Social Media

How to Write for Instagram

A version of this story appeared in Total Annarchy, my fortnightly newsletter that helps you be a better writer, storyteller, marketer. Get it in your inbox; you’ll love it. * * * Last week, my girl Kerry Gorgone and I gave a talk at the Social Pulse Summit titled Blending the Personal and Professional on Instagram (Without Getting Into Trouble or Being a Jackhole). Kerry is the Amy Poehler to my Tina Fey. Kerry also has a JD, so her part was mostly about how Not to Get Into Trouble. I am not a lawyer. So my part was mostly about Avoiding Jackholish-ness. I shared about how I blend the personal and professional on the ‘gram—my favorite social network. Have you ever committed to something and then had immediate regrets? That was me with this talk. In that process, I moved through these stages: Seven Stages of a Creative Project […]

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TikTok with the Best Writing Advice (No Really)

A version of this story appeared in Total Annarchy, my fortnightly newsletter that helps you be a better writer, storyteller, marketer. Get it in your inbox; you’ll love it. * * * I sense I’m being watched. Followed. Stalked, almost. He’s quiet as a ninja. And like a ninja, he seems everywhere at once. Often I sense him before I see him. I think I’ve entered a room alone but then turn suddenly, and—yep—there he is: his silhouette in the doorway, backlit by the yellow hallway light. “Oh, hey. You good? Just keeping an eye on you.” It would be a little creepy, except for… well, look at him. Let’s start with his legs. They’re six inches long—too short to scale all the stairs to the second floor without needing a nap. He lies on the landing and cries. He might be part ninja. But at that moment he looks

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How Do You Balance Your Personal and Professional Social Media Presence?

  I started on Twitter in 2007 as @MarketingProfs, sharing headlines from the site and representing the brand there. Then 5 years later I resuscitated @AnnHandley on Twitter as a personal ID—a handle I’d been squatting on for years but never used. Why the second account? I guess the easiest answer is that it seemed… I don’t know, time? Because Twitter itself had shifted. In 2007, when I started on Twitter, things felt a bit quieter. A bit under the radar. I started and assumed the ‘Profs Twitter account first on a lark (let’s see what this is all about, shall we?) and then as it grew… I just kept at it. Why? Simply: I enjoyed it. (There’s nothing quite like it.) And it’s worked for us. And now, I’m pretty sure MarketingProfs is one of very few major business-to-business brands whose Twitter account is run solely by a shareholder.

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The First Tweets of 16 B2B Brands (and a Few Familiar Faces)

What was your first tweet? As Twitter began trading on the New York Stock Exchange last week, I couldn’t help but consider how far this small, simple, fledgling network has come. Once mocked for being stupid and insipid, and plagued by its own persistent identity crisis, Twitter has nonetheless become a prominent and important part of our culture. I just find to use another word other than “part” to describe Twitter in that last sentence. Because what is Twitter, exactly? Is it a news network? A social platform that connects us to friends, brands, celebrities? A discussion forum? I guess the answer is Yes. (That’s the thing: What’s dumb-brilliant about Twitter is that it defies categorization. What is Twitter? It’s what you think it is.) Twitter was founded in March of 2006. I started on Twitter in September 2007, when Jeremiah Owyang suggested that I should represent MarketingProfs there. (Eventually,

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A Journey to ’25 Random Things’

Three weeks ago, William tagged me in a “25 Random Things About Me” chain letter. I’ve hung around with William a few times, but reading his list feels a lot like a peek at his diary: Here are his hopes, fears, and his profession of love for Twizzlers. I’m tagged again by Tim (“I’m a writer… but poetry is what I love to write the most”), then Kris (“I love Bailey, my Jack Russell cocker who puts her paws over her face when I scold her”), and red-headed Stephanie (“I am addicted to television.” And, comically, “This is not my natural hair color.”) I’m sensing that this thing is bigger than I might have thought. I do some research and discover the concept: Generate a list of 25 “things, facts, habits or goals” about yourself in the notes section of your Facebook profile and publish it there. Then, tap 25

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I Can Haz Hoomin Hart-aik

Maybe it’s because the holidays put me in a melancholy mood. Maybe because I’m again staring down the barrel of six bleak months of winter. Whatever the cause, I can’t help but read lolcats these days without glimpsing the heartache of the human condition. In a piece a few weeks ago in Salon, Jay Dixit articulated it perfectly, when he wrote, “This is all funny stuff. But I submit that the true genius of lolcats lies in their tragedy.” Lolcats, if you don’t know, is a web site and internet phenomenon that combines a photo of a cat with a funny, idiosyncratic caption in broken English—a sort of dialect known as “lolspeak,” “kitteh,” or “kitty pidgin,” which parodies the poor grammar and spelling of Internet slang. The name “lolcat” is a compound of the phrase “LOL” and “cat.” It’s simple, it’s goofy, and it’s stuffed full of references and self-references.

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