It was just over three months ago that this site was set up. Our overall business plan was to

1. Be a local lifestyle website which Fort Worthians could refer to on matters arts and culture;

2. To cover the local education scene in such a way as to serve parents and kids;

3. To look a little bit at real estate, both for those who live her and who are thinking about it;

4. And … this was a big commitment … update every day.

During that time, I’ve become more than a little bit involved in what’s called “Social Media.” Social media involves going on the computer and communicating with others, in your area and around the world, who share various interests.

My social media involvment has driven traffic to the site, mostly through a networking webpage called Twitter. If you’ve been reading this site, you’ve seen the profiles here of some of my Twitter friends over the last couple of months. These have been some of our most popular stories.

The “twitterverse” is full of new ideas. And some of those ideas I have eaten up, like how to modify your WordPress blog theme and how to make blog posts more attractive to readers. Best practices for blogging I tend to pay attention to, though sometimes I can only go so far with that, as recently when I read in a post by @ccseed that we should consider trying to post three times a day.

“Enough is enough!” I exclaimed. Fort Worth Renaissance cannot possibly be updated any more often unless I have some more writers, or the two very part timers I have get seriously serious.  But to each his own, I suppose. I acknolwedge, of course, that more posts per day would objectively be better if possible.

Websites have also  sprung up about how to use Twitter better. One I’ve enjoyed is Zen Habits written by Twitter sweatheart @DaivRawks. Another is Twitter Truth on which you can learn about rules of retweeting, which I have to admit is a good post)

The idea of rules, however, has always made me uncomfortable. And I’ve started hearing from certain sources,  such as Twitter Influence Calculator, that talking about what I’m doing  (I’m writing a blog post ranting about twitter) is some kind of “weak social media networking” and is considered “noise.” There’s an idea that everything we tweet should have a link or a reference of some type. And  one thing I do on twitter is talk a bit about  the weather, dog walking, and fighting children.

Am I strange because yes, I actually want social media to be about meeting people and learning what they’re like, and I assume others are interested in what I’m doing?

There is a time when talk about “best social media practices” gets the better of you and you have to cut through the Gordian knot and say part of what I love about the web is I get to make my own rules for blogging and social media. I”m sending out a notice: if you’re one of those “noise” twitterers, especially if you happen to be in DFW, please add me. I’m at @FWRenaissance. And if you refuse to follow me because I talk too much about the dog sitting under my desk, well, I’m gonna have to do without you. I have to be me.

That’s why I’m so glad that recently Twitter superstar @ChrisBrogan broached the subject of imposing blogging and social media standards when in reality there are no standards. Thank you Chris. It more than makes up for your decision to shave off your beard.

And thanks also to @TheDailyBlond who wrote this post delineating her twitter pet peeves (a guest blog on @David_N_Wilson’s Tweeple blog.) I don’t do any of them. Thank God, perhaps I’m okay after all.