Most of the readers of this blog are new to, or trying to deal with, technology and how it effects their lives. I don’t mind mentioning I am in that place too! That is the objective of this blog. I share as I learn and hope you will share what you learn with us too!

Many of you may have heard of FACEBOOK, MYSPACE & Linked-In and I have talked about them here and they are becoming bigger and bigger and there are more users using them every day. There is another tool, called a microblog named Twitter. I linked these all to descriptions on my website that explain them so if you have questions you can get answers there.

But here is the funny thing. I joined Twitter a little over a year ago (I think.) It was something I heard about people doing and at first I didnt understand it. There are countless blog entries “preaching to the choir” about how Twitter works and all us Twitter users read them, comment on them and we think it is great. But WE ALL READY know Twitter works, it is how you can use social networks to YOUR benefit, maybe the less – techy type that perhaps may think it only works for geeks. (I cannot blame you, really!)

Here are a couple of examples of my own experiences:
A week ago my girlfriend told me her sister was going to need a headcovering or hat for some cancer treatment that was going to wipe out her hair (again) and reveal some scary looking scars on her head and neck. I can knit a scarf – period. I put on my Facebook “wall” that I needed some help. I got 3 replies right away from people I do not normally interact with – and 2 got an emails yesterday that these hats were being mailed to me! That is a non-techy request to a very real situation that any of us could be in at anytime.

Another example: Along with my business, I teach Marketing at the New England School of Communications, I ask all students to “Friend Me” on Facebook and establish Twitter accounts. Paul Hilchey Chandler (twitter id: hilcheychandler) of Central Maine Wireless was a guest speaker in my class and talked about cell phones, marketing and social networking. One of my students revealed that she was in the 8,000+ of monthly text messages. (Makes my thumbs hurt just thinking about it.)

This morning, I was away from my computer and while I was away, one of our local newscasters Kara Matuszewski (twitter id: karamat) WLBZ2 had tweeted something about texting and Paul suggested she contact me (twitter id: ladyotrout) about this student I had. I also follow Kara, but do not know her personally and due to a very busy morning for me, I would probably have missed it, so thank you Paul! After a few direct messages and a phone call we have a “shout out” for high volume texters for a story she is interested in doing. I posted that on my Facebook wall and guess what? Two responses all ready! This is less than an hour and I am not kidding.

So what you may say?

These tools are very helpful in a busy life. I like to get alerts from media sources of what is going on, the weather, etc. but mainly I use Twitter as a bulletin board for articles and information that people that I feel like minded with (remember I know hardly ANY of them PERSONALLY) to share. I also share what I am reading & learning there. The internet and other media is so vast and there is so much information that these tools help me prioritize what I need to learn right now. And they cost me nothing out of pocket except the time to do it.

So I thought I would mention this to you, if you have a mother or father or know someone with a small business that is trying to do more with less (time and money) I cannot recommend these things highly enough! If you feel you dont have time to do the work yourself and you are a small business, give us a call and we can help.

And stay tuned for the WLBZ2 story…I am sure we all will be tweeting about it!