Before you read this message glance around and see how many conversations are taking place on your office floor.

Good-bye — Idle Chatter
Enter—Worth While Talk

Although William Danforth wrote this message decades before the Internet became a part of our lives, his words apply to the Internet, too.

The “office water cooler” may still exist for those who work in offices, but wherever you work you can be lured into idle chatter via Twitter, Facebook, email, texting and other online communications. Each of these has valid business and personal uses, but it is easy to get distracted by unimportant chatter and waste minutes or hours everyday.

We all need a little downtime during the day to decompress and recharge. Spending a few minutes catching up with friends and colleagues, in person or online, can be fun and the interactions keep us connected day-to-day. However, when it becomes a habit that encroaches on productive time, it is time to scale back.

Draw a line between productive time on email and social media and non-productive time. Pay attention to how much of your work day is spent on “idle chatter,” then decide if you need to make some changes. One way to start is by setting aside time every day to handle email and social media. Set a timer, and when it goes off, get back to other tasks.

We all want to get the attention of the bloggers who have huge followings, have feature stories written about us in major publications, and be on Oprah’s show. Some people and companies direct all of their efforts toward those goals.

The problem is that everyone is trying to get the attention of the biggest media. That means that it is hard to get their attention and even harder to get them to cover you. However, there are lots of other media that would love to have your story. Would you rather have 1000 people read about you on a few blogs, or 0 people see you on Oprah?

One of the most important points in Tara’s post is to reach out to the people who want to know about you. She sent out a Twitter message offering to send copies of her new book, The Whuffie Factor, to 20 bloggers. The people who responded are people who want to read the book, and are likely to review it. (At least one of them has already posted a review at Amazon.com.) And you never know who will read those reviews, or where they will lead.

There is nothing wrong with having big dreams and aiming high. Sometimes you can hit that grand target. But do not neglect other opportunities that can bring you results faster, and perhaps take you further.

So go ahead and submit your story to Oprah, and hope for the best. But don’t stop there. Contact local media, look for bloggers in your niche, and reach out to your social networks and beyond to spread your message.

If you feel isolated because you are working alone, social media sites can seem like a lifeline to other humans. They can also be a way to make connections with new customers, influencers and others who can help your business grow. Too often, though, I see people make simple mistakes that harm their reputations, rather than helping.

Here are some common errors and how you can avoid them.

Too little information. Let people know a little about you. Put a picture on your profile, tell us about your business and your life, link to your web site and help others make connections to you.

Too much information. There are things I do not want to know about you, such as the fact that you and your spouse had a rip-roaring fight this morning, or the exact color of whatever just came out of your nose. Spare me. Please.

Updating too infrequently. Out of sight is out of mind. You can’t form relationships with people if you only show up once a month or so.

Updating too frequently. I do not need to know every move you make. “Just woke up.” “Headed for the kitchen.” “Getting coffee. It’s hot!” “My iPhone battery is dead.” You get the idea. If you update every two minutes, you will overwhelm your friends and followers. Only update when you have something interesting to say.

No conversation. Don’t just push your thoughts out to everyone, engage with others, too. Respond to what others are saying and doing. Offer answers and help.

Too much conversation, especially when it doesn’t make sense. I will not be interested in what you have to say if all I see in your Twitter stream is a series of @ replies saying things like, “Oh, yeah. I couldn’t agree more,” or “That is one of my favorite sites, too.” When you do an @ reply, remember that many people will see only that, and not what you are replying to. Make it stand on its own: “http://IdeaLady.com is one of my favorite sites, too.”

Endless self-promotion. If the only things you ever post are links to your latest blog posts, or news about your upcoming product launch, I will lose interest. Spam all of your Facebook friends with nothing but self-promotion, and you will eventually find yourself without friends. Share information, news and helpful links to sites other than yours.

Too many time-wasters. I do not want to be poked, nudged, get in a snowball fight, or be bothered with any of the thousands of useless Facebook apps that are out there. Send one too many and you will be an ex-Facebook friend.

By now you may have surmised that being effective in social media requires balance. Consider what other people do that annoys you, and don’t do those things. Instead, focus on making yourself useful to your network.

Of course, the biggest social media mistake is not having a presence there. Just dive in and get started. Set up an account on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, MySpace or other site. You don’t have to use all of them. Start with one or two. Watch what others are doing, then join in.

To follow or friend me, see the links on ConnectWithCathy.com/

It is not as hard as you might think to get a little famous and, no, the paparazzi will not begin stalking you. Of course, publicity is a great way to gain fame, but you are dependent on the whims of the media for that.

So, while you are waiting for The Oprah to call, here are some things you can do today to make yourself a little famous. Many of these techniques are free, and all can help to create awareness of you and build your expert reputation while making you (at least a little) famous.

Become a famous expert by submitting tips to http://www.Lifetips.com/ and http://www.Lifehack.org/ Lifehack will give a live link with your tip, Lifetips allows you to mention your web site in your profile.

Put up a profile and some of your articles at http://www.EzineArticles.com/ They refer more visitors to my site on a consistent basis than any sites other than the major search engines.

Put your profile on LinkedIn.com, then connect with your network, and their networks, and their networks…this is MySpace for grown-ups with jobs or who are looking for jobs. No garish backgrounds or bad music, just the opportunity to make mutually beneficial connections.

Set up a page at http://www.Squidoo.com/. Post articles, photos, links to your site and more.

Post thoughtful comments on leading blogs in your field. Not sure who they are? Browse the directory at http://www.BlogCatalog.com/. You can also add your blog to their directory.

Distribute an online press release. When it goes out to the news services you will see an increase in traffic to your site. And there will be links to your site, well, forever. Get it done at http://idealady.prwebdirect.com/.

Put yourself on a t-shirt. Or a mug, a mouse pad, a necktie…at http://www.CafePress.com/ or http://www.Zazzle.com/.

Watch yourself get famous by setting up Google Alerts for your name, web site, etc. Go to http://www.google.com/alerts and tell Google what terms you want to watch for. When they run across a term you want to know about, they will send you an email with a link to the page.

None of these things have to take a long time. Just select a couple actions from the list and get started today. A little weekly maintenance will take your fame to greater heights.

Many times, people looking for information will simply enter the name of a person or company followed by “.com.” Voters wanting to learn about the candidate may enter his name and end up on a site set up by his political enemies. People who do not read the attack brochure carefully may even think that the “JohnSmith.com”  site is the candidate’s official site.

Fortunately for this politician, when you do a Google search on his name, his real campaign site comes up first and the attack site was not in the top results. However,  you can not be certain that this will happen if you are ever the victim of this kind of identity theft.

You may think that you do not need to own <yourname>.com. You do business under a company name, and you do not ever plan to run for office, so why do you need to register your name as a domain name?

Well, even if those things are true today, they may not be in the future. And if you decide you want to own the URL of your name, you do not want to discover that someone else owns it. Especially if that someone else is a political opponent or someone else who may use the site maliciously.

It is possible to dispute another party’s ownership of the URL of your name; however, that will probably not do this politician any good as it is unlikely to be resolved before the election. Plus, it is a pain in the rear to have to deal with the dispute resolution process. Is it worth $10 a year to avoid that?

It is also possible that the person who claims “your” domain name will have just as much right to it as you. If they share your name you would have a hard time convincing anyone that you have more right to the URL than they.

When I registered my first domain name, I did not register my name. At that time registrations were much more expensive and I did not see a reason to claim my name. However, a couple of years later, I noticed that someone was buying a lot of names of prominent Internet personalities. I decided I should strike before I became prominent enough to be a target for a squatter.

For a while, I pointed this URL at IdeaLady.com, my primary site. When I decided to set up a blog, CathyStucker.com seemed like the right URL to use.

Also think about registering common misspellings. Lots of people spell my name with a ‘K’ so if you try to go to KathyStucker.com, you will end up here.

Not sure what you should do with the URL of your name? Why not create a business card site?

And once you have your URL registered, start thinking about your identity on social media sites. Although there can be an unlimited number of “John Smith”s on Facebook, on Twitter there can be only one. Do your best to lock up your name, business name or nickname in as many places as possible.

Twitter helps me not only to keep in touch with friends and colleagues but also to make new friends and business connections. I have used it to “meet” many new people, but I do not follow everyone who follows me.

Not familiar with Twitter? Watch this short video, then keep reading to see how I decide which Twits . . .uh, Twitterers . . .uh, people to follow on Twitter. You might want to use similar criteria to evaluate connections on Twitter and other social networks. And following these guidelines for your online profiles may help you get more friends and followers.

When I first got on Twitter, I started following people I knew personally. As I met new people at events and online, I started following them, too. Most of the people who started following me were people I had encountered offline or online, so I also followed them.

As my numbers of followers/following grew, I started getting follows from people I did not know at all. Usually this happened because we had a mutual friend and discovered each other through that friend. That is the “social” part of social media. I have made many great connections this way.

Then the marketers came. Suddenly, there were people just looking for an audience to spam with their blog posts, ads and other garbage Tweets. They were not interested in community, just seeing how many people they could blast stuff out to.

Lots of other people got on Twitter but then they never did anything with it. They never Tweet, and they do not participate in the community.

When I get a notice that someone is following me on Twitter, I check them out before I decide to follow them. You may also want to do so. Here are some of the things I look for:

Is there a picture? A picture of the person is best, but an attractive avatar is fine. If someone can not take 30 seconds to upload some kind of image, how involved will they be?

What does their profile say? Again, if you can’t take a couple of minutes to add a link to your web site, where you are located (you do not have to be too specific), what you do or some of your interests, why should I care about you?

Have they updated? When I see that someone has not even taken 15 seconds to key in something simple, such as, “Learning how to use Twitter,” I assume that they will not be an active part of the community. Make at least one update before you start following anyone, and make several before you start following a lot of people.

What is their follower/following ratio? There are lots of Big Internet Names (BIN) who are followed by thousands of people but only follow a few dozen to a few hundred. That is to be expected. Lots of people want to know what the BIN is thinking, but the BIN may not want to follow thousands of people they do not know.

It is the other side of the coin I avoid: Those who are following 3,748 people and have 17 people following them. That tells me that this is someone who is following everyone in sight in the hopes that some of them will follow back so they have people to spam. And they are not interesting enough for most people to care about them.

What kind of updates do they post? Is every one just a product pitch or a link to their blog? Is it all about them? Or do they engage with other users (through @ replies, etc.), post interesting links to sites they do not own, and share information? I will not mind getting the occasional self-promotional Tweet from you if that is not all you send.

How often do they Tweet? There is no magic answer here, but once a month is not often enough and 100 times a day is way too often.

If you are not sure about whether or not to follow someone, you can always follow them and then unfollow them later if they do something annoying. The great thing about Twitter is that you can ignore (or even block) anyone you do not want to hear from. When you follow someone they receive an email notice; however, they will not receive an email saying that you unfollowed them. (Update: There is now an application called Qwitter that will notify someone when you stop following them. Qwitter users will get an email when you unfollow.)

Want to follow me on Twitter? I am at http://www.Twitter.com/CathyStucker. If you want me to follow you, too, you might want to take a minute or two to go through this checklist. I am open to following new Twitter users, but I do look for a photo, at least one update, and something in the profile.

Once you follow me, send a Tweet to @CathyStucker and let me know you found me through this blog post. Sometimes the email notices of new followers do not get to me, and that way I will be sure to see you.

Tweet you later!

Lots of bloggers are finding Twitter to be a good way to promote their blogs, find new material, and build more one-on-one relationships with their readers. Darren Rowse at ProBlogger.net posts about the value of Twitter here.

Here are the benefits I have discovered in 37 days of Twittering . . .Twitter keeps me connected to people in a way that email and reading their blogs doesn’t do. Some of what gets Twittered is the minutia of people’s lives: where they went to dinner and with whom, what the weather is like where they are, what they are working on, what music they are listening to, which movie they just saw, etc. Maybe I don’t care what you had for breakfast, but finding out that an acquaintance across the country is taking kickboxing lessons was, well, a kick. (Sorry.) I believe that learning some of the little things about people I care about but do not get to spend a lot of time with helps us to be closer, even though we are geographically separated.

Seeing what other people are talking about lets me know about news and events I might have missed. A link to a blog post, a new video, or news about new technology keeps me up on what is new.

Twitter also helps me to reach my audience in new ways, and create more personal relationships. Twitter is not only about broadcasting your thoughts, activities and recent blog posts. You can also exchange private and “semi-private” messages with other Twitterers. And you can not beat the immediacy.

It is also a good way to reach a new audience. I have discovered new blogs and web sites, and been discovered, through Twitter.

So what is the time commitment? Whatever you want it to be. Some users only log in to Twitter once a week or even less often. I log in every day, and try to post something at least once or twice a day. I scan postings by others several times a day, most of the time, but this only takes a few seconds to a minute or two.

There are people who tweet (post) multiple times a day, almost every day. Although that is certainly not necessary, it does not have to take a lot of time. Tweeting can be as simple as sending a text message from your mobile phone.

Even better, you can post automatically. I am using TwitterFeed to create an entry whenever I post to this blog. Twitterfeed checks for new blog posts, then sends the title, a short description and a link to the full post to Twitter.

You may find Twitter the coolest thing ever or the stupidest thing you have ever seen. Why not give it a try and see what you think? Go to http://www.Twitter.com/, register for a free account and fill out your profile. Then start following people. You can start with me. Go to http://www.Twitter.com/CathyStucker and click on the “follow” button under my picture. Follow more people by searching for people you may know on Twitter or clicking some of the avatars on my page or others. See someone who looks interesting? Follow them. You can always stop following them later.

When you follow someone, they get a notification and some of them may start following you. Because you can see who everyone is following, it helps to expand your network. New people will find you when they start following someone who is following you. (Does that seem confusing? It really isn’t. It will make sense when you see it in action.)

Once you are set up, post your first message. It does not have to be earth-shattering news. Just say what you are doing, where you are going, what book you are reading, or anything going through your mind.

After trying Twitter, let me know what you think: Super-cool social meeting tool, or total waste of time? You make the call.