I live in Texas and haven’t been to a single high school football game since moving back to Texas in 1995. And, my daughter is a senior at a high school … a giant one (2600 in two grades) compared to mine (less than 2000 in four grades). Oh, I love football, y’all. My dad took me all around Dallas/Fort Worth to meet a few of the Dallas Cowboys and get their autographs.

Photo by Cherie A. Thurby

When the Cowboys won the Super Bowl in 1994, I was nine months pregnant. Although an exciting game, I couldn’t jump — thank goodness. Everyone wondered how I didn’t go into labor that day. (She arrived 10 days later — maybe that explains her disinterest in football.)

I joke that I didn’t graduate from a real college because it didn’t have a football team. Growing up in Fort Worth, I caught a few games at TCU where I went for my freshman year of college. Loved that experience especially when TCU played against Texas A&M. No matter how you feel about the Aggies, they have an incredible and precise band that puts most bands to shame. And no, it wasn’t because my husband had played in the Aggie band.  You just have to watch the Aggie band to understand.

My most memorable football memory has to be the 1986 Cotton Bowl: Texas A&M vs. Auburn and Bo Jackson. I have my brother, an A&M graduate, to thank for getting to see the game.

What’s your most memorable football memory? If soccer is your thing — go for it.

Brain food…

• Freelancer’s Guide to SEO – More Visibility, Traffic, and Clients. A well-organized doable guide with simple steps that won’t overwhelm you like others.
• 9 Ways Your Business Needs To Change To Become Social. This is how I try to work with social media. I truly love the interactions. I could spend all day listening and helping people if I could. [Link: Adam Helweh]
• How to Write a Good Freelancer Bio. Suggests various elements to include along with some tips.
• How to understand regret — and 2 ways to avoid it. I don’t think I have any big regrets in my life. Sure, I wish I had done some things differently, but if I had never done them … my path may not have ended up where it has today.
• 10 words worth collecting and how to use them. These aren’t insipid words. Quite the opposite.

For fun because we’re allowed…

• Social Media Explained… in very simple terms. Hilarious.
• Duck Tron. What happens when you throw duct tape into a scene from Tron.
• George Washington Autocorrect. HA!

Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2011 Meryl Evans

Tomorrow, my husband and our two sons will see the Harlem Globetrotters play the hapless Washington Generals. I went years ago with my dad and caught them on TV whenever I could. I enjoyed the antics and fancy ball-handling of Curly Neal, Twiggy Sanders, Sweet Lou Dunbar and Meadowlark Lemon. I remember when Lynette Woodard joined them.

Cool fact: “Globetrotters have lost 345 games over the course of eight-plus decades. However, with over 23,000 wins, the Globetrotters do own the best winning percentage (.985) in the history of professional sports.”

What are your favorite sports memories?

Brain food…

• Social Networking For Authors: Tips For Using Twitter Effectively: Not including this because it mentions one of my articles. It’s good stuff.
• Best Writing Advice (According to Writers): A nice variety of folks.
• Lorna’s Top Ten Movies About Writers: What do you think? I added The Shipping News.
• How to Scan Thousands of Tweets without Tears: Breathe… one step at a time. It’s one option for finding what you need.
• 10 Rules for Killer Business Cards: 80 page presentation with mostly photos. Great example of good presentations and business cards. But what’s wrong with business card promos? OK, you don’t want your business card to be used to help someone get their shoes on, but there are clever ones.

For fun because we’re allowed…

• 16 Creative Coffee Mugs
• 10 Geeky Ways to Say I Love You: How about, “01001001 00100000 01101100 01101111 01110110 01100101 00100000 01111001 01101111 01110101.” (I love you in binary computer code).
• 11 Strangest How-To Books: I own How to Read a Book.
• 12 of the World’s Most Unique Stamps: My dad was a stamp collector. Even went as far as mail certain stamps to have them stamped by US postal service. I was interested in it for about 10 minutes.
• Pac-Man Art in Brooklyn: Be like Pac.
• 40 Conceptual Print Ads – Creativity with concept: The one time McDonald’s had me saying, “Whoa! Cool!” (Referring to coffee photo. The clown one just looks freaky.)

You can do more with YouTube than posting videos of bloopers and sleepwalking dogs running into walls. Creating videos and uploading them to sites like YouTube and Vimeo provide writers with the opportunity to share expertise, promote a book and connect with others. Camera shy? You don’t have to be in the video. You have many possibilities with videos beyond being a talking head on camera!

Furthermore, YouTube has a lot of traffic. Alexa ranks it as #3 in traffic rank and comscore reports, “Six out of seven U.S. Internet users now view online video content in a month.” Verdict: Include video in your networking and marketing toolbox, writers.

Here are 30+ ways writers can benefit from creating videos and uploading them to YouTube and other video web sites.

Expertise

1. Show your public speaking skills by recording your presentations.

2. Share presentation slides. Apps like E.M. PowerPoint Video Converter can convert your PowerPoint slides into a video.

3. Interview experts related to your writing topic(s).

4. Create screencasts showing how to use a computer application, tool, web site (that’s not your product or service) — anything that is on your screen. Screencast by me.

5. Produce short videos of you providing tips related to your expertise.

6. Convert podcasts into videos to extend your reach. (Heck, turn them into blog posts, Facebook updates — get the idea?)

7. Join the conversation. Most video sites let you leave comments and good conversations happen there. No video production required.

YouTube Account Profile (Click to view larger)

Marketing and Promotion

8. Select a user name that reflects you and your brand. It’s OK if you already have an ID that doesn’t reflect your brand. See #9.

9. Edit your profile to include as much information as you can about you and your business. While you’re at it, review all your setups and options to make sure it’s what you want. Yes, upload a picture of you or your business logo.

10. Record customer testimonials to let them do the talking about your business. Easy to fake text testimonials. Videos — not so easy to fake.

11. Create a video that explains your business and services.

12. Create a trailer for your book or other products. Here is a book video from dear friend Cindy Ray, creator of The Stapler Caper. Another example: Witch Fire book trailer.

13. Put your video channel URL in your signature, in your social media profiles and on marketing collateral.

14.  Tweet your videos. Of course, don’t promote your stuff too often or in a row. Also, give people a reason to check out the video.  Ex: “Screencast: How to create Twitter lists.” Imagine the retweet (RT) possibilities.

15. Link to videos in Facebook, LinkedIn and other social media networks.

16. Show the results of a client using your product or service.

17. Record events — not just presentations — such as book signings, poetry slams and book readings, panel discussions and teaching. You can use these as edit pieces for other videos. Also, if you do multiple events, these videos can give people an idea of what you have to offer.

18. Introduce colleagues, if you don’t work alone.

19. Give people a tour of your office.

20. Hold a contest.

21. Add your company information in every video such as your name, company name, URL, phone number, Twitter ID and email address.

22. Add call-to-action overlays to your videos for potential web site traffic.

23. Create a channel to reflect your brand.

24. Connect with Facebook to share videos.

Customer Service

25. Create videos answering common questions you receive from clients. When someone asks a question, you can link to the video with the answer. Sometimes visuals do more than an email or a phone call can.

26. Create a podcast-style video of your videos for those unable to view videos.

27. Add captions / subtitles to reach those unable to hear your videos. (You’ll instantly have a fan in me!) Plus, add your video to 22frames, a web site that collects videos with captions or without spoken words.

28. Create how to videos for your products or services.

29. Embed videos on your web pages where appropriate.

30. Write a blog post where you can embed a related video for more support.

31. Create videos of solutions to common problems.

32. Post video of work in progress. Some writers do content for videos and other visual products.

How do you use videos in your writing business?

Google has already apologized for some of the problems with Google Buzz. One of those being Buzz automatically followed some users, a big no-no. The company may have said it was limited to people you emailed frequently, but that wasn’t the case for most of us.

Aside from that, Buzz has mixed reviews and a long list of things that need changing. I’ve listened. I’ve participated. I’ve complained. Yet, Buzz still has my attention. Like an infant, it has cute moments and messy ones. It still needs nourishing before determining what it will be when it grows up.

Using Buzz

Because I always have Gmail open, the growing number of new Buzz is distracting as it grows much faster than email even in spite of my being very selective about who I follow. I’m organized when it comes to my email and maintain inbox zero. It’s easy to see why the new Buzz messages annoy and frustrate people especially when the number climbed to 100.

It took a week to get used to that in the same way I let my newsletters and alerts labels sit with over 100 new messages. Those two labels have hundreds of new messages because those messages are “as needed” messages. So I applied the concept to Buzz and the annoyance factor dropped. Or I click “Buzz” and the number starts over.

Although some folks said they turned off Buzz soon after trying it out, I haven’t written it off because it’s new and evolving. First, I want to understand it better and figure out how to use it efficiently should it find its way. Twitter wasn’t a smash hit in the beginning. Neither were blogs. Facebook was limited to college students. Second, I’m stricter about the people I follow in Buzz than I am in Twitter. If I find someone I follow is Buzzing a lot of useless content, then I stop following without regret.

I haven’t decided if it’s a good idea to funnel my tweets into Buzz. I don’t blog daily, so tweets keep me out there. I’ve created new Buzz a couple of times and comment on Buzzworthy items. I haven’t tried using Buzz for any articles I write.

One-way Interaction

Buzz can import your blog entries, tweets and other content. However, if you reply to any of these, they stay right in Buzz. Well, when I see a tweet from Twitter in Buzz, I go in Twitter and reply there instead of within Buzz. Google lost an opportunity here. What if Google adds a checkbox that asks if I want the reply to go to the original source. Hence, if the source is from Twitter, the reply shows up in Twitter.

Google likely did it this way on purpose to keep people in Buzz. But some will go around it like I did. I hardly think I’m the only one to think of this.

Yes, Facebook lets you import the same information and keeps replies right inside Facebook. I just expect more from Google because many of Facebook’s users don’t use other social media applications.

Twitter Fail Whale = Buzzportunity

Recently, Twitter experienced serious fail whaling. People asked if Twitter was failing in Facebook and Google Buzz. Buzz was a better place to find out than Facebook. Again, so many people in Facebook don’t touch Twitter or any other social media. Those of us in conversation mode buzzed about other things knowing Twitter whaled out.

Multi-communication Integration

I don’t think Google, Facebook and Microsoft are onto anything in combining status/buzz with email. (Facebook is trying to build up email to become a powerhouse like Gmail.) When I want Twitter updates, I go receive them and nothing else. Not email. Not trivia. Not games. Nothing. Just short status updates and direct messages (DM). Of course, I could be wrong about this.

Buzz integration with email doesn’t work for many. It creates more noise and people haven’t come to the point where they want multi-communication opportunities thrown at them. They would rather have a choice, but a choice that goes beyond turning off Buzz. Perhaps, a way  to access Buzz outside of Gmail.

I remember when Newsgator would deliver feeds as Outlook email. I never liked that idea. When I tried it briefly, it overwhelmed me more than Buzz because it took more effort to delete those messages.

Social Media Expert: Is There Such a Thing?

Buzz demonstrates exactly why no one can be an expert in social media. Social media evolves and fast. New things pop up. You can’t become an expert on what works and doesn’t work as soon as it comes out. You have to see how people respond to it as they learn their way around.

Nonetheless, Google has accomplished one thing for itself — Buzz keeps people in Gmail longer as several have admitted this.

What do you think lies ahead for Google Buzz and unborn social media?

Related articles

• 10 Things You Should Know About Google Buzz (eweek.com)
• 30+ Google Buzz How Tos, Tools and other Resources (SEOptimize.com)
• Google Buzz No Facebook , No Twitter Killer, Google Exec Says (eweek.com)

Congratulations to George Angus for winning Laura Cross’ book tour contest! Y’all can still win a book from Elisa Lorello. Interesting that it’s President’s Day week. My 5th grade son has to do a report on Gerald Ford.

Brain food!

• Wordnik: Make word lists, comment on and tag words, record pronunciations, etc. [Link: Michael C. Cordell]
• Value of School Visits: Enjoyed reading this author’s story about visiting schools. This is one reason why I wish I’ve authored a children’s book. I think it’d make the visit more entertaining for the kids when I speak to them about people with differences. Several school visits have made a big difference in how the kids view people who sound different from them. Apparently, after I spoke to my son’s first grade class, they treated him like a king. That’s why I do it. For my kids. To avoid the second grade incident with my daughter.
• Why Google Buzz Is Brilliant and Deadly to Social Media 1.0: Incredible insight I had not considered.
• How to Write Effectively for Twitter and the Social Web: Collection of resources sorted by categories.
• The BS Litmus Test: My first priority is to always keep my current clients happy because really — the easiest and best clients are the ones you already have. I’ve already weeded out the ones where I didn’t enjoy the work. It’s also easier to keep the current clients than go looking for new ones that may not be a good match. I know what my current clients like and don’t like. It takes time to figure that out with every new client.

And for fun because we’re allowed…

• 100 Cupcakes Game: Guess what game each cupcake represents. Brilliant. And great artistry.
• Slightly off-color joke: An author passes a bookstore…
• 20 Funny Examples of Graffiti and 10 Funny Pie Charts [Links: Jason Pollock]
• 12 Most Controversial Video Games: These are NOT the kind of games I cover.
• A Brief History of Pretty Much Everything: Hope they recycled all that paper.
• How Those Famous Websites Have Evolved Throughout the Years: I found Amazon in 1995, I believe (when it was just a bookstore). The screen shot is definitely not the oldest. [Link: bkmacdaddy]

If you read this blog, you most likely have an interest in social media and books. A great combination to ask for your nominations for the Top 10 Social Media books.

More and more books on social media keep hitting the streets, but we can’t buy them all. So let’s help each other out by sharing our favorites. Once done, we’ll whittle the list to 10.

How to Nominate Your Favorite Book on Social Media

To keep things simple, leave a comment nominating one book. If someone nominates a book you love, you might want to nominate a second favorite as the voting will come later. Nominate your favorite by 11:59pm CST on January 31.

Let’s do it!