also on the topic of meaningful consequences re: character death I don't understand the take that death in fantasy requires physical permanency to matter or give a story "stakes". death is permanent regardless. Do you really think that if they get her back, they'll just go back to normal? That these characters are not forever fundamentally changed from this, that Laudna will not be fundamentally changed from this?

That Imogen's world will be less fractured, that she won't be even more of an anxious wreck now that what she stands to lose has been put into vivid clarity? That Orym won't still carry the guilt of being the chosen, that he will be less haunted by the connections he drew to his own grief with Will to Imogen's with Laudna? That Fearne won't look at Laudna and think of that coin flip, of her choice, and what that means for her and how she loves? That FCG and Ashton won't think to this and be reminded of the people they've hurt or been hurt by, and what this effort and what this grief means for how they view the hells?

That Laudna, who has been so blasé about life and if she's alive and what being alive even means for someone like her, won't wake up surrounded by family and by love and be driven to reexamine everything she's taught herself in 28 years of isolation to cope with the trauma of Whitestone? That this, maybe, will be the driving force she needed to realize that there are things she wants to live for?

It might be that I'm just biased, but I'm not sure what stakes Laudna perma-dying adds aside from just presenting the characters with the knowledge they all already have that they can, in fact, die. that what they're up against is incomprehensibly powerful and dangerous. The stakes already feel so impossibly high when you think of what and who they are preparing to face. frankly the aftermath of this combat alone, even if everything had gone perfect and everyone had gotten back up a-okay, would have set that tone.

I don't know, regardless I'll be happy to watch whatever story they choose to tell unfold as it does, but it strikes me that so many people seem to think that death only matters if there is a physical absence.

Top Tips to Get Started on Twitter (A Parody)

This is a farce of tips on the best way to begin twittering for the individuals who partakes in an irregular ridiculing things. Appropriate for Twitter-addicts, Twitter-haters and regular people sad heartbreak quotes.

Pick a persona. Would you like to be the emotional young lady who posts dismal, emotional stuff like how no one on the planet comprehends the exceptional aggravation and heartbreaks she's going through; or are you more keen on being the person who Googles moving statements coz it makes him sound extremely profound and significantly more savvy than he really is; or perhaps you simply need to be a geek who tweets numerical formulae - whatever it is, ensure it is really cliché! Keep in mind, your supporters request you to be as platitude as could be expected!

Your presentation picture should be crazzzzyyy!! Rather than being exhausting by putting an anticipated image of yourself, take a stab at putting an image of a window box, a vacuum cleaner or a pink unicorn. Or on the other hand on the off chance that you reaaally need to catch individuals' eye, why not post an image of an egg as your DP? Absolutely wild!

Start by following your companions. They will be only your apparatuses. Then, at that point use them to discover aliens to follow. Follow everybody! Furthermore, Twitterians are thankful individuals. They'll follow back, no inquiry! Also, they don't pose irritating inquiries like 'Who are you?'... That is so Facebook!

Presently begin tweeting! Tweet pretty much everything! From the amusing states of your craps to how charming and cuddly your pet hippo is and to how arbitrary you are at an irregular shopping center, haphazardly making irregular discussion with a store life sized model - these are only a couple of the famous models! Furthermore, we as a whole need to know where you are. Do tweet about your area. "In the latrine... pooping...' presently isn't that value a tweet?

Keep in mind, Twitter has a 140 person limit. So attempt to be brilliant! Why squander on space by composing short tweets like 'I'm at home now' Instead, draaaggg and expand that tweet into something like this 'I am so absolutely at home now and I'm similar to so absolutely not intending to go out like yes it's my so absolutely sluggish melody by Bruno Mars ROTFLMFAO..' You would prefer not to squander what Twitter has given to you. Utilize each character! Presently who's the virtuoso? You are!

You definitely should review your Bio area now. To place a wind in the story, your profile SHOULD NEVER portray who you really are. All things considered, be extremely dubious and attempt to sound exceptionally strange. "Am I a man? Or then again am I not? What characterizes a man? Or on the other hand am I a monster? Or on the other hand a robot?" That sounds totally ordinary to me!

We as a whole love a normal dose of Twitpics (that is pictures on Twitter for you dawdlers). Post pictures on Twitter for the things you can't portray like the uncommon shade of shade of your period blood.

Start a ruckus for no obvious reason on Twitter! One more type of a more revolutionary Twitterdrama; pick an arbitrary person on Twitter (ideally the person who lives with his mother and has no sweetheart) and begin offending him! Consider him a Lady Gaga fan, a K-Pop admirer - anything at all to drive him insane. This will get you quick consideration from him, his devotees... also, his mother! Before sufficiently long, you'll make a World War Two-witter (see what I did there?) and your supporters will before long found the show and are compelled to favor one side. You are currently a TwitFamous! A VIP really taking shape! Pat yourself at the back, will ya?

Since you have a gazillion adherents, it doesn't make any difference what you tweet any longer (as though it has ever been!)... Take a stab at tweeting things like "Pantries", "Clothes washers" or "Hippos Milk" and perceive how individuals will promptly retweet those tweets! It's astounding how cool these individuals are! The more silly your tweet is, the more RT's you'll get! Take a stab at tweeting "Msjhidhiwdklon" and see that it gets moving in the blink of an eye!

Twitter is presently your life! Disregard work or school, your prominence is the oxygen you inhale and the cash in your ideal minimal world. Overlook the annoying sound from your mother! Overlook how the needle of the gauging scale have a seizure each time u advance on in! Twitter is your life now! What's more, for what reason should all the other things matter? You have your devoted devotees (or slaves and followers... whatever term you like.)

Presently that you're hastily well known, attempt a hand in global control. Hello, on the off chance that you can vanquish Twitterville, overcoming the world ought to be eazzzy peezy!

140 characters is enough.

I decided to see if 140 character really is enough to convey an emotional, motivational message. Below are some famous quotes which I have altered to fit within the 140 character limit on Twitter.

“I believe that everything happens for a reason. People change so that you can learn to let go, things go wrong so that you appreciate them when they're right, you believe lies so you eventually learn to trust no one but yourself, and sometimes good things fall apart so better things can fall together.” 

― Marilyn Monroe

Things happen for a reason, ppl change & you learn to let go. Things go wrong so appreciate success. Trust yourself, there is always better. 0 Space: the final frontier. These are the voyages of the starship Enterprise. Its five-year mission: to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no man has gone before.

Space: The 5-year mission of Starship Enterprise; explore new worlds, seek out new life, discover unexplored places. +24

“The opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference. The opposite of art is not ugliness, it's indifference. The opposite of faith is not heresy, it's indifference. And the opposite of life is not death, it's indifference.” ― Elie Wiesel

Indifference is not hate; the opposite of art is indifference. The opposite of faith is indifference. And the opposite of life is the same. +1

“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines, Sail away from the safe harbor, Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.” – Mark Twain

In 20 years you will be more disappointed by things you didnt do, not the ones you did. Leave the comfort zone, explore, dream, discover. +3

The most difficult thing is the decision to act, the rest is merely tenacity. The fears are paper tigers. You can do anything you decide to do. You can act to change and control your life; and the procedure, the process is its own reward.

- Amelia Earhart

Deciding to act is the hardest thing, fear is ineffectual so you really can do anything. Make change & gain control, process is the reward. +1

Take up one idea. Make that one idea your life - think of it, dream of it, live on that idea. Let the brain, muscles, nerves, every part of your body, be full of that idea, and just leave every other idea alone. This is the way to success.

- Swami Vivekananda

Take one idea and make it your life. Live on that idea, let your body be full of it, focus solely on it. That is the path to success. +7

Violence as a way of achieving racial justice is both impractical and immoral. I am not unmindful of the fact that violence often brings about momentary results. Nations have frequently won their independence in battle. But in spite of temporary victories, violence never brings permanent peace. 

- Martin Luther King, Jr.

Violence is impractical and immoral, there is no justice. Violence does often bring momentary results like independence, but never peace. +3

Wherever my story takes me, however dark and difficult the theme, there is always some hope and redemption, not because readers like happy endings, but because I am an optimist at heart. I know the sun will rise in the morning, that there is a light at the end of every tunnel. 

- Michael Morpurgo

Wherever my story takes me, no matter how dark, there is always hope. I am an optimist at heart and there is light at the end of the tunnel. 0

Women should be respected as well! Generally speaking, men are held in great esteem in all parts of the world, so why shouldn’t women have their share? Soldiers and war heroes are honored and commemorated, explorers are granted immortal fame, martyrs are revered, but how many people look upon women too as soldiers?

- Anne Frank

Women should be valued. Men are respected worldwide, why shouldn't women? Soldiers are honored, how many people see women too as soldiers? +2

At the end of the day, you are solely responsible for your success and your failure. And the sooner you realize that, you accept that, and integrate that into your work ethic, you will start being successful. As long as you blame others for the reason you aren't where you want to be, you will always be a failure. 

- Erin Cummings

At the end, you are responsible for your success & failure. The sooner you realize, you will succeed. You will fail if you blame others. +4

Don't ever criticize yourself. Don't go around all day long thinking, 'I'm unattractive, I'm slow, I'm not as smart as my brother.' God wasn't having a bad day when he made you... If you don't love yourself in the right way, you can't love your neighbour. You can't be as good as you are supposed to be. 

- Joel Osteen

Dont criticize yourself. "Im unattractive, Im slow" God wasnt having a bad day when he made you. You wont be as good as you are meant to be. 0

You ask, what is our aim? I can answer in one word: Victory. Victory at all costs—Victory in spite of all terror—Victory, however long and hard the road may be, for without victory there is no survival. 

- Winston Churchill

What is our aim? Victory. Victory at all costs, despite terror and difficulty, for without victory there is no survival. +19

Our constitutional democracy enshrines the peaceful transfer of power, and we don't just respect that, we cherish it. It also enshrines other things — the rule of law, the principle that we are all equal in rights and dignity, freedom of worship and expression. We respect and cherish these values, too, and we must defend them. 

- Hillary Clinton

Our democracy cherishes the transfer of power, It also respects equal rights, worship, and expression. We too must respect and defend them. 0

Is this the real life? Is this just fantasy? Caught in a landslide, no escape from reality Open your eyes, look up to the skies and see I'm just a poor boy, I need no sympathy Because I'm easy come, easy go, little high, little low Any way the wind blows doesn't really matter to me, to me 

- Queen, Bohemian Rhapsody

Is this the real life or just fantasy? There's no escape but I need no sympathy. I'm easy, it doesn't matter to me which way the wind blows. 0

We take Pete's car, we drive over to Mum's, we go in, take care of Philip - "I'm so sorry, Philip" - then we grab Mum, we go over to Liz's place, hole up, have a cup of tea and wait for this whole thing to blow over. 

- Shaun of the dead

Take the car, drive over to mum's, go in and, grab mum. Hole up, have a cup of tea and wait for this whole thing to blow over. +13

I used to want to save the world. To end war and bring peace to mankind. But then, I glimpsed the darkness that lives within their light. I learned that inside every one of them, there will always be both. The choice each must make for themselves - something no hero will ever defeat. I've touched the darkness that lives in between the light. Seen the worst of this world, and the best. Seen the terrible things men do to each other in the name of hatred, and the lengths they'll go to for love. Now I know. Only love can save this world. So I stay. I fight, and I give... for the world I know can be. This is my mission, now. Forever. 

- Diana Prince, Wonder Woman

I've tried to end bring peace, but every person has darkness inside them. I've witnessed the darkness, and only love can save this world. +3

But then I said, ‘If you hit a Talib with your shoe, then there would be no difference between you and the Talib. You must not treat others with cruelty and that much harshly, you must fight others but through peace and through dialogue and through education.’ Then I said I will tell him how important education is and that ‘I even want education for your children as well.’ And I will tell him, ‘That’s what I want to tell you, now do what you want. 

- Malala Yousafzai

You must not treat others with cruelty, fight through peace, dialogue and education. Be educated, and follow your own path. +17

One does not simply walk into Mordor. Its black gates are guarded by more than just orcs. There is evil there that does not sleep. And the Great Eye, is ever watchful. It is a barren wasteland, riddled with fire, ash and dust. The very air you breathe is a poisonous fume. Not with ten thousand men could you do this. It is folly! 

- Sean bean

R is drunk and raving (not in the party way).

(R:) Additionally, I’m procrastinating like a fucking champion at working on fic construction, so you know the best use of my time is going off about random social media crap on the internet.

tl;dr: Putting all commentary in tags on Tumblr makes R cry and shit thousands of words into the Internet.

Every social media site inevitably develops sets of unwritten social conventions. Some of them actually make sense as being derived from meatspace etiquette and therefore you don’t really have to stress about remembering them as long as you play nice like a decent creature.

And some of them just don’t make any fucking sense that I can see. Folks on Twitter using a deliberately space-limited form of media to write a page’s worth or more in a string of 30+ rapidfire tweets? This is just how it’s done over there? (Tweetlonger exists but for some reason these massive chain-tweeters never seem to use it. Same with posting the whole thing in a long-form site like LJ/DW/Tumblr and just linking it to a tweet.)

And Tumblr has things that I literally had to put effort into learning after I migrated here, and after I learned about them I frankly decided to ignore them because I couldn’t see the point in them. Tumblr has this bizarre allergy to commentary and, likely derived from that, the practice of instead commenting by putting it all in awkward tags that render the tagging system not especially useful and are harder to get to if you’re actually interested in an individual’s thoughts about a thing and not just the twelfth instance of the same post crossing your dash in a day or two. It’s not like you can’t engage with people, because asks and messaging and such exist, but like...there’s this strong sense that it’s Terribly Ill-Mannered to weigh in with your own impressions right there, in the body of the post, typing your own words in that seductive, wide-open text box that appears all on its own when you go to reblog something. The properly-socialized Tumblrite eschews that tempting text field and instead posts weird sentence fragments in tag form (interspersed with actual tags that might serve to usefully categorize the post’s content), to the extent that some people can add on a good couple paragraphs of material down among the hashtags where others need to go looking for it on purpose if they want it. (I, at least, haven’t been able to find a plugin or something that automatically expands full tags on all posts so that I don’t have to fuck around with extra interface elements to get to them. I admit that I haven’t looked super hard, though.)

Preserving the original form of the OP’s post is a noble practice that I heartily support, but how is adding commentary a problem if you’re only adding a separate thing, not taking away or altering anything in the original...? This was already a practice/convention/code of social interaction on Tumblr when I got here, so I was never in the front row to witness this element taking shape. I suppose it must have made good sense at the time, but every time I see ten people reblogging the same post with no additions and a paragraph of tags appended to it, it’s like a splinter in my brain that has been digging into me for years now.

And I’m not hating on people who do that! I get that that’s The Way It’s Done Here and I am the deviant weirdo for continually adding comments directly onto things that I reblog. Tags are where individuality lives here, unless you’re producing your own original posts, which I guess other people are then supposed to reblog without commentary so that you have to go hunting after all the reblogs individually if you want to get an actual sense of what these people were all thinking when they reblogged your thing. It all just seems...so...WORK INTENSIVE, refusing to use site functions as they were intended??

Look, I absolutely know that my commentary is not the work of incisive genius that unfailingly adds value to every post I find worthy of my attention. We’re pretty much solid shitposting on this blog. Because I’m a little loaded at the moment and that gives me a handy excuse to run my fingers like an idiot (plus I put that readmore up there, so if your eyes are actually consuming these words, you have only yourself to blame for being here), let me run down relevant history of how we got here.

LJ was home for a good long while. Then shit got seriously messed up and Dreamwidth was created as a better LJ, so we migrated all our stuff over there. And journaling sites along those lines still feel like a native environment. I, in particular, am the most long-winded piece of shit we know and I am honestly incapable of talking about anything of worth in short form. It’s a sickness and I just sort of have to own it. :/ But that’s why journaling sites are a good place for me to live, because that’s where people go when they have the inclination to read meandering scrawls about the depths of other people’s lives or whatever.

We went to Twitter for a good while because all the cool people we knew from LJ were going there for some unfathomable reason. These people wrote things that were complex and fascinating to read, so all of them jumping ship to a place that limited them to 140-character chunks made no damn sense, but we loved those people and wanted to trust that they knew what the hell they were doing. And they probably did, and a couple of us were actually okay with Twitter, but I, being the long-winded shitpiece, spent a lot of time frustrated and kind of overstimulated.

Then things started going to hell more and more consistently for me personally (and us generally by extension, but that’s unnecessary detail). Bunkering down specifically to protect people that you care about from the fallout of your crazy is a fairly common thing for mentally-ill people to do, I think. So I’d shut up online until I felt stable enough to talk to people again. Those periods lasted a few days, then a week or more, then a month, then eventually I stopped talking entirely. I missed the LJ/DW format, but in the past I’d written about life events and things I was thinking about and such, so...at the time, all I really had to write about was the bad stuff. So LJ/DW was basically unusable as well.

I literally came here to be as shallow as I could possibly manage. Tumblr had a rapid, chaotic flow similar to Twitter, but could hold longer content like LJ/DW. We’ve never really used the site’s full functionality at any point, though. For at least a year, all we were following was the most lightweight, zero-calorie entertainment that we could find. (We actually came here for Flight Rising content, so there was a lot of that.) Being engaged with fandom in any consistent respect is an extremely recent thing.

And I’m not saying that fandom hasn’t got depth and complexity because it absolutely does and that’s one of the beautiful things about shared fan experiences. I kind of got into that sort of fandom by accident after getting here and rediscovering Transformers. But the unvoiced policy that I’ve always had here is to avoid the Too Real and dodge serious topics whenever possible. Thus, no gender theory, no neurodivergence or multiplicity, no nonhumanity, no religion or UPG, nothing with real substance behind it that bared real vulnerabilities. (Apparently this was a good move anyway because the nonhuman and multiplicity situation here on Tumblr is a bit of a clusterfuck? I honestly wouldn’t know, as I haven’t made a lot of effort to link up with those folks.) That’s still the policy. That might remain the policy forever until I reach some vaguely-defined threshold of sanity that makes me worthy of talking about those things in places and formats that other people can interact with.

And I’m sorry for all this talk about mental illness, but it’s simpler just to explain things clearly. I likely won’t go into any more detail about it on Tumblr. Or anywhere else, because I care about people even if I’ve never met them or talked to them at all and I still want to keep it all in the bunker to protect good people from the crazy. Sometimes, all you can do is just prevent the damage from spilling out into other people’s lives, and that’s the place that I usually operate from.

I’m still pretty drunk, so I’m allowed to ramble from too much truth serum, but all of that explanation was to get around to saying that the format of online communication that is most intuitive to me is the long, oversharing gut-spill of random people talking about things that are really meaningful to them - not in the sense of elaborate philosophy or artsy epistles to the cosmos, but just people being super real about things that are meaningful to them and going into lots of detail about them because gushing about things you love is great. And it’s possible to get that sort of discussion and gushing in Tumblr fandom, and I love it because it reminds me of better times, and the fact that I love it is WHY IT MAKES ME SO GODDAMN FRUSTRATED that Tumblr culture is basically stifling discussion and feedback and RESPONSE to things that people find interesting!!

Like, here’s how I see it. Unlike on LJ/DW, where you were limited to hyperlinking to a cool post in one of your own posts if you wanted your readers to go check it out, on Tumblr, if you find a super cool thing, you can pull it directly into your space and let other people experience it directly, exactly as you experienced it. But the thing is, I also subscribe to the My Blog My House concept. If I pull a thing into my “home,” I do it because there’s something homelike about it; it belongs in my home for some specific reason. I don’t take “ownership” of an item in the sense that I’m claiming it in place of its creator, but I’m taking ownership of it in the sense that it’s part of my Stuff now and it’ll get my fingerprints all over it and be blended into the general morass of Stuff that I recognize as my home. I don’t just pull random crap into my home for no reason at all.

And I just figure that other people are similar in the sense that they reblog things for distinct, unique reasons, not in the sense that they have some master plan for their blog content (some do, but it’s not necessary), but just that they have compelling reasons why they pick certain bits of content out of the larger river of their dashboard and put it in their own space for people to experience with them. I follow people based on the interesting things that they find interesting. I’m interested in why they’re interested in those things. They seem like interesting people to me because they’re interested in what they’re interested in.

But the WHY is a really important part of the equation for me. Did this person reblog that photo because they’ve been to that place themselves, because they like that kind of tree, because they reblog photos with that color scheme every Thursday? Did that person reblog that piece of art because they love that character, because they’re studying that art medium, because it reminded them of something funny they saw somewhere else? People attach their own context to things that they latch onto. It’s so freaking weird to me that people have to hide their interpretations or impressions in tags here on Tumblr, making them unimportant and optional in the process of sharing things they like with others. (Okay, people also share a lot of things they hate, but reasons for outrage are still part of the context that one adds to content.)

I WANT TO KNOW WHY YOU CARE ABOUT WHAT YOU’RE SHOWING ME. I WANT TO KNOW WHAT MAKES IT IMPORTANT TO YOU. I WANT TO KNOW WHAT IT MAKES YOU THINK AND FEEL. Even if it’s a blurb about how giant robots fuck or a cute kitten video, I NEED TO KNOW THESE THINGS.

Not in excruciating detail or with insightful analysis or even a lot of text at all. Mostly, the things that people put in tags are things that, to me, are a really crucial part of the experience of being able to go into someone’s “home” and see the Stuff that they chose to put in it. Reducing oneself to a glorified signal repeater is...okay, I guess, though it turns a Tumblr blog into a kind of faceless stream of other people’s material a lot of the time. The personal touch is what makes it all interesting. And I’m just unutterably frustrated that, somewhere along the line, it was decided that personalizing an experience by sharing one’s own impressions of it became rude enough that polite society decided that it had to be hidden away in tags. I want all of it, so I do go looking for it, but omg it requires MORE EFFORT and BURNING CALORIES and BODILY MOVEMENT and WAAAAH, you know what I mean. :P

And possibly Tumblr society is right and it’s done for a good, decent purpose and I’m being pigheaded and uncool by insisting on doing things my way without bothering to try and understand the local customs. I’m not usually that much of an asshole, but I am about this, for some reason. And I admit that my craving for those personal touches could very well spring from how utterly isolated and lonely I am, so maybe normal people really don’t need all the extra info and actually do just want mostly-impersonal streams of content. And that’s fine, since I know I’m kind of a weirdo even on my best days.

I’m pretty sure that that was all that I really wanted to say. I’m probably overreacting about the whole comments-in-tags thing. Like I said, it’s kind of an irrational irritation. Also, I need to stop before I write myself sober and no longer have an excuse for all of this. If you actually read all of that, you are an awesome, generous person and I’m pretty damn certain that I love you even though I have no idea who you are.

Twitter Marketing 101: Proven Effective Ways to Grow Your Twitter Flock

Twitter’s 140 character limit requires much-distilled thinking and it can be frustrating especially if you are obsessed with using overly long sentences. However, your love to “gab” shouldn’t hamper the wind beneath your business’ wings. One of the best virtual assistants in the Philippines shared foolproof ways to leverage Twitter for your business. If you are serious about learning a few tricks for your tweets to impact your business while creating a loyal flock of followers, “perch” on a comfortable spot and read on.

UTILIZE TWITTER’S ADVANCED SEARCH WITH THE HELP OF THE BEST VIRTUAL ASSISTANTS IN THE PHILIPPINES

Twitter had evolved from a fun place to chat or keep up with the new trend to a platform that could help marketers with lead prospecting. It is best facilitated with its search feature. If you’ve been around Twitter for a long time, you have probably done a search for a username or a trending topic or a mention of your company using the site’s toolbar search field. Cool. This is great if you want to perform a quick search for a phrase or a trend. You can also use “search operators” (yes, this term is not exclusive to Google) to perform a more advanced query.

But did you know that there is a more advanced way to narrow your search? Here is where Twitter’s Advanced Search would come into logic: https://twitter.com/search-advanced. This is so advanced you can even filter Tweets that have happy or sad sentiments!

But why would you need to do an advanced search? It’s simply because paying attention to what people are actually saying on Twitterverse matters. Let’s say you own a pasta place and you want to find out pasta-related tweets. I did a search and I am amazed by the results 😉 (See images.)

ADVANCED SEARCH QUERY

See? A lot of insights can be derived from that search result and you can later use it as a basis for crafting your next tweet or even better, a new social business tactic. Brilliant!

TIPS ON DOING ADVANCED SEARCH

Keep it simple so you don’t miss out on the tweets.

Use a variety of hashtags, phrase and search operators.

Save your searches so you can go back to what you searched anytime.

This article from Zapier is a more detailed resource on how to use Twitter’s Advanced Search to precisely find the Tweets that may help advance your business.

Keep an Eagle Eye on your Competitors

Now that you are acquainted with Twitter’s Advanced Search, why not further utilize it to evolve from a chick to a bird of prey (insert evil grin here lol)? This nifty feature will help you refine competitors’ hashtags, what they are doing to join the trends that emerge and the people they follow (they might be their customers!).

Chances are high that you and your competitor share the same followers, following and even interests so why not see what they are up to and if you are up for fun, you can even join the conversation they have started 😉

Get a Birds-Eye View of your Key Influencers

According to a 2010 research report from Meteor Solutions (yes, it is still relevant even if it is 2014), the type of people who follow or friend you are more important than the numbers. Well, you are too familiar with quality vs. quantity, aye?

So if you want your business to soar into new heights knowing your industry’s trusted thought leaders and trendsetters is a must. You have to hire the most reliable virtual assistants in the Philippines. There is a high probability that your potential audience might be in their followers. But the real challenge is how you could get them to endorse you and eventually become an influencer yourself. So how do you go about doing that?

Identify the Influencers

Go back to the Twitter advanced search or do a Google search for your niche. List down influencer, you want to connect with. Building your influencer list can take some time but trust me it will be worth the effort. Some tools might help you identify influencers across various industries and this blog might help you with that: http://www.razorsocial.com/find-influencers-twitter/

Curate and Share

Once you are satisfied with your list of influencers, start digging into their Twitter profiles and catch the influencer’s attention by curating their Tweets/, joining the conversation and even retweeting what they have published. How will this benefit you? This will be a great way to bring value to your target audience and if your target influencer notices you, you might get retweets from him/her or might even net you a follow back. Now isn’t what you call hitting two birds with one stone? 😉

Remember that a picture is worth a Thousand Words and Video a Million

Tweet with an Image

Tweeting texts ONLY are soo 2008. If you are on Twitter since its inception, you will notice that the platform has gotten more visual. Before you have to click on a link to view an image shared on Twitter but recently, image previews are now available. Why is it good news for business owners like you?

If you’re trying to spark a conversation or are looking for feedback from your followers, you can ask a question and upload a photo to go along with it. Adding an image in your next Twitter update can help you stand out, catch followers’ attention and eventually help you gain a higher engagement rate. In fact, according to a study from BufferApp, tweets with images generate 18 percent more clicks and 150 percent more retweets than those without and 89% of tweets with images receive more favorites.

…and a Video, too

Oddly, Twitter seems to be on the last of everyone’s list when it comes to video marketing. It’s usually YouTube or Facebook. But try it. Create sales but rather short and sweet video, upload to Youtube, include the link in your status and reference the emotion in the video’s when you tweet it. If you try tapping into human emotions with video via Twitter, you’ll find that there can be a viral success in 140 chars or fewer. For example, “Want a good laugh? Check out this video, only 50 seconds!”

Most marketers have yet to embrace Twitter as part of their online marketing strategies. But if you are one of those marketers who feel your existing Twitter marketing efforts could use some reform, the above techniques should help you make your Twitter account take off. These will also be possible with the help of the best digital marketing agency in the Philippines.

Review of the Book 'Left, Right and Centre' by Nidhi Razdan

Published on 18.07.2017 To be very frank, I had no intention to publish the review of the book ‘Left, Right and Centre’ by Nidhi Razdan on my blog. I prefer to review only well-deserving books on my blog. This book doesn’t seem to be one of them. The only motivation for writing this review here is the snub by Google Play, which I am assuming has been done under the influence of either the editor or the publisher of this book. I posted an innocuous 3 star neutral rating review of the book on Google Play yesterday, but those ….. removed it before or after publishing it. I didn’t save the copy of the review, so I am reproducing it below from my memory, which is not an exact reproduction. “In older days, that search for an item number or a pretty smile in an otherwise boring movie many a times led to manual rotating of the cassettes tapes. This need not be done now courtesy YouTube. However, books still don’t offer that convenience. Therefore, authors will have to learn to write crisp and short contents. Or at least highlight important text within the 140 characters limit, so that enterprising readers can tweet quotes from the book. I have only read the sample pages of this book, which mainly dwelled upon the Kashmir problem, so I won’t comment on the contents, but I am not buying this book unless either of the editor, the authors or the publisher tweet at least 300 engrossing quotes from the book (Rs 1/quote x 300 = Price of the book). I am giving the book a neutral 3 star rating.” As I said Google Play removed the above review, so I decided to go whole hog and wrote a new review discussing the contents of the two essays I had read; i.e., the introduction by Nidhi Razdan and the essay by Shah Faesal. Since the review was negative, I decided to send the notice of the review to Nidhi Razdan, Shah Faesal and Penguin through Twitter. I gave them a clear notice of nine hours. Nidhi Razdan was active on Twitter till late at night yesterday. There have been 10 profile clicks and two link clicks on my tweet. So, there is good reason to believe the review has been read by atleast one of the recipients. Since there was no reply by anybody, I submitted this second review to Google Play at around 8 AM today. Nearly two hours have passed since then but the review has not been published. So, I am reproducing it here in the quotes below. The review has not been edited, so please bear with me. “I wrote a review a while ago with a neutral 3 star rating here on Google Play, which has been removed. Don’t know why? But anyways, now I will go whole hog. I have read introduction by Nidhi Razdan, the full essay by Shah Faesal, and the part essay by Rahul Pandita, which is good enough to write a review. First, this book is expensive even after a discount. These kinds of opinions are available in blogs and magazines for free. I wonder what value addition the caption ‘Left, Right & Center’ brings to the readers. Shah Faesal, who is a civil servant, actually has no business expressing his views in public. First thing I want to know is has he taken permission from the government while publishing his views in this book? And if he has taken the permission, then which minister or bureaucrat gave him the permission in the early years of his service when he hardly knows anything about the Kashmir problem? Anyways, his essay is a confused potpourri of immature thoughts, which hardly link to each other. Overall, the essay doesn’t leave any concrete message. Morever, it is too long winded to decipher anything sensible out of it. Nidhi Razdan has written an introduction for the book, which in itself is an essay. Well…she is also from Kashmir, so Kashmir gets lots of space in her essay as well. She has tried to define Kashmiriyat as some kind of secular tradition in which Muslims and Hindus intermingle. I will take it with a pinch of salt because Rahul Pandita in his earlier book has written about ingrained rivalry between Muslim and Hindu kids reflected best in Cricket matches. Anyways, I think Kashmiriyat has more to do with humanity than religion. To be very frank, I doubt if Nidhi Razdan is qualified enough to speak on such intellectually stressing topics. Thereafter, she has pretty lightly linked Kashmir conflict to Ultra-Nationalism of Indians. I am an #AntiNationalHumanist, so nobody can hate Ultra-Nationalism more than me, but you can’t start drawing links where none exist – what does Supreme Court taking cognizance of Sardar Jokes has to do with Kashmir conflict? Rest is regular: Pathankot, Gurmehar Kaur, JNU, Trolls, and even Tanmay Bhatt (LOL). This book seems to be a serious fraud. In my last review, which has been taken off, I had given benefit of doubt to the book by putting a condition for purchasing this book, which was that either of the authors, the editor or the publisher should tweet at least 300 engrossing quotes from the book to assure about the quality of the book. If they do it even now, I will buy the book and read other authors, esp people like Aruna Roy, Sunita Narayan, etc. – though I am surprised they have associated with this book. Last but not the least, you don’t delete reviews just because the publisher or the editor asks for it. Google has fallen way down in my eyes today. I wonder if they will publish this review. Anyways, I am saving the copy of this review. If it is not published here, it will be published on my blog. Also, I am giving notice of this review to Nidhi Razdan, Shah Faesal, and Penguin on Twitter before publishing it. At present, I am going with a 2 star rating for the book.” P.S. In the line “I doubt if Nidhi Razdan is qualified enough to speak on such intellectually stressing topics”, my reference is not to educational qualification or IQ of Nidhi Razdan. My reference is rather to her elite upbringing. In her essay, she had defined 'Kashmiriyat’ by way of exemplification through her childhood memories. Had she defined it in abstract terms with or without quoting other thinkers, I wouldn’t have made this comment. However, at the same time, I do believe philosophy is not the exclusive domain of dreamers and thinkers as elaborated in the introduction to my book Light: Philosophy. Comment Dt. 26.07.2017 Today I had some free time so I re-read the two essays, wherafter I am upgrading the rating to 3 stars for the following reasons: The essay by Shah Faesal though not leaving any concrete message is nevertheless a good reading. The comparisons of dogs to militants and soldiers, both despised yet useful, and that of cat to conflict, which sneaks in before you know it, are pretty interesting. Had Shah Faesal concentrated on these two thoughts and build around them to reach a solution, it would have been better. I think he wasted too much of his ink in describing his own celebration and the people’s cynicism surrounding it. It has not added any value to the essay. Generalisations drawn from his own case study are far-fetched. However, since it is an interesting read, it qualifies on the second reading. I have found journalists’ appearance on TV entirely different from that in print. While they may seem completely frivolous as anchors, they do pretty well as researchers. Sunetra Chaudhury, Sagarika Ghosh, Rajdeep Sardesai, Barkha Dutt, are some names I have discovered favourably as authors. I was expecting something similar from Nidhi Razdan. So, probably my standards were high. However, she gets benefit of doubt because technically speaking this is not her book as an author per se. It seems she has produced this book more as a franchisee owner. Nidhi Razdan’s thoughts on nationalism find deep resonance with me because I am an #AntiNationalHumanist, but her linking it with Kashmir conflict, almost frivously as if in an anchor driven TV show, put me off. I think she also over-extended her narrative. Though “Sardar Jokes” was just a single line, it was nevertheless very distracting – there was no scope whatsoever at all for “Sardar Jokes” in the theme of her essay; if she wanted to present it as a side-thought, it should have been separated from the main narrative through appropriate separators, brackets or whatever. Rabindra Nath Tagore is an excellent anchor on any discussion on ultra-nationalism, but unlike Nidhi Razdan, he would not flirt with army tanks, Kashmir conflict, Twitter trolls, Tanmay Bhatt, Gurmehar Kaur, all at the same time swinging in all possible directions – btw, she follows Narendra Modi on Twitter amongst other things. But since it is a boldly written essay on a topic close to my heart, it qualifies too. Click to Post