The all-in-one on getting started in social media, my way

Today, I spoke to a packed room at the Common Cents Conference, for nonprofit coalitions that offer free tax preparation and asset building, serving more than 40,000 people in Maryland, D.C., Virginia and West Virginia. They help low‐income families receive the Earned Income Tax Credit, get help preparing taxes, and learn more about managing finances.  And they had a million dollars' worth of beginner questions about how to get started in social media.  So for them, and for you (if you're starting), here's a roundup of my best posts about getting started in social media--a mix of the practical, the planned and the poetic.


Practical:

• A reader writes: Help me get up to speed with social media was written for another reader just like you. Dive in here.
• Why your social media strategy should be like my homemade pizza will help you make it easy and fun.
• Blogging: Ten lessons, five years in shares my advice based on five years' worth of blogging.
• My current utility belt shares some devices and software I like for social media purposes, and this post needs its own update, but it's a good start.
• How to develop a deft touch with social media also came up a lot in this session--it's something you need to consider and do consistently.

Planned:

• Local was a big theme today, and Boarding the local: 7 social media trends to use will help you get started
• Those of you asking about return on investment should read Got a social-media measuring cup?, which advises you not to wait for the perfect measure of success. Get going!
• We talked a lot about balancing personal and professional. Here's a post that explains how I do that on Twitter, and another on why you should showcase some of your infinite variety on social media.
• Online profiles--and how employers might see them--were raised. Here's a post on that topic, called Me.com: Because employers are fickle, on how to plan your own profile, and a more recent one for the networked communicator on new ways to update your profile.

Poetic: 

• The serendipity of social media is one of its great draws. Here, read about the utter strangers, now muses, that I met on Twitter.
• Finding your unexpected audience on social media is one concept we discussed today. Those of you looking for donors will like this one, in which Bill Gates turns out to be an unexpected reader.
• If you're waiting to achieve perfection, you won't make it. You can't be Mary Poppins in social media explains why.
• I use Twitter to boost my creativity--10 ways.  Try it!

Check out don't get caught on Facebook, where I'm floating ideas and discussing them before they appear on the blog.  It's shaping up as a great networking community for communicators.

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