What’s a bromance? It’s the unabashed admiration one man has for another. I’m not ashamed to admit that I’ve harbored one or two or five bromantic dalliances over the course of my social media career. Here’s a quick look at the who and why of my particular bromances. I’m sure you have your own – please share in the comments.

Oh. If you find yourself on my list don’t be alarmed. My bromances are purely platonic and intellectual. But I wouldn’t mind if you listed me on your broamance list if you felt so inclined.

Chris Brogan – On my list because he’s genuine in his dealings with every human. He’s intuitive and quick-thinking. He also has talent and charm. He also inspires me to write more. Thanks Chris.

Gradon Tripp – While he might be considered by some to be a design geek who should have won the recent makeover contest on Newbury Street, he’s actually a bleeding-heart liberal who does so much for social causes regionally it makes me a little sick. But he’s also a smart, fun and dependable friend. (BTW – Tweetsgiving is coming up – SIGN UP NOW!)

Aaron Strout – He wins on so many counts as a top bromance of mine. He’s a Boston transplant to Austin, TX who still remembers his friends back home. Beyond that, he remembers and even honors those of us who were just peripheral friends a year or so ago. Aaron has always been welcoming and entertaining. He’s a fabulous host who treats everyone as a friend. What a great way to be. I admire and commend that attitude.

CC Chapman – Smart, driven, compassionate and insightful. I was listening to one of his podcasts before I met him and was thrilled at the way in which he connected with listeners and shared his life with us. He’s honest in his opinions and dealings and empathetic to an extreme. He’s also a Miami Dolphins fan which probably would have put him on the bromance list even if he were a complete dink.

General Etiquette:
How To Give A Great Man To Man Hug

Mike Schneider – Who is this guy? He’s someone I met within the last year. He’s a freakish human who would give the shirt off his back to ANYONE who needed it. He’s compassionate to a fault, a hard-working beer genius who also knows a bit about human nature and marketing. He’s currently spearheading our Movember efforts and rallying people to come together to fight cancer. He’s just a great guy who was unlucky enough to make my bromance list.

Mike Langford – Founder of Tweetworks, the lesser-known co-host of NomX3 and a sarcastic, fun and brilliant friend. I tease him about how his two boys will grow up to have more hair and probably get more points on Foursquare. But this coffee fiend is dependable, well-spoken, generally cheerful and a pretty good drunken roommate. I’m glad I met him and that we have become friends.

What’s funny to me is that none of these relationships were based on IRL experiences. They were founded and then fostered using tools like Twitter and Plurk and Seesmic and podcasting and unconferences and even an occasional tweetup and lunch. I’ve grinned the whole time while writing this because I really like the people I’m writing about and I love that there will be people who read this that are uncomfortable that a man can genuinely like another man.

Grow up people. I’m not stalking these guys. I just think they epitomize what’s right with our tiny little fishbowl. Real people who offer real opinions and real support to others. If you have people like this in any part of your life, hang onto them. They’re more valuable than a simple blog post can illustrate.

In this season of giving thanks, I give thanks for bromances. What about you?

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© Jeff Cutler for Jeff Cutler - columns, essays and opinions, 2009. | Permalink | 13 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Austin, author, Boston, bromance, fashion, life, men, movember, podcast, social media

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These groups will inform, entertain and support you. And you’ll do the same for the people in those communities. But it’s not really that easy.

People use Twitter in different ways. As do businesses, organizations, governments and news outlets. Even the celebrity contingent is getting into the fray – as we’ve seen. But a lot of people are stumbling and the first thing to do to eliminate the stumbles is to figure out why you want to use this messaging or micro-blogging tool.

Some people use it to stay in touch with friends and family.

Some use it to find new friends, arrange social events and connect with organizations and businesses.

Companies are using it to pimp their products, market to customers and to strengthen their brand.

PR professionals are all over Twitter trying to find out how this free tool can help them make a buck. They’re also trying to figure out how to reach journalists and bloggers via tweets.

Journalists are here using Twitter to inform and report. They’re also here looking for sources (symbiosis between PR and journalists) for stories.

And celebrities are here because it’s hot and new. They’re also here because it gives them more power than they might have had before in reaching and interacting with their fanbase.

But there are rules and techniques everyone should know about using Twitter. Here’s my bootcamp version of what Twitter can and can’t do and how you can navigate some of the unwritten rules of this unique social media tool.

Let’s dive right in. I’m going to go through these top-of-mind, so read the entire column to see if I’ve addressed a concern or question. If not, leave me a comment and I’ll respond to it with an answer or a resource that you can use to learn more.

Twitter is for everyone. Naysayers abound, but if you want to be on Twitter, jump on. You’re probably going to make some mistakes and get banged up, but it really is like riding a bike. Get on and get dirty. Write some tweets and see what comes back. It’s really the best way to figure out how to use it.

Only follow the people you want to follow. Some people get on a high horse about follower/following ratio (I do for some clients actually) but if you’re just using Twitter to connect with friends and family and maybe some social groups, go wild. Follow the fun people and listen to what they say.

*Basics like how to follow people and how to compose a tweet are covered in the upcoming book Laura Fitton is authoring for Wiley and it’s already listed on Amazon.

In the meanwhile, to follow someone just click on their Twitter name in the EVERYONE stream on Twitter. If you like what you see, click FOLLOW and you’ll then see their updates in your HOME stream.

*I use the word stream to mean the list of updates that flow down your screen. Here’s a shot of my recent Twitter stream…

Abbreviations can mean actions or words and they can be confusing. Here are some you should know.

RT means Retweet – or the act of sharing an update that someone else put on Twitter first. The format of a retweet is…. RT: @jeffcutler The #redsox won today and I loved the game. Even got a foul ball, FTW!

In that retweet, you can tell that @jeffcutler was the original author. That he was allowing others to search for the word REDSOX (use of the # symbol before a word) and that he was thrilled about the foul ball (FTW means For The Win or YAY).

RR means Rerun. I was part of the four people that decided to start this abbreviation on Twitter. Steve Garfield, Greg Verdino, Melissa Pierce and I were chatting over breakfast in Las Vegas in January when we wondered how people could retweet themselves without looking pompous. I shouted out Rerun and the rest is history.

Now, if you want to retweet yourself, just put RR in front of a tweet. Use RR: instead of RT: and you’re all set.

Most often, people RR tweets when the first occurrence may have been either too early or late to be seen by many people. Or maybe a RR is in order if there are other events being shared on Twitter that render your little message insignificant. For instance, when the plan landed on the Hudson River, every other tweet not dealing with the crash landing was ignored. In that case, I would be busy Rerunning the important stuff the next day.

Oh, that @ symbol. That’s what goes before anyone you want to address on Twitter. If your username is jeffcutler, then the way people would get in touch with you is by typing @jeffcutler. In the case of Oprah Winfrey, her Twitter handle (name) is Oprah and you can address her by typing @oprah into a tweet.

Answer questions. As often as you can, take the time to look at your replies (any message that is @YOURNAME) and then respond to it. I like to look at my @’s a few times a day and give reasoned and valuable responses to them. If you help people a lot, they’ll happily help you when you have questions.

Anytime you type a message @ someone, this is out in the open for anyone on Twitter to see. It also shows up in a person’s @MYNAME field, sort of like an inbox. See circled name in this screen shot – that’s where you’d click to see all @’s to you.

DMs. While the majority of tweets are publicly visible, DMs are the Twitter equivalent of private messages. BUT, you can only send DMs to people who are following you. DMs are a great way to share info you don’t want the entire Twittersphere to see.

140 characters. Yep, it’s all about the characters – not the people on Twitter but the actual number of characters in a tweet. You only have 140 characters in which to make your point. If you go over, Twitter will truncate or shorten your post. SO make your tweets short and sweet.

*The character count includes names, abbreviations and the characters in all links.

There are assorted tools online that allow you to shorten URLs, but I’m not going to digress into side lessons about using the Internet. Back to Twitter.

When you’re on Twitter, you’ll be well served to spend about 80%+ of your time sharing, conversing, responding, retweeting and reading. People on Twitter – as in many communities – want you to care about them. But there’s got to be give and take. If you give more than you take then people will gravitate toward you and you’ll gain more resources from which to learn.

Simply put, if you give more than you take, then Twitter will treat you correctly. The companies and people who just spit out links, pimp their blogs and press, and blatantly use Twitter as a PR vehicle see diminishing returns and eventually lose any followers of any worth.

My advice is to treat this social media tool as a way to meet new people and learn about them. Take my word for it, you’ll see how well sharing and contributing works.

Random Thoughts….

Is what you’re sharing on Twitter part of a conversation? Can you really make friends here? What makes Twitter better than the phone, txt messages, blogging or even email?

I’ve been using Twitter since March 2007. I started introducing people to the tool and creating content specifically for the 140-character constraints since day one. Recently I’ve also been tabbed to present Twitter for Business sessions for the National Association of Women Business Owners, and social media tools for journalists for the annual conference of the Society of Professional Journalists.

Continue the conversation or get out. Two examples… A friend of mine was pretty active on Twitter for about four months. He was gathering followers and building a little community of people with whom he could talk and bounce ideas off of.

He was benefiting from the expertise of that group and was holding up his end by sharing his knowledge. Then he got bored and left Twitter for three months. Now he’s having the worst time getting back into the conversations.

People he used to chat with have dropped him because they see him as someone who used them and wasn’t reliable. Now he wants back in as if nothing happened. When the investment people have in you is predominantly digital, you’re only as memorable or as valuable as you most recent exchanges.

His trail has gone cold and now he’s going to have to work twice as hard to get back into the community. Especially now that Twitter is growing so fast.

The second example is that of a restaurant on the South Shore. This company made a splash on Twitter and touted themselves as the best destination for Valentine’s Day. I was excited to see them enter the fray and was hopeful that they would continue to interact with customers. I was even hoping they might run specials for Twitterers that the general public wouldn’t see.

Not happening at all. This restaurant hasn’t tweeted since February and even recent tweets to them haven’t been responded to. They aren’t aware of, or maybe they don’t care, that this segment of their marketing plan is falling flat.

I advise two restaurants on their use of social media – including Facebook, Twitter and blogs – and the one thing I tell them at the outset is not to get into the game if they can’t dedicate time and resources to social media. I say that social media is a long-term investment and it won’t show returns for possibly as long as other traditional advertising or marketing efforts.

If they’re not going to tweet regularly, they shouldn’t even tweet the first time.

Finally, WWOD? What would Oprah do? Well, if I had the chance to speak with Oprah about her use of Twitter, I’d advise her to spend a lot of time on it. I’d say that she should follow only the people who interest her, but not to be focused on numbers.

I’d tell her, Twitter is jam-packed with interesting, skilled and fun people. They’re willing to share and smile with you and they expect the same. Honor that trust and contribute what you can.

And I’d say that if she doesn’t personally have time to interact, not to use it. She’s got enough going on in her life and media empire that Twitter would probably be a distraction.

That said, I might point her in the direction of her handlers or other content creation specialists. These people could coordinate messaging, updates and info that would assuage the demand of her viewers/followers and would probably allow Oprah to benefit from this versatile too.

I hope that the influx of millions of users take the time to each figure out how to use Twitter.

How about you? How is Twitter affecting your life online and offline? And what do you wish you knew about this social media tool?

What did I miss and what questions do you still have?

Find me on Twitter and @ me, I’ll answer your questions.

*EDITED – If you want to see some of what I tell my clients, here’s an 18-page packet of notes I used for a recent talk to 40 small business owners. Download the .pdf. All I ask is that you share this link with people on Twitter, leave a comment below, or link to this post on your blog. Thanks!

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© Jeff Cutler for Jeff Cutler - columns, essays and opinions, 2009. | Permalink | 11 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: dummies, Jeff Cutler, Laura Fitton, life, Oprah, social media, technology, twitter

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Is the cupcake on the counter the best I’ve ever had? Hardly. But it’s still a cupcake. There are plenty of people around who don’t even have the eggs or the milk needed to craft a cupcake.

And what about the heat?

The steam radiators hiss at me like angry cats every time I jack up the heat. But at least I have the option of turning up the heat and keeping myself warm.

Everyday complaints – like there being no cheese in the fridge, having neighbors who mow too close to my house, owning sweaters that are a little scratchy, and having to wait seemingly forever for the tap water to reach a temperature cool enough to drink – are meaningless in the face of bigger issues.

Like what?

How about people who don’t even have water to drink? Take a look at Charity Water and see that lots of people don’t even have that – then look at what people are doing to change things.

Or my friend’s plight. He worked his butt off for 11+ years and now has millions in the bank. But none of that cash or the success is going to be much solace as his father slips away from him mentally. This guy is only 60 and is predisposed to have Alzheimer’s. It hasn’t hit yet, but the family’s already tense anytime this guy forgets his pants or can’t remember a conversation from a few weeks back.

And this other guy I know is worried constantly about his father’s health. (No idea why it’s all fathers in this story, but it is.) This guy is 68 and battling cancer for the second time in two years. The disease is horrible, but what’s worse is living with the constant stress. Will each time I say “bye dad” be the last time? Will each hug or handshake be the last one?

Sure, the bread truck can round the next corner and flatten you like a pita. Your worries would be over and you wouldn’t be so focused on the water, the heat, the cheese or the family. But I tend to think that if there’s no grief if your life, Charlie Brown, you won’t appreciate the times that everything is clicking along nicely.

You won’t smile at the light snowflakes and the hot fudge sundaes. No giggles as the ducklings swim circles around their duck parents. And no contended sighs or happy tears at the end of a corny sitcom.

Until you take measure of your life in real terms, you can’t really measure the your life’s terms.

Even with a father dying of cancer and a paucity of ducks in the local pond, I have it pretty good.

-30-

© Jeff Cutler for Jeff Cutler - columns, essays and opinions, 2009. | Permalink | 3 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Boston, Cancer, ducks, Jeff Cutler, life, twestival

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Bowl of Cheese 50 – New Year\’s Resolution

I just spent about 22 minutes taking headshots of myself for a speaking engagement I have in the middle of the month. None of the photos came out correctly because I’m hideous and my glasses kept reflecting the camera flash.

Therefore, I resolve to become better looking and to spend the extra money and get anti-glare coating the next time I buy glasses.

The candy from my Christmas stocking is almost gone because for the past few days I’ve been gulping down Dr. Pepper and shoving molded sugar treats into my face. This frequently affects my mood and my energy level and I don’t think it’s doing much for my svelteness.

Therefore, I resolve to put different items on my wish list and to at least look in the windows of a gym from time to time.

A recent trip to the laundry room revealed that I own 28 T-shirts, half of which are black. I dislike black T-shirts because I worry about my dry scalp and even dandruff. This worry is balanced by my willingness to be cool, and so many new technology concerns put their logos and taglines only on dark T-shirts.

Therefore, I shall rid myself of these dark shirts (except for the Apple ones) and breathe easier each time I dress myself.

When sitting around the house playing online poker, enjoying video games, watching TV shows that have built up on my DVR or clicking around the Internet on my laptop, I often feel tiny pangs of guilt for wasting time. This time consists of moments of my life that will never occur again, so I’m understandably distraught when these moments get ‘wasted’.

Therefore, I resolve to stop wasting time feeling guilt and spend more time enjoying whatever it is I’m doing – with whomever I’m doing it with. No more worrying that I’m missing out on something better or that I’ll be judged as a time waster.

Lastly, the holiday cards are still piling up in the mailbox. Little visual treats from friends all over the nation. Unfortunately, about 1/3 of the cards are coming from people to whom I forgot to send my holiday card. Overlooking them/taking them for granted was never in my plans and now I know why I have so many extra copies of my card sitting on my desk.

Therefore, I’ll be taking the addresses off the incoming cards and sending out my cards a little late. I’ll also endeavor to make 2009 a year where I take people as seriously as I’d like to be taken. It will make me practice being more attentive to those around me and it will probably make people like me even more – which is a win-win in my book.

What are your resolutions for 2009? Share them here in the comments.

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© Jeff Cutler for Jeff Cutler - columns, essays and opinions, 2008. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: 2009, family, friends, guilt, Jeff Cutler, life, new year's day, resolution

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Other than that, it was the same. Immediately I felt a kinship with this woman and I looked for her every time I ran an errand on the scooter.

Two orange scooters against the universe. Never mind that she was a batty woman who reminded me of a cat-lady. Never mind that she only wore a skull-cap helmet and no gear at all. Never mind that during out talks she seemed oblivious to the rules of the road as they applied to scooters and motorized bicycles.

She and I were on the same scooter team and that made everything right.

I’ve felt the same way about the other woman – easily in her early 120’s – who owns a Scion the same color and year as mine. Far be it for me to admit to driving a car that attracts ancient woman to the driver’s seat, I still beep and wave whenever I’m cruising past her. Two Gray Scions passing in the day.

Where does this superficial kinship develop? And more so, why?

Think about the people who whip out a cell phone similar to yours. Don’t you get a smug feeling of being ‘in’?

Or the friends who tell about their vacation to St. Kitts, a place you enjoyed almost simultaneously.

But there is a line. It’s drawn at clothes and watches and hairstyles and pets.

I’m not sure why, but if you see a similarly dressed person out on the town you feel it’s your obligation to cover up your garments so as not to seem like a twin.

And I know I’ve tugged my sleeve down when seeing that someone else had the same altimeter watch I used to favor (it now sits gathering dust on my nightstand).

For all the spouting we perform about our independence, we’re a funny species. We want to be ‘in’ without being ‘also’. Maybe that’s the real distinction.

Looks like it’s going to be warm today. I’m going to go ride my scooter. Maybe I’ll run into that wacky lady. I just hope she’s not wearing the same gear.

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© Jeff Cutler for Jeff Cutler - columns, essays and opinions, 2008. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: belongings, clothing, freedom, individuals, Jeff Cutler, life, scooter, similarities, taste

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