1. Loved Michael Scott and his talk because he was so accessible to the audience, walking among them without a mike and answering their questions directly.
2. It is not ever polite, if you’re an author to ever, ever, ever, belch as loud as you can on purpose in the mike at the start of your session. (Never funny, and no, I will not say who did this.)
3. Will Clarke is an amazing interviewer/moderator, and author. Wonderfully witty and generous on stage.
4. The best way to reach new readers is to describe your book(s) briefly and not assume that everyone in the audience has read them. (Bill Scheft did a great job of this.)
5. Po Bronson did a fantastic job of talking with his audience, not just too his audience.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NjMUfIKktWU[/youtube] My friend Mark Levy (Twitter – @levyinnovation), has provided me an endless tool for laughter when I’m having a particularly lousy day, because he mentioned to me that every time he sees the Geico pothole commercial he thinks it sounds just like me and it makes him laugh.
(I’ve included the commercial YouTube at the top of this blog post.)
On bad days, I watch it to make myself laugh. While I don’t think I sound all that Southern, the voice in the Geico commercial does tend to grow on you.
It also reminds me how powerful humor is and why it’s so important to use in our lives and in our social media presence. Laughter is the great equalizer for us all.
My great Aunt Florence used to say, “If you can’t say something funny, don’t bother to say anything at all.” At her funeral this was particularly hard on all of us because what’s funny about a funeral?
In a small cemetery, in Mobile, Alabama we all stood in the rain, led by a minister, who was all of 30, and he used humor to ease our grief.
The minister related how on the last Sunday of Aunt Florence’s life she had managed (at 90 years old) to go to church that morning, have him over for fried chicken and turnip greens at noon, and prior to that mowed the front lawn on her riding mower, in her favorite purple flowered floppy hat.
In fact, she was a little bit peeved at the minister because he came a bit earlier than noon and caught her, all dressed in white on the mower clipping the very last bit of the front lawn. She was a staunch advocate of good Southern manners and you never arrive early for supper in the South.
But caught her he did and despite her chiding, they had a great supper and later that night she went to sleep and passed away. When he finished the story, our tears turned to laughter because his story had so perfectly captured our Aunt Florence and her great love for supper, mowing the lawn and her church.
I suppose today I’m feeling particularly Southern and proud because the Texas Book Festival is this weekend and my client Bill Scheft is here among all the other amazing authors that always make me laugh.
So your “Minding Your Southern Social Media Manners” is really about remembering that laughter is good medicine online and offline.
1. Don’t waste time being snarky.
2. Don’t Twitter twerrible twthings.
3. Don’t Facebook-fatigue folks.
4. Don’t blog bad mojo
5. Don’t ever lose sight that life is best lived offline and online with humor and grace.
DM me on Twitter if you’re at the Fest, would love to see you. Twitter @nettiehartsock .
If you’re an author and you’ve not yet ventured into the newly revamped Amazon Author Central (beta) platform, please, please, please do so now.
At Author Central, you have a bevy of ready-made tools designed by the bookselling and bookreading techno geeks at Amazon. All of these tools empower your to share information about yourself and your work with your readers — you can view and edit your bibliography, add a photo and biography to a personal profile, and use a blog to connect with readers.
Geez Louise, this makes me want to finish my book so I too can be front and Web-face forward on Author Central too!
Don’t miss out on the sample link to Neil Gaiman’s page. And take a moment to imagine him cast in a new part for the Twilight movies. I think he’s really trying to move that mojo with the picture he has up there.:>)
My fave is my client Bill Scheft’s page because Bill is really starting to dig all these new ways to connect with people. Bill is also proof that you can teach an amazing humor novelist and 18 year David Letterman show writer new Web tricks.
Bill will also be a keynote at the Erma Bombeck Writers Conference this year (Twitter: @ebww) and he will be at the Texas Book Festival. (He writes a snappy blog too!)
I also notice at the Texas Book Fest that Buzz Aldrin will be speaking. I’m excited about this. I interviewed him years ago about his science fiction novel in Dallas, and he could not have been more gracious.
My favorite part of the interview was where I stupidly asked him (after weeks of watching old Apollo films for background) why they were doing different gaits across the moon.
“Mr. Aldrin,” I asked, “Did you all try those different gaits across the moon because you wanted to calculate differences between running, skipping, hopping?” (Oy vey, to be a young dumb journalist again.)
And he said (without a smile), “For God-sakes no. Young lady, we were on the moon! We were skipping because we were on the moon!” (Duh!)
He also had a great perspective on being the second man on the moon.
Buzz at the time was also in deep planning about his idea for a tourist service around space travel. I’m going to have to dig up the whole interview and post it as a PDF on the blog now.
Speaking of new frontiers, don’t forget to register on another fantastic author platform and one of my own personal faves – Filedby.com . If I was still a technology journalist my prediction would be that in two years from now, this is really the only author community you will need to be on.
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