being on a different level, and somehow inherently unreachable. But social media influentials are by definition different. They made their way there by communicating and being open, so there’s just more of an expectation that they will remain open and reachable, and that they will honor the spirit of social media. And many of them do exactly that.

For many of us though, our top social media influencer is a local contact who made it seem easy, or a Facebook or Twitter connection who just seems to epitomize the way things are supposed to be on social media. They set a standard, and helped influence the way we in turn will influence those around us. They may not make the Forbes list this or any other year, but they have done more to shape our understanding of social media than any big name ever will.

So take a look at the Forbes list. How many do you recognize? How many of them have you connected with, whether online or in real life? Are there any names not there that you thought would have been? Who are the people who have influenced your understanding of social media, whether in a smaller circle or as part of a much larger group?

And how many people would think of you as their top social media influencer?