This year’s Blog Action Day topic is water, and I find it hard to ignore.

Water is the first thing I drink in the morning and the last thing I drink at night.

At my house we gave up bottled water about two years ago, and I’m very pleased about all the plastic we’ve saved. We’re lucky where I live to have clean water from the tap, and we have a large filter tank in the refrigerator.

This year however, I spent a lot of time and attention watching the water in the Gulf of Mexico, wondering if it would ever be clean again. I still worry about the sealife there, and the wildlife in the marshlands on the perimeter of the Gulf. The ocean covers approximately 71% of the Earth’s surface. We need to show some respect.

Sadly, the old adage is still true for many – ocean, ocean, everywhere and not a drop to drink.

In developing countries, drinkable water is hard towards impossible to find, and developed nations are doing the same thing to their natural resources.

Polluted rivers and streams are undrinkable and produce contaminated food sources, as well as polluted river deltas and fishing areas in the ocean at the end of the rivers. Hey guess what, we’re talking about the United States, too! How can this happen? It’s as simple as pesticides and other untreated nastiness draining off of large hog farms into the Mississippi River. Read more: 11 Facts about Pollution

Want to do something? I’ve added a link on this page to the UN Petition for Blog Action Day 2010. Join us! And thanks for reading.

I took part in the third annual Women Who Tech Telesummit yesterday. (Thanks to winning a free pass, thanks Allyson!) I must confess I was multitasking, but nevertheless, I got a lot out of this day-long web conference. I’m looking forward to listening to the recorded sessions that I wasn’t able to attend, and already looking forward to next year!

Topics ranged from diversity to self promotion to social media ROI to launching your own business. We talked about building the ultimate user experience and discussed how to get more women in leadership roles in the tech industry.

My quick little brain-dump of my top ten takeaways from the day:

1. You get the best ideas when you are listening, not speaking.
2. Women tend to be perfectionists about their expertise. Allow yourself some room to fail.
3. Interested in doing public speaking? Practice. In your car, in your shower, on video or audio recordings, to gain confidence.
4. Foursquare is a public relations tool. It’s free, so use it. Manage your organization’s presence there.
5. Google Analytics: also free, so use it. Even if you’re just getting data on your Facebook or Linked In pages.
6. User Experience is every department’s responsibility.
7. To attain the Ultimate User Experience, you need to watch/listen how your customer is engaging with your products.
8. Risk is an abstract element. If you’re afraid of taking a step, ask yourself, “What happens if I fail?” and really answer the question.
9. I need to find the source of this mash-up: it’s not “Rocket Surgery” – I just love that!
10. All-girl events are fun/empowering.

If you have some others, including links you might want to share, please add them in the comments! For more great nuggets, look for the hashtag #WWT on Twitter, follow @WomenWhoTech, and be on the lookout for next year’s conference.

There is lots of info out there about how to get more followers for your Twitter account. And then there are all kinds of links offering to get you more followers the quick and easy way. DO NOT CLICK THERE.

Personally, I get much more out of quality people I follow, not quantity people following me. Sure, with my corporate accounts we want to reach lots of customers with our message. But even there, we want it to be the right people that we reach.

Geoff Livingston, Allison Fine, Beth Kanter and Kami Huyse started a smart meme on “Ways to Increase Your Twitter Following Ethically” – if you’re looking to build a Twitter presence, I highly recommend it.

They’ve invited us all to extend the conversation: I have a few tips of my own to add.

1. Have a goal. Know what you want to get out of people you reach as well as those you’re following. Why are you doing this Twitter thing anyway? Do I have to mention this? Well, yes, from what I’ve read on Twitter it seems I do. Even if your goal is just to communicate with your friends and get news faster. Know that this is your goal.
2. Focus. When someone asks you what you tweet about, can you answer them? Try narrowing tweets from your personal account to just a few topics important to you. I recommend that you focus on topics you know best. This way people find it easier to associate you with a topic or two. Your profile and any directory tags should reflect these topics.
3. Engage. When someone follows you, check out their profile and see what you have in common. Twitter is about making connections, and that’s a two-way street. Make a conscious decision whether to follow someone back or not. And don’t follow so many people that you can’t manage reading your incoming Tweets.
4. Use etiquette. Be positive. If you don’t have something nice to say, don’t say anything. Of course correcting false information and participating in healthy debate is appropriate. Give credit where it is due — label retweets as RT or /via.
5. Don’t overtweet. This does no one any favors. Taking over everyone’s Twitter stream is just rude, and unless you’re covering a specific event, you need to leave space between your Tweets to allow folks to consider what you’ve said.
6. Be patient. Your numbers will come in time. If you have built your audience slowly it will be a much more reliable audience than one that’s been built overnight.

Also read: Tips on being a corporate Tweeter, 10 tips to help you learn to fly on Twitter

I’m looking forward to embarking on a new adventure as a corporate tweeter. As such, I’ve taken a good deal of time accumulating best practices for corporate accounts. Many of these are the same as I would recommend for anyone operating a business Twitter account for themselves:

1. Have a mission/message in mind before you post your first tweet.
2. Your message should also consider your target audience.
3. Twitter directories are a good way to gain some followers initially, but there is no get followers quick solution.
4. Be selective in following. There is no need to follow everyone who follows you.
5. Be careful of your language. This is even more important for corporations than for individuals.
6. Your posts are 100% public. Remember that bad news travels faster than good news and anything your shareholders wouldn’t like will travel out of the Twitterverse and onto TV screens and into newspapers.
7. Corporations need to select a voice. It’s best if one person, or a couple of people, man the account, for consistency, and to be sure there’s no redundancy. Most corporations invoke the royal ‘we.’  Other more customer-service oriented Twitter accounts have used an individual speaking from the first person.
8. A regular stream of content is important to any Twitter feed to maintain followers. Appropriate corporate topics include:

• • respond to follower/customer inquiries
  • retweet satisfied customer tweets
  • link to updated/interesting information on corporate websites/blogs
  • retweet updates from affiliated Twitter accounts
  • Twitter contests
  • advance notice of corporate news
  • Twitter discount codes
  • stimulate Twitter discussions with product-related questions
  • product-related trivia
  • run online surveys
  • photos of corporate events

Have some other ideas? Please share in the comments!

Bird art by Triax Mills.

Thanks to Twitter, I was introduced to a new blog this morning. The post I found really got me excited about editing. It was titled, “Writing without typos is totally outdated.” I was horrified! The blogger kicked off her post by saying,

Will everyone please shut up about the typos on blogs? … Because anyone who is trying to come up with fresh ideas, and convey them in an intelligent, organized way, on a daily basis, has way too many things on their plate to complain about other peoples’ typos.”

In my opinion, conveying your ideas in an intelligent, organized way includes checking your writing for typos. But this blogger goes on to say,

There is a new economy for writing. The focus has shifted toward taking risks with conversation and ideas, and away from hierarchical input (the editorial process) and perfection.”

What? I certainly understand that not every blogger can afford a content editor and a pool of copyeditors. But to say that moving towards risky ideas means moving away from the pursuit of writing perfection, is just sad.

The perfect paragraph does have a place in blogging, and to get it, you need to do some editing. Why should a blogger spend time editing?

1. Edited writing is easier to read. If the practices of good writing are overlooked, ideas can be misunderstood. In the first quote above, it sounds like my colleague is writing about “other peoples’ typos” – but she’s complaining about people who complain about her writing errors in the comment area of her blogs. You can read her post in its entirety yourself if you like.
2. Every impression on the internet is your first impression. Make it a good one! Since you never know how someone may encounter your site, you might have one post to demonstrate your expertise. This blogger is giving out career advice, but in the comments of this post — and in another post — she advises that a typo within a resume is a fine idea, and I’m never going back.
3. Don’t distract readers from your brilliance! An error you made in grammar or spelling confuses your reader, slows the rhythm of your sentence, and dulls the impact of your intelligent ideas. There’s simply no reason for it.
4. Respect your readers. The average reader is looking for a clearly constructed sentence with no misspellings or typographical errors. If you’re asking for someone to read your blog once, it’s fair to expect you’ve read it at least once after you wrote it. So — read it twice. Your writing is a representation of you. Have some pride in what you’re putting out there for the world to see.

Need some tips? Here are some great writing resources:

• The Associated Press Stylebook
• The Elements of Style
• The Chicago Manual of Style
• Lapsing Into a Comma : A Curmudgeon’s Guide to the Many Things That Can Go Wrong in Print–and How to Avoid Them
• The Elephants of Style : A Trunkload of Tips on the Big Issues and Gray Areas of Contemporary American English
• The Slot, a spot for copyeditors, by Bill Walsh

Let me know what you think, and if you’ve got some other good writing or editing resources to add to the list.

I’ve noticed two main types of bloggers: those who write for themselves and those who write with the reader in mind.

This applies to you too, my Twitter friends. Actually, this applies to all communicators. In the land of person-to-person verbal communication we have a third type, the reluctant communicator. This person only reaches out because of biological or occupational requirements, but we’ll leave them alone for now.

Back to the blog. I believe that utility is the key to distinction within the blogosphere. I want to follow a blog that gives me links, news, entertainment or insight. I am not interested in knowing that a stranger is going to the grocery store, looking out the window, napping, etc., unless you are adding some insight or entertainment value to that information.

So your lifeblog sharing the number of reps you did at the gym doesn’t help or motivate me. Unless you are Lance Armstrong,  in which case I am very interested in your workout routine, diet and new bicycle.

If I don’t know you, your date last night isn’t interesting to me. Unless you are dating columnist Julia Allison.  Get it?

What do you do? What are you an expert on? Share what you know, resources you find, news your readers can use. Write with your reader in mind.

If you can only share how your day is going, provide links to help your readers understand better. Are you milking a goat? Share a link to more info on dairy goats: http://www.dairygoatjournal.com

When you’re working in a medium like Twitter or a blog that has subscribers, be respectful with the number of ‘issues’ you send out each day. Keep in mind that some messages don’t need to be public. While you’re editing the number of things you publish, do edit your grammar. Here’s some help at The Slot http://www.theslot.com/.

Writers, hear my plea. I know you have a lot on your mind, and I look forward to reading it. Please let us know here in the comments where you’ll be writing in 2009. Happy blogging!

A friend of mine recently questioned the validity of http://www.truthfightsback.com, an admittedly partisan website supported by John Kerry to help Obama and other Democratic nominees fight negative smears launched against their campaigns.

His exact words included a reference to the vast left wing conspiracy, which he thinks controls most of the media. I can’t believe people really think that owners of TV and newspaper organizations – which are struggling to figure out how to pay the bills without turning to 100% advertising content – are conniving to support their chosen candidates. It seems silly to me.

Nevertheless, there are numerous non-’media’ sites working to be sure that the truth gets out there.

• One of my favorites is http://www.factcheck.org/.
• And http://www.snopes.com/
• There is also http://www.propublica.org/

Keep in mind, though, that every source has a sponsor, even if it is the webmaster’s parents who keep a roof over his/her head.

Inform yourself with a variety of sources. Listening to just one radio station, TV station, or reading just one newspaper or website is like putting yourself behind a wall, or iron curtain, and allowing one editor or station manager to determine what you should hear. Freedom of the press is a great American institution. Exercise it by changing the channel and turning the page every now and then.

And be sure you are registered to vote!
http://www.usa.gov/Citizen/Topics/Voting/Register.shtml