Yesterday, the DART Boston group recorded its weekly podcast, Pokin’ Holes, where they have three expert panelists discuss a business and provide that business feedback and tips to improve their strategy. This week, the guest company was dm Design, a web marketing and design firm based out of Plainville, MA. In essence, dm Design is a group of freelancers with skills in web marketing, web design and development, print design, and 3D modeling.

The three panelists for episode 7 of Pokin’ Holes were:

1. Paul Northup, [@PaulNorthup]
2. Sandy Kalik, [@skalik]
3. and me [@AdamPieniazek]!

Download the Pokin’ Holes – dm Design podcast. [Note, will take you directly to the .mp3 on the Dart Boston site].

Here’s a video of Dave Dabliaso’s thoughts on the shows as well as final comments from the three panelists.

Last night we attended the Networking for a Cause Boston event (OK, I was the only The 42nd Estate member in attendance), which proved to be a big hit.

Met a bunch of smart, passionate people. Won a free book! And got connected with a very cool non-profit via our social media consulting giveaway. Then, to top it all off a bunch of the Dart Boston people came by and integrated their post podcast wrap party with our networking event. Check out their show from last night featuring Swagger Paris.

Sport in Society

As you all know, The 42nd Estate contributed four hours of social media consulting in a giveaway to the non-profits in attendance at #NFACBoston. Sport in Society is the group that won our giveaway and they seem like a perfect fit for our interests and expertise.

Sport in Society:

uses the power and appeal of sport to foster diversity, prevent violence, and improve the health of local and global communities.

Considering we have Sports Fan 4 in our network of sites, Sport in Society should be a great way to combine our love of sports and helping non-profits with our web strategy experience to benefit this great organization. Using sports in the community to unite people and solve problems is something Josh and I have talked about extensively in the past so we’re very excited to put it into practice.

Check out Sport in Society on Twitter, YouTube, and Facebook. We’ll be bringing much more to you soon about how Sport in Society works, their goals, and how we can all help them improve our society via sports.

A few months back we added the Swagger team as one of our hosting clients. Right now the team is composed of Sian-Pierre Regis and Monique Meertens. Their Swagger brand extends to Swagger Paris and Swagger Reloaded, two sites where they promote the latest fashion trends seen on the streets of Paris and New York City. Sian has spent the past several months in Paris, France getting the Swagger Paris brand up and rolling. He’s back in Boston for the week and this past Tuesday we met up to catch up and exchange ideas before rolling out to the TweetNetworking Boston event.

Networking works

As Sian-Pierre and I are both graduates of the 2002 class at the Boston Latin School, I gave him and Monique a few social media and web marketing pointers here and there to help out my fellow entrepreneurs. One of the big general tips I’ve continuously preached to Monique and Sian is that building a web-site is really about building a community and connecting with like minded individuals.

After our coffee shop meeting, Sian and I headed down to the tweetup at the Red Sky Lounge. It was Sian’s first ever tweetup and such a rousing success that he’s already discussing starting similar events in Paris when he heads back.

Why was it such a success?

Dart Boston Builds Bridges

Sian and I both met tons of great people at the tweetup. Meeting passionate people, no matter their field of expertise, is always valuable but meeting someone who can help you and who you can help near immediately is priceless.

At the tweetup, Sian met Cort Johnson from Dart Boston. When you meet Cort, it’s instantly apparent that he is genuinely passionate about being a young entrepreneur and helping other young entrepreneurs. In a nutshell, that is what Dart Boston does.

More explicitly, Dart builds bridges between entrepreneurs who need help and feedback from certain areas, with talented professionals in those exact fields. It’s a similar concept to Boston Young Entrepreneurs, but whereas BYE connects entrepreneurs from all fields with other entrepreneurs, Dart seeks out three targeted experts to directly connect with the young business owner and provide them feedback where they need it most. They accomplish this via their podcast show, Pokin’ Holes.

And that brings us to why Sian found his first tweetup to be so amazing. After talking to each other, Sian and Cort realized they could both help each other. Cort needed a young entrepreneur to help on this week’s Pokin’ Holes show and Sian (like near any entrepreneur) loves getting help from experts. So, this week, Sian-Pierre will be the guest entrepreneur for Dart’s Pokin’ Holes podcast, where he’ll receive help from three experts for his Swagger Paris site.

Dart Promotes Entrepreneurs

Cort and the other members of Dart saw that the City of Boston is filled with smart, passionate people in all fields, but also noticed that the various industries are quite segmented from each other. Dart is an attempt to bridge that gap and bring all of us closer together to help each other make our startups succeed.

Dart Boston does not stop there though. Cort explains that another goal of Dart is to:

create a marketing channel where all the young entrepreneurs in Boston can showcase their projects. Many young entrepreneurs don’t yet have the credibility to turn heads toward their individual projects. Dart Boston is creating a channel that everyone can collectively promote, in turn bringing more eyes to each entrepreneur’s individual project.

Each individual entrepreneur or startup faces a steep climb in reaching the top of the marketing mountain, but together we can create our own marketing force (we love empowering people and organizations to become their own marketing force here at The 42nd Estate). It’s a great concept and one that could potentially help all young entrepreneurs in Boston.

Update: Here’s the link to the Pokin’ Holes podcast episode on Swagger Paris.

We’ll bring you an update on Sian’s spot on the Pokin’ Holes show after it wraps. Come meet up with Sian-Pierre, Cort, and the other members of Dart Boston at Red Sky Lounge for an after-show wrap party. I’ll (already) be there too as part of the Networking for a Cause Boston event, where The 42nd Estate will give out four hours of social media consulting to one non-profit.

Huge news out of Facebook yesterday. On Saturday June 13th at 12:01 AM, Facebook will allow users to choose a username. It will be on a first come, first serve basis so if you have a common name, it’d be wise to stay in Friday night (or connect via your web phone) and get your name picked the first chance you get. Even though my name is fairly rare (Adam Pieniazek), I’ll still be on Facebook right after midnight to ensure I scoop up a username with my full name.

Facebook Pages Get Usernames

Usernames will not be limited to individual profiles, but will also extend out to the Facebook pages for businesses and organizations. If you run a Facebook Page with a name likely to get scooped up, make sure you’re on Facebook right after midnight to protect your brand. A caveat is that to get a username for pages, the page will need to:

be live on Facebook prior to the May 31, 2009 cut-off date and have a minimum 1,000 fans as of May 31, 2009.

If you own the rights to a name, you can fill out a copyright violation form to alert facebook that someone is ingringing on your copyright. You can also take precautionary measures and prevent the registration of a trademarked username.

If you’re thinking of snapping up a generic keyword to help with your organization’s SEO, stop. Facebook will not allow the registration of generic usernames (pizza, flowers, etc.):

At this time, generic words are not available as usernames. Facebook encourages all users and Page administrators to create a username that closely matches the true identity of their name or business.

Use Your Real Name for Facebook Username

When signing up for a username for you Facebook profile or page, ensure it’s a good one as you will not be able to change your username. Dan Schwabel, the personal branding expert, advises that you do not get cute with your username and simply pick your real name to ensure people can find you.

It’s huge news from Facebook and will go a long ways towards Facebook getting more search engine traffic. It also means individuals and organizations will be able to find your Facebook profile that much easier so it is crucial that you keep it clean and professional. Best of luck everyone in snagging your desired username!

Connect with The 42nd Estate on Facebook for more updates.

The web has been social since day one.

As it took form, the internet attempted to connect information and people. As it developed, it began to take on the form of its own society. Once the World Wide Web arrived, there was no questioning that a digital culture had been created. People socialized via linking to each other, discussing topics on message boards, and chatting over messaging platforms long before blogs, Facebook, Twitter, et al.

Originally, the intent of this post was to go through the history of digital social media, but Brett Borders beat me to the punch and did it so well that I’ll point you to his brief history of social media post. A great point he makes is that digital social media actually began on the good old telephone. During the 50′s phone hackers would record messages on corporate voice mail systems and share the call in number with other phone hackers, who would leave messages that the original hacker could respond to in his next “show”.

If we focus purely on social media, it may have existed for even longer. Would you consider Publick Occurrences Both Forreign and Domestick, the first multi-page newspaper in the U.S.A., to be a form of social media? The first (and only) edition of the paper was published in 1690 with a blank page at the end for readers to write comments and pass along. That’s right, a newspaper was the first media form to encourage readers to write and share comments.

I’ll leave it up to you to decide if Publick Occurences represented a form of social media. In either case, the truth remains that social media is not new and has been around for at least a few decades.

Lately, we’ve been setting up a lot of Twitter accounts for The 42nd Estate and our various sites and helping clients set up and optimize their Twitter accounts. During that process we’ve figured out that these first five steps are crucial to using Twitter effectively, especially for beginners. With the recent news that 60% of Twitter users quit Twitter after their first month, follow these guidelines to make sure you hit the ground running and stay tweeting.

1. Upload a picture.

If you’re tweeting as yourself you should upload a real picture of yourself. Adding your real face to your Twitter account will help you feel more connected to the service and allow your followers to see the real person behind your tweets. The only exceptions are if you’re tweeting as a brand (for instance, we have our logo on The 42nd Estate’s Twitter account).

If you’re uploading a personal picture, make sure it’s cropped so we can see your face. The boxes that appear next to everyone’s tweets are really small so to stand out it should be a close-up of just your face. Don’t make the mistake many beginners make and skip the photo. The default brown photo is something that puts off many Twitter users and might make them skip over your profile and your tweets.

2. Fill in your bio

The bio is one of the most important fields on your Twitter profile. Really, all you get is a picture, your location, your web page URL and a 160 characters in your bio so it’s one of the first places people will check when determining if they want to follow you. Include a little bit of info about who you are and what you do but don’t forget to include some personal tidbits, like hobbies. Profiles that only include job titles come across as stiff and promotional rather than entertaining and engaging.

For instance, my bio (which admittedly needs some revising) reads:

Co-founder of The 42nd Estate, a freelance writing and blog consulting web media firm. When I’m not working I’m biking around Boston or reminiscing about BSG.

In the first line you find out my title, company and what we do. The next line dives into three of my interests, bicycling, Boston, and Battlestar Galactica (science-fiction). Immediately you get a feel for my personality and my industry.

3. Send out 5-10 tweets

Your tweets should be useful and interesting to your target market. Tweet out links to articles you enjoyed, expert tips, and keep the mundane detail tweets to a minimum. No, we don’t care if you just drank a cup of coffee or went to the bathroom. We do care about interesting events you’re attending, major milestones and other unique facts. It’s OK to tweet about your personal life but keep it to a minimum and don’t make it mundane. Twitter is all the rage amongst marketers right now but keep the self-promotion to a minimum too. Just like with any social network, it’s OK, and even encouraged, to share your own content but if that’s all you do we’ll tend to ignore you.

4. Follow at least 20 other Twitter users

It’s best to focus on users who share similar interests with you. You can use Twitter directories to help you target certain users. WeFollow lists users by three tags that the users chooses while Twellow organizes users based on industries and locations. Once you’ve found a few users you want to follow, check out who they’re following to find even more interesting people to connect with. Over time you’ll add more and more people to tweet with but to start 20 should give you enough. We’d recommend more, say 42, to make sure your Twitter stream gets updated frequently but at a minimum 20 should suffice, for now.

5. Communicate

Once you have a small list of friends built up, start communicating with them. Check out what they’re tweeting about and if you find their tweet interesting and useful, ReTweet it, or if you have something to add, @ reply them and get a conversation going. At its core, Twitter is a communication platform and you’ll gain the most out of it by treating it as such.

ReTweeting can be done via Twitter applications or via the web by copying the person’s tweet, and then placing RT @their_username in front of their tweet. This is a message to your followers that you found that person’s tweet interesting and are thus sharing it with them. @replies can be done by clicking the little reply button on the right side of everyone’s tweets (or via a reply function in a Twitter application).

All set with Twitter but need help with WordPress? Check out our First Five Steps for a WordPress Blog post.

Follow me on Twitter for boston, biking and other tweets and follow The 42nd Estate for blogging and social media tips.

Would you add any steps to the five we listed above? What did you first do when setting up your Twitter profile? Got any other tips for Twitter beginners that we missed?

Twitter

Recently we’ve started fully utilizing our twitter account to send out useful links to wordpress and social media tips, as well as helping our twitter friends with quick wordpress support and tips. So far, we’ve gotten some good feedback and now want to notify all our readers about our twitter account. So, follow us on twitter for quick wordpress support as well as general tips and tricks covering a wide gamut of blogging and social media arenas.

As always, we’re also available via e-mail for more in-depth help with your blogging, social media, and writing needs.

Let us know your twitter name in the comments below so we can follow you too!

Thanks to Paul Snelling for the awesome Twitter logo.

Yesterday we wrote about Mayor Tom Menino recently signing up for Twitter. Afterwards, we were notified by Jordan Newman, @FindingNewmo, that Sam Yoon, candidate for Mayor of the City of Boston 2009, also tweets @samyoonformayor. Sam has been tweeting since February of this year and it seems it’s actually him sending out the messages and not a ghost tweeter. I say it’s really him because his tweets are a mix of personal and political messages. They’re also not delivered in a professional Twitter style, meaning it’s mostly details of his life with political statements mixed in.

He hasn’t ReTweeted anyone and rarely @replies to anyone. He also has rarely shares links. Whereas Menino’s Twitter stream comes across as a planned professional line of communication, Yoon’s stream feels more personal and spur of the moment. Which method is better? It’s a bit too early to tell.

Here’s a sample of his tweets:

On my way to south Boston with my kids for their piano lesson. This is the one consistent thing I can do w them every week. I’m a piano dad.

We should close down the streets of Boston once a year to promote walking and cycling and mass transit. If Bogota can do it, why not Boston?

Tell me your thoughts on Boston and the budget: http://tinyurl.com/d7kbhl

All of theses tweets lead me to believe that Menino is using a ghost tweeter while Yoon is tweeting himself. These assumptions are educated guesses, but I feel they’re correct. If they are, which method is better? Should a political officer or candidate be spending time tweeting? Or is it best to delegate the task of tweeting to a trusted professional writer who can relay a summary to the politician?

We’ll keep watching the Twitter feeds for Menino and Yoon and try to find out if there are any ghost tweeters behind either account. We do not oppose the use of ghost tweeters, especially when the ghost tweets with the voice and brand of the person they are imitating. If the tweets are useful, on target and effective we feel the real person behind them is not that important.

What about you? Do you value authenticity or effectiveness on Twitter?

Since we’re a Boston based business with an emphasis on helping our clients reach out to their target audience via blogs and other social media, we’re very excited that Mayor Tom Menino of the City of Boston signed up for Twitter recently. He started sending out tweets on Wednesday, or should we say his ghost tweeter started sending out tweets on Wednesday. The first tweet sent out from the @mayortommenino account was written in the third person, which makes us believe it’s not really Tom, but it’s still nice for his office to join twitter:

Mayor Menino is excited to announce his official reelection campaign to move Boston forward. Learn more at: www.MayorMenino.com

We’re very excited to see how Tom/his office utilizes Twitter. Hopefully they use it to connect and communicate with the citizens of Boston and not simply as a PR machine. So far, so good. His account has @ replied to people and even ReTweeted already! Sure, there’s a fair share of self promotion amongst the tweets (6 out of 10 as of 12:37 PM April 24, 2009) but what do you expect from a politician who recently announced his campaign for re-election. We’ll bring you updates on the Mayor’s tweeting progress in a few weeks.

If you need any tweeting tips let us know Tom, we’ll be glad to help!

Bostonians, make sure you attend tonight’s Spring Tweetup at the Gaslight. It is hosted by none other than Thomas Edwards, aka URwingman. The event begins at 5 PM and runs until 10 PM, though I’m sure there’ll be a few people tweeting, or more likely dweeting into the night.

Gaslight is located at:

560 Harrison Ave
Boston, MA 02118

The event is free to attend and there will be free appetizers, free parking and cheap cocktails. I’ll be there (follow me) and hope to see you there too!