social media – Christa Avampato

art, community, compassion, experience, social media, technology, theatre, Washington

This just in: Dear Evan Hansen – theater review

August 10, 2015August 10, 2015 Christa Avampato

As someone who’s used social media for everything from meeting new friends to learning to generating career opportunities to dating, I’ve been thinking a lot about the underside of social media. What if it doesn’t help us connect? What if people don’t like our posts or accept our invitations or offer support when we so clearly needed it? What if we do that hideous comparison game of viewing our own real lives with all their difficulties side-by-side with the perfect lives that people espouse to live via their shiny screens? If we already have anxiety, and who among us doesn’t?, interacting on social media is nearly as frightening as the real world. It’s yet another avenue for rejection and disconnection.

These are the kinds of questions and scenarios that Dear Evan Hansen raises in its gorgeous premiere production at Arena Stage in Washington D.C. The odd and awkward actions online and off that are showcased made me laugh, cry, and contemplate just how hard it is to wrestle through our digital world and navigate its border with the physical world.

There were so many times that my heart just hurt for Evan Hansen, a sweet and shy teenager who’s just trying to get by without having a breakdown. He doesn’t have a lot of friends—he never has—and his family life is less than ideal. He always feels separate and apart from the world around him. He’s someone with a good heart who just can’t connect with people, sometimes rubbing them the wrong way with his awkwardness. He reminded me of a man I used to know, a man I wish I still knew, who also suffers from the same social anxieties and misfortunes with people. I sent that man a virtual hug during the show, not online but in my heart, and I hope wherever he is that he felt it.

Unlike most musicals, Dear Evan Hansen‘s songs aren’t commercial breaks. They move the story along with power, grace, and humor in just the right amount at just the right time. Ben Platt’s voice and demeanor exudes charm and heartbreak, grace and raw honesty. I wanted to run up on stage numerous times, give him a hug, and tell him that it’s all going to be okay. Because that’s really all he needs to know—that someone’s going to stand by him, listen to him, and care about him, especially when he feels uncomfortable and frustrated. He needs to know that someone’s going to be patient with him when he can’t be patient with himself. Isn’t that what we all need and want? Isn’t that the real definition of love? Tom Stoppard said, “It’s no trick loving somebody at their best. Love is loving them at their worst.” I agree.

After seeing Dear Evan Hansen, I didn’t have the best weekend. I’ve got a few personal situations I’m juggling that feel sad and confusing. To be honest, I’m at a little bit of a loss of what to do, say, or feel. My heart and mind feel jumbled and tired. All I could think to do to feel better was smile more, reach out more, and feel more. The instinct might be to shrink away from discomfort, but thanks to Dear Evan Hansen, I leaned into my weekend. The results were mixed, but feeling all of it actually felt better.

And that’s the power of theater. It reminds us that we aren’t alone in our experiences. So much of what we think, feel, see, and bear is shared across space and time by so many others. At its core, Dear Evan Hansen is about friendship and our need to feel cared for and accepted, flaws and all. See it. You’ll walk away a better, kinder person for carrying this story with you online and off.

Dear Evan Hansen will be at Arena Stage until August 23rd. And I’m sure it will have a very long life in many cities across the country soon.

animals, dogs, social media

Beautiful: Why My Dog, Phineas, Has a Twitter Account

November 22, 2013November 21, 2013 Christa Avampato

Phin at home in his domain - Central Park — Phin at home in his domain – Central Park

My pup, Phineas, has a Twitter account. You can check him out @PhineasNYC. Why is Phin on Twitter? Because he’s got a lot to say and a lot to teach others. He teaches me every day and quite frankly I feel selfish keeping all of that knowledge to myself. Phin deserves to have a platform to spread himself around to as many people as possible. The little guy needs a megaphone to be a broadcaster of goodness for animals everywhere and the people who love them. After much deliberation about which platform to use, we decided to start with Twitter. Messages are short and mighty, just like him.

Here’s what he plans to do with his Twitter account:
1.) Daily observations on a dog’s life in the big city with pictures and videos
2.) Spreading the word about good causes related to helping animals, especially, though not exclusively, dogs
3.) Promoting products he loves – from treats to squeaky toys and everything in-between
4.) Tips for pet parents on topics like pet health, separation anxiety, adopting a pet, and special deals on pet products and services
5.) Indulge his many funny bones

Phin and I are excited for his new online adventure. The world needs more goodness, more levity, and more dachshunds.

social media, social media creation

My Social Media Strategy: Wrapping It Up with LinkedIn, Tumblr, Vine, Google+, and Klout

October 23, 2013October 22, 2013 Christa Avampato

Over the last few days, I’ve talked about why social media is so important to me and how I think about and use my existing channels. Here are a few others that I use with less frequency and focus, though they certainly are worthy of mention:

LinkedIn – My account: Christa Avampato
I am active on LinkedIn in terms of accepting and sending connection requests. Though it’s making a lot of improvements, I still find it to be much clunkier than a lot of other platforms. Because it is a professional social network, I accept 99.9% of all connection requests. I don’t post personal information there and mostly use it when I am searching for a contact in my network at a specific company.

Tumblr – My blog: Born Into Color
Because I house my long form blog here on WordPress, I’m not 100% sure how to incorporate Tumblr into my social media strategy for my business. I certainly am having fun with it. The beauty of Tumblr is that it is incredibly easy to upload many different varieties of content. Ironically, the form of content that doesn’t seem to get as much traction on Tumblr is long-form writing like I do here on my blog. (Of course there are certainly exceptions to this!) On Tumblr, I post pictures, video, quotes, art, and I reblog a lot of content that I find interesting and intriguing. Re-blogging is incredibly easy on Tumblr. It also easily connects to Instagram so I do a bit of cross-posting between the two platforms.

Vine
Vine is Twitter’s video tool. When they launched it in January they described it as, “a mobile service that lets you capture and share short looping videos. Like Tweets, the brevity of videos on Vine (6 seconds or less) inspires creativity.” I literally just downloaded the app this week so I’ve not yet populated it with any original content though I plan to start doing some quick videos in the next couple of week. Once your download the vine app, you’ll find me as @christanyc, the same handle as my Twitter feed.

Google+ – My account: Christa Avampato
Google pretty much runs my life – my calendars, my contacts, my email for all of my accounts, my smart phone, and my shared documents. It keeps track of where I need to go, who I need to see, and what I need to do. So it’s with a little surprise that I just can’t seem to figure out why Google+ should be important to me. I’ve read oodles of article on it and spent a fair amount of time playing around with its capabilities. It still seems rather shallow to me and not up-to-par with the steady stream brilliance that flows from Google. If you have advice on this platform, I will gladly take it!

And now…a word about Klout
On Monday I wrote an article on Klout in preparation for the ad:tech conference. (It’s already received almost 6,000 views, which is a testament to people’s curiosity about it!) Klout is a social media tools that traffic’s social influence of individuals. It’s becoming a powerful tool for brands, agencies, and individuals alike. Given its success, we are likely to see many more tools like it in the coming years. You can read my post here on Klout: http://www.allvoices.com/contributed-news/15788893-got-klout-the-meaning-behind-your-social-media-numbers

I hope this series on social media has been helpful in thinking about your own social strategies and channels. I’m always glad to answer questions, offer advice, and hear suggestions so feel free to ping me at christa (at) chasingdownthemuse (dot) com. The social media world is a lot like the lottery – you’ve gotta be in it to win it. Let’s connect!

photographs, pictures, social media, social media creation

My Social Media Strategy: Pinterest and Instagram

October 21, 2013October 20, 2013 Christa Avampato

You oughta be in pictures, and that includes on social media. My Pinterest account is christanyc. My Instagram account is onefineyogi. These channels are important to me for one main reason: 65% of the population is composed of visual learners so it pays to learn how to communicate with pictures. I am not a naturally visual personal. I am one of the oddballs who is almost entirely an auditory learner so communicating in visuals is very difficult for me. Pinterest and Instagram have greatly enhanced my visual abilities and they are fun to use. This is the big difference between Instagram and Pinterest for me: most of my Pinterest pins are pictures that other people have taken that I find interesting and Instagram is composed of photos I take.

Pinterest
Think of this as a visual bulletin board that is neatly organized by topics that you choose. I’ve created boards that include Inspirational Words, Healthy Food, and Yoga. Some key points:

You can either upload images you’ve created or you can upload images from just about any website. When you upload from a website, you can click the uploaded image on your board and it will take you to the site where you found it. I mostly use this latter type of pin to help me bookmark websites that I want to be able to quickly refer to for recipes, visual inspiration, and new product ideas.
I also frequently pin pictures and quotations that I want to use for future blog posts and for the Compass Yoga and One Fine Yogi Facebook pages.
I use Pinterest to say hello to friends whom I share interests with (Hi, Sharni!) and to trade ideas back and forth with my sister, Weez, who is even more passionate about Pinterest than I am!
I am not too focused (yet) on building a following or following a lot of people as I mostly use it for my own reference and utilize keyword searches to find images that relate to what I need. As I begin to make more of my own products within my business, I expect that will change.

Instagram
I was very late to the game on Instagram, mostly because I was a bit freaked out when Facebook stated they would begin selling Instagram images for their own profit with no attribution to the people who created the images. After many people, some quite famous, abandoned and closed their accounts, Facebook quickly changed its tune.

I got into it about 2 months ago because it did seem like a fun platform to use and I wanted to share with the world more of the pictures I actually take. (Admittedly, I have just a *few* photos of my adorable pup Phineas!) It’s kind of like a visual diary of places I go and things I see. I mostly use Instagram mostly for fun and not much for work, but that could change in the future as I get more familiar with the platform and Facebook provides new functionality.

Putting it together
With these two platforms, I’m really trying to improve my visual thinking and visual explanation skills. So far, it’s been fun to play around with these and I have seen vast improvements in my design work as I spend more time with visual content. If you use these platforms, I’d love to hear what they’ve done for you!

social media, social media creation

Beautiful: Social Media Makes It Easy for You to Be Remarkable

October 20, 2013 Christa Avampato

“How dare you settle for less when the world has made it so easy for you to be remarkable?” ~ Seth Godin

I’m about half way through my series of posts on my social media strategy. Yesterday I came across this quote by Seth Godin and it crystalized for me why it’s so important for us to use social technologies. Several years ago, it was impossible to put our experiences, points of view, and concerns out into the world. Connections to individuals whom we admire were difficult to make and difficult to maintain. There was a lot of knowledge pent up inside of people’s heads and hearts. Social media has liberated information, connections, and our ability to share what we know and how we feel. It’s democratized information on an incredible scale. It’s a gift.

You are remarkable and unique. You are living a life that no has lived before and no one will ever live again. And that life is worthy of contemplation and consideration. You have a contribution to make, a gift to give, with your point of view. The world needs your perspective. Social media gives you a way to broadcast it to anyone and everyone. Yours is a voice that needs to be heard; social media is your microphone for your message.

This is why these tools are so important and why your participation is crucial. This world has a lot of large-scale problems that need attention, that need massive amounts of brain power, care, concern, and action. Social media is one way to rally us together, to help us unite our energies so that we leave this planet a bit better than the way we found it. That’s the mission for all of us – to let our light shine, collectively and individually. Are you on board?

business, social media, social media creation

My Social Media Strategy: 9 Ways That I Use Twitter

October 19, 2013October 18, 2013 Christa Avampato

Twitter is one of my favorite social media channels. You can find me at @christanyc. I use it in a number of ways personally and professionally.

1.) Connect, connect, connect
Twitter has liberated connections. If someone is on Twitter, they want to be found. With a simple @(their Twitter handle), you can reach someone to ask a question, give a shout out, or tell them about something you think they’d find interesting. By connecting, I’ve turned Twitter contacts into offline friends, mentors, and business partners. On a personal note, I’ve even dated a few great guys that I initially met via tweets.

2.) Learn and stay up-to-date with breaking news
Twitter is a great source of information. People constantly post interesting links and breaking news is now often first reported on Twitter rather than major news outlets. If you are an information junkie, Twitter is the place for you to indulge.

3.) Share
The flip side of learning is of course sharing out things that matters to you. I often tweet about charities I support, products I love, people who inspire me, and places I’ve been that deliver great experiences.

4.) Find your pack
This is a big one for me. Twitter is a wonderful place to find people who care about the same things you care about. You can find them and they can find you based upon hashtags, keyword searches, and common followers.

5.) Promote
Because I talk about my professional projects via Twitter, people who are interested in the same kind of work can connect directly with me about it.

6.) Get help
I often ask questions on Twitter when I need help with something – advice, referral, or general curiosity. My favorite Twitter help story is about JetBlue. I was in Florida visiting my family and my flight was cancelled due to a snow storm. I couldn’t get through to Jet Blue customer service on the phone so I tweeted them. I had a new flight booked in under three minutes – confirmation number and all.

7.) Live tweeting and Twitter chats
When I’m at an event – often a conference – I tweet interesting tidbits, soundbites, pictures, and links live from the event. This lets people who aren’t at the event get a chance to experience it and helps me to connect with people who are also at the event. Twitter chats are conversations around a specific theme with a wide range of people moderated by a single individual. Both live tweeting and Twitter chats can be discovered by their hashtags.

8.) Prospective work
I monitor my Twitter account closely for followers and people who favorite or retweet my tweets. I’ll often reach out via a direct message, follow-up tweet, or write to them via the email addresses on their websites. This has helped me discover great professional partnerships that I wouldn’t have otherwise been able to make. I recently did this after Advertising Week. I sent out about a dozen follow-up messages to people whom I had interacted with on Twitter in some way related to the event. I got a reply from almost everyone and a number of them led to meetings that may turn into collaborative projects.

9.) Sales, giveaways, and exclusive invitations
I’ve done a few different giveaways via my Twitter account. A lot of brands do this as well. If you have a brand that you love, check them out on Twitter. Many brands offer all kinds of exclusive opportunities that you can only get on Twitter.

As you can see it pays, literally and figuratively, to be on Twitter personally and professionally. In addition to my personal Twitter handle, I also manage the Twitter accounts for @CompassYoga and @OneFineYogi. Those accounts are less active than my personal account, though I use the same types of strategies for them.

Are you on Twitter? How have you made it work for you?

business, Facebook, social media, social media creation

My Social Media Strategy: How I Use Facebook

October 17, 2013October 16, 2013 Christa Avampato

In additional to my personal Facebook page, I also have Facebook pages for Compass Yoga and One Fine Yogi. It took me a long time to decide if this was a good idea. I wasn’t immediately convinced that brands could do something valuable with Facebook though eventually I came around to seeing the power of it for brands.

Compass Yoga Facebook Page
The Compass Facebook page includes inspirational images (and some with humor!), quick snapshots of yoga philosophy, links to our recent blog posts, updates on classes, event notifications, and gives students and supporters a way to connect with us quickly and easily to ask questions, give feedback, and make recommendations. I’d also love to encourage more fans to use it to interact with one another – we’re working on that piece. I used to put together a regular e-newsletter but I’ve decided to put more time into Compass Yoga’s Facebook page for several reasons:

1.) Facebook provides a two-way communication channels and is more dynamic. An e-newsletter is a one way communication tool that’s sent once in a while and many times goes unopened. By industry standards, if 20% of your subscribers open your e-newsletter, you are doing really well. Compass has always had 40%+, but that means that 60% of people never read it.
2.) Facebook gives us a way to connect people to one another. An e-newsletter just gives people a way to connect to us.
3.) The new Google inbox has all but killed email marketing. Many people have given up on email altogether in favor of social media. I will admit that I’m beginning to lean this way as well.
4.) E-newsletters are also difficult to share (meaning even when you click the share button, very few people ever open those shares) and time-consuming to create. A Facebook post is highly shareable and visible by a wide audience.

If you love yoga, or you’re just curious about it, I hope you’ll join us on the Compass Yoga Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/CompassYoga

One Fine Yogi Facebook Page
For a few months, I’ve been working on ideas and designs for One Fine Yogi, a line of yoga-inspired products in a few different categories. I’m still getting my head wrapped around this concept, and sorting through how I’d like it to take shape. Profits from the product sales will support Compass Yoga. While I figure out the direction for the product line, I post inspirational messages and images on the One Fine Yogi Facebook Page. If you need a boost in your day, I’d love to have you become a fan of the page: https://www.facebook.com/onefineyogi.

Facebook has been a great way to inspire people off the mat and to connect with supporters directly on a daily basis. It also helps people know that Compass Yoga and One Fine Yogi are run by real people who care about their health and well-being.

How do you use Facebook as part of your online presence and strategy?

Tomorrow, I’ll chat about Twitter – one of the social media channels I use most frequently.

blog, blogging, business, social media, social media creation, social network, writer, writing

My Social Media Strategy: How I Use My Blogs

October 16, 2013October 16, 2013 Christa Avampato

As promised, my first blog post in this social media strategy series is about how I use my blogs – Christa in New York: Curating a Creative Life and Compass Yoga. I started blogging daily at Christa in New York: Curating a Creative Life on 5/31/07. To date, I’ve written 2,291 blog posts that have collectively received 250,000+ unique visitors across 60+ countries. It’s given me a way to learn, share, help, and celebrate. This blog has been a gift to me, personally and professionally, and there is no way to express how incredibly grateful I am to everyone who’s ever read it.

Blogging helps me connect with people even when we are separated by geography
My friend, Alice, was the editor of our school newspaper and she kindly published a few pieces I had written during our second year. My friend, Stephen, asked me if I planned to keep writing after we graduated. He said I should start a blog. I asked him who would ever read my blog and he simply replied, “I’d read it.” I remember that conversation as if it happened yesterday. That conversation changed the course of my life. I didn’t know it yet, and I don’t think Stephen did either. Some of our most poignant life moments happen that way – they come and go and it’s only upon reflection that we realize how very important they are.

My first blog
I got started blogging on Blogger.com exactly 9 years ago to the day on October 15, 2004 while I lived in Washington DC. My first blog was Eyes and Ears Wide Open and it was on blogger. My first post began: “I’ve been journaling for almost 20 years, and the time has finally arrived for me to get some of these thoughts out of my head, off the closed pages of my diaries, and out into the world. I hope that someone reads them and gets something out of them.” I published a total of 26 posts.

Blogging has shaped my career and my life
On May 31, 2007 I sat down on my couch and started my current blogging adventure. That simple site was largely responsible for helping me secure my first job out of business school at Toys R Us. My boss, Bob G., became my mentor and supporter. During my interview, we chatted about my blog – I had put the URL on my resume. Bob loves a good story, and I told him I was trying to figure out how to become a good storyteller. Today, we’re still trading stories…on Facebook.

Once the recession hit in 2008, I knew I needed to jump to a new job. Like all specialty retail, Toys R Us was heading for the cliff and I didn’t want to go with it. My blog helped me to secure a new role at American Express because my daily posting showed I was disciplined and committed. The job itself was great in terms of the work, but my bosses were the worst I have ever had in my career. Additionally, the company was about to go through one of the most frightening times in its 150+ year history. Lehman Brothers failed 5 weeks after I started my job, and I had a choice: I could be scared and keep my head down or I could pick my head up, sit at the front of the class every day, and learn as much as I could for as long as I was there. I chose the latter and wrote about many of my experiences, without naming American Express, on my blog. The posts are all there, as are the many lessons I learned along the way. *Blogging gives me a way to process what I learn and archive those learnings for myself and others.*

I stayed in that role for 16 months and when a friend told me about a new job in product development, I sold my story like never before. The competition for the role was fierce. I put everything on the line, including my growing interest in blogging and social media. That key point – that I blogged every day about my life and hit “publish” – helped me secure the role and that began my journey as a product developer in technology in a deep way. My blog gave interviewers a way to get to know me on a highly personal level. I also made a lot of dear friends in that role who taught me so much, many of whom are still a wonderful part of my life. I will always be grateful for their presence, acceptance, and support.

Finally, my blog led me to connect with so many people around the world who care about things I care about. Some of my favorite friends found me through my online writing, and to this day their support has never wavered. It is that support that helped me believe I could make a go of writing full-time, or at least give it a healthy shot. On June 15, 2012, I took the plunge to freelance and start my own content development business, Chasing Down the Muse, and in 16 months, I’ve never looked back. It’s been a wild ride; one I am grateful for every day.

The Compass Yoga blog
In March 2010, I started Compass Yoga, a nonprofit to get more yoga to more people in more places. When I published the Compass website, I had no idea how my idea would develop, nor all of the incredible people I would meet on the journey. This blog has 270 posts though I now publish much more regularly on it than I did at the start. Most of the posts are re-posts of content from other sites that discuss the therapeutic benefits of yoga and meditation. Occasionally, I publish a product review and world yoga news.

Through the incredible efforts of so many people, the Compass Yoga blog has been named one of the top 100 yoga blogs and one of the top 10 yoga blogs on Twitter. These kinds of tributes are humbling, shocking, and motivating. What began as one small class at my local library has become a source of comfort for so many people, and most of that credit goes to the amazing teachers, students, board members, donors, supporters, and volunteers who make Compass Yoga what it is – a place online and off that welcomes and accepts all voices in pursuit of a healthy, happy existence.

Blogging helps me find kindred spirits
She who does not howl will never find her pack. For me, blogging has been a way for me to shout about things that inspire me and are important to me, and connect with people who share those interests. Through my blogs, I have been able to create a living, breathing tapestry of my own personal history and the many fantastic characters who have played a part in making me the person I am. It is a deeply satisfying endeavor, something that helps me carve a life I love. It’s been a tool to discover who I am, and it’s given me a way to contribute and pay tribute to the lives of others.

Tomorrow’s social media strategy topic: How I use Facebook.

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