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I could have used “How to get people to stop following you on Twitter” as the title of this blog post.
Yesterday I got eight email messages from UseQwitter.com that various followers of me on Twitter had quit following me.
And get this: All eight quit for the same reason!
“What was the reason?,” you might ask.
I wrote four days ago my first only-personal tweet on Twitter.
All that I wrote was something to the effect of: “Go figure. Weather in Houston is spectacular, but I am sick.”
By the way: Do not look for this tweet now; I deleted it after realizing the error of my ways!
I was imitating someone whom I follow in Austin, who had tweeted something about Austin weather that same day.
But his tweet was not as personal as mine; he simply celebrated the beautiful weather that day.
What those eight Twitter followers of me did — that is, quit following me — actually matches my own behavior about a month ago, when I stopped following a woman who was tweeting like crazy and mostly about personal stuff such as boarding an airplane, going to dinner with someone, and looking for a nightclub to go dancing.
After she started to follow me, I started to follow her because she seemed to have some interesting ideas related to Internet marketing.
But the dominance of her personal tweets over her business tweets made me stop following her.
This is my personal proof that Twitter has become more commercial than personal: I will stop following others when they tweet too much about personal matters, and others stopped following me when I tweeted about one personal matter after my seventy tweets about various business matters.
So my advice to anyone is to take care with the subject matter of one’s tweets.
I noticed this a few weeks ago.
I have eliminated the first name to protect the privacy of the woman to whom this name belongs.
I saw this name at a medical clinic — for a woman who schedules colonoscopies, which made me think of colonics.
And the secretary’s surname is Wash.
I do not believe that it is a coincidence that Ms. Wash has been involved with colonoscopies.
Names mean things.
My wife noticed this one.
U.S. President Obama nominated a woman by the name of Margaret A. Hamburg to be Administrator of the FDA.
That is the Food and Drug Administration.
And the nominee’s surname is almost Hamburger.
I do not believe that it is a coincidence that Dr. Hamburg has been involved with food issues.
Names mean things.
As I wrote a few weeks ago, Valentine’s Day can be painful when you are missing your ex.
And I told you about a system that intelligently, honestly, and kindly teaches you how to get back together with your ex.
You can have better communication with your ex, possibly enough to get him or her back.
But think about this: Is there something you can learn from being robbed at gunpoint?
As the creator of the get-your-ex-back system explains, you should set up your “first date” again after your initial contact with your ex.
And the most important part — the secret and the part that nobody else will tell you — is that the date has to be emotionally charged.
Okay?
That does not mean ‘dinner and a movie’.
… because, well, it’s boring and does not create a bonding — or, in our case, a re-bonding — experience.
In fact, you want to pack in several emotionally charged mini-dates in a span of a couple hours.
Why?
If you just do ‘dinner and a movie’, you lose out on a sociologically proven principle:
Emotionally charged experiences = bonds.
Look at it in another way.
Last time you went to the bank, do you remember the person in line in front of you?
Behind you?
Probably not. I neither.
But …
What if if the bank were robbed at gunpoint while you were in it?
Imagine that the robbers can not get the safe open.
The robbers are livid, screaming and waving huge guns around. The tension is so thick that you can cut through it with a knife.
You are lying face down on the bank’s cold floor and seeing your breath fogging up the tile below.
You are trembling because it is eerily silent for a moment.
“Oh my god!”
“Where are the robbers?”
“Are they behind me?”
“Are they watching me?”
So you slowly move your eyes around and see a sweet older lady lying right next to you.
She looks a little like Grandma, and you come out of your own haze enough to realize that she is even more terrified than you. She is softly sobbing.
You slowly reach out and take her hand in yours and give her a little squeeze that says, “It’s gonna be all right.”
NOW!
Let me ask you: Are you going to ever forget that older lady?
And …
Do you think she will ever forget you?
Not in a million Sundays!
Now I’m not saying to go rob a bank on your first date!
But you want to go on an emotionally charged and exciting date — and preferably several mini-dates — in a span of a couple hours.
A short roller coaster ride is one great example.
The get-your-ex-back system teaches you more about things like emotionally charged dates.
You will also discover psychological tactics and techniques that you can use to get back together with your ex on that (new) first date.
I have collaborated with the creator of the get-your-ex-back system to send tips to you as fast as we can assemble them, but no more often than daily.
Each tip in this newsletter will focus in one way or another on better communication between you and your ex.
If this newsletter would be helpful to you, then simply tell me where to send it:
Once you click the button, please look for a confirmation email message and click the link inside to start getting the newsletter.
I will then start your newsletter subscription for the tips.
And of course I will tell you more about that wonderful get-your-ex-back system that handles the subject in an intelligent, honest, and kind manner.
I look forward to sending this information to you.
Just send me your name — a first name will do — and email address to get started.
I heard this two nights ago during an episode of “My First Place” on the HGTV channel.
The real-estate agent in the episode was showing a house to a husband and wife who were about to buy their first house together.
The agent was promoting the house’s features. When she walked into the kitchen with the couple, she said, “It has the granite countertops.”
The definite article “the” caught my ear because I would have omitted it and said, “It has granite countertops.”
Pondering the agent’s use of “the” in front of “granite countertops”, I realized that “the granite countertops” sounded more expensive than would the phrase “granite countertops” without the definite article “the” in front of it.
But why?
I believe that adding “the” gives a feeling of “one and only”, which gives a feeling of exclusivity, which gives a feeling of higher value.
So try starting a phrase with “the” when you want to increase perceived value.
If you split-test this in your own marketing and see a statistically significant difference, then please let me know what happened — even if I am full of bunk!
Nineteen Common Mistakes that People Make with Hyphens, my new book about hyphenation, launched this morning.
And you can now get this $19.97 book at absolutely no charge!
I highly recommend that you read all about Nineteen Common Mistakes that People Make with Hyphens as soon as possible and make a quick decision about whether it is right for you.
Go here to read all about Nineteen Common Mistakes that People Make with Hyphens.
UPDATE: My How to Use Hyphens book is now available in softcover and several eBook editions and has replaced the Nineteen Common Mistakes that People Make with Hyphens PDF. Learn more here!
Do you need a laugh today? Go to Engrish.com.
My wife’s cousin’s husband (almost sounds like we are hillbillies, eh?) retired at an early age and now seems to spend all of his free time on the Internet.
This means that my wife gets tons of email from him — covering everything from conspiracy theories (No, I do not believe that the World Trade Center was bombed by the U.S. government.) to humorous videos (including my favorite: Evil Baby Eye).
Yesterday he sent to her several photos from the website Engrish.com, and every photo made us laugh!
The site accepts photos taken by readers who have spotted bad English on signs, labels, T-shirts, and other products from non-native-English-speaking countries.
Besides the humor — and there is a LOT of humor at Engrish.com — what I enjoy about the website is trying to understand how the translations into English became so mangled and twisted.
Some bad-but-humorous translations seem to be based on a non-native-English speaker hearing an English word enunciated poorly and converting it into writing such that the written form is an English word but not the same one.
For example, the photographed sign shown here refers to “groups” as “grubs”. If you squint your eyes and muffle your ears while reading and saying it aloud, you can see and hear how “groups” became “grubs”.
Other mangled translations seem to fall into categories such as these:
Beyond the photos, what makes Engrish.com especially funny is the comments from the site’s readers.
Many people say that dissection of a joke takes all the fun out of the joke, but those who become good at dissecting jokes become good at creating new ones.
I believe that this principle applies to mistranslations, too, and I could imagine that someone could write a master’s thesis or doctoral dissertation on how translations go askew from one language to another.
Anyway, even if you are not interested in the mechanics of how words get mistranslated but you enjoy mistranslations for their humor alone, then you will enjoy Engrish.com.
You may have noticed the recent news that Amazon is launching the Kindle 2 — the second version of its wireless reading device — on February 24, 2009.
I am super-excited about the Kindle 2, especially for people like you and me who care about better communication.
You probably read as much as I do.
And the Amazon Kindle is a revolution, in my opinion, in how you can get and read books.
The Amazon Kindle 2 takes this revolution to the next level.
Sure, there are critics who complain about such things as the Kindle 2 using a sixteen-gray-levels screen instead of a color screen, but many of these criticisms relate to cost-versus-benefit decisions that Amazon had to make.
For example, what manufacturer has created an affordable book reader with a color screen that is readable in bright sunlight? I dare say, “None.”
The day that I heard about the launch of the Kindle 2, I made two decisions:
Do you want to know something funny?
I was just about to click the submit-order button at Amazon to get my Kindle 2, when I decided to step away from my computer and tell my wife about it and how excited I was about the Kindle 2.
And guess what my wife said? She said that earlier that day she had ordered one for me for Valentine’s Day.
What a sweetheart, and what a coincidence! And my first goal became moot.
As I write this, another week must pass before Amazon starts shipping the Kindle 2. (I can hardly stand it.)
So I do not have one now, but this has not stopped me from pursuing goal #2.
I set up Kindle2Tricks.com as a resource for anyone who wants to know how to get the most out of the Amazon Kindle 2.
What do you want to know about the Kindle 2?
Go to Kindle2Tricks.com, and tell me!
Valentine’s Day can be painful when you are missing your ex — your ex-boyfriend, your ex-girlfriend, your ex-husband, or your ex-wife.
I know how it feels to be in this state. It is no fun.
Sure, it can be different if you were in a relationship, broke up, and discovered afterward that the break-up was for the best.
But what if you have done the post-break-up soul-searching, still miss your ex, and want to get back together with him or her?
Until just a few weeks ago, I had never seen a system that intelligently, honestly, and kindly teaches you how to get back together with your ex.
I now know about such a get-your-ex-back system, and I want to share it with anyone who wants to make up with his or her ex.
As a reader of my blog, you know that my site’s focus is on “Better Communication for Smart People”, and you can have better communication with your ex!
I know where you have been, and I believe so strongly that you can communicate better with your ex — and very possibly get him or her back — that I have collaborated with the creator of the get-your-ex-back system to send tips to you as fast as we can assemble them, but no more often than daily.
Each tip in this newsletter will focus in one way or another on better communication between you and your ex.
If this newsletter would be helpful to you, then simply tell me where to send it:
Once you click the button, please look for a confirmation email message and click the link inside to start getting the newsletter.
I will then start your newsletter subscription for the tips.
And of course I will tell you more about that wonderful get-your-ex-back system that handles the subject in an intelligent, honest, and kind manner.
I look forward to sending this information to you.
Just send me your name — a first name will do — and email address to get started.
