eric rochow

Just a quick thought here. Today I spoke at SocialDevCamp Chicago on creating niche social networks. I was asked by an audience member how she could get people who use their website to start taking part in conversations, interacting.

My answer was that she herself was probably not going to get more people to interact, [...]

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I get emails all the time from people want to use Real World Green and Gardenfork videos, but this one stood out yesterday.

The big red flag for me here was the person did not say what company he worked for, and in his signature line, it didn’t list the company either. It did list his [...]

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Just heard about SocialDevCampChicago from TechCocktail, and I have signed up for a slot to talk about “What’s it like to create and manage a niche social network” . I’ll talk about how I decided to create The Green House, and what I’ve found works and what doesn’t, and more as I think about what [...]

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I received an email from Plaxo today, sent by Jim XXXX. Wanting me to connect with him on Pulse. I’m sure you get these as well.
Reading this email today, I am thinking about several things that could improve this message. In this latest installment of “What Eric Thinks”, here’s what I think.

Like you, I meet [...]

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Twitter spam, I get at least one of these a day, and I decided to take a minute here to do the “How Eric Sees It” on the use of Twitter as a tool to get out your message, without annoying people.
Let’s step thru my thoughts when I got this email from Twitter:

Here’s a big [...]

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I bought a new bike helmet from Performance Bicycle’s website this week. The site experience was pretty good, no glaring human interface flaws.
Going thru the checkout, I unchecked any button that offered to add me to an email list of any sort.
And in the special instructions text box, i wrote:
Please do not add my name [...]

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Representatives John Culberson and Tim Ryan are now using Twitter. Other politicians use it, but its usually their staff that send out the posts. These 2 are sending their own. A quick review of some of their posts reveal their outlook on current topics

Of the two, Mr Culberson is using Twitter for what it does [...]

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Like me, you probably get a few of these a week. An email with a subject line that sounds familiar. You open the email to find it is from a group, usually a non-profit, about an event or some issue they are working on.

I’ve replied to a few of these emails, asking the sender where [...]

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This has been in the front of my brain for a while, and David Eckoff’s post on the “Twitter dilemma, how many people to follow” has caused me to finally write about it.

To some people, Twitter may seem like a waste of time. I find it useful, to a point. You follow people, they follow [...]

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It seems the prevailing attitude is that Email is Dead. I find the contrary to be true. Email works great for reaching out to regular viewers of Gardenfork and Real World Green, and causes more people to visit our community site, The Greenhouse.
In every episode of Gardenfork and Real World Green, I mention that people [...]

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