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How to make your advocacies rock, on social media

Years ago, I started writing online just for the love of writing.  There’s no definable goal, no strategy, nor any specifics to it. I just love to write. I was a kid who found one trendy eye candy thing to do. It’s called blogging and I was a blogger without a cause. My blogging mantra then was:

….

That’s right. I have no blogging mantra before. If you take a look at my social media profile today, this is my mantra:

I empower people.

So how did my wanderlust blogging evolved into this social media mantra of today? I’m not so sure but there’s two things on my side that made room for “experimentation”.

One is time, the other, I suck at writing. 

I was one of the few who started blogging when it wasn’t popular then. Ergo I had the luxury of squandering time just to write rhetorics and metaphors.  I had little regard for grammatical correctness so long that I could blog. Mind you, the whole content police is at your ass every time waiting to bust your ill constructed content. But, I didn’t care.

When facebook and twitter became king and queen online platforms, I still suck at writing. The thing though, king Facebook doesn’t really care how grammatically correct your status updates are.  Or, how sane your content is. It has its own algorithm, and facebook-ers really hate long posts like this.

Well, queen twitter even pushed further and set the character limit (of thoughts) to 140. That’s how many characters twitter thinks relevant content amount to. Insane? Yes, but it squeezes the freaking juices out of your creative mind. Grammars, notwithstanding .

When Google+ came in late and transformed itself into a rock solid social app to mean business, I began re examining finite resources and strategised my social media involvement. No one knows how or when will Google settle revamping its app, but I seriously thought about playing my cards right when it still owns the search engine mega empire to back its social media platform.

So again, how is mantra, writing, social media fell into place to supercharge your advocacy on social media?

I gave the following tips on #ChangePh social media day:

SOCIALMEDIADAY

No content marketing? No writing or grammar polishing? No SEOs? Surprised?! Cliche?

The most important thing I’ve learned over the years of gallivanting on social media is the underpinning of most technical tips and advices experts would tell me. Humans are innately social. Those who are rockstars on social media, tend to have superb human  rather than technical”skills”. So now you can see, the tips I gave above are really positive human traits and are easily likeable on social media.

If there’s one sentence I’d like my audience to remember, it should be this :

Be authentically, human on social media.

Heck, I still suck at writing. But I have an advocacy to empower people and that compulsion to never stop at being “okay” . I try to be authentic, with helpfulness as a fuel to this passion. Lastly, the social media animal should never be just online. In fact, the social media rockstars are those who bring humans into a “gathering” offline. And that’s  what social media is all about.

Being human, being social.

The author talking about social media on social media day #ChangePh #SMDayGensan #HEalthXPh #smartlife

The author talking about social media on social media day #ChangePh #SMDayGensan #HEalthXPh #smartlife

(This post is related to my talk on “how to make your advocacy rock on social media” during #ChangePh social media day in Gensan (#SMdayGensan) and is my contribution to #smartlife social media tips)

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Don’t you just love the tech start up scene?

What’s an orthopedic surgeon doing in a tech startup camp? Ask me.

I don’t know.

In fact, I found myself the odd man out in the hordes of hopeful youngster ready to change the world for the better. Anyhow, there are things I liked about tech community that draws me into a startup scene.  The craziest bunch of tech people have the fresh-iest ideas in my opinion.  The startup tech community is exactly made of such crazy people:

Open-ness

No matter how naive and crazy their ideas may sound, it is shared. Every person inside this room is crazy enough, bold enough to think they will change how we live our lives. In fact the craziest ideas are usually the one that flourishes under the hood. This environment of open-ness emboldens innovators to go beyond boring repetitions and hack useful ideas. Each seem to be excited to share and listen what others have in mind. Here, openness and sharing leapfrogs an idea from the incubators to the field.

Techies doing all the discussion under the watchful Steve Jobs...

Techies doing all the discussion under the watchful Steve Jobs…

Collaboration

If there’s a word to describe a tech startup community, it is collaboration. This is how brilliant ideas become useful tech. Of how a simple hack makes our boring lives exciting. One guy posted a problem, another piecemeal-ed it into workable algorithm, and another totally tosses an idea out into the open.

Craziness

If theres one way to measure how an idea could change our world, it is the degree of craziness that idea may sound. Tell a tech guy how crazy he is and he will get back to you with a crazy idea that works. Most of the guys here would love to tell mainstream guys (yup, that’s me), “You are crazy. How were you able to survive your life when you can simplify it with this, hack?” . Note the reversal of perspectives?

Amazement

Everyone hoots and wow with every idea presented. A candy bar moment every time. The sense of wonder and thirst for knowing is unlimited. “How’d you do that?” or “Let’s do something like..” is such a norm, I ran out of brain cells to store ideas.

Serendipity/Connectedness

“Oh you are working with this idea? I was kind of working too with part of the same idea!” Every person in the room is working with something that touches, connects or ends with an idea that someone else is working. The connectedness is infinite, and serendipity is just a natural consequence.

 

My last tech moment of ideas was a gazillion years ago when the norm was still tin can radios. Just joking. But I love this tech community. It’s out to change the world. Like or not or call me crazy. 🙂

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Why I prefer Twitter as a personal learning network

I have an account in every available social media platform today. Even Meerkat and Periscope, which I haven’t had any idea what to do in it.   I’ve been blogging for almost 8 years already. I enjoy posting a lot of stuff on Facebook and Google +, sometimes on Pinterest too. None exceeded my amazement with twitter. Why?

Platform for a new enterprise

We hacked #HealthXPh on Facebook and Google + (Hangout), but we formalized our new enterprise with twitter. To think, the series of “fortunate events” started with a reply to a tweet by @endocrine_witch.  #HealthXPh’s main platform today is still twitter.

Troubleshoot your way to everything with a tweet!

One of twitter’s strength is that you can find people easily who can solve (your) problems quickly.  I once tweeted about my telco’s lack of response to my complaints. Within minutes, a technical support person DM’ed me. Problem solved. I also tweeted a unfamiliar technical glitz while troubleshooting my old macpro.  A Mac guru tweeted a link to the solution to me!

Amazing industry news feed you can tailor easily.

As my personal learning network, I get newsfeeds about my industry from twitter. Even those from role models that are impossible to follow in other social media platforms,  I can freely follow on Twitter. In most cases, scientific articles that I missed (reading journals really take much time nowadays) but are relevant to my industry found its way on twitter!

Tremendous connection growth!

The growth of my industry connections grew tremendously with twitter. In fact I have more industry colleagues abroad than locally on twitter! And if you want to grow your network on one specific area, twitter is your social network.

Learning new skills is a tweet away.

Did I mention I learn new skills from twitter? How? Well, most links to skills or DIY sites are shared on twitter. Even the link  that landed me on the awesome graphic social media platforms like Pinterest or instructables came from my twitter feed!

New opportunities?

Of course there are things that I wish twitter would lead me to, like new clients and business opportunities. That will come sooner than later I guess. Look, in one year I have opportunities opening up via twitter more than I can handle. What’s more to ask?

Oh, just a bonus. I find people on twitter more open, more helpful and more intellectual. Yup, but that’s just me.

Have you tried twitter? Who knows?! 🙂

I’m @remoaguilar on twitter. Follow me there too!

(H/T to Mark Schaefer’s The Tao of Twitter” and Guy Kawasaki’s “Art of Social Media”  for the amazing ideas and tips!)

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Solid state drive (SSD) upgrade for your unibody Macbook Pro

Next to a memory upgrade, an SSD drive is probably the next bang-for-the-buck upgrade you have to make on your hackintosh. I’ve upgraded my hackintoshes recently and frankly, I’ve never been as happy.

The 50% less boot up time and loading of apps is remarkable. I encountered a few hiccups during the upgrade but I manage to run the hackintosh after a few trials. Occasionally I get freeze ups and sudden reboots, but I pretty damn understand my hardware isn’t the best there is for a mac.  Still, the markedly reduced boot up time and noticeably faster loading of apps is fantastic.

A do it yourself  SSD upgrade for Macbooks, especially the retina ready later models, is not for the faint hearted. Generally, If you’re not ready to waste your Macbook, don’t do it. Have the professionals do it for you. Repairing Macbooks are a tad difficult, not to mention expensive. It does require some technical skills mind you.

It can be done though. It will present some unique challenges and it will require a ton of patience, luck and willingness to learn! I will share how I did my upgrades in my future posts!

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