Facebook has been in the news recently, with the company announcing groups, downloading and several other new features, the opening of Social Network, the semi-fictionalized account of how Mark Zuckerberg started the service, and Malcolm Gladwell’s piece on social networks in the latest issue of The New Yorker.

I didn’t know any of that would be happening back in early summer when I asked social media expert Trish Lawrence to be my guest for the Sept. 29 Word Count Last Wednesday to talk about how writers can use Facebook to promote themselves and their business.

Coincidences aside, Lawrence has great information on how Facebook can fit into a writer’s promotional efforts. She should know. She’s the owner of real/brilliant, a Seattle company that helps authors develop social media platforms to build their online presence, brand them as experts, and ultimately, sell more books. You can read more about what Lawrence does on her blog.

Here’s a summary of Lawrence’s advice on using Facebook from the chat. The questions came from me and other writers on the chat. The answers are all from Lawrence, though I’ve added some links and other details.

On Facebook, what’s the difference between a page and a profile?
There’s not much of a difference technically. They have the same options, but the perception about who will read it is different. A page establishes you as a business, as an expert; a profile is the same as any other Facebook user.

If you’re already on Facebook, should you have a separate page for your business?
It depends on your goals for the page. Are you looking to be seen as an expert? Of course! A page takes you to that level. Facebook is #1. More people get on Facebook than check their email first thing in the morning. Every company that you can think of is on FB.

If you’re a writer and you have a blog about a specific topic, should you have a Facebook page to support that?
Yes, a blog needs to be seen on Facebook. You can post to a profile, but if you post to a page, it is a different way of promoting. At some point soon, Facebook users won’t even leave to read blog updates or to chat or interact. It’s a big point of contention right now.

So do you put your blog posts in Facebook?
Yes, I funnel all my blog posts into Facebook as a content aggregator. This helps the Facebook page to have new content every day. That is what all the experts say: new content everyday. And it has to be good, helpful info, not promos every single day, info your readers and followers can use. I use http://dlvr.it/ to funnel my blogs to my social network. It’s all automatic. You can see how posting to your Facebook page affects your blog traffic and your interaction with your audience. Do they like coming to your blog? If you find that your audience doesn’t like to leave Facebook, than you may have content on both Facebook and your blog.

Is it possible for writers to keep a private area on FB, or at some point does it become a problem?
Yes, it is possible with a profile. If writers want to have something private, they should have both page and a profile. That way writers can limit their friends for their private life and still maintain promotional activities. A lot of authors and agents are stalked on Facebook, so a page is the way they’ve decided to control it. Facebook is actually encouraging it. Not only are they making it super easy to set up a page, but they also encourage customized pages.

So all the friend requests I get from work colleagues, I should funnel to a page for my writing business, not my private page?
Yes, if that is important to you. I crowd everything together myself, but this is a great way to keep your private and public (business) separate. If someone wants to read my private stuff as well, more power to ‘em.

Where does the new Facebook groups feature fit into all of this?
I’m not a big fan of the new Facebook groups feature actually, although I haven’t yet seen it in action. From what I’ve read, I think the new Groups feature defeats the purpose of social media networking. I would recommend that writers not take advantage of their friends on Facebook by adding them to groups unilaterally. I actually think Facebook will have to change reverse this wacky decision in the next few weeks, if not days.

Have you followed Anne Rice on Facebook? She’s fascinating. She’s also on Twitter.
Yes, she is an interesting person to watch. Great for experimentation purposes! I also watched Steven Pressfield get on Facebook. He was not going to do it, but he has had a blast. Don Miller is another author who has harnessed social media to really push his ideas out to the world. Tracking famous writers is a great way to find out what’s working and to be inspired. The world of social media for authors is really still being created. As we watch people become more active, we can see what works. To get other ideas, you might take a look at my Facebook friends list; most are authors/agents. My FB page is: facebook.com/realbrilliant.

Are there other apps or add ons that make publishing content to Facebook easier?
There are so many ways to spread content around that whatever you can do to make it easy for people, the better. I love AddToAny for my WordPress blog, which makes it easy to send my content to the social network. I also love a WordPress plugin called Scribe that allows me to find other blogs and Twitter users talking about my key words to link to. Scribe does cost a monthly fee, however. Networkedblogs is a great one too.

People used to differentiate between how they used LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook, but does it matter? Should you use all of them and all the same way?
I think it still matters. Authors tend to answer questions on LinkedIn, post updates on Twitter and chat with friends on Facebook. Facebook is a great traffic builder. It is so important to do what works best for you and to test, test, test. But the most important thing across all social networks is to have a strategy. What are you trying to accomplish? Expert status? Are you going to be a publisher? (of ebooks, ecourses) Are you going to be a consultant? You use them all with a main strategy, but for different purposes.

What’s the biggest mistake people make with Facebook pages?
Starting a page and leaving it there alone. Even if you only post one news item a day, that helps the page to stay alive.

Any other words of wisdom?
A great book on this subject is Facebook Marketing an Hour a Day by Chris Treadaway and Mari Smith. It has great information to help your decisions with Facebook. Here are a few other  action items: Research five authors for what you like about what they are doing on the social networks. Create a page for yourself separate from your profile and begin to play with content such as blog posts, pictures and conversation. Try to drill down to the purpose for your page and your presence on Facebook. What are you trying to accomplish with all this content? As authors, we provide solutions through our words. That’s the ultimate purpose of a Facebook profile or page. It’s important to think about what you are sharing so you will have a permanent social record to be proud of.

If you’re interested in learning more, Trish Lawrence will be teaching a course on social media for authors through Writer’s Digest University in late 2010 or early 2011. The course is titled Social Media 101 for Writers: 4 Core Competencies for Building a Meaningful Online Presence. Visit Lawrence’s website, http://www.realbrilliant.com/blog, and sign up for her e-newsletter to be notified when registration opens.

Got your own advice to share about using Facebook to promote your writing? Let’s hear it.

Love Twitter?

Love Mad Men?

Whichever it is, tune into the WordCount Last Wednesday live chat tomorrow for a chance to meet the award-winning tweeter behind the @Peggy Olson Twitter account.

That would be Carri Bugbee, a Portland, Oregon, social media, marketing and public relations executive who took home a 2009 Shorty Award for anonymously tweeting as Olson.

Bugbee will lead a chat on how writers and bloggers can use Twitter to crowdsource and promote their work. She’ll also discuss some of the best Twitter apps for writers.

The one-hour chat takes place on Twitter at 8:30 a.m. Pacific time.  To follow along, use the hashtag #wclw.

The format of tomorrow’s live chat is as follows:

• 8:30 – Log on, introduce yourself with your name, city, type of writing you do and what Twitter-related topics you’d like the chat to cover.
• 8:35 to 8:40 – I’ll ask Carri a few questions to get things rolling.
• 9 a.m. – We’ll open it up to questions from the audience.
• 9:30 a.m. – The chat ends.

Although it’s possible to use the standard Twitter interface for a live chat, you might find it easier to follow along with an add-on application such as TweetGrid, TweetChat or HootSuite. This tutorial explains how to set them up.

If you’re afraid you’ll offend followers by tweeting too much during a chat, you can suggest they use an app called TwitterSnooze to temporarily turn off your tweets. In case you haven’t done this before, when the chat starts, tweet a message like this: “I’ll be in a live chat for the next hour; if you don’t want to follow, turn off my tweets with TwitterSnooze.com.”

Coming attractions

Stay tuned for more on tech tools for writers and running a writing business in coming months. Here’s what you can expect on the next few upcoming WordCount Last Wednesdays:

• August 25 – Using an e-newsletter to promote your business, with Susan Weiner, writer-editor, chartered financial analyst (CFA), blogger and author of a long-running monthly e-newsletter on investment and wealth management.
• September 29 – Facebook fan pages for fun and profit, with Tricia Lawrence, writer, blogger, social media strategist and instructor of an upcoming Writer’s Digest University class on social media strategy for authors.
• October 27 – Creating and marketing your self-published ebook, with Susan Johnson, writer, blogger at The Urban Museand author of the new ebook, The Urban Muse Guide to Online Writing Markets.

If you’ve got a suggestion for a subject you’d like to see covered, send it my way.

If you’re an expert in a particular aspect of freelance writing, running a freelance business or tech tools for writers and are interested in participating as a guest speaker, contact me.

If you’ve sworn off online communities like Facebook and Twitter because all people seem to do on them is goof around, consider joining LinkedIn, the site that puts the “work” in “social network.”

While other online networks might be bigger – Facebook now has more members than the entire U.S. population – LinkedIn is specifically tailored to the world of work. No Mafia Wars. No Farmville. Instead, you’ll find people talking shop, looking for jobs or job candidates and connecting with colleagues past, present and future.

Read the rest of this post at SecondAct.com: The social network that puts work first.

If you’re looking at this on a reader, you won’t be able to tell.

But if you’re reading this on my blog, it should be obvious something’s changed.

As of today, I’ve joined the BlogHer ad network. You can tell by the ad in the far right-hand column. In the future you may see a second small BlogHer ad here as well.

After two-plus years of blogging purely to keep up with the times and share a career’s worth of accumulated wisdom about writing, journalism and freelancing, I was ready to explore turning my little enterprise from a nonprofit to a money-making venture – to develop an alternative revenue stream as they say.

When it comes to ad networks, bloggers have a lot of options.

BlogHer wasn’t an obvious choice for me. Although I’m a mom and a blogger, I’m not a mommy blogger, a fact that kept me from investigating BlogHer and similar networks for some time.

But when I did, I found a lot of compelling reasons to join. The BlogHer network has 2,500 bloggers, not a huge number, which gives WordCount a chance to stand out. There aren’t a lot of other BlogHer blogs covering freelancing or the media business, another opportunity for me to shine. BlogHer has grown beyond its initial mommy blogger roots: the company recently announced an initiative with The White House Project to get more women to run for office in 2010.  With more than 20 million unique visitors a month, it’s getting noticed: BusinessWeek included the Belmont, California company in its February 2010 list of America’s Most Promising Startups. Writing in Forbes, in November 2009, CBS anchor Katie Couric included BlogHer cofounders Lisa Stone, Jory Des Jardins and Elisa Camahort Page in a list of the most powerful people in new media.

I also picked BlogHer because it maintains a newspaper-type editorial code when it comes to bloggers accepting free gifts and junkets. At a time when many bloggers think it’s OK to take free stuff and write positive things about the companies that gave it to them – with or without acknowledging the relationship – I appreciate that BlogHer holds contributors to a higher standard. You can read the entire editorial policy here.

Have I sold out? You could say that. Am I OK with it? It took me a while, but yes, I am. Do I expect to make lots of money? Not at first. I see it as the latest step on my journey as an journalist entrepreneur.

Happy Twitter anniversary to me. I joined Twitter exactly one year ago today. It took a little convincing, but once I figured out how to incorporate it into my freelance business I never looked back.

Earlier today, I tweeted the following lessons learned from my first year on the microblogging service, 17 in honor of joining on Dec. 17, 2008. Every one of them is 140 characters or less.

What I’ve learned:

1 – Be real. People can see through a fake, even online. Therefore, don’t use auto–DMs.

2 – One note may work for a samba, but not online. Don’t tweet on same topic 24/7, even if you’re here for work.

3 – Don’t drink and tweet. But if you do, the next day, delete the tweets. (I got that tip from a Twitterati.)

4 – You don’t have to DM every new follower, esp. once you hit 2,000+. But do DM those you want to know better.

5 – Lists are great organizational tools, but if you follow a lot of people, building them’s a bear.

6 – While good in theory, #FF is hard to keep up, especially if like me, all deadlines seem to fall on Fridays.

7 – Twitter is just a tool. It will not find you customers or make you rich. You do that. All it does is help.

8 – As a writer, Twitter forces me to be concise and use colorful words and phrases. It’s my robo-copydesk.

9 – Twitter is not texting. Some people may be OK with abbreviating everything; for me, that’s too hard to read.

10 – Hashtags and conferences go together. There’s no better way to promote one or report from one. However…

11 – …As recent events have shown, Twitter at meetings can lead to mean-spirited back-channel snark.

12 – Saved Search is handy for tracking subjects you’ll be writing about. I use it like Google News alerts.

13 – Trending Topics is worthless, unless you use it as an obituary tracker. Otherwise, it’s too easy to game.

14 – Spam, porn, phishing, malware, scams: as Twitter’s user base has grown, so has its smarmy underbelly.

15 – Twitter is a conversation, which means you can’t do all the talking. Stop, look, listen, and retweet.

16 – Twitter collapses the space between you and that famous publisher or CEO, but you still gotta make your case.

17 – Blogging and Twitter go together like cheese and crackers: you can have one without the other but it’s not as good.

That’s it. If you’ve used Twitter a year or longer, what wisdom can you share?

By the way, I wrote the first draft of this on Twitter in real time. It was easier than I thought.

Don’t let the fact that 50 million people discovered it before you stop you from giving it a whirl. If you have a blog, Twitter is not only a good way to promote your blog, it’s also an idea factory you scan for things to write about, and a virtual hangout you can visit to discuss the latest blogging issues and trends.

Here to make a convincing argument for integrating Twitter into your blogging life is Jane Boursaw, an entertainment industry writer and blogger at TV Squad, Film Gecko and more. If you like what you see, consider taking Jane’s upcoming blogging class, which she mention’s at the end of the post. Hit it Jane:

Blogging and Twitter: The Perfect Match

For better or worse, Twitter seems to be here to stay, and that’s a good thing for bloggers. I manage five Twitter accounts for my various blogs, and get tons of traffic coming from Twitter for each one. Here are five tips and tricks to help you blend Twitter into your blogging life:

1. Feed those blog posts. No, I don’t mean give them grains and veggies. I’m talking about feeding your blog posts automatically into Twitter. There are several programs to do this, including TwitterFeed.com, but my current favorite is RSS2Twitter. The site is clean and simple, it supports multiple Twitter accounts, and once you sign up and set up your Twitter accounts, it starts immediately feeding your posts into Twitter automatically. No muss, no fuss.

2. Access Twitter easily. There are a number of programs to help you keep track of your Twitter followers and traffic, including TweetDeck, TweetGrid, and Tweetie. My favorite is Seesmic.com. Basically, what these do is provide a place to easily update Twitter, manage conversations with @replies and direct messages, stay organized with groups, see what’s trending, and manage multiple Twitter accounts easily.

3. Check out Twitter’s Help section. It’s a little bewildering getting up to speed on all the Twitter-speak like hash-tags, RTs, @names, trending topics, and everything else. Twitter actually has a great Help section that helps to sort it all out. So if you’re ever stumped on anything, that’s a great resource.

4. Build your followers. If your Twitter goal is to help build your brand and niche -– and not just to tell people what you’re having for lunch – the more followers you have, the more you’ll spread the word about your blog. To get followers, follow others, but focus on people and groups within your niche. For example, to build my niche of entertainment and get people clicking through to my blogs, I follow lots of people and groups in the movie, TV and celebrity niche.

5. Include updates that aren’t blog posts. It’s considered bad form (by whomever created the social media rules) to have ONLY blog posts going into your Twitter account. So in addition to your blog posts (which should be automatically feeding into your Twitter account – see Item #1), be sure to include Twitter updates about other fun things in your niche.

For more on Twitter, social media, and all things blogging related, sign up for my online class, Blogging for Passion and Profit. The next six-week session starts Monday, Oct. 26, 2009, but feel free to sign up after Monday, as well, and I’ll get the lessons headed your way. Email me if you have any questions or need more info, jboursaw@charter.net.

Jane Boursaw blogs at TV Squad, Film Gecko, CliqueClack, Ruby Shoes, and ifollo.com. Home base is Reel Life With Jane.

Twitter co-founder Ev Williams said as much when he talked about the new feature – which the company rolled out in wide beta yesterday – at the recent Online News Association conference in San Francisco.

Twitter has been working behind the scenes on a Lists feature for some time, but this is the first glimpse of it most of its millions of users have had.

The Lists feature lets users organize followers into groups that other Twitter users can see and follow. It’s like the TweetDeck groups function  – only better, because it can be shared.

A Lists tab now appears in the right-hand features column on a Twitter user’s profile page, along with Trending Topics, Saved Searches and Followers.

To create a list, click on the New List link and give the new list you’re creating a name. You can then add followers to it by clicking on a person’s Twitter user name and then on the Lists button that appears at the top of their profile page to the left of the tools button. Clicking on the Lists button opens a drop-down menu that displays every list you’ve created, which allows you to add someone to one or more lists. The List feature also lets you create a new list anytime you pull up someone’s profile page.

Another key feature of the List function: you can can keep lists private or make them public, in which case anyone on the network can see what lists you’ve created and who’s on them. People can also sign up to follow your lists – more on how that could be a good thing for journalists and other writers in a minute.

According to Williams, the potential uses for Twitter lists are huge. “We created a list of people who work at Twitter,” he told a SRO crowd at the  October ONA conference in San Francisco. “You could do a list of funny people, favorite journalists, and as a way to crowdsource. You could have a list of everyone at this conference to see what they were saying. It’s about controlling the information flow.”

Not every Twitter user is going to go to the trouble of creating lists – for one thing, if you’re following hundreds or thousands of people on Twitter, creating lists and then categorizing all those people into one or more of them could take hours (unless somebody designs an app for that though I’m not sure how they’d do that).

But Williams expects that journalists will be among the number that do. “Jouranlists will curate these lists. That would be a value add, just like editing is,” he told the convention audience.

Twitter’s List function is the latest evidence that the service is best thought of as a network, not a destination, Williams says. It’s an underlying technology that other companies will use to build stuff on – like many Twitter app builders already do. “The list content will be available through the API and through widgets that journalists or media organizations can take and put on their site and integrate in interesting ways,” he says. ” That will make it much more powerful.”

Two weeks passed between the time I heard Williams talk at ONA and the Lists feature went into wide beta, giving me plenty of time to think about how I’d start using the service when it came out. At least initially, I’m using it to segment the people and organizations I follow on the network into the following categories, which you can see on MichelleRafter’s Lists:

• Subjects I write about on a regular basis, including tech, finance, small business, workplace issues and media
• Fellow freelance writers
• News people and organizations
• Portland people, places and events
• A feed for this blog

Other journalists, writers and bloggers are using it in different ways. Here are a few examples:

Danny Sullivan, editor of SearchEngineLand.com, a blog about search engines, set up lists for each of the major search engine providers he writes about, Google and Microsoft, as well as for other subjects he writes about, such as search marketing and social media. If you clicked on any of those links, you’d have discovered they take you right to that list – which means you can share them on blogs like this one, and on Twitter (as in, ‘Hey, check out this cool list Danny Sullivan published called @DannySullivan/Potpourri‘)

Robert Scoble, aka The Scobelizer, the noted Silicon Valley techie blogger and hard-core Twitter user, has already created 20 lists, which is the maximum number any one person can create right now, including one for People I have met – a substitute for keeping sources’ business cards perhaps? – and another for analysts that track subjects he follows. Scoble also follows 20 lists created by other people, including a couple from Danny Sullivan, but also a list of entrepreneurs created by Twitter product designer Vitor Lourenco.

Josh Weinberger, managing editor of CRM magazine, a computer industry trade publication, created a list for conferences and trade shows he’s attended, going to attend or just curious about; PR people he deals with, and The New Yorker, for when he wants to do a little light reading.

These examples are from hard-core tech geeks. But they’re not the only writer types who could benefit from using Twitter lists.

This morning I read Matea Gold’s Los Angeles Times story, Demi v. Perez? See Twitter, on the celebrity feuds taking place on the microblogging network. Gold, the paper’s TV reporter, could easily set up lists to track broadcast and cable TV networks, TV show fan websites, and in the case of today’s story, actress Demi Moore, blogger Perez Hilton and the other celebs mentioned.

Are you using Twitter Lists? If so, I’d love to hear how you’re using them for research, reporting or other writing-related activities.

It’s got me contemplating my own tribes. There are the obvious ones – my extended family, the parents of children my kids go to school with, friends I went to high school or college with.

Then there are the writing tribes I belong to. When I worked at a daily newspaper, the other reporters were my tribe.

When I went freelance, not only did I lose my full-time paycheck, I lost my tribe. Instead of being part of a pack of 300, suddenly I was on my own – at least that’s what it felt like at the time.

It’s partly the reason journalists – anybody really – feel discombobulated after losing a job. Suddenly the tribe you’ve identified with for as long as you held that job has vanished.

But as Godin points out, the Internet is the perfect tribe-making tool because it makes communicating so easy. First it was through email listservs, then IM and chat rooms on online services like AOL, then the Web, blogs, and now the ultimate tribal circles, social networks like MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, Ning, LinkedIn and so on and so on.

Today, I’m part of several writing tribes. Knit them together and they’re the buddy system I lost when I left the newsroom. They’ve become intrinsic to my professional identity.

My tribes:

Freelance Success – A subscription-based writer’s community with a weekly newsletter and pay-rate database. For me and many of the hundreds of professional writers who pay the site’s $99 annual fee, the best part is the message boards, which are active, civil and cover topics such as magazines, corporate writing, blogs, travel writing and books.

#EditorChat - A weekly online chat on FriendFeed.com hosted by Motley Fool finance writer Tim Beyers and business feature writer Lydia Dishman that takes on all manner of subjects writers and editors care about. #Editorchat happens Wednesday nights at 8:30 p.m. Eastern. The latest discussion covered the types of work or household tasks freelancers outsource to buy themselves more time to work – or would if they could afford it. Earlier discussions have covered the New York Times’ decision to have columnists teach online classes, writing for content aggregators and hyperlocal news.

Twitter – Writers use Twitter many ways – to connect with sources, promote a story, showcase a blog. Another is to synch up with fellow writers. I follow several hundred writers and editors and am followed by a like number. We use it like a mini-message board, to share tips, answer quick questions or exchange atta boys. If you’re a writer, follow me at
@MichelleRafter and I’ll follow you back.

Portland digital media scene – A collection of writers, bloggers, podcasters, software developers and other media types with one thing in common – living and working here in Portland. This is probably the most loosely defined tribe I’m in. Portland’s media tribe hangs out at the Green Dragon on Fridays for Beer and Blog, goes to WordPress user groups meetings and WordCamp Portland (the next one’s Sept. 19-20 at Webtrends), and congregates at Mediabistro.com cocktail parties (which, BTW, somebody needs to resurrect – Mediabistro, if you read this, I’m happy to volunteer). The area’s digerati coalesced in the biggest way ever when more than 150 locals got together at the Digital Journalism Camp in August to listen to panels on hyperlocal news, new revenue models, podcasting and more.

UPOD – A Yahoo group for experienced freelancers led by Los Angeles freelancer David Hochman that I tune into via email.

Online News Association – This trade group for professional journalists who specialize in digital media has benefited from the demise of traditional (print) media in the past year, witnessed by a major uptick in membership. The group holds an annual convention – this year’s is in San Francisco Oct. 2-4 and I’ll be there – regular online and in-person classes, an online journalism awards competition, member discussion forum and offers other benefits and resources.

These tribes have become the places I look for help, bounce ideas off people, blow off steam when I’m frustrated with a story or editor or visit when I just want to talk.

As more people work freelance – not just writers but all kinds of freelancers – expect to see more tribes. That’s what all the fuss is over social networks, which ones are the best tool for creating tribes. It’s why Facebook and Twitter are such big news, why investors still pour money into social network start ups and everyone from job boards to media outlets are tacking on a community component to their websites – think of it as tribal warfare.

Are you in a tribe?

Should you ask before following a reporter on Twitter? Is it OK to respond to a HARO request even though the expert you represent only kinda sorta knows about the issue? Is it ever OK to just pick up the phone and call someone?

No, no and no.

I don’t claim to be the Emily Post of PR-reporter netiquette. But I’ve spent enough time on the news side of that particular fence and been online since the dawn of email to have formed strong opinions as a result, opinions that based on my conversations with other reporters and freelancers, are widely shared.

If you represent a company or organization dealing with news media and wonder how email and social media fit in, here are some pointers:

DO

* Email your press release – But don’t follow up to find out if I got it, read it, like it, want to use it. If I do, I’ll be in touch.

* Follow me on Twitter and LinkedIn – So when I am looking for sources you’ll know right away.

* Respond to my tweet, LinkedIn question or HARO request – If the professor, company, non-profit or other source you represent fits my need as I’ve outlined it.

* Cover yourself – If the organization you represent makes a huge announcement and you’re not going to be around to handle reporters’ calls.

* Promptly follow up interviews – With any additional facts or materials your organization’s source promises to get to me.

* Tweet me to pitch a story idea – Or at least to see if I’m interested. Love the 140-character cut off – it keeps pitches from running on and on. If I like it, I’ll ask for more details in an email.

DON’T

* Call me – That’s why email was invented.

* Futz around making press releases arty or pretty – All I need are facts, contact information and links to pertinent websites.

* Ask what I’m working on – Chances are I can’t or won’t tell you.

* Respond to HARO requests with sources that aren’t related to the topic – FAIL. Don’t expect a quick reply either. A single HARO request can elicit dozens of replies. I try to answer all of them, even if it’s just to say thanks but no thanks. But if I’m on deadline I might not have the time. I will, however, save them for the next time I’m writing on that topic.

* Ask me to sign a non-disclosure agreement – Been there, done that, got burned, won’t get burned again.

* Ask me to send you a link to the story when it comes out – I’ll say yes because I’m polite that way, but by the time it does come out I’ll have forgotten or will be on another deadline.

* Invite me for coffee or lunch to hear about what I do – Unless it’s something I’m actively working on I can’t take that much time out of my day. If I want a F2F interview with your client, I’ll let you know. Or go to national or local meetings for the industries or subjects I write about – I’ll be in networking mode and will be happy to meet you and talk about your client.

* Friend me on Facebook – It’s the one social network I reserve for friends and family.

Then I started using Twitter.

And never stopped. For the last eight months I’ve tweeted every day, with the occasional weekend off. I tweet eight, 10, 12 times a day: when I put up a new blog post, when one of my stories is published, when I need a source, when a random thought simply needs to be shared – though in hindsight some of those would have been better left unsaid.

Until last week.

I took an honest-to-goodness vacation away from email, blogging, Twitter, LinkedIn and everything connected to being connected.

Guess what?

The sky didn’t fall. The earth stayed on its axis. And the bottom didn’t fall out of my business – I even had a few assignments in my inbox when I got back.

It was easier than I thought to unplug. It helped to be stuck with the middle of nowhere, the only available Internet access whatever could be siphoned off a neighbor’s unsecured wireless connection.

Going without was good for the soul and apparently didn’t hurt my standing on Twitter – I returned to a few dozen new followers.

So how to unplug?

Tell people you’re leaving. If you stop tweeting without explanation, followers may think you’ve given up on Twitter. Give them a head’s up. If you don’t want to broadcast the fact that you’re leaving town for safety reasons, be a bit cagey about what you’re doing. “I’ll be taking a break from here for the next few days” works. So does “Busy elsewhere. See everyone in a week.”

Automate. If you can’t bear going a whole week without saying something, use a tool such as TweetLater or TwitResponse to send tweets at predesignated intervals in your absence.

Go mobile. Leave your laptop home and tweet from your iPhone or BlackBerry using an application like Twitterrific, PocketTweets or TwitterBerry. Twitter’s applications list has a lot more.

Tweet from vacation, sparingly. Who wants to spend their precious downtime tethered to a machine, even if it’s only a cell phone? Limit the number of times you log on. Or allow yourself a specific time of day or amount of time to check in, update your status and upload vacation pics.

Then go play.

Got your own story of going off the social media grid? Share!