What I Meant To Say

Image via CrunchBase

Why is it that you always think of the perfect thing to say after the fact?  Last night was no exception.  I taught an overview of Twitter and all the good things came to me after the class had left.  I’m left feeling as if I let them down by not passing along this info.  I had so much in my head, so much I had planned to show and talk about but somehow there is never enough time.

So here is a list of things I hope I pointed out but in case I didn’t:

• Your follower/following ratio – this ratio should not be horribly lopsided.  5 followers but following 500 isn’t good.  More than likely that person is just in it for the numbers (so folks just want to have the most followers but aren’t really using Twitter correctly).
• Before you follow – view their profile.  Is their bio filled out?  Who are they following?  What is their follower/following ratio?  Read some of their tweets, all of them help you to decide is this person really someone I want to follow.
• Twitter vs. Facebook – Twitter is more informational.  Facebook is more fun.  Each has it’s place and they can connect (have Twitter update your status on Facebook) but I don’t get the same level of information on Facebook as I do on Twitter.
• To understand Twitter you need to use Twitter.  Not that the concept is so hard to grasp just that it can have so many applications depending on what you want from it.
• I did say this but feel I should elaborate – Twitter is what you get out of it.  I use it to stay on top of trends (professionally or just what’s going on in the world), I use it to stay informed (following BBCnews, BreakingNews, NyTimes as well as several experts in the social media arena), I use it to connect to others in my profession, I use it for note taking (I’ve live blogged a photography class I attend at the library just using Twitter.  Because I hashtagged my Tweets I was able to go back later and put all my notes into a cohesive blog post).
• Use Twitter for what you want but be real.  If you want to connect with other like minded folks, Twitter is great for that.  If you want to promote your business, non-profit, favorite charity, etc. it is also great for that.  Just beware.  Don’t be an institution.  People want to follow real people no matter whether is it a Mom who is looking to connect to other stay at home Moms or it is a Fortune 500 company trying to connect with their customers.  Let your personality shine through on your tweets.  Don’t be stuffy.  Also don’t make it all about you – engage a conversation with your customers.  Make yourself approachable.  Twitter is just another doorway into your business – good customer service extends to the web as well.
• Protecting your tweets isn’t always a good thing.  If you are out on the social web the point is to share.  I understand about wanting to be in control of what you share with others.  Protecting your tweets just puts another layer between you and the people/customers who may want to follow you.  This also keeps your tweets out of searches.  So if I search for dog grooming and your are a dog groomer with protected tweets I’m not going to see you and you may miss an opportunity for business.  What are you protecting?  Think twice before you protect your tweets.
• Be patient.  Give it a try.  Twitter wasn’t built in a day.  You need to try it on, take it out for a test drive, kick the tires a little bit before you decide.  The social web has a web site for everyone – Twitter maybe for you or it may not.  But at least give it a try.

Can you Digg It?

Image via Wikipedia

…I knew that you could, yes, yes, yes.   (gotta love Billy Crystal)

Decided I’m going to post at least once a month a link to my  recent activity on Digg.  Hope you might find something interesting there as well.

Blog Day Afternoon – Day 4

Little did I know when I came into work today it was going to turn into the day of blogs.

Day 4

It’s Thursday so I don’t have morning duties or bouncedback emails today.  After putting my stuff away I turned on my Ubuntu and Windows machines.  Checked my voice mail (was one regarding the email and spam settings that we had posted on the staff Intranet).

Walked out into the public area after getting ice for my green tea and replenished my display celebrating the 40th anniversary of the moon landing.  Some folks might consider it wrong but I mixed adult non-fiction books with the children’s non-fiction.  Bottom shelf of the wedding cake was all children’s titles – they have actually been the hot items even though this display is upstairs in the adult non-fiction area.  My reason for adding the children’s titles to the display is often Mom or Dad have a little one in tow when they are upstairs, so why not have something for them on the same display.

Went back downstairs to Customer Service (the department formally known as Circulation) and picked up my reserves (several books on photography and a CD for hubby).  Back upstairs to my desk.

Opened Twirl and replied to a Tweet.  Checked both work and Gmail accounts.  Since revamping our Staff Intranet has been on my mind I logged into the backend of Joomla and made a few tweaks (from suggestions that staff have provided).  Then I moved over to the front end and checked to see if there were any helpdesk tickets to assign (yep a few but not many).

Emailed the Central Asst. Branch Manager regarding a tweak I made on the Staff Intranet.  It related to items she posted – combined her web guides from Enoch Pratt/SLRC into one location.

Closed a helpdesk ticket regarding a new staff member who had forgotten his email password – changed password back to default and it will prompt him to change it again.

Sent an email to all the branch managers asking them to clean up (unpublish and delete if possible).  In hopes that we can clean up lots of content that won’t need to be brought over to the new Intranet.

Now the start of the blog day —

Tweaked our main blog, Highly Recommended per the phone conversation I had with the editor on Day 2.   Moved the login on the front end to a less conspicuous location on the blog navigation area.  Then I added a new blogger to the list of contributors per the editor’s email

Wrote my blog entry for Day 3.  Sent an email to the blogger of Highly Recommended about the tweaks I had made so they are kept in the loop.

Answered the helpdesk phone line – question about accessing our Intranet remotely (from a new grandmother visiting her daughter and grandson in NC).

Then I began the afternoon of updating all our blogs which uses WordPress.  Luckily 3 of the blogs were not that old so I could just click on Update under Tools.  Open Source, This Is Your Life and Customer Service all upgraded with no problems.  I then had to upgrade Teacher Notes the hard way.  WHOO HOO, it went pretty smoothly and I didn’t mess anything up.  Okay 4 out of 6 went okay so I must be doing something right.

Call from Public Relations department asking for help with posting an article to our Choose Civility site which uses Joomla.  Walked him through a few things and corrected code that seemed to make the one video disappear even though we weren’t adding anything anywhere near the video on that page.

Got a lovely surprise, former employee Aileen Trout came in for a quick visit.  Aileen left us many years ago and moved back to her place of birth, Hawaii.  She hasn’t aged at all – I’m convinced living on the islands there is like the fountain of youth.  After that I checked the helpdesk tickets and assigned 2 to fellow IT staff.  Answered the helpdesk phone line – fellow IT staff member needed help with the printer settings for Horizon.

Consulted with our web programmer about navigation and design for our new Intranet.  We looked at Google Analytics to get a feel of what people used the most on our Intranet (that combined with actual feedback from staff should help).

Consulted with fellow IT staff member about helpdesk ticket regarding a broken link in Aquabrowser (the information page in AB had never been updated to reflect the RSS feed page on our new web site which went live over a year ago – GULP!).  Need a better way to keep track of all our links out there.

LUNCH!! finally

Assigned another helpdesk ticket.  Got a call from the editor of our Highly Recommended blog about linking a contributor’s name.

Guess my confidence from earlier was a bit premature.  I updated our TeenZine (which isn’t a true blog but does use WordPress).  This time things did not go well. Not sure if I missed some files in the update or what.  Was seeing strange results even though I did get the right messages during the upgrade process.  Cleared cache and refreshed browser and still had odd displays.  Asked web programmer for help – he watched me do the upgrade for the 4th time – something about him standing there must have done the trick.  But even he saw the odd display and seems like things took several minutes to display correctly.  It’s all good in the end.

Called the Information Services Supervisor regarding the voice mail she had left me that morning – left her a voice mail.

Emailed username/password for our Staff Intranet to staff member so they could add content.

Assigned to myself and closed helpdesk ticket regarding an email from a customer letting us know that the wording on one of our PACs screen savers was wrong.  We had already fixed this so I contacted the customer via email thanking her for catching this and letting her know we fixed it.

Cleaned up a bounce of AOL accounts that had marked us as spam.  Trying to get the message out there that when you sign up for a library card and give us your email account you will receive notices via email.  Do not mark us as a spammer – you agreed to receive notices from us.  Some reason the AOL users don’t remember this more than any other email user.

Went ahead and updated our last blog (our main one and the one that I was most scared about) to the latest version of WordPress.  It was my biggest worry but things went smoothly.  WHEW!

Past time for me to go home.  Off to get my son, walk dogs, take some photos, fix dinner and possibly get a little Lost season 2 watching done.

A Day in the Life – Take Two

Image by emdot via Flickr

The 2nd Annual Library Day in the Life started today. Same rules apply – “whether you are a librarian or library worker of any kind, help us share and learn about the joys and challenges of working in a library.” So after a full day of work, walking of the dogs, mowing part of our 2 acres, fixing dinner and cleaning up I finally sat down to watch “The Hunting Party” episode of  season two of Lost while I put my notes into a blog post.

Monday July 27, 2009

Got to work just before 7:30 am to find that I wasn’t the only early bird this morning.  Julian Clark (who is also participating in this via Twitter – @julian2) was in before me and already hard at work.

• Swapped out the backup tapes and exchanged last week’s set for the new set for both the Horizon and the Authority Works servers.
• Put a new sheet up for the server room temperature sheet (librarian in charge has to record the temp once a day to ensure the servers stay cool)
• Unforward the helpdesk phone line (gets forward after hours to one of IT’s cell phones)
• Performed the morning duties for Monday
• Headed to Staff Lounge to get a mug full of ice for my homemade green tea with lime
• Settled into my desk – logged into both my Ubuntu and Windows machines
• Checked voice mail – one call from the Head of Collection Services in response to a question about what we do when titles are no longer available from OverDrive
• Checked email (both work and Gmail)
• Checked to see if there any pending helpdesk tickets to assign (luckily there were none)
• Using Twirl I Twittered about Library Day in the Life (smiled when armylibrarian retweeted my tweet about Library Day in the Life)
• Sent email (per Central Library Manager’s request) to rest of the Howard County Library signage committee about the cool picture I found of Seattle Public Library’s call no. floor mats
• Checked Flickr, Facebook and Twitter and rss feeds (social|median and RWW)
• Dugg a couple of worthy articles
• Updated Online Request a title for your bookclub form on library’s web site
• Reviewed Si fStaff Intranet) for submissions that may need to be published  and cleaned up expired announcements
• Went to our Miller Branch to take the last Library101 photos
• Got back to Central Library about 15 minutes after we had opened (due to budget restrictions we are now opening at 10 am instead of 9 am) and got one of the few remaining parking spaces (we are loved!)
• Worked on email bouncebacks notices (always a lot after the weekend) – remove the address from customer’s account, put block on the account asking for an updated email address
  
• Responded to email from the Executive Director and CEO about how to get an important presentation to the architects before the 1pm meeting
• Took call from librarian at the main information desk – problem with receipt printer and trapping hold – conflict between the printer and keyboard
• Just got back to desk when the fiction desk called with a problem – not sure what happened as they said they couldn’t trap hold but when I was there had no problem (didn’t hear anything more from them about this issue)
• Queued up several Tweets for the library’s official Twitter account – @HoCo_Library
• Email to head of collection services about removing titles from catalog that aren’t part of Overdrive anymore.
• Closed 2 helpdesk tickets regarding customer question and error message with OverDrive – one could have been found by looking through the help section
• Finally some lunch and my guilty pleasure of playing Bejeweled Blitz on Faceboo
• Answered IM question from librarian about OpenOffice and adding page numbers.   Found answer by Googling – gee, why didn’t the librarian do that?
• Wrote another Tweet for the library’s official account
• Edited and uploaded images I took at Miller Branch for Library101 video project
• Wrote post for Open Source blog – waiting review
• Sent email to staff that had pictures taken for library101 w/link to Flickr
• Resized library101 images and uploaded to facebook
• Updated email alias and closed helpdesk ticket – didn’t need to update – realized I forgot to update the mailing list (not just the group in Deksnow)
• Worked on some AOL bounced backs – people forget that they sign up for email notices from the library then they mark us as spam
• Closed another helpdesk ticket about OverDrive – seems like the problems come in batches
• Fixed email mailing list so all names display on staff intranet
• Investigated how we managed to have Maryland spelled incorrectly on one of our PAC screensavers for the last couple of yrs.
• Surfing web sites to get ideas for navigation for our new staff intranet – using stumbleupon

After 3:30 pm so it’s time to go home.  WHEW, what a day.

What I Learned From Michael Jackson’s Death

Image by [ Zenat El3ain ]™ via Flickr

I hate to jump on the band wagon.  I’m not just posting this to see my blog stats rise all based on the demise of a celebrity.  I guess this is my Friday rant/vent session.  But it is also a reminder of what I learned today.

First of all, my condolances go out to both Farrah Fawcett and Michael Jackson’s family and friends.  Losing someone you care about is never easy whether it’s anticipated or not.   I can’t imagine how it must feel.   What should be a private moment to mourn you loss being scrutinized and put under media/public attention.

The media frustrates me with the way they run everything into the ground.  These people haven’t even been dead 24 hours.  In Farrah’s case we know what caused her death but in Michael’s case they are just speculating.  Until  all the reports are in no one in the media can say anything with surety.  MOVE ON there is other news to be covered, I don’t need to hear the same 5 sentences repeated a myriad of different ways.  I trust that you will give me the news when you have confirmation – in the meantime report something else instead of rehashing speculations.  But the most frustrating part is those who are not in the know, who are not even privy to the sources the media has trying to comment, judge or even condemn someone.

From what information we have most would hazard a guess that Michael Jackson didn’t have the best of childhoods.  I don’t know how the pressure to perform coupled with the every glaring spotlight would have effected you but I am not that strong.  Yes, some people have had hard lives and are able to move on or even go on to really become an inspiration.  But you know what, some people just aren’t that strong.  Some people don’t have the support system or tools in life to get over their issues.  Does that make them any less worthy of our sympathy?  I for one am not going to sit in judgment of them for not being able to overcome.  You know it’s not my job.  I was raised to believe that job feel to someone else and I wasn’t suppose to try and do his job.

However, all of this crazy professional media (and real people via Twitter, Facebook, blogs, Friendfeed and other social media) attention has taught me a reminder.  The next time I see something and start to pass judgement on it, I will think Michael Jackson.  It will be my personal reminder to myself that it is not my place to pass judgement on someone.  I have not walked in their shoes, I have not experienced their life in any way, shape or form, I am not them.  I believe that the universe teaches us lessons for a reason – guess I needed to be reminded of this lesson.  We could all learn from Michael Jackson’s death.  I’m just sorry it took him dying to remind me of my place.

My 2 Cents To Businesses Everywhere

Customer service seems to be on the minds of everyone lately.  First I posted about my recent not so great experiences, then today Strange Librarian posted on her blog her dealings with Weiss and being rushed out of the store, and then Andrew Shuping posted at FriendFeed his less than stellar experience with Cracker Barrel.  Something must be in the water.

You might wonder what do I know about customer service.  Well I served at the public service desk for many years as part of the Circulation department, I have contact with customers on weekly basis via email when dealing with technology problems, I have to interact with internal customers (staff and they are just as important as our external customers) daily solving their problems, answering their questions and helping them succeed in their roles but most importantly I AM A CONSUMER!

So whether you are a library, a retail establishment, small business or major corporation here is my 2 cents to you:

• Hire the appropriate staff.  Make sure your interview process asks probing, clarifying questions.  Don’t just give scenarios and ask how they’d handle them.
• Once appropriate staff are hired, TRAIN THEM.  Don’t assume because they answered questions correctly in the interview they know everything.  Technology comes along that they need to be aware of to interact correctly with customers.  Also refreshers are never a bad thing we can all benefit from that.
• Make sure your company policies are inline with good customer service.  Don’t tie your employees hands with silly policies or rules.
• Trust your employees.  You interviewed them, you hired them, you trained them now trust them.  That isn’t to say not to be aware of what they are doing but don’t micro-manage.  If you hover over them that kind of pressure won’t bring out the best customer service in them.
• Reward great customer service.  Let them know you value the kind of service they are providing.  Anything from an “attaboy” to comp time to monetary rewards – doesn’t have to be big but acknowledgment is always great to hear.
• Nip bad customer service in the bud.  One bad experience by a customer can multiply times ten and now with the social web it can multiply times ten thousand or more.  Pull that person off the front line, get them back into training, listen to them and help them learn a better way to handle the situation and if worst comes to worst fire them.  Keeping bad customer service employees in this day and age is tantamount to suicide.

I am as loyal as they come when you treat me right.  But all it takes is one wrong customer service experience for me to write about it, tell all my friends and more than likely never darken the doorstep of your establishment again.  Just ask Sears.  Had a bad experience with them back in 1989 and other than walking through their store to get inside the Columbia Mall I have never bought anything from them again.  You might think how much damage can one little person not buying anything from a major company like Sears do.  Well, it isn’t just me that isn’t buying it is my family and friends who have heard the full story – now with the social web that story can be told to many, many more.

Let The Social Web Document Your Next Training

While driving home from the Maryland Library Association conference I had several hours in the car alone to contemplate things.  At some point my mind wondered to those forms that we or at least folks in Maryland have to fill out to receive CEUs.

The form is boring.  The form can’t really capture what you may or may not have learned at a training or conference.  Why not allow the social web to document your next training or conference as an option.  Mind you I know not everyone blogs or Twitters or has a Flickr account but many of us do.

Submit your Twitter stream and the hashtags you used.  Give the URL of your Flickr set from the training/conference.  Set up a blog and live the sessions you attend.  All of these options would give your employer a much better idea of what you got out of a session than some form.

Photography Leads to Micro-Blogging

Last night I volunteered to help my photography mentor with a class she was instructing in how to use Flickr.  With a hands-on class it always helps to have an extra set of eyes, hands and legs to walk the room and help students.  I was more than happy to help.  Not only did I coerce…umm, suggest that she teach the class but it gave me yet another chance for her to impart her years of photography experience on me.

When the class was over I wound up talking to several people and registering them for her next class (sure sign things went well).  She had billed me as “the web 2.0 guru”, a name I wear proudly and several ladies asked me when I was going to teach my web 2.0 class.  One woman in particular wanted to know if I would teach about Twitter.  I was thrilled to hear that word (one of my favorite web 2.0 sites that I feel has such potential).  So when I got a tweet from Mashable, I thought how timely.

10 Ways to Build Your Blog Community with Twitter stressed many of the points I would have made.  The first 3 bolded paragraphs are just a start but each of the ten bullet points bring home good reasons to use Twitter as well.  I’ll be passing this blog post along to my photography mentor.  Why you may ask?  Because she is also the editor of our readers advisory blog at the Library, Highly Recommended.

More Than a Marriage of Convenience

Oh joy, joy.  Oh, happy day.  Thanks to corephp’s tweet I am in 7th heaven.  Two of my favorite open source products just got married.  WordPress is now available for Joomla 1.5.  This couldn’t come at a better time since I’ve been working on a Joomla 1.5 for our Choose Civility (this is the old site) initiative at Howard County Library.  Ron Nicodemus, of Nicodemus Communications Group, had suggested that we include a blog for the new Choose Civility site.  Originally we had wanted to use the blog component inherent in Joomla but to be honest it isn’t the greatest.

I have installed, maintained and tweaked 6 WordPress blogs for the library.  I use WordPress.com for my own blog.  So needless to say having WordPress be a part of Joomla (been involved with 5 Joomla sites for work) is a dream come true.  This is a great marriage and I look forward to celebrating their union.  Mazal tov!

Sold My Soul to Web 2.0 (or I tried)

I was beginning to wonder if Web 2.0 is just a library thing.  Many of my colleagues across the country have embraced the read/write web but I’ve found that few of my friends or old classmates have.

My series of Web 2.0 classes that I and my fellow co-workers presented at the library were well received.  So I offered myself and another co-worker to be part of the silent auction at our big fund raising event, Evening in the Stacks: Along the Silk Road.  But  I was seriously disappointed to find out that no one from the business community bid on our offer of to come to their business and suggest which Web 2.0 features they could use to promote their business.

Why aren’t people getting it?  I think part of the problem is people are using the read/write web they just don’t know it.  They don’t know that Twitter, Facebook, a blog, uploading to Flickr or Youtube is Web 2.0.  They just use those sites.  They might want to learn more about the features these sites have but they are already using the sites.

Then I open my Google Reader and see feeds like this Yes, We Plan: How Altruism and Advertising Could Change the World or Companies turn to web 2.0 to recruit for trials.   I know I’m finding more and more sites that have Twitter, Facebook or other Web 2.0 badges on them saying “follow me”.   So someone is obviously getting it.   So I guess I just need to figure out how to sell myself better next year so the bids come flying in.  Sorry that I couldn’t help to raise any money for my library – I really thought the idea had merit and wings.