TurkishWIN Dinner At Pera Palace With TED Curator June Cohen

After tonight's Turkish Women's International Network dinner with TED curator June Cohen, at Pera Palace Hotel, Istanbul. With Berin Galatalı Aksoy, Nilufer Durak, Managing Director of Endeavor Turkey Didem Altop, lady in silver (and to-die-for shoes) is Sandrine Ramboux, June Cohen, founder of Turkish WIN and TEDx Gotham curator Melek Pulatkonak, Semiha Ünal and Işık Aydın Deliorman.

Earlier in the evening we'd been joined by Turkish parliamentarian and my fellow TurkishWIN speaker Safak Pavey.

I'm pleased to be a member of the advisory board of this network of women with professional, cultural and global ties to Turkey since 2010.

Community Crowdsourcing My Move From IST to SF

As I relocate from Istanbul to San Francisco, we're crowd sourcing the psychic transition. Whether you're familiar with Istanbul or have a little bit of San Francisco in your past or not, the Global Niche community is full of experts on the growing pains of displacement -- and replacement.

In your opinion, what connects Istanbul to SF, and vice versa? What are the biggest differences?

Care to share your favorite places to see, eat, relax, exercise, work in SF? What Bay Area 'hood can you see a global citizen like me settling in? Suggestions of who I MUST meet in town?

FOREVER GRATEFUL! ....for helping me say my goodbye to Istanbul -- and hello to San Fran. (And be sure to let us know when you need the Global Niche crowd to help you process a displacement of your own!)

GlobalNiche.net

How Do You Support The People In Your Network?

That was a question posted by small business marketing coach Stephanie Ward, at the GlobalNiche LinkedIn group. She suggested 5 ways. Here's my answer:

I like to share job leads and pass on assignments I'm offered but can't personally pursue.

Also, when people approach me to collaborate somehow and I'm unable to I usually suggest an alternative for them -- whether it's access to my audience, or an intro to someone else I know who might jump at their offer. It feels like flow -- things come to me, they're right for someone else, I try to make that connection.

Stephanie also asked how we introduce ourselves to a group. (Here are mistakes she notes.)

My response:

It depends on what group you're introducing yourself to: Emphasis may be different, type of info required may differ. You may use jargon if it's an industry event, or simplify how you describe your work if you're at a more general networking affair -- or make an analogy. One intro does not fit all.

Stephanie says, " It's always smart to tailor your introduction to the crowd and event."

Stephanie also asked what we do to follow up after a networking event. "Networking is about building relationships over time."

My reply:

After a networking event, I find the people I met on multiple social media platforms, and toss their business card. If we talked about stuff in particular I send them leads and links, and introductions. Then we keep in touch *ambiently* ....

Stephanie says, "It's smart to reach out across platforms."

Suspended Between Multiple Worlds -- Challenged By Culture, Geography, Language or Time Zone? What I Did About It.

Do you ever feel suspended between multiple worlds -- challenged in your pursuits and interests by culture, geography, language or time zone? Welcome to the club. In fact, after fourteen years of expatriatism and through my cultural identity work as a writer/producer I’ve come to see this psychic limbo state about who we are and where we belong -- familiar to people with transglobal lives and culturally hybrid lifestyles -- as our secret weapon.

To start at the beginning, we’re all born global citizens even if that knowledge gets trained out of us. As we mature, a global identity seems nebulous, and ungrounded. Better to bond with the more concrete: family, culture, nation. Our schoolmates, colleagues, neighbors.

There’s a problem with concrete, though. It cracks over time and in quickly changing conditions, and sometimes even under its own weight.

I’d even venture to say that ‘our people’ today are not who they used to be. We’re unbounded by the communities in our physical midst. Now we can find inspiring new kinship in interest and outlook.

Expats and international types have more reasons than most to find a way to operate independently of where we happen to be physically.

With today's economic uncertainties no matter who or where we are, we all have to embrace an enterprising view of ourselves -- a way to operate unlimited by the options directly surrounding us.

With recent advances in virtual technologies like mobile devices and the social web, we have tools at our disposal to help us live a globally unbounded life.

Now we don’t have to be a tech expert or social media guru to build a micro-yet-global base of operations with a professional web platform and virtual network for continuing education, professional development, and a close-knit but world-flung set of friends. We can be digital world citizens and achieve a cutting-edge state of being -- that is, what I call ‘psychic location independence’.

I coined the concept of a global niche -- defined as a ‘psychic solution to your global identity crisis’-- at expat+HAREM, the online community of global citizens, identity adventurers and intentional travelers I founded in 2009. The group blog was inspired by the global community that gathered around Tales from the Expat Harem, an anthology by foreign women about their lives in modern Turkey that I coedited in 2005 with fellow Istanbul resident Jennifer Gokmen.

Expatharem.com was also informed by the idea of an ‘expat harem’ itself, where all the writers in the book and the readers drawn to them are cultural peers in a virtual realm.

My partner Tara Agacayak, a creative enterprise consultant from Silicon Valley who’s spent the past 10 years in Turkey, and I launched this new work-life initiative here at GlobalNiche.net. We’re applying the innovations we've been exploring in the past few years in our professional communities of creative entrepreneurs and social media proponents along with our expat experiences. We've realized that a robust online presence that helps us reach our offline goals is the most important independent survival skill of international people.

Talking Broadway With The Book Of Mormon Director

Dining at Bebek's Poseidon with visiting Broadway musical director Casey Nicholaw (he won the Tony for the satirical Book of Mormon!) and Josh Market (he does actress Jane Krakowski's hair on 30 Rock). We had plenty of entertainment world issues to talk about since I used to work for Broadway & Grammy Awards producer Pierre Cossette when I lived in LA.

Thanks to former Discovery Networks president and founder of Akoo (that's social media television to you) Billy Campbell for the introduction!

Name Changes of My LinkedIn Group Track With Its Evolution. Social Media Is A Given. And We're All Creative Entrepreneurs.

When Tara Agacayak and I started our LinkedIn group in 2009 we called it Creative Entrepreneurs and Social Media. We wanted a place to discuss what we were learning about using social media to build our professional platforms. Within six months it became apparent our use of social media had naturally coalesced into our creative enterprise goals. So we dropped it from our name -- social media is not a distinguishing factor, it’s a given now!

Today, as we’ve all become much more savvy in our pro use of the social web while building our platforms we think it’s time to take this group to the next level.

Soon we’ll be changing the name of this group to Global Niche to reflect the fact we are all builders of our own micro-yet-global base of operation. We look forward to having more conversations here about what it means to be (and build!) a global microbrand as a creative entrepreneur.

Please swing by http://globalniche.net to learn more about this life-work initiative for indie pros, mobile progressives and cultural creatives.

We’re looking forward to evolving with you!

Introducing Turkish Women's International Network At The TEDGlobal Simulcast Held At TURKCELL Headquarters, Istanbul

As a member of the advisory board, I was happy to introduce Melek Pulatkonak's Turkish Women's International Network to the audience at the TEDGlobal simulcast hosted by TURKCELL headquarters in Istanbul. Melek and I met in Oxford while attending TEDGlobal 2010! In these images, TED curator Chris Anderson opens the dark side session -- with cybercrime journalist Misha Glenny.

With attendees including TurkishWIN members including creative director Muzaffer Tan and foreign professional women in Istanbul Karen Van Drie and Catherine Bayar.

We had our cocktail hour between 3rd and 4th session of TEDGlobal simulcast from the UK, in which business economist, development professional and policy adviser Anja Koenig makes a point.

Social Media Consumption, Filters, and Overcoming The Reluctance To Share

From a discussion at the GlobalNiche LinkedIn group about creatives being reluctant to promote themselves that morphed into a discussion about the opposite issue of dealing with sources who share more than we can handle: This is another reason to use Google+: you can put useful-but-prolific sharers into their very own circle if need be, then dip in when you want. You can also do that with Facebook lists but apparently very few people have exploited their existence. I use mine all the time.

It's why I directly visit NPR reporter @AndyCarvin's Twitter account but don't have him in my main feed. I also have him in a list but cannot see native RTs from him that way.

As Clay Shirky has famously said years ago -- the problem is filter failure, not info overload. http://news.cnet.com/8301-13505_3-10142298-16.html

Would I want @AndyCarvin to cut down on what he shares and how he works because I can't figure out how to best access his stuff? No.

Maybe we're not in his position yet, but what would happen if we reframed our challenge to be "how do I become someone whose content and contact-style people will want to find a way to use that works for them"? The tools are there.

On the other hand, the tools are there for us content sharers too. I use SocialOomph to schedule tweets in advance, and an autoresponder series on AWeber. I think I could contact people more than I already do. I know I am leaving tools on the table. We can offer our audience options at various stages of the game: "Do you want more like this? A weekly digest?" via our newsletter provider, etc.

We can take the guessing out of it -- I bet we pull back long before we reach our audience's limit because we don't like to promote ourselves. We can do split-tests and get the stats on our side like Tim Ferriss.

On Pro Networks At Facebook, LinkedIn, Google Plus And Diaspora

In a discussion at the GlobalNiche LinkedIn group about BranchOut, here's what I had to say: BranchOut hopes to be the LinkedIn of Facebook -- we're getting that meta now -- but I have to say I've heard a lot of complaints about the way it works (and auto-posts things for you). I joined a while ago, did nothing with it. Not sure I'll need it either. But if it fills a gap in the way Facebook pro connections work, then it may be useful since Facebook is increasingly my contact book.

And, if it at the same time fills a gap in the way that LinkedIn works, then great. Those kind of solutions are really interesting to me.

I try things and see if they are useful. Plenty of things haven't been, other things were useful for the time I used them and then I was done. Still other apps have yet to show me what I might do with them.

In the end we have to use the networks that provide what we're looking for.

Personally, I am working on developing my weak ties and creating a diverse network that will not only help spread my content to their own groups, but also supply guidance and info and perspective that perhaps my stronger ties/morelikeminded contacts cannot. I don't know that I will spend even a minute on BranchOut, but it's not a random network (it's Facebook!) and for that reason worth it for me to be part of in whatever limited way.

I've tried other things like that open source network DIASPORA and no one was there! Great idea, maybe before its own time. Now Google has its own Facebook like network, Google+. Will eventually try that too. If it only amounts to having a profile there, not much trouble for me.

BTW, here's what's what about GOOGLE+ (for writers and publishers, but applicable to creative entrepreneurs): http://www.mediabistro.com/galleycat/what-publishers-authors-need-to-know-about-google_b33317

If you're on Google+ please connect with me! (So lonely...) Then we can test the group video chat HANGOUTS.

P.S. Here is Chris Brogan on 50 things about Google+ http://www.chrisbrogan.com/googleplus50/

Measuring Social Media Influence: Klout & Empire Avenue

In the GlobalNiche LinkedIn group, designer and writer Catherine Salter Bayar shared this piece from the New York Times -- "Got Twitter? What's Your Influence Score"  -- and asked the group if we've looked at Klout. I said that I took a look this week (actually checked out Klout a while back -- so now I have an OG badge there....as far as I know "OG" stands for "original gangster" so I'm not sure what they could possibly mean by it, ha)

There are strangenesses, like their claim I am influenced by @GigaOm, which is an account I don't even follow.

Most interesting to me is the STYLE matrix: Today I'm a "broadcaster", yesterday I was a "specialist" and I'd like to be a "tastemaker" like @brainpicker. The change in my score (today is 62) must be due to some large retweets I got today on topics other than the narrow ones they ascribe to me). What models do you aspire to on Twitter and where are they in the matrix of your followed accounts?

Writer and artist Rose Deniz said, "My Klout score is erratic, too, so I don't put a lot of emphasis on it in terms of influence, and I do notice that it's fluid based on your activity level - how sensitive it is to daily fluxes, I don't know."

"I've found Empire Avenue to be a better indicator (and more interesting) - it just tracks more stuff," responded global marketing strategist Kirsten Weiss.

"I think any sort of measurement system is bound to be full of flaws," said social media educator Charlene Kingston.

"At first glance, not sure I love Empire Avenue's verbiage - banking terms repel more than attract me," said Catherine Bayar.

On The Advisory Board For Turkish Women International Network

I'm pleased to be on the advisory board of Turkish WIN, a global networking platform for women with family, cultural or professional ties to Turkey with regular speaking events -- a cross between TED and A SMALL WORLD. Featured here with founder Melek Pulatkonak and my fellow TRWIN speakers at KAGIDER  (Women Entrepreneurs Association of Turkey) headquarters, Istanbul, June 2011, AKTUEL magazine. Nakiye Boyaciller next to me is the dean of Sabanci University's business school, and Sedef Koktenturk on the far right is a Turkish Olympian in the sport of sailing.

Being Global Gives Writers Unique Voices

The writer and cultural curator Rose Deniz asked us what happens to our writing when worlds and languages collide.

Our language choice and vernacular will never be the same.

Even if I don't use Turkish words, the syntax is bound to slip in... like "make shopping" instead of "go shopping", and "arrive to" instead of "arrive at or in".

I know my adoption of the Malaysian "air-con" replaced the American "A/C" and remains hard to shake more than a decade since I lived there.

For globalist writers, like Rose and me and so many of the Expat Harem bloggers, I can only think it adds to the unique definition of our voice.

Content Curation Is The New Black & Scoop.it Is The New Squidoo

Announcing Scoop.it.  Anyone who wants to demonstrate their expertise in a subject area will benefit from this new tool to scoop web content into a graphically-displayed archive. Takes minutes to get started. It makes those bookmarks enticing rather than a list of text links. I believe this is an improvement on Squidoo's "lenses", it's not as complicated and easier to share. "If you can't be the source, be the resource" is the thinking....but you can also be the source.

Here are some related links:

IS CONTENT CURATION THE NEW BLACK? http://www.jonathanfields.com/blog/curation-is-the-new-content-black/

CONTENT CURATION: WHY THE NEW CURATORS ARE BEATING THE OLD http://curationservices.com/content-curation-why-the-new-curators-are-beating-the-old/

CURATION IS THE NEW CREATION http://lindaziskind.com/curation-is-the-new-creation

And a Scoop-it page of one of GlobalNiche at LinkedIn's creative entrepreneurs:  Jan Gordon

http://www.scoop.it/t/content-curation-social-media

Findings From A Lightning Round Of Masterminds

Along with Tara Agacayak, I run a private mastermind group on LinkedIn (it’s a subgroup of my Creative Entrepreneurs & Social Media group). She asks, "Now that Round Two has ended, please let us know:  how you liked it (what worked, what didn't) and what has changed for you (something you implemented, a transformed thought or behavior...)." Here are my thoughts on the second round, which was a weekly affair.

I liked the swifter pace because I think the longer things are stretched out the more disrupted they have the potential to become. So, the mastermind experience felt more cohesive, and potent to me. The swifter pace also meant it was my turn before I was ready.

I'd call that a bad thing -- except for the fact that it required me to just spit out what would otherwise have been revolving around inside my head for weeks longer, and maybe I would have chosen a different subject matter if I'd had more time to think about it.

Spitting out the first problem you can think of -- because it's 'easiest' -- is a useful first step. Doing the easiest thing first has a way of pointing to the next easiest step.

So, the faster paced mastermind got me to bring up the Global Niche plan that I meant to work on more slowly (and in a different order), and that led me to make it the focus of the Turkish WIN talk this month, and that precipitated the making of an extended slideshow to support the talk, both of which are now public videos (and on expat+HAREM and SlideShare and Scribd and Vimeo and my Amazon author page and my Facebook pages). And this also precipitated the creation of a Global Niche twitter account, a Global Niche facebook page, a Global Niche logo...see, just got me 'off the pot'.

What I like most about this turn of events (and the FAB discussion of the second round masterminds -- *thank you everyone*!) is that it's forced me to iterate early and often on a big project that now I can let seep into a larger consciousness, while the next step percolates.

Speaking About Global Niche At Turkish Women's International Network, Microsoft

Spoke today at Turkish WIN about the evolution of a global niche (my own, and the educational community I'm now developing). Microsoft headquarters, Istanbul. View my slideshow "The Evolution Of A Global Niche" here. I joined four other "accomplished dreamers" speaking at this inaugural Istanbul event produced by Melek Pulatkonak, the founder of Turkish WIN.

How To Use An Identity Crisis To Your Advantage

What comes after cultural disenfranchisement?

What comes after Expat Harem, the book?

What comes after expat+HAREM, the community site?

This slideshow charts the evolution of Globalniche.net (or, how to use an identity crisis to your advantage). Below is the script of my accompanying talk The Evolution of A GlobalNiche, delivered at Turkish Women's International Network, Microsoft Headquarters, Istanbul

EVOLUTION

DREAM of belonging how PLAYING with cultural identity has helped me ACHIEVE new sense of myself, personally and pro

CONCEPT & COMMUNITY we can all can use to be successful.

MAP

FB contacts. Where in the world do I belong?

Dream of belonging. Not just fitting in. But being in the right place with the right people. Place to lead your ideal lifestyle, chosen livelihood? Work you love to do so much it’s play?

For ppl who dream of life/community beyond what surrounds u now.

Story begins. Southeast Asia. Disenfranchised experience. lost my voice. Writer but I could not make myself understood. I didn’t understand what was going on around me.

What saved me: play. Pasttimes that put me into context. Taught me about the place. Historical travelogue. Acting in a period film. Drawn to crossroads, places where time meshes, opposites collide and cultures fuse.

EXPAT HAREM

Turkey 2003. Asian complaint travelogue. Snake infested island! Pirate-filled waters! No metaphors, really happened.

Turkey kidnapped me instead - metaphor. Theoretical home with the Expat Harem anthology. Inspired by the foreign women in sultan harem, liminal state of TR.

Showed how we can be embedded in a place, yet forever alien. Survive, but thrive in limbo. Also my character, like working alone at home, in collab with others. Found historical counterparts, also cultural peers. 100 women in 14 nations answered call for subs. 100s more on book tours. No longer alone in my limbo, even if American publishers suspected I was. worried book’s nonexistent audience, 15 New York publishing houses passed before sold. proved wrong. Thanks to Turks Turkophiles, expats, travelers, women writers, Near Eastern studies types -- people like you.

EXPANDING

EH called together virtual community but nowhere to meet. 2yrs ago: group blog to address readers and see what was beyond the book.

Expand circle. not just woman expat writer in Turkey. Expats everywhere. Global nomads, multicultural types. Immigrants, intentional travelers. Men, even! Anyone in cultural limbo.

New social order, most meaningful bonds not family, culture, nation. School. Work. social web connect us on interest, experience and world view. we can find each other, learn.

HYBRIDS

EH community started teaching me. Podcast roundtable discussion, realized all using creativity to manage hybrid, multifaceted lives. Flex skills/perspectives cd bring to all endeavors. Our life trajectory not a liability! Cd be asset.

AUTHOR PLATFORM

While launching EH online, also working on 2nd book, about my friendship with a multiple personality. Problem. After success/acceptance of EH book -- 5 yrs -- committing career suicide? lose my audience, or transition them to new topic? to prepare my author platform for 2nd book, began explaining why cultural writer shifting to psychological topic. Emphasizing identity, how formed thru culture -- getting away from travel focus. Also apparent expat and hybrid life writing more concerned with personality and psyche issues than travel often is.

MULTIPLE CULTURAL IDENTITIES

there WAS a link between past work, new book. have multiple CULTURAL personalities -- like a multiple personality, honor/care for each key to health/happiness. Career 'problem' both addressed personal issue and paved new pro growth! We have fusion!

GLOBAL NICHE DEFINED

called expat+HAREM site global niche, meant niche for globalists, home in world. 6 mos definition emerged. Looking at lifestyle design, location independent movements pioneering gate-jumping new paradigms, digital nomadic practices we require when geographically or culturally disadvantaged.

Detected my community's distinctly different need. Our question not Generation-Y: "how can i live on a beach in Thailand by running a blog."

PSYCHIC LOCATION INDEPENDENCE

Instead, PLU looking for in a GN is answer to: "how can I live the life I want wherever it is I happen to be?" To live/ work to our abilities independent of location and whatever its limitations.

Maybe still in hometown, or everyone speaks language we're not good at -- whether language of tongue, some other kind. best customers 10 time zones away?.

This addresses more universal issue. How to be okay with where we are, plenty reasons why we are where we are. Don't always live in optimal setting for our dreams. Doesn't mean we have to defer. We can get started, right now.

GLOBAL NICHE WORKGROUP

Past yr: cofounded creative entrepreneurship workgroup, mastermind how building life/livelihoods around strengths and interests. What we UNIQUELY bring. Belonging into own hands, playing with possibilities to find ourselves, audience, peers. Focus on web platforms reflect our place in the world, connect to relevant ppl, communities, integrate into offline activities.

Love fusion. NOW combining workgroup with expat+HAREM mission to make our psychic limbo a productive state. A global niche workgroup.

Developing private edu community -- GLOBALNICHE.net -- to equip psychically location independent PLU -- transglobal, multicultural, dreamer in a situation mismatch -- with skills/ tools need to achieve dreams.

Please visit so we can keep u posted about upcoming launch. Thank you TurkishWIN, good night.

Masterminding An Expat's Reluctant Entrepreneurism

Along with Tara Agacayak, I run a private mastermind group on LinkedIn (it’s a subgroup of my Creative Entrepreneurs & Social Media group). Each participant presents her case study and we brainstorm next steps.

Here are some of my thoughts on an expatriate writer's mention that if she weren't an expat and forced to find ways to make a living outside the norm, she wouldn't be an entrepreneur.

It reminds me of the Dialogue2010 conversations at expat+HAREM, and how our hybrid lives have *forced* us to be flexible about a lot of things most people (especially those in our 'previous lives' if we're living outside an original territory, including who we might have been if we'd stayed) never have to deal with. Our careers are one of those things.

The beauty of being a creative entrepreneur is that it's about making your work type and situation *work* for you, for the type of person you are, and the situation you face. That doesn't mean it's the easy choice, just that it has the potential to deliver much more than you'd get from being a cog in someone else's wheel.

Was also reading something the other day about how we don't have to make money from everything we produce (or even try to sell it), but if we're professionals (or hope to be, that is, we're not hobbyists) earning money for the work we do has to be part of the larger plan.

Writing ONLY for money is different type of job than writing what you want to write and receiving money for it (at some point on the journey, and maybe not directly from the writing).

If your interest in writing dries up at the prospect of selling it, or using it as a form of content marketing for something else you are selling, then maybe writing is not an element of the paid work you want to do. Maybe you want to keep it as a hobby, a special form of personal entertainment. That's totally cool.

But, if you harbor dreams of yourself as a professional writer, not only sharing your work widely but receiving compensation for it, then writing *is* an element of your livelihood. If you have the luxury of already knowing what you want to write, and already writing what you want to write (some people are on a different carousel, where they write for hire and dream of writing from the heart and soul and it's hard to get off that carousel for the very reason that it's scary and hard) then all you have to add to your picture is a strategy to get paid for what you are already doing.

Will you have to make changes in your plans, will you have to improve to be competitive, will you have to be sensitive to your readership? Will you have to be aware of the market and how it works and what the shifts are in publishing? Will you see clearly whether you have achieved your professional writing goals or not? Yes.

In fact, writing might suddenly seem like a different kind of work if all that stuff I just mentioned has previously been kept separate from your writing life. I think this might be the key for you. Integrating in small steps your writing as professional, and with a market purpose.

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Another participant of the group points out this post by creativity coach Mark McGuinness of Lateral Action that if Shakespeare had continued to work for a patron, we may never have heard of him.

Masterminding Optimizing A Writer's Online Presence

Along with Tara Agacayak, I run a private mastermind group on LinkedIn (it’s a subgroup of my Creative Entrepreneurs & Social Media group). Each participant presents her case study and we brainstorm next steps.

Here are some of my thoughts on optimizing a writer's presence online, including consolidating her blogs and deciding on which social media services to use and how.

I changed my anastasiaashman.wordpress.com blog to my own domain and there were no posts lost. it took a hour or something, no big investment! The method is actually easy and since so many people before you have done it, there are tutorials too. do you have a domain and host ready to go? if so, i think there is even a option inside your wordpress.com dashboard to take you through the steps. If i find a tutorial i'll post it. Here we go, first returned on google: http://www.labnol.org/internet/migrate-wordpress-blog-to-own-domain/12776/ Here are more considerations but an older post: http://remarkablogger.com/2008/03/18/moving-wordpress-com-self-hosted/

Actually if you read the second post above, you'll see a good reason to consolidate your site and blogs under one URL: "search strength". Will be talking more about this soon, but it's something to consider -- bring everything under one umbrella, with a menu that sends us to different areas. And if you're not blogging often, you don't need a separate blog for those different interests. just use categories to separate them, and one blog with unlimited static pages.an idea for what to do on twitter (which i think is best SM platform for you to be active on besides your own blogs) -- focus on twitter chats for writers.

Here is a list of Twitter chats by Inkygirl. Look thru the schedule, pick the ones of interest and then show up for them. Participate. Use the hashtags, talk to the people there, follow them.

This way people will get to know you, and your time on twitter will be spent in groups of professional interest to you.

There are also agent chats and book seller chats and publishing world chats. Branch into them as you see fit. Talk about your work in the context of the chat, but also just be engaging with others and people will check out your profile, follow you, and see what you've got going on. Talking to other writers who have books they want to publish is a way to talk about your own...

I wouldn't spend a minute more on LinkedIn (besides this group, I mean). Facebook is nice but if you're going to put in time or drive traffic it should be to your own site. Twitter + blog/site it is!

Alexandra Samuel is a woman who knows what she's talking about: "How to sustain a social media presence in 3 hours a week." Take a look at her suggestions and see what you can do to set up a system like this.

Also, look at this "Strategic tweeting for authors: If you’re an author who isn’t active on Twitter, you’re making a huge mistake, say savvy book-marketing gurus."

If you're going to tweet add a twitter widget to your site so your more ephemeral activities and the conversation and info you share can be seen by visitors to your site. It makes it look like someone's home. Here's how.

How Can We Maintain Our Web Presence & Data When Social Services Are In Flux?

In our GlobalNiche LinkedIn group, Tara Agacayak asked what we're doing to protect our content. Her blog on Blogger was blocked by court order in Turkey. "Not as in legal protection - but how to you make sure your data doesn't disappear? We've seen what happens when companies like Delicious get acquired and we lose our bookmarks or when Turkish courts ban sites like YouTube and Blogger. What are some things we can do to maintain our web presence when it is constantly in a state of flux?"

Here's my answer:

Redundancy, back-up. And trying out new services to capture your feeds...

Even microblogging sites like Tumblr -- you can set it up to capture your blog posts, your tweets, your bookmarks (at least for Delicious it worked).

Content aggregators -- I'm trying out the beta MemoLane to build a social media timeline with FB, Flickr, Twitter, RSS, vimeo.

Here's an example:

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=204181789596377&set=a.187853447895878.54875.180650641949492&theater

Groupon Ad Fiasco + Kenneth Cole Twitter Debacle = False Cosmopolitanism

Groupon's SuperBowl ad fiasco when the company attempted to mix consumerism with sensitive political, environmental, cultural, economic and social issues, and the Kenneth Cole Twitter debacle which appeared to make light of unrest in Cairo are examples of the bellyflops that come from false cosmopolitanism.

I wrote about this back in August of 2010.

We’re suffering from a false sense of cosmopolitanism. Access to the worldwide Interwebs leads us to imagine ourselves global thinkers. But we’re not -- unless we’re true xenophiles, bridging cultures, immersed and knowledgeable about multiple worlds.

Most people hang out in “like-minded microcosms” and when we cross a boundary online the new light shed on everyone’s prejudices and assumptions can take us by surprise.

“Xeno-confusion” is happening more often in the virtual realm, with higher and higher stakes. How are you preparing yourself for a wider world?

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Related: Global Dexterity