Stories about Twitter

Easy to use, not easy to make it proffesionally. There are lot of applications and small tricks making Twitter a valuable tool for marketing promotion. Even I am using this social media networking for a lot of time already, I am still far enough of the moment when I can be sure I know at least 80% about.

Time management

I am a fun of the social media from the very beginning: a Facebook account, a Twitter account, various professional networks. I tried to be a trend follower, but wanted to be among the first to see the whole evolution and the changes occurred. And there are tremendous changes, in only a couple of years, even months.

A big problem I encountered in the next month, as the 2.0 activity increased, as my professional interests as well: I need a tremendous amount of time to check, read, select, use and send further an impressive amount of information. Take for example Twitter, where the number of the persons I follow is more than 200: in 5 minutes, at 11-12 o'clock, I receive around 21 updates. Most part of the updates, are related to relevant domains: social design, writing, various political and social activities, academic information. I do speed reading, but still I need time. And perseverance to switch from a news to another, while keeping my offline schedule - including long hours of meetings, business lunches etc. When I am back, the flow of information is entering my world from all directions, so I usually need more than one hour for processing the information.

It is addictive and cutting serious chances to maintain your normal real life interaction. But, in a lot of cases, the information provided via various channels offered me tremendous help in finding new business and academic opportunities and improving my knowledge in various domains.

What to do with my time, though?

For at least two weeks I implemented a very careful system of periods dedicated to this online activities: chat, finding new opportunities, reading and forwarding articles, registering for webinars. When I am very busy during the day, I prefer to perform these operations three time the day, for 40 minutes: early in the morning, while sipping my coffee; during the lunch break; late in the evening. In between, I am trying to catch some time too for writing for various classes and book projects plus blogging - at least two hours the day - and reading - various documentations.

And, of course, at least once the week I take the freedom to refuse to stay too much connected, but going out to look for proper human inspiration.

Time management is everything, but life is everywhere.

Writing for businesses

could be more than a monotonous boring show-up of words. Good to know, good to think about this. And, I faced this situation in many cases as needed to convince my clients that trying to have open messages and interesting messages do not diminish at all the level of seriosity and the sober image of the company. Sometimes I won, sometimes not.

10 questions

for a startup or a new kind of business-therapy.

On the publishing market

The publishing marketing is becoming more and more creative and imaginative. Very well connected and fully using the tools of 2.0. While continuing to rely on the gifts of good wording and the creativity.

In fact, it is a hard task for the writers used with the classical rhythm of life. You write your piece of story, after documentation and a little meditation about what do you want to say and how and then submit your contribution to a review, according to the deadline set.

The last day I went through a different experience, as I found, thanks to a friend, the call for submissions posted by 48 Hour Magazine. First, I impatiently waited the announcement of the subject. Checking the Twitter account, trying to figure out what the main topic will be while watching some videos posted on the website. The whole process of submission, editing and sending to print is taking 48 hour. From time to time, the editors aired live webcams with the atmosphere from the editing desk, suggestive videos about what the work is going on, announcement about what to do - and not, messages about the level of interests. All you have to do is to be creative, a very organised mind and perseverent in sharing your ideas.

Even I do not have any idea about the chances to succeed in getting published, this latest writing experience was extremely interesting and challenging for me. And made me think about what I want to write and how. And, not less important, the feeling of being happy to be part of this new world of creative publishers.

Self-helping books

or a long period of time I considered the self-help book and, in general, the publications aiming to make you happier and shining and more peaceful with a huge distrust. What profession is this, to help people to smile, to be themselves, to be happy? In fact, everybody wants to be like this, but what you cannot solve is the unpredictable and unfriendly environment. In conclusion, these self-help whatever are not to be taken into account, as their efficiency and professionalism is closer to the daily horoscopes.

It was a long time ago, more than 10 years, at a very beginning of my personal observation process of the human relations. Working in a very personalized environment as it is the case with the journalistic one, it was not necessarily a need to be too careful with the management of human resources. Journalists are supposed to be, by their professional definition, bold, mean, indifferent to what other people say. But, as I upgraded my level from a simple reporter to a middle executive, if these people do not understand the reason of being connected and coordinating with the others, their news could be a wonderful story, but without relevance for what the daily organisation of the newspaper. Hence, the need to create good communications links and to let people understand the necessity to be aware of the nonconflictual tools which could be used in relation with the others.

After these experiences, I continued to face various problems related to human resources distribution: people unhappy with their work because unable to go beyond their own limits, people unable to identify their potential in order to find the right place for outlining their capacities, people in a permanent conflictual competition with the others, but in the impossibility to realize that the most important problem relies in themselves.

With other words, the industry of self-help and coaching books is not a simple industry, but it is answering practical needs following the dramatic changes from the last years regarding our working environments, economic incertainties and outbursts of new communication tools. And I started to read several books about how to better improve ourselves, by a careful - almost scientifical - evaluation of our own resources and I also started to write one, about how to better communicate in and between institutions.

The practical experience is always the best key to create the opportunities for change and improvement. Of ourselves and of our environments. A new section in this blog will be dedicated to this books and articles dealing with how to communicate with ourselves, not only for the purpose of our very urgent commercial projects.

Quality and quantity and quality and quantity

I've intensively been busy the last days with reading and getting as much as possible information about the "global" writing market. More precisely, looked after blogs of writers and about writing and style and literature online. From tweet posts to various blogs and online literary agents. One interest is purely personal and direct, as I am preparing to reshape my career in literature writing, with some children books I am planning to finish in the coming months - the illustrations included. Another interest is related to the profession of writing and the ways in which Internet could be used to address this kind of questions, not always involving a very public side. You could write for yourself and the idea of sharing to anonymous eyes your writings is for some a voyeurism not wholeheartely accepted.

Hope to be able to follow some of the advices I've found out and to put into practice a couple of the ideas I went through this intensive reading. As I hope to improve considerably my writing skills.

As for the market, I have a very banal conclusion: the opportunities are impressive and the choices huge. Writing is an ovewhelmingly global trend and the area of subjects covered is enormous. What does it makes the difference? The quality of the words from a sentence, of the sentences from the paragraph, of the paragraphs of a post. In other words, the survival of the best.