For someone (me) who is always trying to balance the online with the offline, I feel your social media junkie pain.

You Just Might Be A Social Media Junkie if…

 1. You keep dropping a note in your collection plate at church instead of a donation. The note says, “Dear Reverend Hill – why have you not yet started a Facebook fan page for Jesus?”

2. Your wife wants you to be in therapy with her, but you’ve told her you will only do it if you can find a therapist who can dispel his/her wisdom in 140 characters or less. (length of a Twitter)

3. You’ve told your immediate and extended family that the best place for them to find out what you’re up to is on Tweetdeck. 

4. Instead of an emergency phone number on your children’s school information – you’ve posted your TwitterID account and told them that is the best way for them to reach you. (The school secretary in particular does not seem hip to the tweeting.) 

5. You volunteered for the Parent Teacher Organization group but only on a virtual level and have promised you will send tweets during the school carnival when the principal is dunked. 

6. Your Mom closed her Facebook account, because she was getting too many Fan messages from you asking her to join your Fan page. 

7. Your husband has a Google alert set up on your name and occasionally searches Google images so he can see what you looked like before you became part of your office chair. 

8. Your neighborhood bunko group has unfriended you on Facebook because they don’t much cotten to you sending status updates like, “I just kicked everyone’s butt in bunko. I’m the bunko queen and these women can’t roll a triple six if it killed them.” 

9. You tell people you and Barack Obama are very close virtually because you joined his Facebook Fan page. 

10. You found your Honors English teacher (Mrs. Whitley) on Facebook and you’re sending her blog posts to redline for you (because after all once a teacher, always a teacher.) 

11. Your husband has banned twittering, facebooking, linkedin-ing from the bedroom. 

12. Your pug starts a very high pitched noise when he sees you reach for your iPhone.

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I’ll be leaving tomorrow to speak at the Erma Bombeck Writers’ Conference which is a great thrill for me. My client Bill Scheft will be speaking there too, as well as one of my heroes Gail Collins.

Erma is another hero of mine and I started reading her books when I was very young and my Mom would pass them to me to inspire me and give me the gift of humor. I’m taking my Mom, a 72 year old English teacher, who still teaches in an 95% economically disadvantaged school district near Dallas. My mom gets the kids in 9th grade who everyone else has “passed along” but those same kids can’t read and often have no one to believe in them. My mom changes all that for them. Several of her students are now in college and many have gone on to work in other careers as well. She inspires them to do more with their lives.

Erma’s writing always inspires me. It is timeless because it is good common sense and elevates the power of humor and love in our lives. Being a humorist is the hardest writing job one can have, yet Erma did it effortlessly. So before I leave for the trip in the morning, I wanted to share my favorite Erma quotes.

1. Before you try to keep up with the Joneses, be sure they’re not trying to keep up with you.

10. It takes a lot of courage to show your dreams to someone else.” I’ll be presenting “Overwebbed: Help I’ve Had a Social Media Breakdown and I Can’t Tweet Up”. I’ll also be tweeting from the event so look for hashtag #ebww . I think everyone will be using that one for tweets.

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Goddard was where I finally arrived to finish my B.A. in my early 20s and one of the first things you do as part of the work is complete your semester independent study plan with your advisor and fellow group members. The semester’s study is what you will work on throughout the semester once you’ve returned home.

The students there I felt were so hip and artistic and at a depth of soulfulness that I’d not yet experienced. The experience was overwhelming.

I spent several hours during the first few days at Goddard, truly refining what I thought was the magnum opus of all independent study plans. “Oh, this will blow my advisor away,” I thought, full of pride and bravado. “This will go in the halls of infamy as one of the best study plans ever!”

Skipping down to my advisor/group meeting carrying this hallowed six page document, I reveled in anticipation at what I was sure would entail several rounds of standing ovations (from my advisor Rob Tarule and the other six members of the group.) Tripping over a particularly big mound of sidewalk snow should have been my first sign that things were not going to go as I thought they might.

Holding my document in the air as I fell and thereby ensuring its dryness in lieu of my own bloodied knees and wet beret, I walked those final steps to the group’s meeting place.

Finally, it was my turn to present my study plan – rising from my bean bag chair I started reading! Alas, by the fourth paragraph my advisor Rob said, “This sounds very scholarly, but where are YOU in this document? What will change in YOU and your creative work by doing this study?” I couldn’t answer this. Rob gave me one more night to rework the plan -to put ME – in the plan.

It was about 23 degrees that night as I trudged up in my red boots back to the Goddard library to read samples of other plans – anything that might show me what was the RIGHT plan for me.

After spending two depressing hours in one bookshelf area, studying other successfully executed plans, I moved to another row of books. There I spied, “Franny and Zoey” by J.D. Salinger.

Suffering from severe anxiety I sat down on the floor beside the bookshelf and read the book from front to back in the middle of that night in the library. That book was where I found my answer to the block I was feeling over writing the “perfect” study plan.

The answer was this phrase, “An artist’s only concern is to shoot for some kind of perfection, and on his own terms, not anyone else’s.”

I worked all night creating a whole new study plan and in doing so created a plan to be a writer, an artist, an idea-lover not focused on perfection, but focused only on finally meeting and expressing my artistic soul on my own terms.

God bless Salinger for that gift.

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2. In the aforementioned stories, highlight all the adjectives they use in the story and you’ll get a very good feel for their particular slant in stories and the publication’s slant as well.

3. If they are very well-known journalists, then take the time to read interviews they’ve done about writing, their own work and their lives. This is an excellent way to make a human connection. Remember, no matter what your PR firm has told you, journalists are HUMANS too.

4. Go through each story and highlight the experts they’ve sourced in the story. This will teach you what they look for, what caliber of expert they reach out to and how you might position your own thought leadership around this. By the way, don’t create inauthentic content via blogging or otherwise to just “snag” a journalist’s attention. They’re much smarter than that and really good journalists are very intuitive and work hard to find the best possible source.

5. RESPECT, find out what it means to the journalist. Don’t stalk them, don’t email them incessantly, don’t consistently denigrate their angle on a story. If there is something you can add, then by all means add it to your blog post about the story. Add some new insight. We can all help each other to elevate the writing and meaning.

6. Don’t ever expect or think you deserve coverage. It’s not enough to just decide you’re a great expert or big thinker. You have to work harder than that. Don’t even make it about a journalist doing a story on you. Make it about you doing a story for your own community that engenders new discussion. Journalists are always looking for new angles to old stories!

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Newton’s Law of Inertia: Every object persists in its state of rest or uniform motion in a straight line unless it is compelled to change that state by forces impressed upon it.

Today is the 367th birthday of Sir Isaac Newton and let it be the first day you move out of inertia about Web 2.0 and into the Law of  Acceleration with Web 2.0.

Here are Six Ways to Stave Off Social Media Inertia:

1. Stop lying under someone else’s apple tree passively waiting for the Web to drop on you, instead start planting your own seeds on the Web.

2. Stop thinking your web presence will grow without you being a part of it. If you’re not digging your own soil, planting your own seeds and watering your own online thought-garden, then you are not participating!

3. Stop kvetching about how everyone else’s orchards are bigger and it’s too late for you to grow your own platform. As everything continues to move online, you need to do so as well.

4. Start tweeting so you can ensure lots of good “traffic” rain to your site or blog through meaningful engagement.

5. Stop wasting time on the Web. Set up a growing plan and stick to it. Keep moving, growing and seeding new ideas and opportunities.

6. Don’t let the force of fear paralyze keep you from finding new ways to build community online.

7. Stop being defined by your age or place in career, and start becoming ageless on the Web through your unique insight and wisdom.

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In his book, Hopcke (a therapist) says people ask him, “How do you work with synchronicity?” and he answers, “Be open to the meaning in what you did not want to happen.”

How does this apply to social media? I think it does beautifully because if there is one thing I know about social media it is that you never know what might happen and you can not underestimate the power of being online and finding new synchronistic communities and readers.

I might say, “”Be open to the meaning in what you do not yet know will happen in social media.”  Stop being afraid of what might or might not happen and just start conversing online.

If you come from a place of reticence, fear and “i’m not enough-ness” online then synchronicity will be hard fought. If you choose to be open to all that CAN and will surely happen if you are participating on the Web, then BELIEVE me you will be constantly amazed at how the Web really works to connect people to their tribe.

It’s not about marketing your ideas, it’s about empowering your community and finding synchronicity between them and you and what can be done to change the world.

It’s not about celebrity. It’s about celebrating how uniquely gifted all of us are and how we can lift up one another.

It’s not about bait and switch and selling something you know is not the real deal. It’s about waking up and typing your heart out because you know in doing that you are doing good.

Every single person on the Web counts toward something greater and at the end of the day, why not be counted?

You matter to the Web. I hope to see you there in the new year.

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I was up last night like a little Animoto elf creating some and I like this one best.

The price point is fantastic at $30 year for creating as many as you want.

If you want to create a free one you can do so as well. The free ones are limited in length and can only have 15 elements, but they still turn out pretty terrific.

It would be wonderful of course if every author had a budget of $3000 to $5000 to have a company create a stunning video for their books, but just in case you don’t, take heart you can still come up with something
that works for your site, your Tweets and your Facebook.

Now go and create! Send me links to some of the ones you create and I’ll feature them on the blog!

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If you’re ready to be inspired to write and join a fantastic group of people who will encourage you along the way then I highly recommend you register NOW for the Erma Bombeck Writers’s Conference. The registration is ongoing and they sell out usually in a very short time period. Folks like Gail Collins and Bill Scheft will be part of the event and I’ll be presenting on authors and social media there too! I hope you’ll join as well!

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Not only will a mind map program help you improve your creativity, but it’s a fantastic blog brainstorming tool.

One of the best free tools out there to do this is Bubble.us, which lets you create a map, share a map and embed one in your blog, website or emails.

You can also choose Mindomo.com – which offers free 7 private maps.

I encourage you to look at these and incorporate them early on before you even launch your blog. There’s nothing worse than having a blog that yakkity-yaks with no direction and lacks strong content for your burgeoning community.

Speaking of yakkity-yak, make sure your blog is not solely focused on you and your yakking. In the South, the person who is yakking the most in the center of the room, usually is also the one everyone tries to avoid by the end of the night. Don’t be that blog-yakker.

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It’s really time to stop worrying about how you will “look” on the Web if it’s preventing you from wholly participating. It’s not about how you will look on the Web, it’s about being authentic, engaging and real while you’re on there. It’s about sharing your insight freely and championing those in your peer arena who are doing the same.

If I worried about how I “looked” on the Web, I would have been a failure, during the years from 1995 to 2002, because dare I say, I was a full-time mom, writing my technology news stories late at night for Ziff-Davis and Allbusiness.com , Internet Business Forum (now defunct), all for the sake of being able to stay at home with my kids when they were little. I was lucky and blessed, and left a job at a news station to do this.

I mistakenly thought if someone could have seen the real me (mom, pajamas, milk pump, cheerios strewn throughout my hair, typing feverishly at 4am), they would not be paying me to write as a technology journalist or think the stuff I’d written was worthwile.

But here’s the real secret, they can see you on the Web. They know your heart by your writing. They know who you choose to affiliate with by your blogroll. They know how much you care about your readers of your blog by how often you post really good edu-focused content to uplift your whole community.

The Web community can tell a bait and switch a mile away. This community can also tell when you’re not being honest, authentic and mindful of their time.

If you’re going to spend time on the Web building your platform the biggest thing you need to understand is there’s not a dress code, but there is a social 2.0 code.

Take time to learn it and you’ll thrive. You’ll really make lifelong connections. Hey, maybe you’ll even be like me, who got roses upon the birth of my son Gibson, from a client in New Zealand that I worked with for almost three years and never met.

The only way to truly participate in the Web is to give up control over what you dictate your community should find useful. Decide that you are going to focus your energy on empowering the collective and you’ll be surprised at the Web marketshare you’ll slowly gain.

Decide to invite your community to share their ideas, to guest blog at your site, to openly comment and disagree with your ideas. Elevate the discussion and you’ll elevate your community as well.

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“It’s time to trust my instincts. Close my eyes and leap. It’s time to try defying gravity. I think I’ll try defying gravity, and you can’t pull me down.” (Defying Gravity – Wicked the Musical)

I’m writing my book fulltime on Sundays and I always try to listen to inspiring and uplifting music when I’m writing. Today my work ended with the soundtrack from Wicked, The Musical.

I’ve seen Wicked close to ten times and plan on seeing it again when I go to New York in October.  (I was doubly blessed to take my teenage daughter to it for her first trip in NY last year.)

The book and the musical help inspire me to be more. The story of Elphaba and how hard she works to stay true to her mission, what she gives up along the way, and what she gains in return is timeless.

Elphaba (the green girl) also changes the people and places she comes in contact with. That’s certainly a powerful way to live your life.

For some of us, we face this new world of Web 2.0 with great fear and trepidation, but I can tell you after having been on the Web since 1995, there’s no reason to fear Web 2.0.

It’s just another upgrade.  In fact, it’s one you can make easily and bring together  the best of yourself offline blended with the offline. As they say in the musical, ”Let the green girl go.”

You’ve nothing to lose by using these tools and you and your community have so much to gain. The only thing Web 2.0 asks of you, your company or your community is to be just who you are.

Turns out the more authentic you are, the better off you are on the Web.

Web 2.0 doesn’t have any of the old smoke and mirrors tricks. Web 2.0 has disrobed the wizard controlling the masses through fear.  For the first time in a long time, you can be who you want to be and create a highly engaged following.

You can be unlimited in Web 2.0. You might even be popular.

You might even be like me, a woman who started a career on the Web in 1995 (to stay at home with my young children) and is still blessed and lucky enough to be going strong after all this time.

You can absolutely engender success on the Web 2.0, but you have to participate. You have to defy gravity along with the rest of us. Take your hits and keep flying.

Here are five ways to “defy gravity’ using Web 2.0.

1. Build your page on Facebook.

2. Build your LinkedIn.com profile to 100%

3. Stop waiting for permission to be who you are.

4. Find the people that care about your causes on places like Twitter, Facebook and other social sites.

5. Start participating by embracing your mission and your messages and sharing them across the Web without fear.

You can do it. Sweep away all your fears of failure and start flying.

If I can do it, you can do it. If they can do it, we can do it. Just take one small leap and defy gravity.

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Ten Ways to Kiss the Social Media Facade Goodbye:

1. Stop trying to control your community – and start being a part of it.

2. Freely admit you do not have all the answers and be a perpetually free resource with the answers you do have.

3. Be yourself and the tribe will follow.

4. Don’t spend time trying to be clever or inauthentic.

5. Don’t only quantify the value of your readership or community by the number of clicks.

6. Die snarkiness die.

7. Cash isn’t the currency you need on the Web. Courage and transparency are what really goes viral in Web 2.0. (Don’t believe me? Check out Randy Pausch’s “Last Lecture” on YouTube. Look at the view numbers and watch the vid if you haven’t yet.)

8. Let “link-love” abound.

9. Find joy in Web 2.0 or don’t do it.

10. For every hour you spend on social media, spend the same amount outside. (Remember the sun is good for you. Real grass smells fantastic. Laughter at playgrounds cures almost everything.)

Be brave and lose the facade. Life’s way to short not to spend it being real with your co-people.

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