I just recently had my one-year anniversary on Twitter. At the risk of copying my friend @DannyBrown who has a series of “Ten in 2010″ posts, one of which I made the list (thanks to my extensive lobbying and a rather substantial sum of money) I felt the urge to come up with a list of ten people I would like to meet at a “tweet-up” in 2010. Most of these people have supported us from the beginning and others I would just like to get to know. Without further ado, here is my list in no particular order of relevance.
1) @OKE_News Menachem works tirelessly for the benefit of underprivileged children. If you haven’t met him check out his profile and his web site. He’s the only guy I know who tweets harder than I do.
2) @ThirstAidLive Denise and her whole family are always planning fund raisers. Big fund raisers — for other people. This year she was hit by that huge flood in Atlanta and lost her house. Sometimes life can be very unfair. She is now organizing a flood relief concert for her community that was so devastated. I hope we can pick up again where we left off real soon as we had plans to work together.
3) @JohnHaydon@JoeWaters – This is a “two-fer” since where you find one the other one is standing right beside him. John is a model of how to be in social media, always helping and supporting other people and has been a great champion for Kids Are Heroes. Joe is his sidekick and quite frankly I don’t remember what he does. But I heard he is fun to have around at parties. ;)
4) @DannyBrown started the #12for12k effort. If you are not familiar with it check out his web site and learn about it. This movement is a great demonstration of the power of social media if you know how to interact with it properly. In addition to that it is helping people all over the world.
5) @PoulinGail is a kindergarten teacher from Southampton Massachusetts who reads a different story from the Kids Are Heroes web site to her class each and every day. How I know this is because they post shout-outs to one of the heroes after they have read the story. Each time I see this I am extremely encouraged as this is exactly what the web site is designed for. She even got the class together and collected socks for the homeless emulating one of our heroes. I just wish we had a thousand other teachers just like her.
6) @RichardBranson doesn’t really tweet to me but if you know anything about how Kids Are Heroes got started you’d know that he was a major influence. Coincidentally in March of 2009 we entered a contest sponsored by Sir Richard and thanks to the Kids Are Heroes fans we won! In the month of June our video pitch was played on Virgin Atlantic planes for the entire month. I am one who is never star-struck, but this is one “celebrity” I would surely like to meet.
7) @AARprotectkids is run by Zephora Haddon. She has been watching us from the start and has generously included us in her fund raising activities. Her Amber Alert registry business is growing impressively which only helps us because as more people sign on and select Kids Are Heroes as a charity the more support we get.
8) @hiannie is my friend from Singapore. Among other things she teaches Mandarin Chinese online. She is also just a really good person who I could learn so much from besides a different language.
9) @TheElders I have never met any of these people but would humbled to meet just one. This was the group started by Richard Branson and Peter Gabriel (who by the way is not on Twitter otherwise I would add him to this list). This group of “elders” with the likes of Desmond Tutu, Jimmy Carter and Nelson Mandela go out to troubled areas on our planet and try to help resolve difficult issues in a peaceful manner thus saving thousands of lives. I would just love to be a fly on the wall during one of their strategy meetings.
10) Kids Are Heroes List - I know I am cheating but I would really love to meet all the kids on the Kids Are Heroes web site (now approaching 100) and their parents as well. (I guess I need a bigger hall to rent for this tweet-up.) Our lives have been so enriched since we started this venture and it is all because of these children. My sister came down for the second annual Kids Are Heroes Day in October and when the “after-party” was over she told me specifically, “I met some very special people today.” This sums it up very nicely and I couldn’t agree more.
I know I said “top ten” but they are my rules and sometimes I like to break them.
11) @SueScheff is the author of the “Google Bomb!” book which is an eye-opener when it comes to what can happen to one’s reputation if someone smears it online. She is also a champion of teens and helps parents deal with sensitive subject matters regarding teens. She is also a great Kids Are Heroes supporter and has been for a long time.
12) My Colorado Peeps: @DaveWebb@EricRodwell and @MiloGirly I lived in Boulder Colorado for three months a little over ten years ago. I had just gotten a job and three days later I was told I was shipping out. Certainly there are worse places to be so I lucked out in that department. I have traveled all over the US and Canada and if I had to live anywhere other than Frederick, MD it would be in Colorado. I loved the climate, the scenery and mostly the people. Dave, Eric and Kyra are all great examples of those people.
So this is my ultimate tweet-up. For those of you who feel left out, you can come too. I’m sure I missed some real gems, so you can let me have it in the comments section and I will somehow try and make amends.
Guess what I got for Christmas? Yep – the Droid. Like many things it prompted a blog post, so if you are thinking about getting one, I hope this helps you.
I must preface this “review” with a few caveats. I don’t pretend to be an expert on anything, or a professional reviewer, but from a user’s point of view I think I have a lot to offer, especially since I am a computer nerd and can handle technical things. I also have noticed that part of my decision revolved around reading other reviews, and many of them were influenced by personal allegiances. Many people who buy one or the other (iPhone or Droid) don’t want to admit they made a mistake. I will do my best to be as objective as possible, especially since I have till tomorrow to take it back without penalty. Update 01/02/10: Read this but keep in mind had I read the “Getting Started” pamphlet in full before I let myself loose on my phone I would have had fewer bumps along the way. I highly suggest that if you have a new Droid that you be a tad more patient than I was. :)
Why I Chose Droid
When I first looked at the iPhone I LOVED it! It is sleek, pretty and the interface is wonderful. However, when I tried to use the keyboard that was an absolute show stopper for me. My fat fingers were constantly looking for the backspace key. It has no other keyboard so that was it – no iPhone for me. It also didn’t help that I was already with Verizon and would have to pay to get out of my contract. But that is up in April and I am a patient person. If the iPhone was right for me I would have waited. I even went back a few months later to see if my fingers got any “slimmer”. Nope – I was still having the same problems. I had also heard from many iPhone users how bad AT&T was. “I hate the dropped calls” many people told me. This to me is not just a knock against the iPhone. It is a huge reason not to get it. It’s like saying, “I got this new car today — the leather seats are beautiful and the stereo system is unmatched. Unfortunately it stalls out on me a lot.” This reason alone would prevent me from buying one until they fixed this issue. Remember that this is a phone and if the phone part doesn’t work then I don’t see much sense in getting it.
Then I heard about the Droid. It was supposedly the first real competition to the iPhone that Verizon had. That interested me because I am happy with Verizon’s network. I did a bunch of reading when it first came out. It had all kinds of glitches — the largest one seemed to be in the camera. Due to some very strange bug the auto-focus wouldn’t work on certain days of the month. Then all of a sudden the issue would clear itself up. I waited and watched and then heard about the patch that was sent out to fix this issue. So maybe the phone was ready for me, or I for it. And besides, it has a navigation appliucation that gives turn-by-turn directions and it’s free.
The Purchase
I went to two places to test it out. I was pleased to learn that I could use the keyboard right out of the gate with no problems. The second time I went I knew I was going to buy it. Neither salesman knew about the camera glitch which was scary to me. Either they are uninformed about their own product or are hiding that among other things. The first salesman showed me the things he liked about it which were OK I guess. He liked the video and that did seem to be pretty good. I realized that the device had so many features I had to take it home and try it myself to see if it was worth it or not. Oh and by the way. If a Droid salesperson tries to sell you a plastic film screen protector for ten bucks, show him this:
The Experience
So from here on I am going to tell you my impressions, both good and bad, about the device, reminding you that I am not a technical device reviewer. As a matter of fact this is my first touch screen smart phone, so some of my missteps might have been due to lack of experience. Hopefully that will give you a better snapshot (sorry for the pun) for yourself.
My overall impression of the Droid so far is that it is a bit kludgy and is still so new that all the bugs haven’t been worked out yet. There are a lot of neat things about it, and will probably be an excellent choice in a year from now. Whether or not I put up with its idiosyncracies and lack of app support remains to be seen. Here are my impressions of the things I have worked with so far:
We have had several “featured hero” segments, but this is the first time we have conducted an interview. Many of the children on the Kids Are Heroes web site are younger, but Riley is a bit older and what she has accomplished is no less than amazing. She has a movement called “Breaking the Chain” that has the “goal of breaking the bonds of illiteracy and poverty for children around the world.” She is also a young writer of children’s books donating some of the proceeds to her literacy programs. Here is her profile on the Kids Are Heroes web site.
What does Breaking the Chain represent to you and how did it get started?
I am passionate about promoting global literacy because I believe that the way to help people, especially children, break the cycle of poverty and exploitation is through literacy.
I created my nonprofit for literacy, Breaking the Chain, when I was fourteen, after learning that there are 120 million children around the world don’t have the opportunity get an education and that there are 800 million adults that cannot read or write, two-thirds of whom are women. These women and children are very vulnerable to exploitation. They are unable to get jobs and they cannot feed or clothe themselves. Only through education do they have the opportunity to make their lives better.
The mission of Breaking the Chain try to eliminate the bonds of poverty and illiteracy for children and their communities through education and sustainable development, both domestically and internationally. Building schools in places where the government cannot or will not build schools for their citizens seemed like a good place to begin. I adopted two villages in Africa, one in Kenya and one in Sierra Leone; I was able to raise enough money to build a school for each village, and to provide both villages with a water purification system. I’ve also created a children’s literacy center at a women’s shelter in Colorado, and bought over 1000 new children’s books for Reach Out and Read and The Heart of America Foundation.
This year, Breaking the Chain achieved tax-exempt status and my older brother, Nick, who is twenty, joined me (I wasn’t old enough to sit on the Board of Directors or to file the paperwork with the IRS).
How do you decide which new projects to take on?
The two most important factors in the decision-making process about what projects to take on are: first, how many kids will be impacted by what we do, and second, how significant the impact is.
I think that each of the projects that I have undertaken for my program Breaking the Chain will have a significant impact on illiteracy, and therefore, on poverty and the exploitation of children.
I believe that the two schools that I built in Africa will change the lives of the children in those villages for many generations. I was incredibly excited when I received pictures of the school and the children of my adopted village in Kenya. The children’s faces were so full of joy and hope that I knew that my efforts would impact those children, and generations of children, for the rest of their lives! They now have the opportunity to live a life full of options, rather than a life of desperation. The privilege of receiving an education and having access to clean drinking water was something I had always taken for granted, just as most Americans do, and yet, seventy-five million children worldwide between the ages of six and fourteen are denied basic education, and one in every five children does not have access to clean drinking water. I believe that I changed those statistics for two villages in Africa. I am looking forward to receiving pictures of the new school in Sierra Leone and of the children who will attend the school.
I also believe that the literacy center at the women’s shelter will impact many children, since the mothers and their children stay at the shelter during a very pivotal time in their lives. The children have suffered enormously and are often frightened or angry, or both. The room offers a place where they can feel safe, and it offers books and learning as a joyful means to escape a difficult situation. I believe that the literacy center will help reading and learning take on a special meaning for the many children who pass through the shelter.
I believe that supporting programs like Reach Out and Read, since the program has had significant impact on increasing literacy in low income areas throughout the United States, and because it prevents children from slipping through the education system before they even begin school. Studies have shown that exposing children to the wonder of books at a very young age and throughout childhood dramatically increases literacy. The most important asset that the program has is books, so I believe that by providing books to this program I have directly impacted as many children as there were books given.
I am really excited about our new projects this year. We have adopted another village in Sierra Leone, and will provide the funds to build a school and a water purification system there. We are also developing a domestic program which I think can have a direct affect on kids in the United States. It’s more difficult to dramatically impact children’s literacy in the United States because we already have schools in place, but many schools in the U.S. have very low reading proficiency rates. We can potentially have a significant impact on those kids. We hope to have that program in place within the next month or two.
It seems that you are very successful in raising funds for your various projects. To what would you attribute that success?
I think the two things that have most helped us raise funds are that I am very persistent and that I use a variety of ways to raise money. We’ve sold t-shirts, sent letters out to the community, and a number of other activities.
Here’s a related question how do you spread the word?
Initially, I spread the word by twice showing a video presentation during school assembly at my high school and by writing letters. Now, I have written six books and the first book of the five-book series had been published, so I have been speaking at schools around the country to 4-8 graders. I talk to them about writing and about literacy, and then I try to inspire them to reach out and help others.
What drives you to continue to do this? Will you continue your work throughout your adult years?
I continue to do this because I believe my efforts are making a significant difference in the lives of hundreds of children, and because I really believe that one person really can make a difference in the world. I plan to continue to combat illiteracy and poverty throughout my adult years – how could I ever stop reaching out when I know that I can make a significant impact?
What would you envision your organization doing in 5 years from now?
I envision Breaking the Chain continuing to combat illiteracy and poverty for children through education in much the same way it is now, but perhaps on a larger scale.
What have you learned from doing this? How has it affected you as a person?
The most important thing I learned from my volunteer work is that one person can make a significant difference in the lives of many people. I think that we too often feel overwhelmed by the problems in the world and we throw up our hands in defeat, but if each of us were to set our mind to doing something, we really could change the world. I would encourage other young people to find something that you believe in and go out there and make it happen. There will be times when it is difficult to accomplish your goals, but if you persevere you really can change the world.
What’s the first thing you think of when you think of social media? Is it connecting with others? Maybe. But why are you doing this? Do you need more friends? Would you really have time for all the people you connect with on a regular basis in real life? I think the main reason many of us engage in social media is that we are promoting something. I make no bones about the fact that I do this to promote Kids Are Heroes. Would I drop out of it if all of a sudden Kids Are Heroes ended abruptly? Maybe not, but I can guarantee you I would not be doing it as much. Don’t get me wrong — the “social” part of this makes it fun and I honestly do consider many of my connections strong ones. I do think there may be people who do this just for fun, but more of us do it to promote something, whether it be business, charity or something else. Is that bad? I don’t think so. However it is how you promote things that can directly affect your success.
To date I have been treating Twitter and Facebook mainly as promotional/networking tools. They are indeed a great way to get the word out about something. But lately I have found another great use for social media. I have always known about it, but for whatever reason am more aware of it now that I have been using it more for this purpose. That is, learning. This is true especially for Twitter. I have learned a lot lately from one of my Twitter colleagues whose name is @JohnHaydon. His videos have taught me how to “trick out” my Facebook page, and I discovered ClickToTweet through him among other things. I just signed up for his “31 Day Challenge: Optimize Your Blog For Social Media” which starts in January as this is a topic I am focusing on right now. I look forward to discovering more new tricks.
When we started our Kids Are Heroes venture the web site was it. Period. KidsAreHeroes.com was the entire effort. Then we branched out into social media and all of a sudden we had a blog site that supported it. Now we also have a Twitter, Facebook and Youtube presence among other things. I now look upon it as one big package. It all has the same message to get kids involved in philanthropy and we try to work on each individual spoke of the wheel to make it better. Take SEO for instance (for you ankle-biters that’s ‘Search Engine Optimization’). I know a little bit about it, but want to know more. I want people to have the best chance of finding our web site or blog when I’m not there to direct them. So what do I do? I use TweepSearch and search for “SEO” in people’s profiles. This is a wonderful tool to discover people from all walks of life. I can then subscribe to their blog to learn more or even ask them direct questions.
Another obvious way to learn is to just ask. I have a social media training session coming up and I lack in one area as I do not update Twitter with my phone. I know how to do it, just don’t have much sense of what tools are being used and which are more popular. By sending out one tweet I found that ‘Tweetie 2′ for the iPhone is a big one, and also came across a great resource to discover Twitter apps. OneForty.com is a new web site developed by my old Twitter friend @Pistachio. (You can also follow @oneforty). If you click on iPhone you will get a list of Twitter apps designed for it.
It is great to know that people are so generous with their knowledge. Google’s results can be so overwhelming sometimes. And for the record I do like to pass on what I learn and give back too. See a catalog of my posts on Twitter.
This morning when I checked my Twitter feed I came across a particularly interesting question from my friend Eri. She asked me “What is your exciting plan for next year?”
Wow. What a great question. It’s not as if I haven’t thought about it, it’s just that noone has ever asked me that question before. I know that when you write things down more ideas come flowing out, so I decided to write a blog post about it.
Kids Are Heroes began in March of 2008, so we are just finishing up our second year. During that time we have featured close to 100 kids, had two Kids Are Heroes Days and been on Virgin Atlantic planes for one month, thanks to Sir Richard Branson. We have also created our first major project where we plan to involve kids from all over. I am happy with our progress, especially since we have become involved with social media. But at the moment we are still very small with big plans.
It is hard to develop exact timetables, especially when I know that there are so many unknowns. A lot of what we do will depend on what kind of financial help we can get. We are lucky to have a few business partners who support us but I would sure love to get a bunch more. :) Having said that plans are meant to be flexible, so let me at least speak to what we would like to do.
Drill our first well with the help of kids out there who don’t have their own project. We still want to encourage kids to follow their own passions, but also want to offer an alternative. This will be done through Project KAH2O.
Develop other projects so kids can select among them.
Secure our 501c3 status.
Finish our business plan (will it ever be finished?).
Provide funding for more kids to attend Kids Are Heroes Day in October.
Feature at least 150 more kids.
Start to provide web site development to help jump-start kids’ projects.
Develop materials that can be sent to schools. This will include a video (already produced) explaining what we do at Kids Are Heroes along with added resources.
Achieve mentions in several national media outlets.
Start to travel the country to spead the word.
We have felt from the beginning that Kids Are Heroes is something that works in every community and hope it will eventually become a household word. Just the other night my 11-year-old daughter MaryMargaret received an email from a 12-year-old girl named Lily. She is just getting started in her project to “help the world in its desperate struggle to stop the pollution and clean up our mess.” She noted that MaryMargaret “had some experience” and could she “give me some advice”. This is another role we really hope to develop — to help nurture kids’ ideas and help them maintain their focus so they can follow through with their projects. You bet we are following up with Lily and watching her progress.
So, I welcome the next year and hope we can indeed accomplish many of those things. One thing I am sure of, we will certainly be writing about it along the way!
I have been working on something that I’m pretty excited about. I have a social media seminar coming up next week that I have been planning for a while. I figured I’d better be organized so I started with an agenda. I thought that it might be cool if I provided an electronic document that linked the subjects to corresponding posts that I have written. I’ve been writing about Twitter for less than a year so one would think that would be rather simple. Maybe it’s the Wordpress theme I am using, but it wasn’t too easy to pinpoint exact posts from a while ago, let alone browse through them.
I ended up creating a new page that I call the guide to my social media posts. (You can also access it at the top of the page by clicking “directory” on the menu.) This was a pain to create, but I think that it may be very helpful to people. It lists the topic, title and excerpt in the order that I prescribed.
Update 12/12/09: I was so happy with this method of organization that I went ahead and classified many of my other posts the same way. Now when you click on “Directory” you get a listing of all the Kids Are Heroes related posts, and then can branch off to the Twitter and Facebook related ones. For now that should suffice, since these are the main topics I focus on.
Ideally there is a Wordpress plug-in to do this, and my friend and guru @DannyBrown suggested I try a plug-in called “In-Series“. This appears that it may be able to accomplish what I am doing, but I liked what I had set up and I know I have ultimate control over how it looks, the order and sections each post belongs in, and ultimately which posts make the directory. I also didn’t see a working example anywhere which would have been nice. Maybe someone knows of one?
Anyway I think this is an excellent way of providing readers a quick way of perusing all of our material, allowing them to easily choose what interests them. What do you all think?
A lot of people have been asking me how I did this, so here goes. I fully admit I am just getting started with this sort of thing and hope to learn (and share) how to enhance both my Facebook page and my blog functionality.
I try to learn from the best. I will say that my friend John Haydon got me started with all this stuff. The idea is that you want your FB page to stand out from others.
Let’s start with the avatar. As you can see, mine is a bit different. Facebook will let you display one that is maximum 200 pixels wide and 600 pixels in length. I did two things to be different. I took advantage of that size, and also made it appear that the top part has an invisible background. To do that, I copied the color of the Facebook background and used that as the background of my image. This piece is 51 pixels high. The color in RGB (red, green and blue) is 237, 239, and 244 respectively or #edeff4 in hex or html color. (This assumes you have some experience working with colors in Photoshop or a similar graphics program.) Below that there is one line that is 1 pixel high and its color is 188, 221, 236 or #bcddec. The only caveat with that is that the same avatar (or at least a portion thereof) is used to preface each update you have so there has to be a portion of your picture that works for this too. To select the crop area, click on the main image once you have it installed, select “Change Profile Picture” then drag the image to adjust the Thumbnail version. Make sure you save your changes. Most people recommend a 200×200 image so that the representation is the same in both areas.
Next is the Navigation bar to the left. I call it on my page “Other Stuff”. Rather that reinvent the wheel I will point you to where I first learned how to do this and that is from the aforementioned John Haydon. His post “How to Add an Interactive Sidebar” was extremely helpful to me. This is an instructional video that you will want to bookmark. (NB: John is a rocker so beware of a bit of music to start the video.) I started by doing almost exactly what John did. Later I wanted a bit more pizazz so I used images rather than simple links. This is all a function of the embedded HTML. The one thing to note here is the name of the application used here is called “Static FBML”. This inherently means that you cannot use Javascript, PHP or anything else to make it more dynamic. I would have changed the pictures when the mouse hovers over them like I do on my regular web site if I had that capability.
In a lot of my research I discovered that many people recommend a different “landing page” for fan pages. That is, when people who are not fans go to your page they are treated with something totally different than just a disjointed conversation on your wall. So I created my “Welcome!” page. It gets added to Facebook exactly the same way that we did with John’s navigation bar, with the single difference that towards the end you do not remove it from the Tabs, you remove it from the Boxes. Then you can simply drag the tab laterally to wherever you want it in the food chain. To set your default landing page, from your Fan page go to Edit Page, then Settings. Edit Wall Settings and change the “Default Landing Tab for Everyone Else” to your new page. You are done.
As far as the HTML is concerned, I created a page 540 pixels wide. Again, you cannot have too many bells and whistles because by definition it is “Static FBML”, but you can brand it to make it look like yours. Feel free to ask questions in the comments section and I will gladly answer them if I am able. Good luck!
P.S. Here is another gem for Fan page people. If you have at least 25 fans you can get your own “Vanity URL” (i.e. http://facebook.com/KidsAreHeroes). This number was reduced from originally 1000 then 100. It is SO MUCH easier to promote when you have your own url. To get one simply visit http://www.facebook.com/username/.
UPDATE 12/15/09: Just when you think you are ahead of the game… I just discovered that Facebook is planning a series of “improvements” to their site in the next few weeks. One of which is that they are removing the “Boxes” concept. What that basically means is if you create a Navigation Bar as described above, it will vanish when they implement those changes. The avatar and landing page concepts are still valid. Watch my blog for a replacement method once this happens. Dontcha just love progress??
It just seems inevitable that I start to write about Facebook. Even though six months ago I was telling people I was strictly a Twitter person, only keeping up an outpost on Facebook, I have become much more involved with it since then. I totally agree with those who are tired of all the “gurus”, many of them being far from it, so I of course do not claim to be one. But being a software developer I have a keen interest in learning the technical concepts and using them to our benefit.
Bear with me because I am still learning. I have delved into Wordpress a bit lately as well. You may see some FB and Twitter plug-ins here on my blog and I finally understand how to get the blog to do what I want for the most part. This kind of stuff is fun for me. So what I plan to do is talk about some differences between Facebook and Twitter in this post, and follow up with a technical “how-to” post regarding Fan pages as I have been getting requests to do just that.
When I originally asked my friend Bob about how to best spread the word about Kids Are Heroes, he did not hesitate to reply “Facebook and Twitter”. So I started an account on both platforms. Immediately I saw quite a difference. I find Facebook to be much more personal as people tell intimate details of their lives and post their family pictures. I did not want everyone to “friend” me. I didn’t feel it was appropriate. Then I started a Kids Are Heroes group. That’s the ticket, I thought. My nephew told all his friends to join and before you know it I had over 200 members. The problem was I was the only one writing anything. There was no participation. I had the ability to message everyone, but being a person who hates to be bugged that way I hardly ever used that capability.
Twitter on the other hand was entirely different. It seemed to be a much easier way to connect with people. There are several ways to find those that share your interests. WeFollow.com and TweepSearch.com are just a couple. Follow people and voilà, they more often than not follow you back. Strike up a conversation and you are on your way to making a connection. All of a sudden guess what? I was actually starting to get comments on my blog. The number of Twitter ”followers” was increasing much quicker than the number of Facebook “friends” or group members. So I focused most of my efforts on Twitter.
I’m not saying you can’t use Facebook in the same way — many people are far quicker to “friend” others than I am. For some reason I was less comfortable with that.
Then along came the Facebook Fan pages. At first I didn’t pay much attention to them until I “fanned” one or two pages. Wait a minute — the updates go to my wall automatically! Very “Twitteresque” I thought. When I realized this I immediately dropped the group and started a fan page. I messaged everyone in the group to come over and a good portion of them did. I was left with a hundred and some fans and more fans were just trickling in. Ok, I thought — just like everything else regarding social media, this isn’t going to happen overnight. Patience is the best virtue you can have when it comes to things like this. So I hunkered down and kept up both my Twitter account and my Facebook fan page equally. I tweet more than I update my FB status, only because I have a sense that people don’t want to fan pages to clutter up their walls all day. I may be wrong — this is just a gut feeling. So I make sure I have at least a couple of updates a day on my fan page and tweet whenever the urge comes over me.
The Fan Chart
As you can see by this chart, things got started in late July and the numbers crept up ever so slightly over time. Then you can see a big jump in fans in November. Ironically, this was a result of me going against my own principles. (Kind of like George in the Seinfeld episode where he does the opposite of what he normally does and eeverything works out for him.) If you have been keeping up with my blog, you will know that I try and follow my own rules of social media and I also sort of preach them. I often say do not ask for votes or ask people to follow or fan you. I still go by those rules, but I also admittedly break them from time to time. I just went through my status updates and found this posted on November 18: “Hmmm… Wondering what would happen if all fans of this page suggested it to their friends. ;)”. This is totally against what I tell people to do. “Patience is so important”, I say. “Rome wasn’t built in a day!” Well my friend Eri (who is also a Twitter friend) did just that. She suggested my page. So did Amy. Neither of them have their number of friends listed on their profiles, but let me tell you they have a lot. Eri is from Indonesia and as a result Jakarta ranks as the top city of fans with 83. Chicago, where Amy comes from, ranks 3rd with 31. So as of this writing I have close to 1300 fans. To some that might be a lot — to others that’s chump change. But I will say that this is one of the biggest differences I have seen between Facebook and Twitter. I get #followfriday recommendations on Twitter every week and they never amount to an onrush of followers. As a matter of fact, the additional followers are negligible. Since I put out that FB request my fans have increased by 400%.
So what does all this mean? As of this writing we have 1289 fans and 16,403 followers. Do these numbers mean anything? Not really. It’s the amount of interaction you receive that’s important. Dialog is what you want on both platforms. Connections – even making new friends is what this should be all about.
So getting back to the main topic, which aims to list differences between Twitter and Facebook, I will relay a few gems as they have applied to us.
1) You are much more vulnerable to spammers on Twitter than in Facebook. This is truly a drawback in my eyes. 2) Followers seem to be much easier to get that fans. The difference here is that fans are there because they truly have an interest in what you have to offer. Followers, at least some of them, are more interested in getting you interested in them. 3) It is much easier to have a conversation in almost real time on Twitter. 4) You are born with a “vanity url” on Twitter. Facebook requires at least 25 fans to get this. It used to be much more, so now it’s not as bad as it used to be. Vanity URLs, like http://facebook.com/KidsAreHeroes, are much easier to send out and put on business cards, etc. 5) Twitter seems to have a lot more applications that replace the native web interface. Seismic Desktop, Tweetdeck and others offer an alternative to viewing and interacting with your tweets. As an afterthought seemingly, Tweetdeck now allows you to read and update your Facebook page, but at this time doesn’t seem to have any way to access your fan page. Tweetdeck is the only one I have experience with, so I may be wrong on this. But the convenience of not having to refresh the browser every time is nice. 6) For fan pages at least, at least so far for me, fans mostly react off of what we write as opposed to posting original material. Many fan pages don’t even want you to post original stuff for fear that the other fans will be subjected to spam of that the message might somehow become diluted. At this point I haven’t experienced that so it’s totally all right if fans start up a conversation, as long as it is related to the theme. On Twitter most of the posts are written by others. You select those that interest you and interact with them. 7) Twitter makes it much easier for you find new people and to get to know them, at least at a basic level, before you decide to follow them. Even if their tweets are protected you can see their profile, where they live and what they say about themselves if they have filled out that info. If they are not protected you can see all their tweets and get a good sense if you might have a chance for a connection. Facebook doesn’t allow for that.
8) Facebook has a better capability to be a hub for your company. In a Twitter profile you are able to provide one hyperlink that will actually go somewhere. With a little trickery in FB you can have virtually unlimited links on the sidebar of your wall.
Again, if you have 100 followers on Twitter and 100 friends on Facebook, the experience between the two might be very similar. This post comes from the angle of wanting to promote a business or in my case a non-profit.
So, which one is better for promoting your business, cause or non-profit? If you had asked me 6 months ago I would have said Twitter – hands down. But now I spend a lot of time managing both platforms. I think I am finally starting to worry less about which platform to use and worry more about effective ways to engage people in general. We don’t want to overload or spam people. We do want to get our message across, but must realize they have a message too that is equally as important.
I would love to hear your suggestions on how we can engage people better, and/or tell us how you do it.
Children miss school to walk miles carrying dirty water in diesel cans every day.
Every single day we are witness to what kids are capable of. We are constantly surrounded by the wonder and joy their generous acts bestow on everyone who is around our heroes. We are forever impressed by what they have accomplished. It is truly inspirational. As a matter of fact we have been so inspired that we thought we would try our hand at what some of our kids are doing. Ever since we learned about the global water crisis through the Ryan’s Well Foundation, we have wanted to drill a well somewhere in Africa. We must be careful not to extend out to too many charities as we do not want to dilute our message. But we recently came upon a reason why drilling a well makes sense for us.
One of the strengths of Kids Are Heroes lies in its willingness to let the kids take over. Many times an adult will dictate which charity money is to be collected for and why. We discovered that kids will stick to things longer and also work harder if they have a passion for the charity. These are usually charities they have personal experience with, or affect someone (or a pet) in their family. We haven’t changed that directive. However, what if the child just wants to help out with something? What if he or she wants to learn what it feels like to change the world, but doesn’t know where to get started? That’s where Project KAH2O comes in!
Through Project KAH2O, we plan to drill a water well somewhere on this planet where it is needed most. The beauty of it is, this will be a kids’ project. Kids all over the world can collect as little or as much money to go towards the well. Collecting more money has its benefits: Kids who bring in $25.00 or more will get a mention on the collection page, and kids who bring in $100.00 or more will recognized as heroes on our web site! Every child who helps will have the knowledge that will carry with them for a lifetime that they helped save people’s lives.
It is also good to know the charity that you are raisng money for. The Ryan’s Well Foundation was started by Ryan when he was just 7 years old. In just over 10 years, they have built over 500 wells in 16 countries helping over 600,000 people! It is also nice to know that 100% of the donations will go to the construction and implementation of the well.
So we will not slow down in recognizing kids who have their own philanthropic efforts, but if your child is looking to make a difference and he or she is not sure where to start, please consider having your young hero join us in building our first well!
For more information and to register your child with this project, please visit this link.
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I just recently had my one-year anniversary on Twitter. At the risk of copying my friend @DannyBrown who has a series of “Ten in 2010″ posts, one of which I made the list (thanks to my extensive lobbying and a rather substantial sum of money) I felt the urge to come up with a list of ten people I would like to meet at a “tweet-up” in 2010. Most of these people have supported us from the beginning and others I would just like to get to know. Without further ado, here is my list in no particular order of relevance.
Guess what I got for Christmas? Yep – the Droid. Like many things it prompted a blog post, so if you are thinking about getting one, I hope this helps you.
What does Breaking the Chain represent to you and how did it get started?
What’s the first thing you think of when you think of social media? Is it connecting with others? Maybe. But why are you doing this? Do you need more friends? Would you really have time for all the people you connect with on a regular basis in real life? I think the main reason many of us engage in social media is that we are promoting something. I make no bones about the fact that I do this to promote Kids Are Heroes. Would I drop out of it if all of a sudden Kids Are Heroes ended abruptly? Maybe not, but I can guarantee you I would not be doing it as much. Don’t get me wrong — the “social” part of this makes it fun and I honestly do consider many of my connections strong ones. I do think there may be people who do this just for fun, but more of us do it to promote something, whether it be business, charity or something else. Is that bad? I don’t think so. However it is how you promote things that can directly affect your success.
This morning when I checked my Twitter feed I came across a particularly interesting question from my friend 
I have been working on something that I’m pretty excited about. I have a social media seminar coming up next week that I have been planning for a while. I figured I’d better be organized so I started with an agenda. I thought that it might be cool if I provided an electronic document that linked the subjects to corresponding posts that I have written. I’ve been writing about Twitter for less than a year so one would think that would be rather simple. Maybe it’s the Wordpress theme I am using, but it wasn’t too easy to pinpoint exact posts from a while ago, let alone browse through them.
A lot of people have been asking me how I did this, so here goes. I fully admit I am just getting started with this sort of thing and hope to learn (and share) how to enhance both my 
It just seems inevitable that I start to write about Facebook. Even though six months ago I was telling people I was strictly a Twitter person, only keeping up an outpost on Facebook, I have become much more involved with it since then. I totally agree with those who are tired of all the “gurus”, many of them being far from it, so I of course do not claim to be one. But being a software developer I have a keen interest in learning the technical concepts and using them to our benefit.
