DISQUS

Excellent post. Great tips...I especially love #5, because in the day-to-day operations, it's easy to get bogged down. Two (or three) heads are better than one.

I agree with DebinDenver, and many of the previous posters. I also want to add that you get out of Plurk what you put into Plurk...it's way beyond casual greetings and as MichDdot said a "spamfest." Real people have real conversations and are real (or at least that's *my* experience), which is something more than Twitter offers. Allowing people to customize their plurklines isn't going to hurt Plurk one way or another.

"The worst are messages without a subject line at all! They tend to get ignored."
Oh, I agree 100 percent, Joyce.

Also, if you have to compose a long e-mail message, it should be broken up into short paragraphs w/white space between the paragraphs. And if someone does a cut and paste from Word, they should make sure that the formatting makes sense for the e-mail message.

Barbara, I also do that, change the subject line to make it more relevant to the current topic, especially if it's an e-mail in string of replies where the original topic has changed. Also, regarding those strings of replies, after a while, I'll delete the extraneous chain of replies in that singular e-mail. This is especially useful in G-mail, which tabs the thread of conversations anyway.

Great post Chris.

Great post, Chris. I wish I'd seen it before I sent out my e-Newsletter this morning, I'd have added the link to it in my very short list of important SM resources. I learn so much from you...how can I not share?

Okay...one comment, after my little novella up there.
I might like tidbits of wisdom--Broganisms, if you will, if there were a way to distinguish your twitter-robot-alias from tweets straight from the source. (Same would go for anyone or organization w/a TRA.)

As long as the robots are smart and lead to connectedness and conversation, then they make sense. For a news organization to tweet, I'm not sure about that, because chances are, I'm already subscribing to their rss feed. Would I want to read the robot alias of someone who I trust and respect? On one hand, yes, but on the other, I also like the fact, that (for example you), when you tweet, you're there, reacting, interacting, generating conversation, thoughts, even possibly helping bring about a behavioral change in others...look at your last 2 blog posts. I signed up for e-mail notification and I'm still getting responses. (That's not a complaint, I love watching the conversation unfold and morph.) To me, if that happened from a robot-generated tweet, it might be a bit ingenuine. That's my 2-cents anyway, fwiw.

The point that Ellie made about looking really interested is spot on as is Luke's about focusing on being not un-sexy (since some people might ramp up the sexiness factor too much). Smile a genuine smile, look people in the eye, and have that certain nonchalance that exudes, what they called in the Renaissance "sprezzatura."

Great post...and I got here from your tweet as I did one last check of Twitter before shutting down for the night. (Thanks for delaying my bedtime...just kidding.) Great post, well-written and informative. I have to add to Clara's comment, this isn't just the post that people are looking for, it's the post that many need. (And stuff, that I too need to remember. Why I remember to do it when I'm guest blogging and blogging professionally, and not at my personal blog?--I don't know.) I will add to your list...either get a hosted blog or mask the subdomained URL w/a dedicated URL(for those using WP.com and blogger), that is...and my brain is fried, so I forget what that process is actually called.

Kelly, this is so wonderful indeed! Tammy skyped me and let me know and I just sent a donation and posted about it at my blog with a link back here, since you're the originator of the idea and the story. Hopefully, we can make this viral and raise enough funds to help LaTara out. Much love goes out to LaTara as well!

Erika Geiss's last blog post..WAHMs Helping WAHMs

Do these new plug-ins differ from the free and paid verisons of Wordpress? And, what about when a scraper, posts your sraped content, but attributes it to someone else...complete with someone else's byline? As an example, someone recently scraped content and duplicated it verbatim, in two different places within minutes of my blog entry; but gave two different bylines for the content...neither of which was my name. Do these new plugins protect the blog owner from this issue?

Thanks!