Sleepless in the Beltway: A Tale of Twitter, Facebook, Earthquakes and Insomnia

Last night I could not sleep for the life of me.  So, I decided to be productive and work on a few blog posts as well as check in with my tweeps on Twitter and my friends on Facebook.  Being in the beltway I was unaffected by last night's SoCal earthquake, however, a few other problems stood in my way.

#1- Twitter was acting up.  Tweets and DMs would not go through.  The whale was up and down and up and down.  All of my old tweets disappeared, leaving only a message for my followers to nudge me to tweet.  (How ironic is that?)  And although purportedly the tweets were not posting, in reality tweets were being posted multiple times (I woke up this morning with several repeats of the same tweet.)

#2- Facebook was acting up as well.  Although I did not experience the brunt of it, I saw others post stories of their suffering. 

#3- To top it all off, my Sprint overdrive device was acting up and not working for the second time in the last few days. 

NYCityMama tweeted:

Facebook is out of whack and Twitter keeps crashing.  Kiss and hug your loved ones y'all.  The world is ending.

When the news of the SoCal earthquake came in by way of FB of course I put it all in perspective.  Although there have been no injuries from the earthquake reported to date, a 5.9 earthquake is much more serious than a Twitter fail whale.  However, it was obvious to everyone myself included how inextricably our life, social circles and consumption of information news and otherwise are tied to these new technologies.  The exercise is no longer hypothetical.

How to Grow and Mobilize Your Social Media Followers: My Bridge Conference Presentation

I've been invited to do a presentation at the Bridge conference next month.  The presentation title is, "How to Grow and Mobilize Your Social Media Followers."  I am sitting on a panel with three other great women.  It promises to be a fantastic event. 

Today I was in the middle of organizing my slides for our upcoming discussion when it dawned on me... I should go out into the social media universe and ask my friends, followers and readers for their advice.  What are your thoughts?  

What do you find particularly useful when working on growing and mobilizing your Social Media followers?  What have you seen others do that you think has been the most effective/helpful?  What are some of the worst examples that you have seen?  What about the best examples?  Thanks in advance for any thoughts that you care to share!  

Further details on our Bridge conference session below.  I hope that you will join us!  Looking forward to seeing you there!

Presentation Title:          How to Grow and Mobilize Your Social Media Followers

Presentation Description:

So, you’re tweeting and have fans.  But you wish you had larger growth or engagement on your social media sites. Are there tools, techniques, or strategies you should be employing? This panel of online marketing experts will share what’s working for their organizations and audiences. And you’ll hear valuable findings from a new study – Nonprofit Social Media Benchmarks Study – that will help you create your own social media benchmarks and strategy. 

Attendee will learn:

1.  Best practices for what to do and NOT to do to grow your social media base

2.  How to engage corporations and other organizations to help you

3.  How to target Latinos and other special audiences in the social media world

Speakers Name/Title:   Amy Ganderson, Digital Marketing Manager, The Nature Conservancy

Email: aganderson@tnc.org

Speakers Name/Title:   Kety Esquivel, Executive Director and CEO, Latinos in Social Media

Email: kety.esquivel@gmail.com

Speakers Name/Title:    Arielle Holland, Consultant, M+R Strategic Services

Email: aholland@mrss.com

Speakers Name/Title:  Catherine Algeri, Senior Account Executive, InfoGroup Nonprofit (Moderator)

Email:  Catherine.Algeri@tdmc.com


Tuesday, July 27, 2:00-3:15 (75 minutes)