Look for me on Twitter

Discovering Twitter - where you can make your mark at 140 characters maximum.

Look for my comments on Twitter at @MerrySelk. (You'll see some to the column on the right of this page.)

You're invited to become my "follower" on Twitter (and see my occasional posts there, when you look at your own postings). One goal (for some) is to follow lots of people, and to be followed by alot. You'll see some people and organizations with hundreds or thousands of followers.

I'm presently trying out two desktop ways to keep track of my Twitter comments and who I follow, without overwhelm:

• TweetDeck
• Seesmic Desktop

The trick is to balance one's professional demeanor with the comments made on Twitter. It's interesting to see how various people I follow are managing that: Tom Bedecarré of AKQA (@tombed) who is a great Twitter fan; and Mac evangelist Guy Kawasaki (@GuyKawasaki)

Inspiration from Leonard Cohen

"Ring the bells that still can ring.

              Forget your perfect offering.
There is a crack in everything,
             that's how the light gets in." 

  - - Leonard Cohen 

more on songwriter Leonard Cohen

... and more on Leonard Cohen

Make it very very easy for people to respond

Make it very very easy for people to respond and to take the action you want. Too often, it’s a real effort to find the contact info on a website - when that should be the first thing you think about about when you're developing a website.

Imagine yourself at the keyboard of the visitor to your website. Remember -- you have about 30 seconds to get and hold their attention.

Check your own site to see if there's a very obvious “Contact Us” link, that tells visitors how to reach you by phone, address and email. Or a button to “Subscribe” or “Click Here for more information.”

What do you want your visitor to do (and why)?

• Donate? You need a big "DONATE HERE" button.
• Let you have their name and email for future contacts? You need a FREE giveaway (a newsletter? a list of tips) and an easy way for the visitor to sign up to get it.
• Send you information? Consider a survey? Or a quick email form?
• Buy your product? Can I find the product I want in 3 clicks or less? Is there a search feature?

One more thing: Please don't make it so hard for people to sign in that it's a huge effort. My bank makes it pretty easy for me to get on-line at their site -- so please try to do that too! I want you to protect my information, but I just need a small level of protection if I'm making a comment on your website, and if I'm making a purchase or a payment, I'd prefer to do that in 3-4 clicks, rather than having to break into the vault at Fort Knox.

I know, it can be overwhelming if a site gets unexpectedly busy and there is an onslaught of emails or phone calls to deal with (we should all be so lucky). But (especially in Web 2.0) site visitors expect to be able to respond, and it’s far better if you give them an easy way to do so.

Just remember the last time you tried to contact customer service at your local airline office, and how long it took you to find the right phone or email contact on their website. And be nice to your visitors (like me) who want to stay in touch.

Finding an Extra 15 minutes

I’ve just discovered an extra 15 minutes — every time I have an appointment.

What a difference! Now, instead of gripping the steering wheel and driving too fast, I’m calmly moving at the pace of traffic and uncomplaining about a red light with 6 cars ahead of mine. And I arrive, cool and collected, at my appointment, with time to take things out of the car, smooth my hair, order the items in my briefcase, and appear at my appointment a few minutes early.

What an amazement that the extra 15 minutes could make such a difference.

It’s deceptively simple. It started with my haircutter, who was disgruntled that I kept showing up 5 or 10 minutes late to appointments. So I wrote my next haircut appointment in my calendar 15 minutes earlier. My 4 pm haircut became 3:45.

To my amazement, even knowing that the appointment was at 4 pm, I aimed to get there at 3:45. So when I did leave the office (with just a few minutes to spare), I arrived at 3:55 instead of 4 pm — calm, cool and collected.

What a discovery!

Then there was the client who was clearly unhappy when I showed up 7 minutes late (after I’d driven to their office at 80 mph). I’d figured any time less than 15 minutes late was OK.

So I put in the next 10 am appointment with the client as starting at 9:45. Same astonishing results. A bit of traffic, a slightly late start, and I arrived at 9:52, with time to walk slowly up the stairs to the office and show up comfortably before the appointed meeting time.

Next: every appointment is 15 minutes early. And another stressful moment disappears.

Figuring Out RSS

RSS = Really Simple Syndication

Seems intimidating, but it’s really easy, once you get the hang of it. The result is a single page that headlines all the items you might want to look at during the day on one web page — your very own RSS page — without having to go to other blog or web pages. The list is constantly updated, automatically, and then you can click-through for a closer look (or not)!

I’m excited to share this trick, since I’ve just figured it out, and it makes my ‘web scanning’ life so much easier.


To begin with, you need an RSS page, where your RSS “subscription” downloads can “live” until you’re ready to take a look. http://www.google.com/reader is easy to use (though there are others).

Google makes it simple to set up RSS, using some of their suggestions: You can select a pre-packaged “group” of sites, like “Thinkers” or “News” or “Small Business,” and see which websites show up on your page.

Here are some favorites I discovered (and have now ‘subscribed to’) and now I see new postings, without going to their pages, whenever I open my daily Google Reader RSS window:

Gladwell.com (New Yorker writer Malcolm Gladwell wrote The Tipping Point)
http://www.ducttapemarketing.com (Simple, effective and affordable small business marketing)
www.marginalrevolution.com (“small steps towards a better world”)

And you can add new subscriptions.
- Look for the “RSS” icon in the window where your favorite web page is listed (ie, http://selkcommunications.blogspot.com/).
- Click on RSS and a new RSS-friendly web address appears (or maybe it’s the same, like http://selkcommunications.blogspot.com/).
- on the left side of your Google Reader page, just before your list of subscriptions appears, is an Add Subscription + link. Click it, there’s a window to past-in your RSS-friendly web address address, and voila, you’ve included a new page for your RSS feed.

One small Google Reader hint: You can’t change the “folder” names for your subscription pages, which appear in alpha order (“News” before “Small Business”). But you can add a new folder with a name early in the alphabet (“Ace” for instance) and put your hottest pages there (there’s a “Manage My Subscriptions” link at the bottom of the subscriptions column that lets you add folders and move pages from one folder to another).

Get Ready to Be Inspired @ TED.com

It takes only 20 minutes to see this talk at TED.com by the head of an international NGO on financing profit-making ventures in third-world countries.

Or this amazing discussion by a brain scientist, recounting her extraordinary observations of her own brain after she had a stroke.

Or this lecture by a photojournalist on the smart and talented people who live in shacks in shantytowns he has visited all over the world, living in what he calls the shadow cities of the future.

Then you can bookmark TED.com to see hundreds of other extraordinary talks on hundreds of topics, by amazing people -- most of whom you’ve probably never heard of. Chris Anderson, who was a publisher of Wired Magazine, created TED, which now draws a selected list of over 1000 people to an annual conference to discuss "ideas worth spreading." And they have now put those talks on the web for all of us to see.

Every year, people (including the not-so-famous, and luminaries like Stephen Hawking, Bill Clinton and Goldie Hawn) put in applications for the opportunity to attend (or to speak for 20 minutes) at the TED Conference. Now in Long Beach, CA, applications are already closed for the 2009 Conference, at $6000 per person, with some reduced price seats and 30 free fellowships. TED is run by a 501(c)3 private nonprofit foundation, The Sapling Foundation, established in 1996 by Anderson.

The goal of the Sapling Foundation (and TED) is to foster the spread of great ideas. It aims to provide a platform for the world's smartest thinkers, greatest visionaries and most-inspiring teachers, so that millions of people can gain a better understanding of the biggest issues faced by the world, and a desire to help create a better future. Core to this goal is a belief that there is no greater force for changing the world than a powerful idea.

The Sapling Foundation selects people to attend the TED Conference who:

+ are curious, passionate, open-minded
+ have done something fascinating with their lives
+ show evidence of creativity, innovation, insight, or brilliance
+ would be wonderful to sit next to at lunch and have a conversation with
+ are well placed to help make a difference in the world
+ have made a contribution to the TED community (for example, by supporting a TED Prize wish)

Profits from the TED Conference are used to advance TED's philanthropic goals:

+ to fund the growth of the TED website and distribute TEDTalks free to the world
+ to support the TED Prize and the projects that come out of it
+ to invest in other TED conferences, such as the TEDGlobal event recently held in Africa
+ to support philanthropic organizations that leverage technology, media or entrepreneurship to make lasting social change.

You can sign up for a TED newsletter, to nominate a prospective speaker, or you can nominate someone you think is extraordinary for the TED Prize -- $100,000 to help change the world.

How to Make a Better Website

Your website is pure potential. That means you can use it to show your wares, as an "on-screen resume" -- or you can take advantage of Web 2.0 and turn even a small website into an interactive dynamo.

The rules have changed! When was the last time you bought something because you got a direct-mail appeal? Or saw a newspaper ad? You probably checked on-line before you made that purchase, didn't you!

Our customers have changed! (Don't miss this funny video about our new customer expectations.) Price is no longer the major factor when we make a purchase. We want quality, and we want information.

Turns out that 80% of us visit a website before we make a purchase (whether we’re buying on line or at a store).

What's more, we want to give our opinion about products and services, and we want to see other peoples' opinons, too. For example, as Petco discovered -- on-site reviews make sales go up, and returns go down.

Basic things to make your website better:

• Visitors expect to contact you. We expect to get contact information on your website within 20 seconds -- so be sure that your email and contact information are obvious to the first-time visitor.

• Visitors have something to tell you (that’s the whole point of Web 2.0). We want to ‘talk back’ and let you know how you are doing, how you can improve. Consider a blog, product reviews, a survey.

• Simple is better. Most web visitors are 'browsers' who will stay at your site for a very short time. Make it easy for visitors to find out what they want (and to learn that one thing you want to tell them about your company/product/service).

• The 3-click rule: Make it easy to get from one place on your site to another. A visitor should be able to get the most important/ most interesting information on your website by searching and/or by clicking less than 3 times.

Seth Godin is cool. For more tips on How To Make Any Webite Better, look for Godin's book, The Big Red Fez