Help a Reporter Out (HARO) Helps Me Out With Twitter Book

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I’m working on I’m on Twitter — Now What??? Yes, I’m a nut.  A crazy nut.  I swore I wouldn’t do a second book.  Swore more I wouldn’t do a third book.  Now I’m going to to stop swearing, since I have a fourth book I am going to do, and am anxious to write another top secret book (not a “Now What” book).

I signed up for Help a Reporter Out (HARO) a few weeks ago and have enjoyed watching Peter Shankman grow this concept into a very powerful resource for journalists.  I subscribed thinking maybe there were opportunities for me to be an expert… never did I think I’d ask for sources for an article.  Here’s the top of the HARO website:

Then I saw solicitation for input on various books, and thought maybe I should try it out.  So I did.  I put this:

11) Summary: Input for Twitter book

Name: Jason Alba

Email: Jason@JibberJobber.com

Title: I’m on Twitter — Now What???

Media Outlet/Publication: book

Anonymous? No

Specific Geographic Region? No

Region:

Deadline: 12:00 PM MOUNTAIN – July 31

Query:

“I am working on I’m on Twitter — Now What??? (following I’m on LinkedIn — Now What??? and I’m on Facebook — Now What???) and am looking for input.

Has Twitter helped you improve your network, your brand, increase revenues (make sales), etc?

What do you LOVE about Twitter, and what do you HATE about it? What confuses you about it?

Specific examples or stories are what I’m looking for. Please send answers (or questions), and your Twitter handle, to Jason@JibberJobber.com”

I can’t believe the amazing responses I’ve gotten.  Twitter n00bies, Twitter early adopters, businesses, professionals.  Some Twitter haters (or, I-don’t-getters), mostly people saying “I resisted for a long time but then I tried it out and have been amazed at what it is.”

I’m getting excellent input.  How much input?

I have received 36 e-mails from people answering my questions. And the question came out about 8 hours ago.  I’m sure I’ll get more through the next week.

Love Twitter, hate Twitter, results from Twitter (ROI)… it’s all there.  This HARO resource is phenomenal… thank you Peter Shankman, this isn’t the last time I’m using HARO!

Login pages that suck

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There are two websites I login to frequently that I wish would be changed.  They cause me a split second of angst, and I’ve been meaning to blog about them for a while.  To get this off my chest, almost like a public confession, here they are:

Elance doesn’t quite get the order a user tabs through their login.  Follow the numbers to see where your cursor goes when you hit tab:

I should mention, I grabbed this screenshot while multitasking.  If I let the page load for a few minutes, then it tabs from #1 to the password field… but hello, I rarely let it sit for minutes, I want to LOGIN NOW!

Guess what happens if you tab from #3?  It goes down to other places on the page… I haven’t tabbed enough to see when/if it ever gets to the password page.

I wonder if elance could post a little project on their own site to see if a developer could take, oh, 4 seconds and fix that :p

The other one is my beloved LinkedIn.  This has been a beef since day one.  When you go to the front page of LinkedIn you have this handy dandy form:

They make it easy to sign up if you have never signed up.  But what about any of the 24 million people who have already signed up?  You are chopped liver, second-class citizen.  You must do an extra click, either at the bottom arrow, or at the very top of the page (not shown) where you can click a sign in link.

So, it’s annoying to have to make that extra click… that’s my beef.

But I also worry that this is what I *should* be doing with my JibberJobber login!  Check out what we have at the top right of every single page when you are logged out:

We give all visitors the ability to sign in from any page, assuming they already have an account.  We are respecting the returing visitors a hair more than the non-users.  Non-users get that big read button that says “Get Free Account”… so *they* are the ones who have to click once before they can proceed!

Which is right?  I’d like to think that I’m right… but perhaps LinkedIn has high-powered  user interface professionals that say what they are doing is totally right… and I should learn from that!

After all, they have over 24M signups… that’s saying something.

Ah, the angst it causes me 😉

Amazon shows status of LinkedIn book

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I took a break from checking my stats on Amazon, since my book should be past it’s prime, as far as what I’m told.  But I’m pleasantly surprised to see that it’s still doing well:

In the highlight, this shows it’s the four thousanth most popular book that Amazon sells (during this period, which I think is limited to an hour or a few hours).

The red arrow shows it’s the eighth most popular book in the Job Hunting book category.  Here’s some interesting observations with that:

  1. The number one book in this category is Career Warfare: 10 Rules for Building a Sucessful Personal Brand on the Business Battlefield … funny that it only has 1 customer review, but it is a McGraw-Hill book, and a second edition.  It’s also #144 of ALL books sold in this period – big kudos to author D’Alessandro.
  2. Unbelievable that the always-#1 book in this category, What color is your parachute, is knocked to #2!  That won’t last long, but it’s good to see a new #1 for now 🙂
  3. I own the next three books, in #9,  Escape from Corporate America: A Practical Guide to Creating the Career of Your Dreams  #10 How’d You Score That Gig?: A Guide to the Coolest Jobs-and How to Get Them  and #11 Knock ’em Dead, 2008: The Ultimate Job Search Guide (Knock ’em Dead).  It’s great to see my friends’ books there.
  4. Surprisingly, I’m on Facebook — Now What??? is sitting at #16. That might be the highest I’ve seen it there… while I have seen my LinkedIn book down around #40 or somewhere around there.

Amazon stats are quite fickle, so I don’t pretend there’s any science here, but it’s fun to pontificate every once in a while 🙂

eList Coolness

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I participate as much as I can in the My LinkedIn Power Forum, and have for about two years.  It’s been very cool to see how things change and evolve there.

Rarely have I seen something as cool as this.  It is an e-mail (see below) where a member does a play-by-play of how an e-mail thread evolves.  Realize that this is a summary of a number of e-mails throughout the thread, but the way he lays it out is just plain cool.

The problem with the daily digest is the loss of the excitement of the chase – it is just like fishing:

The quarry was there:

Posted by: “Brock Henderson”

(Something about job search or career management… )

The hook was baited:

Posted by: “Jason Alba”

Brock, I agree… and that’s why I’d be on the lookout for a good career management tool :p

The nibbles started:

Posted by: “Brock Henderson”

Jason,

I seriously doubt such a thing exists.

And then the strike!

Posted by: “Jason Alba”

I seem to think JibberJobber does a pretty good job of serving as a career
management tool 😉

The digest removes the thrill of the chase – the anticipation started at Jason’s first post but was over in the blink of an eye.

Actually, I can’t remember anything as cool as this on an e-mail. Kudos to Andrew Baker, from Australia, for putting it together.

Another reason I love Twitter (& eating grasshoppers raw)

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My son decided he likes to eat grasshoppers.  Raw.  He goes out to our back yard, finds a grasshopper, and plops it in his mouth.  No lie, the kid eats the entire thing.

Must have got that from his mom’s side of the family.

So, here’s why I love  Twitter.  Because I can share this amazingly funny thing to my Twitter network.  I’m not sure who, if anyone, listens to my tweets… and I don’t do it to get a response.  I justify it by thinking it is some kind of life-journaling… anyway, here’s what I wrote:

And here’s the responses I got:

I love this Twitter community thing 🙂

Why I stopped doing creative stuff

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Yesterday I had a pretty rough day. More on that next week on my JibberJobber blog.

To end the day, though, I thought I’d carve out some time and put together a powerpoint to try slideshare.net. I’ve been wanting to do it for a while, but really wish I had a really creative person to do it for me, or at least check it out. Someone like Armano, or Geno (both of whom I’ve met in person).

It’s not that I don’t like to pretend I’m creative. But something happened two years ago that made me stop and think harder about what I was doing.

I put out a press release.

It was uber-successful.

And that success scared me.

Scared me into thinking I had to be more thoughtful, more careful, with these types of things.

And I stopped. No more press releases. Nothing that an ad agency, or a PR firm, should do.

I scared myself into non-action.

And that was dumb.

William wants to be a Canadian

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Last night my wife was putting the the 4 and 7 year olds to bed. In her own words:

I just finished putting a scared Taylor to bed. When the kids are scared, I say a special prayer of comfort and love. William is in the top bunk over Taylor and after we said amen, he said, ‘Why do we always say A-Men and not A-Lady?‘ I busted up laughing and told him how smart he was to think of that question and that I had never thought to ask that.

Then, William says:

“When I grow up I want to be a Canadian, that makes people laugh.” My wife asks, “A Comedian?” and William responds “Yeah!”

Guffaws all around 🙂

Twitter tools at a conference

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I’m presenting at the newcommforum.com conference and it seems that over 60% of the audience is twittering (tweeting) DURING the presentations. In fact, perhaps the conversation on Twitter during the presentation is more interesting than the actual presentation?? Talk about disruptive, especially as a presenter.

Anyway, here are some links to help you track a certain “thing” in twitter…. people here are using the hash mark (pound) like this: #sncr (sncr is the name of the group, pronounced “snicker”):

This definitely makes the list of top 5 valuable things to do with Twitter (and makes the information manageable).

Taylor said all of the cusswords

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Conversation this morning with my 7yo son:

William: Dad, yesterday Taylor (4yo girl) said all of the cusswords.

Me: Oh yeah, did mom hear?

William: yeah. And she didn’t even get in trouble.

Me: What did she say?

William: She said

  • stupid
  • dumb
  • your not the boss of me
  • and all the other cuss words there could be, except the V-word.

Me: What is the v-word? (thinking I knew all of the cusswords, but the gravity of this v-word issue was almost concerning…)

William: (hesitating, and in a whisper) … “vain”