After spending yet another maddening evening cleaning up my e-mail, I realized that many of the messages clogging my inbox stemmed from oversize attachments, press releases completely unrelated to my beat, and back-and-forth banter that could have been avoided with one phone call. As a journalist, I find that at least 75 percent of my e-mails are related to public relations.

Below are seven simple steps to streamline our communication, respect my inbox, and make both of our jobs easier. Read the rest of the article I wrote at Ragan.com »

Preface: If you don’t know who Maura Kelly is, she’s a freelance writer who’s had articles appear in the The New York Times, The New York Observer, The Washington Post, New York Press, Glamour, and Salon, among others. She’s also the writer of Marie Claire‘s “A Year of Living Flirtatiously” column. Yesterday, she and the magazine posted a story for that column called “Should ‘Fatties’ Get a Room? (Even on TV?),” in response to the CBS show “Mike and Molly.” The article has certainly sparked a firestorm around the Internet, including Marie Claire trending on Twitter and critical responses on sites like The Frisky, Advertising Age, Jezebel, and BlogHer. I’ll let you read the column (and its subsequent comments) and decide your reaction. But I wanted to post mine, in an open letter form.

Dear Maura,

I must say, I was disheartened to read your latest column, titled “Should ‘Fatties’ Get a Room? (Even on TV?).” I think the masses have spoken to how many women are feeling right now, so my two cents on the article’s subject matter won’t add much. But as a writer, I do feel some pity for you. As one commenter on MarieClaire.com pointed out, you must be living the worst day of your working life right now. I’d like to share a story with you. This landed in my inbox ages ago, but has stuck with me tremendously:

There once was a little girl who had a bad temper. Her mother gave her a bag of nails and told her that every time she lost her temper, she must hammer a nail into the back of the fence.

The first day the girl had driven 37 nails into the fence. Over the next few weeks, as she learned to control her anger, the number of nails hammered daily gradually dwindled down. She discovered it was easier to hold her temper than to drive those nails into the fence.

Finally the day came when the girl didn’t lose her temper at all.  She told her mother about it and the mother suggested that the girl now pull out one nail for each day that she was able to hold her temper.

The day passed and the young girl was finally able to tell her mother that all the nails were gone. The mother took her daughter by the hand and led her to the fence.

She said, “You have done well, my daughter, but look at the holes in the fence. The fence will never be the same. When you say things in anger, they leave a scar just like this one.” You can put a knife in a person and draw it out. It won’ t matter how many times you say “I’m sorry,”  the wound is still there.

A verbal wound is as bad as a physical one.

Today, you left many a hole. Because this is the Internet, your nails will be forever driven into the virtual fence. No matter how many times you say you’re sorry, the holes will remain. I’m sure you’re feeling a few of those holes yourself.

The Internet makes it very easy to share your opinions and emotions. But those opinions and emotions, while sometimes fleeting offline, are often permanent after being posted online. Web pages are cached, quotes (and misquotes) live on in blogs, and tweets are housed in the Library of Congress. I do hope that your insensitive remarks don’t come back to haunt your future job prospects or relationships, because they will be Google-able for years.

If anything positive came out of your article, it’s the example of the pen being mightier than the sword. May this be a lesson to you, and to all writers, to think a little closer before hitting the “Submit” button. Perhaps it will persuade writers to think, “How will my words affect myself and others, both bad and good?”

I know it’s certainly persuaded me.

Sincerely,
Amanda

I suppose that’s what it would look like if Allan Sherman’s “Hello Muddah, Hello Faddah (A Letter From Camp)” was instead tweeted from camp.

Yesterday, I was at camp, minus the s’mores – Social Media Camp Long Island, that is.  The first-ever event was held at St. Joseph’s College in Patchogue, and included a day full of social media-related sessions, a panel discussion, and networking. It was perhaps the only place that someone wasn’t insulted if you were tweeting or posting on Facebook while talking to him!

The three blocks of sessions were attendee-influenced and led by local experts from all realms of social media. Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, journalism, podcasting, privacy – so many topics were discussed at once, and it was difficult to choose which breakout session to attend. I settled for three on business and Twitter, event planning, and local news. What I enjoyed most about it is that no one spoke at you – even though someone was leading a session, everyone shared ideas and learned from each other. Here are some takeaways:

To Tweet or Not To Tweet… That is the Question! (Is Twitter a Useful Business Tool or a Devious Distraction?)

The session was led by Aleweb Social Marketing‘s Tara Alemany (@eandtsmom), and focused on ways to use Twitter to promote your business. Besides personal tweeting, I’m also setting up an account for Angel Bridals and tweeting for Journey to the Cure (@journey2thecure). Part of it was Twitter 101, but I learned:

• Do not use an auto-follower. It’s all about building personal relationships, and you don’t want a computer to do that for you.
• The best time to post is at 4:01 pm. That’s when the majority of Twitter users are online and reading.
• Monitor your name constantly, like Domino’s after one of its pizzas was not delivered hot to @interactiveAmy. Domino’s' immediate video apology.
• Use the minus sign (-) to streamline search results. For instance, if you’re searching for Long Island, but only get posts of the iced tea variety, search “Long Island -tea”
• Save searches you use often. And search for misspellings of yours or your business’ name.
• Two useful websites: Hashtag.org and Tagal.us

Create a Successful Event – Case Study: Long Island Restaurant Week

The session was led by WordHampton Public Relations‘ Lindsey Jaffe (@LindseyJaffe), and focused on how to use social media to create a successful event. Lindsey discussed how it worked for promoting Long Island Restaurant Week, and attendees shared what they’ve learned along the way. Some talking points:

• Don’t just focus on one element when sending out invitations. Some people prefer to receive e-mails, others Facebook.
• Use Excel spreadsheets to keep track of attendees across different invitation media so there aren’t double or triple RSVPs (a mistake I once made after inviting people via Evite, Facebook, and MySpace, and subsequently ordering too much food).
• If you’re looking for a single invitation mode, try Facebook, as you can send the link to people. They’ll get the vital information without having to sign up for Facebook, and can either call or e-mail you to RSVP.
• E-blasts are still great for getting the word out.
• Try Facebook ads – you can hit targeted demographics for your event. However, don’t use keywords (they will pare down the number of people the ad reaches) and keep it simple – the more basic, the better. And make sure the accompanying image is not too busy – go for impact. Recognizable logos are great.
• Use a service like SurveyMonkey after the event.
• Media sponsors provide a great return. But if you want to partner with someone, don’t ask, “What can you do for me?” Instead, ask, “How can I partner with you?”
• Monitor your event afterwards. Lindsey always tries to reach out to those who had a bad experience with Restaurant Week and amend the situation with the restaurant.

The Social Media Revolution: How Social Networking Sites Can Make or Break Your Career

The self-explanatory panel included Communication Journey‘s Louise DiCarlo (@LovelyLu), WordHampton Public Relation’s Steve Haweeli (@SteveHaweeli), Long Island Patch‘s David Reich-Hale (@drhli), and St. Joseph’s College’s Thomas Whitby (@TomWhitby). Some points discussed:

• There’s no longer a separation between social and traditional media
• Patch.com is seeing traffic pouring in from social media sites
• In order for professors to stay relevant, they have to keep with technology. Students are digital citizens.
• Using social media, potential employers can find out information about you that they’re not legally allowed to ask you in an interview
• Google yourself at least once weekly
• Technology is shifting towards the smartphone
• You have to stay on top of social media if you want communication to keep going.
• Brian Solis and Chris Brogan are highly recommended social media sources
• The ideal personal tweet to sale tweet ratio on Twitter should be 10 to 1

As Local As Local News Gets

Back for round two with David Reich-Hale, who was joined by former Long Island Business News colleague Carl Corry (@CarlCorry), who’s now with Newsday. (I’d met Carl a few weeks ago at the first-ever Newsday Tweet-Up, which he put together.) The duo honed in on using social media to take news to a more local (and in Patch.com’s case, hyperlocal) level. Both publications are very active on Twitter (@LongIslandPatch and @Newsday). Patch.com requires its local reporters to be posting something at least every four hours on Twitter and Facebook; Newsday, on top of linking to stories, uses it to tweet other items of interest to Long Islanders that may not necessarily make it to publication. Newsday‘s seeking to become even more localized, and is incorporating more reader-generated media, such as photos and videos (case in point: yesterday’s Twitter request for storm photos). Long Island has a dearth of community newspapers, which is why the region was one of Patch.com’s first targets – we’re not like David’s former stomping grounds of New Haven, Conn., which had five or six alone in the surrounding community.

You can find out more about the event by checking out the other sessions and following #SMCampLI on Twitter. The day ended with lots of door prizes, the top being a highly sought-after iPad. I didn’t win the iPad (I guess winning one Apple product in the past year was enough), but I did win a pair of fabulous garnet and labradorite earrings from jewelry artisan @SueanneShirzay (you can check out the Alejandro earrings and the rest of her jewelry at Etsy).

Alejandro Earrings by Sueanne Shirzay

Afterwards, most of the attendees met at Public House 49 in Patchogue for a post-event happy hour. While walking down Main Street, I encountered a man sitting on a planter. He was holding a brand-new package of three washcloths. He took out the top one, and asked me what color it was. I replied, “Teal,” assuming his spectrum was limited to Crayola’s 16-color box of crayons and he didn’t know the fancy name for the bright cloth in front of me. He said, “I’m colorblind – just making sure it wasn’t pink.” Gotcha. I pointed out that one of the other washcloths was pink. He quickly pulled it out of the package and said, “Here! You take it!” He seemed offended by it – guess he was too manly.

I now own a fuzzy pink washcloth.

I feel like one of the people in the Halls Get Through The Season ads that have permeated NYC subway cars. Haven’t been able to get to the doctor or acupuncturist, and would prefer to go to the latter as I don’t want antibiotics. Hopefully I’ll get over what I think is a sinus infection by the time I leave for Taiwan.

Those Halls ads always make me feel uncomfortable. One of the comments on Ads of the World pinpointed it – you feel like you’re going to catch a cold just from looking at them. I’d probably be less bothered had they been painted caricatures, but they’re disturbing digitally warped photos.

I wrote to Daryl Lang today in response to his blog post about rouge subway signs (back story: I was at the DeKalb Avenue station the other day and noticed a black-on-white sign, which Daryl posted here, and Google brought my curiosity to his website), in which I explained the difference between the MTA’s Helvetica font and the once-used Akzidenz-Grotesk (if you’re interested, here’s a great site on Helvetica and the NYC subway). Although the standard signage font nowadays is now Helvetica, there are still bits and pieces of Akzidenz-Grotesk around. I’ve always prefered the latter, as it’s a slightly cheerier font – the diagonal cuts of the c and e remind me of smiley faces. Lame, I know.

But then it got me thinking about which fonts I love and which I truly abhor.  Admit it, you have those two.

My most loathed is Algerian Standard. I used to pass it every day while walking past Blatt Billards on my lunch break. Seriously, I dislike it so much that I wanted to spray paint the store sign. I don’t know where the deep-rooted hatred comes from, but I’m apparently not the only one. There’s actually a Flickr group called Algerian Font, A Burning Hate.  And Kenny over at Childrens Ministry Online has I Loath Algerian Font Days. It made #12 on Inspiration Bit’s “A Plea From 16 Most Overused Fonts.” I don’t like Curlz or Bradley Hand either, but they’re a far second and third from Algerian. I realized that I dislike most Victorian, circus, and Old West-inspired fonts.

In my more innocent days, Comic Sans MS was my font of choice (and you thought Algerian hatred was bad? There’s a whole website advocating the ban of Comic Sans). I used it entirely on my first website, which is lost somewhere in the bowels of Angelfire now. I used it for headers on my second website. Even though it was 10 years ago and I should cut myself some slack, I am appalled at the inconsistent use of fonts. Not to mention my overuse of  GIFs, stretched JPGs with artifacts, and a sad attempt to embed a BMP image of She-Ra and He-Man. However, it isn’t as bad as the first, which rivals CADIE’s HomePAGE.

I then moved on to Century Gothic, which is ultimately my favorite basic font, but realized it didn’t render well on some browsers. Now I stick to Arial and Georgia, for the most part. This website header is in the Jane Austen font.  I’m a big fan of (nice) handwriting fonts (sorry, Bradley and Kristen). This year, I plan to make my own personal handwriting font for $9.95.

One more link and I’m done – a shoutout to Kenny Kane for showing me the way to thousands of free fonts. Perhaps my favorites will change tomorrow.