Marc Majers is currently employed as the Manager of Web Development for the Cleveland Institute of Art. He is also the Founder of Leading Hands.org.
Leading Hands is an Northeastern Ohio organization dedicated to educating parents, seniors and children how to stay safe on the Internet. The only way to be safe online is stay on top of the latest trends in technology and that's what they do. They are keeping families in sync with technology.
Marc was a speaker at the recent Cool Twitter Conference at the House of Blues in Cleveland.
One of the interesting messages he relayed is that Social Media, and Twitter in particular, is like a Swiss Army Knife. Swiss Army Knives have lots of tools to choose from and can be intimidating.
Marc Majers and his Twitter Swiss Army Knife
Majers advised to decide which tool/application to use first and focus on that. You don't have to use all 20 blades, the corkscrew and the toothpick right away just as you don't need to use every function and application of Twitter to get started.
With so many social media options, it's vital to determine your goal in using social media and work toward it. One of Majers' goals, for example, is to use social media to drive traffic to his blog and web page.
Another goal is to learn from others. He likes to use Hashtags in Twitter to create useful search results. Majers says you should think of a hashtag as a kind of shorthand for social networking. You use this shorthand to describe your conversion so that it's marked for others so they can at a glance know what you're talking about. You generally start with a "#" sign and then your word(s).
For example in Twitter if you talking about NASCAR, you would type your comment and "#nascar" and so it has context. Once you tag your conversation, it then serves as a great way to search for conversations.
He also likes to use Twitter to educate people - in line with his LeadingHands,org philosophy. So when he finds an app that aggregates the pictures he uploads from his iPhone and presents them in a cool new way, he posts that to his followers.
You should also follow him on Twitter @LeadingHands.
In this podcast from the CoolTwitter Conference there is, unfortunately, a lot of background noise but the content is worth the effort. The video's audio is a little better.
Listen to Marc Majers
