Reality Checked - Book Review

Reality Checked - Life through Death, is a moving saga about finding meaning in a world of suffering and pointless hate based on the color of skin. Former school teacher and Theologist, Victor Waller has incorporated many of life's issues through the lives of his characters who were forced to make decisions in hopeless situations. Racism, revenge and hate are rampant in this book. Domestic abuse and the dangers hidden within our society's foster care system are also addressed.

There is only one main character - Catherine Brown - along with a host of supporting characters. Catherine grows up under the terrible threat of racism - which many use simply as an excuse to harm another human. In fact, her father and uncle were orphaned at a very young age through a racist attack. The fairy-tale romance of her parents slid away as fears of her father's suspected infidelity enforces her mother's accusations that she is being poisoned. Never really knowing the truth, Catherine stumbles through her youth and into adulthood.

Unfortunately, a disturbed individual brutally murders her family and Catherine is dragged away by the police and incarcerated for many years. She survived the harsh environment through the friendship of her cellmate - and their hunger for revenge.

As an old woman, Catherine is only free from the bars of her prison. Her body is now her jailer - it is discovered that she inherited her mother's mysterious illness. Thinking she had no family remaining alive, Catherine is surprised when she is invited to a family reunion. This reunion proves to be one of Catherine's greatest challenges. As she seeks to repair the family discord, she is contacted by a person from the past and her chance for revenge is handed to her on a silver platter.

Victor Waller has created an important and meaningful story in Reality Checked. In fact, the work is well titled. The novel provokes the reader to question their own choices in life -and possibly, to release some of the pessimistic inner voices which influence their decisions.

I give this 377 page novel the highest of ratings with no hesitation, what-so-ever.

ISBN#: 0976498103 Author: Victor Waller Publisher: Turn Key Press

Reality Checked - Book Review

Reality Checked - Life through Death, is a moving saga about finding meaning in a world of suffering and pointless hate based on the color of skin. Former school teacher and Theologist, Victor Waller has incorporated many of life's issues through the lives of his characters who were forced to make decisions in hopeless situations. Racism, revenge and hate are rampant in this book. Domestic abuse and the dangers hidden within our society's foster care system are also addressed.

There is only one main character - Catherine Brown - along with a host of supporting characters. Catherine grows up under the terrible threat of racism - which many use simply as an excuse to harm another human. In fact, her father and uncle were orphaned at a very young age through a racist attack. The fairy-tale romance of her parents slid away as fears of her father's suspected infidelity enforces her mother's accusations that she is being poisoned. Never really knowing the truth, Catherine stumbles through her youth and into adulthood.

Unfortunately, a disturbed individual brutally murders her family and Catherine is dragged away by the police and incarcerated for many years. She survived the harsh environment through the friendship of her cellmate - and their hunger for revenge.

As an old woman, Catherine is only free from the bars of her prison. Her body is now her jailer - it is discovered that she inherited her mother's mysterious illness. Thinking she had no family remaining alive, Catherine is surprised when she is invited to a family reunion. This reunion proves to be one of Catherine's greatest challenges. As she seeks to repair the family discord, she is contacted by a person from the past and her chance for revenge is handed to her on a silver platter.

Victor Waller has created an important and meaningful story in Reality Checked. In fact, the work is well titled. The novel provokes the reader to question their own choices in life -and possibly, to release some of the pessimistic inner voices which influence their decisions.

I give this 377 page novel the highest of ratings with no hesitation, what-so-ever.

ISBN#: 0976498103 Author: Victor Waller Publisher: Turn Key Press

Why You Should Not Connect Your Twitter Account to Your Facebook Account

Twitter has made it very easy to connect Twitter to your Facebook profile or fan page. This allows you to make a post on Twitter and then have it automatically come up on your Facebook page. While this seems ideal, this is not a very good idea for many people.

Twitter and Facebook, while overall do the same thing, have very unique etiquette and rules. It's not very hard in Twitter to get up to 1000 followers. When you have that many followers, you won't see many of their tweets. If you tweet 10 times in a day, odds are many of them won't be seen and will get drowned out by the other ones. However Facebook is more personal. It's harder to get 1000 friends because you have to accept them as friends. So when people go onto Facebook, they will see most of the messages that people post. Users usually will only make a few posts a week, so those will be easily seen. If you make a lot of posts on Twitter and connect these accounts, then all these posts will show up on Facebook. That could make your Facebook friends very mad.

Secondly, the format of writing is different. Twitter allows only 140 characters per tweet, so people abbreviate a lot and skip words to get their point across in that short frame. Facebook doesn't restrict you at 140 characters, so Facebook users expect full sentences. Pulling over your short tweets won't translate well to Facebook.

Also, many items are used in Twitter that aren't in Facebook. Hashtags are used frequently in Twitter and people search for them constantly, however those aren't really used in Facebook. The same goes for mention (@), when you are directing a tweet towards someone. Also, RT (Retweet) is commonly used in Twitter, but not at all in Facebook. You might see a tweet like this in Twitter: "Hey #ClevelandFolks, I'm all set to see @LadyGaga tonite! RT if u r going too" Now this gets your point across in Twitter, but your Facebook friends might appreciate a full sentence or two on it.

One final thing I like to do in my Twitter account is promote my Facebook page. It's a great way to get fans to your Fanpage if you own a business or blog. However, making a tweet like "Check out my Facebook fanpage at.... And let's be friends there too" will not come off well if that gets automatically transferred to Facebook!

The only people that I see connecting accounts good for, are those people who only make 1 tweet a day at most and don't employ all the hashtags and mentions. If you simply use Twitter to make a tweet or two about your day that could fit into Facebook, then this would be the only reason to connect accounts. Otherwise, it's best to leave them separate.

Does It Pay to Be LinkedIn?   How Social Networking For Business Came to Be   Making Social and E-Mail Calls to Action More Effective   Making Efficient Use of Your Social Media Campaign - A Debut Into Social Media Marketing   

Engage in Social Networking the Twitter Way

To be an effective social networker/marketer setting up your profile is the first step, but it goes far beyond the setup. The saying from the Field of Dreams movie... "Build it and they will come" will not work in this instance. You must continually develop online relationships and share relevant information from your expertise. Like your website and blog, social networking is a constant work-in-progress. Don't let your shoulders sag, engagement does not need to take you endless hours every day.

Today I will focus on... How to strengthen your Twitter participation:

To be an effective member of the Twitter community you need to tweet on a consistent basis. Note tweets are limited to 140 characters including spaces and the URL you are directing the reader to. Your tweets can be just about anything. Such as, your latest book, your newsletter, book reviews, author interviews, and information you find interesting to the freelance writing career, etc. My rule of thumb is to tweet at least 4-5 times per day, Monday through Friday. I give myself off the weekends for good behavior.

Use Tinyurl dot com to shorten the length of the URL you are providing in your tweet, so you save valuable characters for your message.

Don't just tweet about yourself. Avoid the "it's all about me attitude", become a master communicator with tweeting a combination of your own tweets with those of colleagues.

Take out ten to fifteen minutes per day and visit Twitter and retweet (RT) posts of interest for those you are following. You'll be amazed how appreciative tweeters are for RT. It is a terrific way to broaden the contact base for all those participating.

Scheduling Your Tweets Ahead of Time: Save valuable time and plan your tweets ahead of time (at least weekly). Create your tweets in Word and double check the character length by highlighting your tweet, clicking Review in the toolbar and to the right of Translate on the far left click the ABC/123 symbol. A pop-up screen will appear providing full statistics and make note of the Characters (with spaces) number. To set-up and schedule your tweets, I recommend Dynamic Tweets. Once you register an account you will be able to schedule a one-time tweet or tweets you'd like to repeat throughout a specific timeframe. The template/site is simple to use.

Tweeting Lingo and What It Means for Your Tweeting Experience:

# - hashtag - by searching for a keyword with the # (hashtag) before it will pull you up a list of the latest tweets regarding the topic. This is a great way to get in specific conversations and tweeter parties.

@ - symbol before username - by searching for a particular username the results provides their tweets and mentions by fellow tweeters.

Direct Messages - by clicking on the "head" image the pull down menu will appear. Click on direct messages, here you will find a listing of all messages sent to you by fellow tweeters.

For more lingo details visit: https://support.twitter.com/articles/166337-the-twitter-glossary

Remember, tackle your social networking campaign with baby steps every day for each step will develop into a quantum leap.

Next month I will discuss the social networking platform LinkedIn.

As a PR Publicist I offer an array of services to help you free up your valuable writing time, visit Author PR Services for details.

Thank you for joining me today, it's been a pleasure.

Does It Pay to Be LinkedIn?   How Social Networking For Business Came to Be   Making Social and E-Mail Calls to Action More Effective   Social Networking - A Beginners Guide to LinkedIn   Making Efficient Use of Your Social Media Campaign - A Debut Into Social Media Marketing   

Making the Most of Marketing Via Twitter

How do the best Twitter Marketing Greats get the top results that we see them getting from their tweets? What are the tricks of the Twitter Marketing Trade that help businesses get their products and services into the hands of the right people?

One important note to make before beginning is that marketing via Twitter, even B2B Marketing, is not necessarily the most effective form of online marketing for all businesses. Like any kind of advertising, whether it be online or offline, it is important for the businessman or woman to continue to optimize, experiment and develop their marketing approaches as time goes on.

With time, it might become clear that Twitter is not the forum for you and your business, or you might find a sudden wave of successful leads coming in to your site as a result of your marketing efforts in the "tweeting" department.

Finding out whether Twitter is the forum for you and your business is something that you need to follow up on. However, we can give a few helpful hints to begin with and a few Twitter Marketing Tips to put into practice via the post.

After taking a look at these tips, you might find that you have been approaching Twitter Marketing all wrong and you might find that our ideas lead you to lead-generation success. You might also find that these tips help to reiterate the fact that Twitter is not for you and help you make the decision to concentrate your online marketing efforts in other spheres.

Either way, the reading of this post is going to be helpful, so let's get cracking...

1. Use Industry Keywords Not only should you be using the # key in your tweets to identify industry keywords that will help people who are searching via Twitter to find you, but you should also use the # key to then highlight industry keywords in your Twitter Biography.

When you land on the Facebook Page of any Tom, Dick or Harry, you can instantly find out lots about them. We jam our blog bios full of information and it is probably safe to say that nearly all websites have an "about" page.

Therefore, why not share your industry information via Twitter using the # key to ensure that the people who need to know about this vital information get to know about it without difficulty?

2. Share Third-Party Content As with any other form of online content, what you share, what you highlight and what you offer your followers, must be of great value to them. If you don't offer this, there is no reason for them to follow you.

Therefore, search well and find people in your industry who are doing great things worth sharing. Tweet the content of others from their Twitter profiles, their blogs and from industry news sources too. Value is the key.

If you can become a valuable Twitter source, the results you get from your online marketing via Twitter will make you smile.

3. Find and Follow Don't be passive with your Twitter Marketing. Instead of waiting for someone to tweet you, why not tweet them and introduce yourself?

Industry leaders, who can be found throughout the various Twitter directories and lists, will respond to your tweets if it is clear that you are offering something of use to the industry as a whole and something that they too can use as a way of publicizing their Twitter profiles as effective sources of up-to-date industry information.

4. Tweet links from your company Don't forget about all the wonderful things that your company is doing when you are Tweeting. It is OK to link to your special offers and link to a page about the services that your provide because you are using Twitter as a marketing forum and everybody knows that.

Try different kinds of links. Try blog posts, try landing pages, try your events agenda (if you have one), etc. and see which form of Tweeting to your particular website seems to generate the most amount of Twitter activity. When you find the kind that works the best, stick with it for a while and remember to keep reviewing, as with any kind of online marketing, after a few months.

5. Follow general news sources and trade publications If you want to remain an authority in your industry, then you must keep up-to-date with your industry news. In order to stay up-to-date, take the time to read the Tweets of important news sources and publications associated with your business, twice daily if possible.

Don't use this time to re-tweet necessarily, unless you find something that really MUST be shared, but instead treat this time as research time and simply read the information that you are given and digest it as much as possible.

Swallow the facts and make sure that they have sunk in sufficiently to be of use to you whenever the time presents itself.

Does It Pay to Be LinkedIn?   How Social Networking For Business Came to Be   Making Social and E-Mail Calls to Action More Effective   Social Networking - A Beginners Guide to LinkedIn