Twitter | Table for Five

I Really Need to Un-Complicate My Online Life

May 16, 2011 By Elizabeth

Webtreats 3d Glossy Blue Orbs Social Media Icons

Image by webtreats via Flickr

My online life is just way too complicated, people. I don’t know what made me think I could handle three blogs, three Facebook accounts, four Twitter streams, three email addresses. At first I thought I was “organizing” the information, but man, is it hard to keep with all of them!

The thing about social media for me is that it feels so…important. Meaning, I feel like if I delete a Twitter account, the 37 people who added me to a Twitter list will see that my account is gone and, I don’t know, dislike me? Obviously I understand the overall importance of social media, but I also am thinking that over-saturation is much less effective.

Is it really necessary, for example, to have four Twitter accounts? I started with one, @Table4Five, then decided MomReviews needed it’s own Twitter stream for tweets and retweets about reviews and giveaways. And then I decided that MomCooks needed IT’S own Twitter stream for tweets about the reviews and giveaways I was doing there.

Ask me how well I’m managing to keep those four Twitter streams up to date. I’ll give you a hint – I’m NOT. Besides the huge headache I gave myself last year just before BlogHer when I suddenly decided my old Twitter for Table4Five was too crowded and I needed a SECOND Table4Five twitter account where I could have more personal conversations. Now I have @Table4Five, the newly renamed @ElizabethT45 (used to be called @Table4Five2, and trust me, it confuses me too), @MomReviews and @mom_cooks. GAH.

Facebook is actually not that unmanageable. I have my main account for myself, then I have fan pages for Table for Five and MomReviews. MomCooks doesn’t have it’s own fan page, which is fine by me. I have RSS for each blog going to it’s respective fan page, and every once in a while I check in to see if there are messages or friend requests. Facebook is the least stressful of my online identities really.

A brand consultant I “met” through LinkedIn gave me a very interesting piece of advice, based only on looking at my three blogs. She said that what I should do is rename MomReviews to Table for Five Reviews and Giveaways (anyone see why that’s a problem?) and MomCooks to Table for Five Cooks. But here’s the thing – can a four year old blog really be renamed? What happens to all of the posts?

The problem is that the title of a blog is in the permalink to every one of it’s posts, categories, tags, and archives. Like this: http://momcooks.net/2011/04/25/ham-pasta-skillet-recipe/. If I changed the name of MomCooks to something like Table for Five Cooks, and someone copy/pasted an old momcooks link into Google, it would give them a 404 “page doesn’t exist” error. MomCooks has 467 published posts, so that’s a whole lot of errors.

And of course the problem with the suggestion for MomReviews is that there is already a blog titled Table for Five Reviews and Giveaways, as I discovered last year.

I love Table for Five, and I love MomReviews. I can’t see a logical way to combine them. MomCooks I really just use for a place to copy/paste recipes I find online rather than printing them out on paper, and the advertising pays for the annual domain name registration, so it’s not costing me anything out of pocket to keep it.

So what’s the solution? Do I keep everything I have and just try to update it the best I can, when I can? How are you handling multiple online accounts?

Filed Under: Born to Blog Tagged With: Born to Blog, Facebook, Twitter

Kraft Foods Gift Basket Giveaway

February 1, 2010 By Elizabeth

this giveaway is closed.

Kraft Foods, makers of products like Oreos, Ritz crackers, Stove Top stuffing, and Maxwell House coffee, have re-launched their Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube pages to make it even easier for busy cooks to find great recipes and cooking tips. On their terrific recipe site, Kraft has a Community forum where you can ask questions and share your favorite recipes. I’m not exactly a pro in the kitchen, and I subscribe to Kraft Food & Family magazine for dinner tips, and also rely heavily on the Budget Wi$e section of the Kraft website, especially their “1 Bag, 5 Dinners” menus. We also use a lot of Kraft Food products, so I’m thrilled to be helping them with this giveaway!

To help spread the word about all the ways you can interact with Kraft Foods, they sent me a gift basket full of products, and will send one to the winner of this giveaway.

The HUGE gift basket is packed with food and kitchen items including new varieties of Ritz crackers, Velveeta Rotini & Cheese, and Wheat Thins.

The products in the gift basket are NEW Ritz Brown Sugar & Cinnamon crackers, Oreos, Planters Cocktail Peanuts, Honey Maid Cinnamon Grahams, Stove Top Stuffing, NEW Wheat Thins Flatbread crackers, Maxwell House coffee, Planters Pecan halves, Baker’s Semi-Sweet chocolate, Kraft salad dressing, Jet-Puffed marshmallows, NEW Velveeta Whole Grain Rotini & Cheese, a garlic peeler, a wooden spoon, and recipe cards.

Wanna guess how long all of this lasted in my house? The only thing we haven’t finished is the can of coffee! Those Brown Sugar & Cinnamon Ritz crackers? I would have never in a million years guessed that I would love those as much as I did. I can’t wait for them to be available in stores!

Kraft Foods has generously donated another gift basket to a Table for Five reader to win in this giveaway. It’s got to be super-quick though, I need to end the giveaway this Friday so the sponsor can get the basket mailed out early next week. Here’s how to enter!

WIN IT: For your main entry, Kraft Foods would like your feedback on their Facebook page, Twitter page, and YouTube Channel. Please visit those sites and then come back here and tell me what you thought of them. What do you think it means to the consumer to be able to interact with Kraft Foods using social networking? Enter by this Friday, Feb. 05 at 1:00 PM EST.

BONUS ENTRIES: Since this is a super-quick giveaway, help me spread the word and earn yourself extra chances to win! Leave a separate comment for each of the following that you do or have done:

Follow @kraftfoods on Twitter and tweet this: Win a huge gift basket from @Table4Five & @kraftfoods! Enter by 2/05 at 1:00 PM EST, plz retweet! http://bit.ly/9BmP18 . You can tweet this once per day and leave a separate comment for each tweet.
Follow me on Twitter @Table4Five, I’ll follow back!
Become a fan of Kraft Foods on Facebook.
Post a link to the giveaway on your Facebook status. Become my fan on Facebook if you aren’t already, the link is at the top of the page!
Blog about this giveaway including a link back. Not a blogger? Not a problem! Earn an extra entry by adding the link to the giveaway to any blog’s giveaway round-up. Leave the URL to your post or to the site where you linked up the giveaway.

Thanks for entering and good luck everybody!

Filed Under: Contests and Giveaways Tagged With: Facebook, Kraft, Kraft Food, Twitter, youtube

Tweet-a-Cause and Make A Wish!

November 20, 2009 By Elizabeth

This is a Sponsored Post written by me on behalf of LeapFish Inc. All opinions are 100% mine.

The Make-a-Wish foundation is the world’s largest wish-granting organization, and right now, they are trying to help make a wish come true for a sick little boy. Through Make-a-Wish’s Adopt-a-Wish program, a sponsor can “adopt” the wish and raise the money needed to grant it. To raise awareness of this program and get the social media community involved, LeapFish is sponsoring the Make-a-Wish Tweet-a-Cause.

The wish that LeapFish wants to grant is for four year old Jacob, who has Atresia, a rare and life-threatening illness. His wish is to go to Disneyland with his family. To help make his wish come true, search engine LeapFish partnered with Make-a-Wish and “adopted” Jacob’s wish. Their “Tweet-a-Cause” campaign gives five cents towards granting Jacob’s wish for each tweet sent through the LeapFish website. If you have your own Twitter account, please tweet the following message:

Just tweeted 2 grant a childs wish! #LeapFish donates to #makeawish foundation for each tweet. http://bit.ly/3Tj8A Please retweet!

Or, you can go to www.leapfish.com/MakeAWish and click the Tweet Now button. Your tweet will go out automatically, and LeapFish will donate five cents towards Jacob’s trip to Disneyland. Their goal is to raise $10,000 by November 27th, so please take a moment and go to the site to help!