Non-Book Review: Tweetdeck is Awesome!

Tweeting in TweetDeck

I like Twitter, but Tweetdeck is awesome.

I don't recall exactly how I found out about it, probably from another blog or a tweet. Basically it's Twitter, but on your terms. You customize how you want to interact with your account. I have all the posts responding to or liking my tweets, my messages, and my scheduled posts all on their own columns. The constant twitter feed, which I find overwhelming on the main site, is hidden off to the side.

And yes, the scheduled posts. When I first got on Twitter, I was all like, "I write and post all my Tweets real-time." That's fine and all, but when you're trying to manage a blog and share reviews and also post thoughtful and interesting Tweets consistently, it gets rather difficult. So yes, with Tweetdeck, I went to the dark side, as I thought of it at the time, and started scheduling things ahead of time, mostly links to my books and quotes from them.

Then about this time last year I got frisky and wrote out a slew of posts of all sorts. Not just for my books, but for some of my older non-review posts here on the blog, for things I've learned as an author, and for my take on healthy living and happiness. I wrote them all over the course of a week and then spent a weekend scheduling them to go out over the course of the rest of the year.

This experiment in scheduled Tweets actually ran out just last month. So now that it's over, was it worth it?

Yes, it was. Not only did I manage to be more present in Twitter, I got more engagement out of folks and more followers, because I wasn't just posting random stuff, I was posting regularly and according to a few pre-determined themes I thought folks would enjoy.

An unexpected bonus was the enjoyment I got out of seeing those posts come up and remembering when I wrote them. It was fun!

So, long story short. I found Tweetdeck. It's neat. I definitely recommend it to folks who like Twitter.

Go forth and Tweet!

Writing for work and fun...

Here's another legacy post from my Goodreads blog.

Writing improves the more you practice, but the type of writing and the approach you must take to write effectively varies.  Writing blog posts is much different than writing a novel, and writing training materials is much different than technical writing.  Here are a few tips I've come up with through trial, error and research.

January 26, 2013

Today, I decided to write about the various types of writing I do, including creative writing, of course. Here's the breakdown, in order of highest to lowest volume.

1. Business writing (emails, memos, standard operating procedures, etc.)

2. Instructional Writing (training materials, eLearning Courses, lesson plans)

3. Creative Writing (stories)

4. Social Writing (blogs, essays, and reviews)

As you can see, the majority of the writing I do falls into the Business and Instructional Writing categories (my day job), but I spend a great deal of time at home on the Creative and Social Writing.

Beyond Goodreads: book-based social networking

It's been awhile since I last posted about my travails as an independent author, and one of the trickiest and most time consuming activities for any author is marketing. That's why I decided to write a short blurb on a few of the book related social networks I've come across since my books were published last year.

Currently, I know of three: Goodreads, Shelfari, and LibraryThing.

So here's what I think.

Goodreads 
What I like: free, easy to use, vibrant community of active members, meeting other authors, Read to Review programs, groups, message boards, free blog, author dashboard, html tips, ability to edit reviews and blogs you've written, ability to post reading status updates, talks to Facebook, ability to follow reviews, become a fan, block people from following you, friending

Am I addicted to it: yes

What I don't like: can't save a review in progress, have to finish in one sitting, book setup as an author is a pain in the behind (worth it, but painful), you have to upload your own picture of your cover or your book has the dreary generic look