Twitter Training

The world is saturated with twits, tweets, and tweeps. Everyone, from Oprah to NPR has decided that this is the most brilliant application ever devised by man. They constantly cite it, talk about it, and overhype it to the Nth degree.

The one thing they never explain about twitter is how it is intended to be used. They don’t explain the reTweet, or spambot followers. They just tell random people to get online, and drop their thoughts, in 140 characters or less, of course.

It’s not their fault, really, as twitter doesn’t really have a defined purpose. The idea is that it is supposed to enable real-time communication, sort of a text message broadcast to the entire world. The actual purpose of tweets are left up to the users’ imaginations.

It was too much for me to get my mind wrapped around when I started, that is for sure. With this in mind, I’d like to tell you a couple uses that will make twitter a valuable investment of your time.

This article will serve a very practical purpose, both for the novice user of twitter, and for those who have lost interest: It’ll tell you how, what, and why to follow certain users, along with giving you the ability to find and organize that data in a meaningful manner.

With that in mind, let’s begin. There are around 7 major types of twitter users. Your interests will determine which of these folks it would be in your best interest to follow:

1. Newsies: The New York Times, Tribune Media, Huffington Post, Drudge Report, and various other news agencies use twitter as a point of distribution for their articles. Updates commonly carry newly published content, or respond to readers of their content, which will naturally drive new readers to their site.

2. Gurus: These people, like Tony Robbin or Robert Kiyosaki(of Rich Dad, Poor Dad fame) use their accounts to push out mini-seminars. Their updates range from the inspirational to motivational, deliver news updates, and of course, push product in-between.

3. Gossip Gals: They don’t miss a single controversy. It doesn’t matter how small, these girls(and guys—think Perez Hilton) won’t let it rest. While TMZ and the Smoking Gun throw out some really interesting stuff, I wouldn’t put it in the category of “news”.

4. Info-Marketers: Pushing everything from get-rich-schemes, to plugging their latest eBook, these folks peddle all things downloadable. They are always mentioning some resource that seems designed to help you make money, but will make them money instead.

5. Regular Marketers: Generally, tweeps of this ilk are pushing a physical product, or building up that brand. You’ll see everyone from tire companies to toilet paper purveyors interacting with their customers and fans. To spice things up, fun facts and interesting news are served with soft-sell promotional tactics.

6. Power Tweeters: This is an odd group. They generally tweet about anything and everything. Most of the time, they are female in gender, and are a mixture of Gossip Gals and Newsie fare, with a spatter of hometown chatter. They never sell anything. Many times, they will live-tweet their thoughts on concerts, television shows, and fashion.

7. Everyone Else: This encompasses roughly 97% of the twitterverse. They followed a few people, didn’t learn how to link, reTweet, or even reply inside of twitter. Eventually, they get tired of the whole thing, and move back to playing “Mafia Wars” on facebook.

While there are sub-groups within every group, these are where the lines are generally drawn. The most important takeaway from this breakdown is the following: Most people on twitter are trying to sell you something. Now that you know who’s online, how can you get the most out of twitter?

Glad you asked. The first thing to get is a twitter client. For the purpose of this article, we’re going with TweetDeck, a leader in the twitter client arena. It’s easy to use. Download it, open it up, enter your username and password…and magically, you have a bird’s eye view of everything happening in twitter(or at least who you are following, and their activity).

You’ll see your live twitter feed on the far left, in-between you’ll find any replies that have been made to your messages(if you’ve just opened an account, there won’t be any messages here), and on the far right, your direct messages(private messages between you and another user that are not broadcast to other users).

The first thing you should do is find twitterers who meet your basic informational needs. For that, I actually prefer to use google, as it generally does a better job of finding who, or what you are looking for than twitter’s native search service. Google your local station’s call sign and add twitter to the end.(e.g. WKPY twitter). Let’s say we were searching for a our local station in New Mexico. We’d follow @KOBTV. That will be useful for weather alerts, local news, and community events.

Next, get a national news feed you trust. CNN, MSNBC, and Fox all have twitter feeds kicking out news at the speed of type. You can now see what is making waves at the national level, along with any upcoming special reports.

Now comes the fun part…your interests. Love tech…grab @TechCrunch. Need your daily fix of stats and scores: Follow @ESPN. Pick 2-3 twittering entities that don’t overlap. For instance, unless you just love too much information, don’t follow ABC, NBC, and CBS news.

From there, it’s time to find interesting people to follow. See if your favorite celebrities, nobel laureates, or trashmen are online. Check out their profile online, either by searching google with their name, followed by twitter, or by going to their website, and finding out what it is. This is probably the greatest chance at interaction with the rich and infamous that you will get. Rainn Wilson(Dwight Schrute of “The Office”) is one celebrity with particularly interest thoughts, links, and conversation.

You have a base of good, solid tweets that you are now following. Here comes the fun part. There are people around the world having conversations about the latest news, movies, restaurants, whatever. Now, you just have to find them. Pull up the search feature in TweetDeck. There are two ways to search: hashtag, or plain text. Hashtags denote a post in a certain category. For instance, if you were looking for all the updates that include the President, but don’t actually mention him in the body, this is the easiest way to search. If you are just looking for all mentions of Barack Obama, you would enter his name in plain text.

Searching in TweetDeck will open a column that automatically updates each time the search term is mentioned. For instance, you could keep a column opened for any topics you are interested in, and monitor them in real-time. I like to keep an eye on precious metals, mining, and tire news(boring, I know). When I am monitoring twitter, I keep a #gold, #silver, #mining, and #tires tab open, so that I can keep abreast of what is happening. It’s like a stock ticker. Glance, see something you like, and read any article links that come through. If I see someone who is tweeting regularly about a topic I am interested in, I follow them, so I can see any of their general tweets as well. Rinse and repeat for each topic you have an interest in, and the list of people you follow will be over 100 in no time.

Now, for the bad part: Taking out the trash. Twitter is full of people who will spam you, by doing the most flattering thing of all: following your account. Since twitter sends you an email notification that someone is a follower, your curiosity makes you want to check them out. Many times, they will masquerade as a female in a bathing suit(or less). Their names will often be followed by a dash with a 4-digit number. You should immediately go to your follower page, and hit “report as spam”. This helps twitter eliminate them from the roster, and keeps any of your followers from checking their garbage out.

On a lesser note, I try to clean out people I follow from time-to-time. Some of them have reverted to inane chatter, instead of providing important news. Even worse, they are tweeting more often, and saying even less. If you are spending time in twitter, make sure that dump a few people to keep things uncluttered.

Some of you might be wondering how to get legitimate followers. It’s simple advice: Be you. If you are chatty, be chatty. Talk about your interests. ReTweet things from others that you find interesting. Be consistent. Spend time on twitter. The more you are engaged with others, the more likely it is that people will like, and follow what you have to say.

Now, let’s recap how to get the most out of twitter:

1. Know the major categories of Twitterers. Filter them out based upon your interests.

2. Get a twitter client, like TweetDeck, to help you manage the vast streams of information coming through.

3. Make sure you are following a local news station, national news station, and sources that cover any informational gaps that you might have.

4. Follow celebrities that are active and intelligent.

5. Use search and hashtags to sort out topics and people to follow that are of interest to you.

6. Take out the trash regularly to make sure your feed isn’t overloaded with garbage. Block or report bots as spam.

7. Gain more followers by contributing to the conversation, and being yourself.

That’s all for now. There are far more advanced methods of tweeting, following, and being heard. Most of those methods are custom rules, developed by each user. You wouldn’t think publishing a message would need rules. After all, how complex should sending out 140 characters be?

Evidently, as complex as we can possibly make something that has no definable purpose.

Kurt Hartman

In 2006, Google agreed to censor itself to get a piece of the Chinese market. Sold it’s soul to the devil in other terms. Through the years, Google got mad because the Chinese intermittently would block Facebook, Twitter and YouTube (all owned by Google), and one day last year they shut them all off and never let them back online. Google wasn’t making any money. A few weeks ago Google announced it would stop censoring itself and if China didn’t like it, they’d pull out. Their deadline was last Tuesday. They’re still in China, and they’re still censored. It was clearly a power play with Beijing to get their biggest money-makers like Facebook and YouTube back online making money / free advertising.

Many companies are unethical, but isn’t Google particularly unethical for using this issue to further it’s profits?
Liuzhou Laowai: You say Google is not censored in China and I’m in fairyland? Hahaha good one.

Ethics are a principal very infrequently recognised by giant companies. It’s money, money, money at every twist and turn. Profits and power are the bywords of these commercial pirates. However, it is likely that Google could just catch a cold on this one. The Chinese have always played the game behind the shadows and I wouldn’t mind a few quid on, sometime in the future and without warning, the plug will be pulled resulting in the Google baby going down the plug hole!

I don’t know about anyone else, but it always bothers me when people brag about their technology and knowing how to use it. For example "Oh I got the best blackberry, let me update my Twitter from my phone hold on.", "I’m totally going to ustream that!" , "Hold on I’m playing on my ITouch", or people who talk in Internet lingo. Maybe I’m odd, but it seems so overly flamboyant to me like they’re trying to be hip and act like they’re on top of the times. Don’t get me wrong; I go on Youtube, have a Facebook…but I don’t allude to it all the time in normal conversation because I think it is annoying. It is like they think they’re cool and modern. Maybe I just like being simplistic…

Presumptuous, but also depressing, it appears that people seem to care, today more than ever about technology, hell all materiel goods than aything else.

When you think about it, there are only 2 things that people are looking for in Social Media. It does not matter if you are in real estate, mortgage banking, insurance, or even in marketing of some type. People are always looking for something.

You just need to make sure that you know what those things are.

Most people in the Social Media arena are progressive thinkers and progressive people. Most are ahead of the curve in the web 2.0 world, and most have a focus of being ahead of the pack. The early adopters of Social Media, which I am one, started on the Social media scene 5 years ago. There as not much there, but what was there, was used as best as it could be used.

People then, and people now, are still the same. They always will be. But in the Social media arena, they are looking for 2 things that will help them.

Help them feel better about whom they are. Help them feel better about what they do. And help them feel better about where their life is going. All people are in some way looking for that forward focus. That is why in the social scene, there are 2 things people seem to be seeking more than anything.

Only two.

1) CONNECTION.

Most people in Web 2.0 ville are looking for Connection. They want to connect with people, information, new ideas, new trainings, new events, new groups, new videos, but whatever they are looking for, they want to CONNECT.

Connection is part of the culture we grew up in. People in real estate understand the person want to feel emotionally connected to a house before they purchase it. People want to feel connected to a car before they decide to buy it. And people want to feel connected to something before they start building that bridge of trust with you. You must make an effort to connect in a way that they will respond to in social media.

IN Social Media Marketing, Connection is NOT Correction as so many people think. They are NOT looking to be told that their life is not any good, or is lacking. They are not looking to be told their home is too small for them. They want to Connect to something or someone that will make them feel better about themselves and where their life is headed. You do that in conversations on twitter, facebook, myspace, orkut, moli, LinkedIn, and the like.

They want to feel GOOD about a conversation with you, no matter the social network. They want to feel FOCUSED ON and Tied into a conversation that will help them feel more a part of something that can increase and enlarge their life and future.

CONNECTING with people is simply reaching out and taking their hand over the internet and letting them feel PLUGGED IN to something and someone that can help you connect to new possibilities and to new destinies.

THAT is simple and the truth. Keep the Connection authentic and real, and they will listen to what your conversation is about and start drawing closer to you and your message.

2) Elevation.

People want to feel like they are being lifted higher in their life. They want to feel like their life is going somewhere and means something. We all do. We all are looking for that special feeling that we are special, and as trite as that sounds, it is the truth.

What can you do to create that feeling that they truly believe they are walking on air?

Life them up by noticing something g they said that has helped you.

Compliment them.

Give them a kind remark about their efforts in what they are doing in Social Media.

Ask questions they might know the answer to show you appreciate their knowledge..

Send them new ideas on their passion.

Notice something about their conversation that you can totally appreciate and let them know about it.

Empower them with encouragement.

Thank them for learning something from them.

WHY?

It will make them glad they talked to you in Social Media. And they will remember you the next message, tweet, or conversation. They will move from the Awareness stage, to the Appreciation stage in Social Media.

As a realtor, you will see that they can start to trust you, and even start referring possible clients to you as people they know are moving out or into – your area.

Remember- it is NOT what you said. But how you made them feel by Connecting with them and Elevating their hope and future in the Social media Marketing arena.

blessings…doug

Doug Firebaugh
http://www.articlesbase.com/marketing-articles/social-media-marketing-training-the-two-things-that-everyone-is-looking-for-in-social-media-681829.html

Internet marketing has become a very popular thing in the internet. There are many ways to make money online now. However, do you know that there is an easy way to make four and five figures, even six figures in the shortest time? This way is known as affiliate marketing.

Affiliate marketing is the easiest way to make money online because you do not need your own products, deal with customers and so on. A blog is not compulsory too. You will get paid my promoting other merchants’ product. There are many super affiliates who make over 6 figures in just few hours!

Generally, affiliate marketing can be classified into 2 kinds: Pay-Per-Sale and Pay-Pay-Lead.

1. Pay-Per-Sale Affiliate Marketing
This is the most popular affiliate marketing which many bloggers are doing. Based on the title, you can easily know what it means. The merchant only pays the affiliate when a visitor referred by the affiliate make a purchase.

In this type of marketing, you need to be highly selective when you want to choose and promote a product. Choose a product which is profitable and hot in the market is very important. You also need to be strategic when you want to promote a product.

2. Pay-Per-Lead Affiliate Marketing
For this type of affiliate marketing, you will get paid by generating leads for the merchants. It is usually used by finance and insurance companies. Whenever a visitor referred by the affiliate to the merchant’s website requested a quote or filled up an online application form, the affiliate will get the commission.

Find out what I am doing by following my twitter. If you need to know more about making money online stuff, don’t forget to subscribe my e-mail updates so that you will not miss any post. Do not forget to grab my FREE e-book worth $37 by joining my free newsletters!

Jeen Hao
http://www.articlesbase.com/affiliate-programs-articles/basic-information-of-affiliate-marketing-682166.html

The world is saturated with twits, tweets, and tweeps. Everyone, from Oprah to NPR has decided that this is the most brilliant application ever devised by man. They constantly cite it, talk about it, and overhype it to the Nth degree.

The one thing they never explain about twitter is how it is intended to be used. They don’t explain the reTweet, or spambot followers. They just tell random people to get online, and drop their thoughts, in 140 characters or less, of course.

It’s not their fault, really, as twitter doesn’t really have a defined purpose. The idea is that it is supposed to enable real-time communication, sort of a text message broadcast to the entire world. The actual purpose of tweets are left up to the users’ imaginations.

It was too much for me to get my mind wrapped around when I started, that is for sure. With this in mind, I’d like to tell you a couple uses that will make twitter a valuable investment of your time.

This article will serve a very practical purpose, both for the novice user of twitter, and for those who have lost interest: It’ll tell you how, what, and why to follow certain users, along with giving you the ability to find and organize that data in a meaningful manner.

With that in mind, let’s begin. There are around 7 major types of twitter users. Your interests will determine which of these folks it would be in your best interest to follow:

1. Newsies: The New York Times, Tribune Media, Huffington Post, Drudge Report, and various other news agencies use twitter as a point of distribution for their articles. Updates commonly carry newly published content, or respond to readers of their content, which will naturally drive new readers to their site.

2. Gurus: These people, like Tony Robbin or Robert Kiyosaki(of Rich Dad, Poor Dad fame) use their accounts to push out mini-seminars. Their updates range from the inspirational to motivational, deliver news updates, and of course, push product in-between.

3. Gossip Gals: They don’t miss a single controversy. It doesn’t matter how small, these girls(and guys—think Perez Hilton) won’t let it rest. While TMZ and the Smoking Gun throw out some really interesting stuff, I wouldn’t put it in the category of “news”.

4. Info-Marketers: Pushing everything from get-rich-schemes, to plugging their latest eBook, these folks peddle all things downloadable. They are always mentioning some resource that seems designed to help you make money, but will make them money instead.

5. Regular Marketers: Generally, tweeps of this ilk are pushing a physical product, or building up that brand. You’ll see everyone from tire companies to toilet paper purveyors interacting with their customers and fans. To spice things up, fun facts and interesting news are served with soft-sell promotional tactics.

6. Power Tweeters: This is an odd group. They generally tweet about anything and everything. Most of the time, they are female in gender, and are a mixture of Gossip Gals and Newsie fare, with a spatter of hometown chatter. They never sell anything. Many times, they will live-tweet their thoughts on concerts, television shows, and fashion.

7. Everyone Else: This encompasses roughly 97% of the twitterverse. They followed a few people, didn’t learn how to link, reTweet, or even reply inside of twitter. Eventually, they get tired of the whole thing, and move back to playing “Mafia Wars” on facebook.

While there are sub-groups within every group, these are where the lines are generally drawn. The most important takeaway from this breakdown is the following: Most people on twitter are trying to sell you something. Now that you know who’s online, how can you get the most out of twitter?

Glad you asked. The first thing to get is a twitter client. For the purpose of this article, we’re going with TweetDeck, a leader in the twitter client arena. It’s easy to use. Download it, open it up, enter your username and password…and magically, you have a bird’s eye view of everything happening in twitter(or at least who you are following, and their activity).

You’ll see your live twitter feed on the far left, in-between you’ll find any replies that have been made to your messages(if you’ve just opened an account, there won’t be any messages here), and on the far right, your direct messages(private messages between you and another user that are not broadcast to other users).

The first thing you should do is find twitterers who meet your basic informational needs. For that, I actually prefer to use google, as it generally does a better job of finding who, or what you are looking for than twitter’s native search service. Google your local station’s call sign and add twitter to the end.(e.g. WKPY twitter). Let’s say we were searching for a our local station in New Mexico. We’d follow @KOBTV. That will be useful for weather alerts, local news, and community events.

Next, get a national news feed you trust. CNN, MSNBC, and Fox all have twitter feeds kicking out news at the speed of type. You can now see what is making waves at the national level, along with any upcoming special reports.

Now comes the fun part…your interests. Love tech…grab @TechCrunch. Need your daily fix of stats and scores: Follow @ESPN. Pick 2-3 twittering entities that don’t overlap. For instance, unless you just love too much information, don’t follow ABC, NBC, and CBS news.

From there, it’s time to find interesting people to follow. See if your favorite celebrities, nobel laureates, or trashmen are online. Check out their profile online, either by searching google with their name, followed by twitter, or by going to their website, and finding out what it is. This is probably the greatest chance at interaction with the rich and infamous that you will get. Rainn Wilson(Dwight Schrute of “The Office”) is one celebrity with particularly interest thoughts, links, and conversation.

You have a base of good, solid tweets that you are now following. Here comes the fun part. There are people around the world having conversations about the latest news, movies, restaurants, whatever. Now, you just have to find them. Pull up the search feature in TweetDeck. There are two ways to search: hashtag, or plain text. Hashtags denote a post in a certain category. For instance, if you were looking for all the updates that include the President, but don’t actually mention him in the body, this is the easiest way to search. If you are just looking for all mentions of Barack Obama, you would enter his name in plain text.

Searching in TweetDeck will open a column that automatically updates each time the search term is mentioned. For instance, you could keep a column opened for any topics you are interested in, and monitor them in real-time. I like to keep an eye on precious metals, mining, and tire news(boring, I know). When I am monitoring twitter, I keep a #gold, #silver, #mining, and #tires tab open, so that I can keep abreast of what is happening. It’s like a stock ticker. Glance, see something you like, and read any article links that come through. If I see someone who is tweeting regularly about a topic I am interested in, I follow them, so I can see any of their general tweets as well. Rinse and repeat for each topic you have an interest in, and the list of people you follow will be over 100 in no time.

Now, for the bad part: Taking out the trash. Twitter is full of people who will spam you, by doing the most flattering thing of all: following your account. Since twitter sends you an email notification that someone is a follower, your curiosity makes you want to check them out. Many times, they will masquerade as a female in a bathing suit(or less). Their names will often be followed by a dash with a 4-digit number. You should immediately go to your follower page, and hit “report as spam”. This helps twitter eliminate them from the roster, and keeps any of your followers from checking their garbage out.

On a lesser note, I try to clean out people I follow from time-to-time. Some of them have reverted to inane chatter, instead of providing important news. Even worse, they are tweeting more often, and saying even less. If you are spending time in twitter, make sure that dump a few people to keep things uncluttered.

Some of you might be wondering how to get legitimate followers. It’s simple advice: Be you. If you are chatty, be chatty. Talk about your interests. ReTweet things from others that you find interesting. Be consistent. Spend time on twitter. The more you are engaged with others, the more likely it is that people will like, and follow what you have to say.

Now, let’s recap how to get the most out of twitter:

1. Know the major categories of Twitterers. Filter them out based upon your interests.

2. Get a twitter client, like TweetDeck, to help you manage the vast streams of information coming through.

3. Make sure you are following a local news station, national news station, and sources that cover any informational gaps that you might have.

4. Follow celebrities that are active and intelligent.

5. Use search and hashtags to sort out topics and people to follow that are of interest to you.

6. Take out the trash regularly to make sure your feed isn’t overloaded with garbage. Block or report bots as spam.

7. Gain more followers by contributing to the conversation, and being yourself.

That’s all for now. There are far more advanced methods of tweeting, following, and being heard. Most of those methods are custom rules, developed by each user. You wouldn’t think publishing a message would need rules. After all, how complex should sending out 140 characters be?

Evidently, as complex as we can possibly make something that has no definable purpose.

Kurt Hartman

Tweet along with your favorite celebs Divided by category with celebrities listed in alphabetical order so you can easily find your favorite celeb, “The Celebrity Tweet Directory” tweets you to conversations with hundreds of well-known actors, comedians, singers, politicians, sports figures, and more. With this handy guide, you can flutter into the world of celebrity chatter and experience how they reveal themselves in a way you don’t see anywhere else. With this portable directory, you’ll quickly and easily discover what’s “really” happening in Hollywood, on Wall Street, or in Washington, all while following your favorite celeb. In addition, the helpful directory weeds out any fake celebrity twitter accounts, providing only “real” Twitter handles, saving you the hassle and time of sifting through phony accounts. Features a helpful celebrity directory so you can find your favorite celeb and enjoy sweet tweets from the hottest actors, singers, politicians, sports figures, and more Weeds out any phony celebrity accounts, saving you the hassle of sorting through fake accounts Helps keep you in the know with celebrities on the go, so you’re up on what’s happening everywhere from Beverly Hills to Capitol Hill Be the first to hear celebrity buzz and get the chic tweets from your fave celebs with “The Celebrity Tweet Directory

(more…)

Previously their was an article, small one about her recent talk in Hong Kong giving one of those brilliant speeches she gives. She is such a smart women. Going to China I bet she knew more about US policy than Obama!
Sept. 23 was a hazy day in Hong Kong. It’s unlikely that Sarah Palin could have gazed across the city’s harbor, past the mountains of the New Territories, and spied mainland China in the distance. Secluded inside the Grand Hyatt hotel, behind a tight cordon of security and a sea of hobnobbing fund managers, she may not even have seen much of Hong Kong itself.

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Palin was in the Big Lychee on her first visit to Asia, delivering her first major speech abroad at a high-profile conference of bankers and regional finance executives. A reported 1,100 delegates crammed into the ballroom to hear her champion "commonsense conservatism" and Reaganomics and offer commentary on Asian geopolitics. But if this luncheon keynote address was the former Alaska governor’s first credential-burnishing step toward a 2012 presidential bid, it was made with the pesky media well at arm’s length. All press were barred from the event, reportedly at the request of Palin’s camp. Details of her remarks have been pieced together from interviews with delegates who were in attendance, tweets from inside the ballroom and a few private recordings of the proceedings that were obtained by news agencies. Neither spokespersons for Palin or CLSA Asia-Pacific Markets, the investment firm sponsoring the conference, were willing to disclose Palin’s itinerary in Asia.
(See the top 10 Sarah Palin spoofs.)

Though dubbed "a conversation with Sarah Palin," the event turned out to be more of a monologue. She spoke for almost 90 minutes, all the way to 2 p.m., when the session was supposed to end. As an attendee said while walking out, "she clearly wanted to keep talking so there’d be no questions." The moderator did ask her a few questions, but that part of the program lasted less than 10 minutes.
(See pictures of Sarah Palin.)

She did make a few memorable pronouncements, for example, "I don’t like excessive partisanship." Addressing the financial crisis, she declared there was no need for new regulation: "Lack of government wasn’t the problem. Government policies were the problem. The markets didn’t fail. Government failed." Palin reportedly called for the elimination of capital gains and estate taxes, decried state overspending and, supposedly without mentioning U.S. President Barack Obama by name, criticized his efforts to widen government involvement in health care. She rattled off a few terms of financial art but did not address the issues facing the markets for long, saying, "That’s for next time."
(See what Sarah Palin is planning next.)

Palin did not shy away from addressing Asia and its politics. She hit the Republican talking points on China, warning against protectionism and expressing concern about China’s military buildup. "We hope for China to rise responsibly," a delegate posting to Twitter live from the speech quoted Palin as saying. She also spoke of the U.S.’s historic role in securing prosperity and stability in the region and expressed a conviction that the U.S. could help steer Beijing toward democracy.

Still, according to many delegates, Palin’s home state of Alaska dominated the talk. "She rambled on about the place for ages," says an Indian banker with a major U.S. firm. "Palin even talked about Alaska’s land bridges with Asia and how animals once went across." Based on a recording it reviewed, the Wall Street Journal says Palin invoked her husband Todd’s Eskimo heritage as a sign of shared "bloodlines" between the continents.

Palin’s audience was a mostly sympathetic throng of high-flying executives and fund managers from more than 32 countries, responsible for some $10 trillion worth of assets among themselves. While they welcomed her support for strong free-market policies, some of the executives in the crowd were not entirely convinced. "[Palin] displayed a mixture of commonsense prudence and a bit of naiveté when it comes to finance," says a London-based fund manager (most delegates spoke anonymously due to the confidentiality policies of their companies). "Surely, we know now not all things are better left to the market."

After stepping down as governor earlier this year, Palin has allegedly received more than 1,000 speaking invitations. Some speculate that she was well remunerated by CLSA, though the company spokeswoman, Simone Wheeler, refused to comment on the question of a fee. The CLSA Investors’ Forum has a rich tradition of bringing in leading global — and often American — figures, such as Bill Clinton, Al Gore and Archbishop Desmond Tutu. Preceding Palin as top-of-the-bill speakers
on Monday and Tuesday were the Harvard financial historian Niall Ferguson and Robert Fisk, a veteran British correspondent in the Middle East. "Our speakers do not fit a specific formula," says Wheeler. "We just want to present our forum with newsmakers, with people who think outside the box. We want to air their virgin views."

But as the foreign press flapped about Palin (and the lack of access to her), few in the local Cantonese media — or most Hong Kongers, in general — seemed to care. Few representatives from Hong Kong’s tabloid-driven press stood in the forlorn journalist pen outside the hotel. Shown a picture of Palin, a woman surnamed Ng, who operated a food stand near the Grand Hyatt, professed to not know who she was. "If she is rich and famous, then maybe she goes shopping nearby," said Ng from behind her counter. "Afterward, she can come eat my fishballs."
FOR ALL YOU LIBBIES ASKING WHY SHE DIDN’T LEAVE ROOM FOR QUESTIONS OR LET THE STORY BE RECORDED, IT’S CUS
SHE DOESN’T WANT FOREIGN PEOPLE QUESTIONING HER OK! DEAL WITH IT SHE IS AMAZING!.
SHE IS SO SMART YOU DON’T NEED TO GO TO HARVARD TYO BE AS SMART AS SHE IS SHE INSPIRES ME AND MAKES ME HAPPY AND I THINK THAts why YOU SHOULD VOTE FOR HER CUS SHES A MAVERICK AND SHE’S GONNA WHIP THINGS UP!

Yes, she is smart.

http://www.timescolonist.com/business/Churches+need+younger+clergy/2498403/story.html

I’m having a hard time deciding what to accept as premises in this short letter to the editor.  I’ve picked a conclusion as well as what I think the premises are, but I think I’m either missing or adding some.

Conclusion:  "I don’t think enough is done to attract the next generation of clergy."

Premise 1: "students in seminaries are training for a second career"

Premise 2: "we’re not brining them on board and exploring a call for spiritual leadership within churches and communities."

Premise 3: "solutions have to involve an acceptance that the young peoples attitudes towards the bible have changed."

Premise 4: "use of technology to reach a younger….facebook group, and twitter."

I don’t feel anything else applies to the conclusion. I just want to make sure I’m doing this right.
Sorry, maybe I wasn’t clear. I am basically analyzing the letter that in the link that I’ve posted. I just need to find the premises that are relevant to the conclusion.
Thanks

It looks like you are following the prescribed pattern. I would just say you may want to actually use some evidence to strengthen your conclusion. This would include information on ways that seminaries currently recruit students. Where and how do they look? What denominations are recruiting. What denominations are not recruiting? It sounds like you are disputing theology rather than supporting your main conclusion.

My Twitter SN is DirtyLOVE_703 and I have some followers but I want more. Any ideas?

A few methods you can try at http://www.doshdosh.com/how-to-get-more-twitter-followers/

http://www.ehow.com/how_5042136_people-follow-twitter.html