It's All About Who Knows You

Dear B-Reader,

With any marketing that you do in business, you want to address your message to the audience you are trying to reach. Try telling kindergartners your last business presentation and see how long they stay interested...tweak your message and bring it down to their level using Elmo or Dora as a mouthpiece, and bada-bing, you have captivated their attention. Same holds true online in social networking outlets. You must format your social networking messages to the audience who will be reading your postings.

Take Twitter. Twitter is intended to be short tweets (messages) of no more than 140 characters in length. These are similar to texts. Who is totally into texting these days? You bet, B-Reader, it's the teenager next door (or maybe the one living under your roof and monopolizing your cell phone plan). The audience for Twitter is the college student age and under. Make your tweets speak to this group...keep them interesting and less adult-ish in content.

Want to reach a slightly more educated audience? Try LinkedIn. LinkedIn is a professional networking website where users post their resumes online and link (network) with other professionals. As you connect (befriend) with more and more users, you increase your professional network exponentially through indirect connections. One great feature of LinkedIn is the referral capability. I can refer you to a great veterinarian through the click of a button (and of course, I'd refer you to Jeff Chalkley, DVM). So, who uses LinkedIn? Professionals, which would be anyone employed or self-employed who is over college age and below retiree age. Want to send messages to this group? Fine, but keep it professional and very business-related.

How about Facebook? These days, it appears everyone and their mama has a Facebook page. This is the most popular social networking site for women in the baby boomer generation. Take my mother for example, she is on Facebook daily, and she has reconnected with many old friends, made new friends, and keep tabs on her kids and...bonus...see photos of their latest activities. Many new grandmothers simply love the photo feature, and this is exactly what draws them into using this particular form of social networking. Want to reach this wise and nurturing group? You can if you write your posts using smart, cultured language and include pretty pictures. Seriously, a picture speaks a thousand words.

Most important to all of these social networking avenues is their original intent: to network. Don't forget that you are a part of a community. The people who follow, connect to, or fan/like you on Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook (respectively) want to interact with you. Nobody enjoys a one-sided conversation. Dive in, join the chatter, and have fun with it.

ET! ET! ET! Be Good!

Dear B-Reader,

True love comes around rarely in one's life. Go ahead and prepare yourself to be jealous. True love has has happened to me twice.

"What?!" is probably what you're screaming at the computer screen right now, if you are related to or know my husband, Jeff. Of course, Jeff is my original true love, my perfect match, my childhood sweetheart, my Paco. Puccini, my eight-year-old companion of the feline persuasion, is my OKB (Original Kitty Baby), my second true love, my ET.

Let's focus on the ET concept for a moment, shall we? You remember Spielberg's '80's classic film featuring the extra-terrestrial, ET, and Elliot (played by Henry Thomas)? They were connected. When ET became drunk on beer, Elliot became inebriated; when ET watched a dramatic love scene in a classic movie, Elliot acted out that scene in biology class with his elementary school crush; when ET was presumed dead, recall Elliot's heartbreaking line, "You must be dead, because I don't know how to feel. I can't feel anything anymore."

Puccini is my ET. We feel what each other feels.

* ET (1982).

Last night, Puccini showed me the most affection he has ever shown a living creature. He has been recovering from a permanent manicure (declaw), and I have been feeling under the weather and seriously stressed ever since his surgery last week. Yesterday evening, Puccini crawled up onto my lap, nestled into the blanket, and slept on me for an entire two-and-a-half hours. It was so comfortable that the two of us fell into a deep sleep. He needed this one-one relaxation and recharge time just as desperately as I. He knows me, and I know him. My true love. My ET. My Puccini.

* Chalkaholic and Puccini (2010).

Oh, and just because he's my ET does not mean that Puccini and I make any promises to "Be good." You know, ET said that line to Gertie, not Elliot, so the expectation is not that I, Kathy, be good, but rather, that someone else, perhaps you, B-Reader, be good.

H-town to G-town, Baby

Dear B-Reader,

Last week, my parents, siblings and their spouses, and Jeff and I vacationed in Houston's southern version of The Hamptons, Galveston Island. OK, OK, it is a stretch to liken Galveston to the posh east coast getaway destination, but isn't what you love about me my ability to embellish?

One of the things I love about Jeff is his ability to sit back and relax in high-style. Nothing too stuffy, just good, clean, simple luxury. A step above the ordinary. And Galveston is the perfect locale for such a good ol' boy meets Renaissance man.

Jeff and I pulled on our polos and starched shorts, sported sunglasses and sun-kissed/aloe slathered faces, and hopped into my VW Beetle Convertible. Top down. Wind blowing. Vampire Weekend blasting through the speakers. Cruising down the Seawall. Parking on the Strand. Looking for the "little seafood-Mexican food place" that L.D.E. recommended.

This place was little. It had seafood. It had Mexican food. But it was so much more than a little seafood-Mexican food place.

Rudy and Paco's. Fifteen tables covered with white linen table cloths, black cloth napkins (my favorite because unlike their white alternative, the black napkins do not leave lint on dark clothing), personal wine lockers lining the walls, art deco vibe. Patrons decked out in the latest casual sports clothing -- the style that says I have taste and class, but I value comfort. Superb waitstaff who each carry one dish, prepare to serve one guest, wait for the other staff to bring the individual meals, then serve all guests at the same table in unison. What a gorgeous culinary production. And the food is to die for delicious. Do yourself a favor and order the daily special tostada.

Oh, and there really is a Paco. He is there, seated at the bar, positioned so that he is able to greet every person patronizing his fine establishment. Paco oozes old school charm, referring to new customers, cute young women, and old friends as "Baby."

Ever since college, for a reason I can't recall, I have called Jeff "Paco" as a pet name. I think now that he has met the real Paco, live and in concert, he has upped his game a bit. Bring it. I just adore a man with that extra something special.

* Yours truly and her Paco in Galveston.