When I entered the Twitterverse, I decided to focus on just a few areas: healthy eating, environmental issues, nonprofit philanthropy, and classical music.  And I am finding that keeping up with the green side of Twitter is an overwhelming task.  There are just so many different and interesting tweeters with news and facts to share about the environment.  The green tweets really heated up during the Copenhagen summit on the environment recently, and there doesn't seem to be any slowdown in sight. (A good introduction to the green side of Twitter is to query #ecomonday each week. Some of the better information will come from that hashtag.)

If this activity is any indication of the possibility of real change in our stewardship of Planet Earth, then I say thanks to Twitter and to all the committed users who tweet daily (and some hourly!) about environmental issues.  Many believe that we are on the brink of a crisis if something isn't done soon, so the interest level via Twitter is a hopeful sign of potential change in both our personal behavior and in our communities.

Recently Twitter added a list feature, allowing users to compile smaller groups around topics.  My own Green list contains 38 of the best tweeters on the environment including @huffpostgreen, @MyGreenATL, and @GreenGeorgia. (There are actually hundreds in the United States alone, not to mention the unknown quantity world-wide.)  Check it out if you want to start keeping up with current green news.  Word of warning:  you could spend hours reading all the tweets and following all the links to all the news stories and blogs.  And let us know if you find any others to recommend. 

Note: You can go directly to the list via this link www.twitter.com/cellojayne/green

Just as I was getting somewhat comfortable with Twitter, I was given a new work assignment.  Create a weekly blog!  What was I going to write about?  Who would be interested?  Could I find something to say every week??  As all of these doubts and questions were swimming in my brain the weekend after my new assignment, I decided to go to the movies.  I saw Food, Inc., the documentary about our food supply and factory farming. 

I left the theatre that day with a lot of questions about what I had seen.  Like where to buy locally grown food, how to be sure products did not contain genetically modified ingredients, and if I was going to eat animal protein, what constituted ethical treatment. 

As I began to do some research, I learned that there is a lot of information and opinions on these topics.  Then the light bulb went on...why not blog about what I discovered?  So, I named my blog...Atlanta S.O.L.E.  Eager to share my new idea with my co-workers I soon found that S.O.L.E. needed some explaining.  So in case you are wondering...

S is for Sustainable

O is for Organic

L is for Local

E is for Ethical

After a few months as a novice blogger, I can report that once you start to focus on a topic, the ideas will just appear.  I have found inspiration from Twitter, friends, family, the media, and even Top Chef! 

Thinking about starting your own blog, maybe right here on Lens?  I encourage you to give it a try.  Just find something you care about, follow some other bloggers who write on the subject, and soon, you will find the ideas flowing.  And if you follow users on Twitter with the same interests, you will get even more great input. 

I hope to see some great new blogs on Lens soon!!

At the same time, I had to choose some people or organizations to follow.  Twitter has a great search feature and you can find almost any topic being discussed.  Do you like cats?  Interested in the environment?  Politics?  Enjoy sports?  Have a passion for classical music?  I learned that anything and everything is out there.  I started following folks who were commenting on my interests, like classical music, organic food,  philanthropy, and the environment.   And soon, people were following me!!  Really?  I have to admit that at first, I had a little thrill every time I got a new follower.  And I learned most major institutions are tweeting, so if you want to keep up with the Falcons, or the Atlanta Opera, or the Atlanta Zoo, all you have to do is follow them.  (TIP: many of them offer special discounts/promotions via twitter only, so you can get some bargains just by being a follower.) 

Soon I had a budding social media strategy in full force. I was doing a lot of re-tweeting and employing another trick I quickly learned... to provide a link to online articles or blogs relevant to the topic.  And I was actually getting overwhelmed trying to read all the tweets...not to mention that sometimes I would hear about an important tweet I had missed.

 Time to take the next step...find a way to organize all this information.  I decided to use a third party application which allowed me to put all the tweeters into categories. (I use TweetDeck). And quite frankly, to ignore some who I had found to be very noisy and no longer that relevant. Now I can check in each day and see what has happened.  I also decided to start accepting a text on my cell for certain tweeters.  That way I know immediately when there is news (@charlesedwards1) or a special from the symphony (@atlantasymphony).

My journey into social media will continue via twitter and this blog.  What is next? I don't know, but I am pretty confident that we will all be learning another new thing in a few years...in the meantime, I can report it is fun to be a part of the current wave.  Try it...I think you will like it. 

And just as I conquered my fear of tweeting...a new assignment.  Write a weekly blog. It was one thing to find 140 characters a few times a day for a tweet...but a blog??  The final chapter of this odyssey will cover the birth of a blogger (that's me) and share a few things I have learned along the way.