In January, I took a social media fast on a bet with a friend (and we were only drinking coffee)! She chronicled her experience at The Write Now! Coach Blogs last Friday.  You can read about my harrowing journey at her blog, Teamblood. And for those of you who love to play online, today’s tip...Read More

Over the winter holiday, Jocelyn Koehler and I agreed to try a social media fast during January. Even though I had a much tamer plan than Jocelyn, I suffered from withdrawal symptoms almost immediately. You can read about my experience at Jocelyn’s blog, Teamblood. To learn how Jocelyn stayed off the net nearly all day...Read More

I first heard about Pinterest from a client. She was enchanted by the application and confessed to spending many pleasant hours pinning. After a few conversations, her energy and excitement for the platform inspired me, and I signed up. When I began to create boards—I had no idea what I was doing. And I didn’t...Read More

Write First: How to Juggle Writing and Social Media by Rochelle Melander If you’ve been following the social media summer series, then you know that I’ve spent the last three months writing about how you can develop a social media platform by blogging, tweeting, updating, pinning, and a gazillion other social media actions we haven’t...Read More

A year or so ago, while having coffee with friends, one of them asked: “What’s this Linked-up thing I keep getting invited to?” We explained it to her. But I confessed, “I don’t really get LinkedIn. It doesn’t seem as valuable as Facebook.” I was wrong. LinkedIn offers enormous value to writers—but only if you...Read More

No doubt you’re on Facebook. But, if you’re a writer on Facebook, chances are you are not making the most of your Facebook profile. Or, you’re offending people and losing friends by sharing way too much information about your latest book, blog post, or personal experience. Today’s tip will help you strike just the right...Read More

Most days, I can barely find time to write let alone carve out extra time to create clever tweets. I used to worry about becoming the wallflower at the Twitter party, until I realized that listening matters, too. If you’re struggling to figure out what to say and do on Twitter, take a deep breath...Read More

Last week, we talked about who to follow on Twitter. Here’s a quick recap of the people you might be interested in following: *Fascinating, intelligent people in your niche. *Organizations, conferences, and other groups in your niche. *Your favorite writers. *Your colleagues. *Agents and editors. So how do you find these people? *Look at the...Read More

As we continue our social media summer, I will be taking the next month to talk about the three big social networking sites—Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn—and how you can make use of them as a writer. So let’s start with Twitter. Twitter is a social networking site with over 500 million users who, according to...Read More

Toby Keith has a hilarious song titled, I Wanna Talk About Me. In the song, he runs through all the things he talks about with this friend including: “The polish on your toes and the run in your hose/And God knows, we’re going to talk about your clothes.” Then he sings, “I wanna talk about...Read More