I talk to a lot of non-tech people about Twitter. Most of the time the general consensus is that they don’t get it. Why do they want to read about someone getting coffee or eating a sandwich? Well, I personally do like to read those types of details in a Twitter feed, but I understand that it’s not appealing to everyone. A new Twitter client called Twylah can help cut through that clutter.

Let’s say you follow your favorite baseball player on Twitter and you’d only want to read about his tweets relating to baseball – Twylah will help you do that by sorting a any Twitter profile by most-tweeted keywords. Cool right?

Maybe you want to create a mini-blog out of your Twitter stream – you can do that too. In fact, I can use my Twylah page to mix in blog posts longer than 140 characters with my existing Twitter updates. Register yourself a domain name and point it to your Twylah page and BOOM – you’ve got yourself a blog.

I recently interviewed Twylah founder Eric Kim for Relevantly Speaking. I think you guys will find this interesting.

I talk to companies everyday about the way to use a channel like Twitter the right way to engage and market to consumers. There are many clients doing it right including CPK, Zappos, Comcast and Citrix Online.

Then I see spam like this:

In none of my recent tweets have I talked about home ownership or solar panels. So why single me out with an “@” message that tries to sell me solar panels for my home? I often counsel clients on listening tools they can use to make sure they are part of relevant conversations that are happening on Twitter about their industry or their brand. When done correctly and with genuine intent, it can often lead to a sale – or even better – a long term relationship.

In this particular case Mr. Lester Sheets not only wasted his time by blindly Twitter spamming me, he did actual damage to his brand by harassing me in a very public way with an unwanted tweet. First off, even when I am in the market for solar panels this incident ensures I will never buy from him. Second, I immediately unfollowed him therefore severing any chance he had to build a relationship and market to me in the future.

Social media marketing is a lot like a cocktail party. You wouldn’t walk up to a group of people, interrupt their conversation and start handing out business cards, would you? No, instead, you’d walk up, smile and probably listen for a few minutes to hear what the conversation was about. Then, where appropriate, you’d add a comment or share a common experience that adds value to the group. Maybe after 10 or 15 minutes someone might say to you “hey, what is it that you do?” At that point you can elaborate and if they’re in the market for what you’re offering you have a reasonable chance at building a business relationship. That’s because you took the time to listen and add value before you shared details about yourself. It should be the same mindset on Twitter.

That said, I have a question for @SilverJingles: How often has you vomiting into someone else’s Twitter stream actually brought you a customer?

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What do you get when you mashup BP, Joran van der Sloot, John McCain and Snooki powered by a soundtrack of Against Me! and Steelheart? Well, you get this week’s show of course.

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On the show:

* Joran van der Sloot Tries to Recant Confession
* John McCain Tweets Snookie of Jersey Shore. Yep, It’s True
* Obama Labeled as “anti-British” Over BP Criticism

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Those that know me understand my passion for food. A good meal is one of my favorite things on this Earth. In addition to traveling and dining at some of the most amazing restaurants in the country, I also like to cook for myself at home. Usually I’m a “make-it-from-scratch” kind of guy, but sometimes I take a shortcut or two.

Tonight I made pasta with Rao’s Homeade Marinara Sauce. It was one of the best pasta dishes I’ve had in a long time. Here’s what I did:

First, I pan-fried an Italian sausage until it was brown. Then I cut it into bit-sized pieces and set it aside. Next, I chopped some red bell peppers and onions and sauteed them in the same pan I had cooked the sausage with a bit of olive oil. When they were just about cooked I added some finely sliced garlic and the sausage I cooked earlier. After browning the garlic and cooking the sausage through, I added the Rao’s Marinara Sauce. I simmered it on low heat for about 10 minutes and served it with bucatini pasta.

For those unaware, Rao’s is a legendary Italian restaurant in Harlem. It’s nearly impossible to get a table. Ever. They’ve since opened another location in Las Vegas at Caesar’s Palace that replicates the New York location almost identically. They’ve become such legend among foodies, they’ve started offering jarred sauce at retail outlets across the country.

Rao’s sauce consists of pretty simple ingredients. It contains only Imported tomatos, olive oil, onions, salt, garlic, basil, black pepper and oregano. This is truly one of the cases where the end-result is greater than the sum of it’s parts.

This is an admittedly unusual entry on my blog. Even though I obsess about food daily, I never write about it here. I am not in any way affiliated with Rao’s and I don’t receive any compensation for writing about their sauce, but this meal was so good I felt compelled to share it with you in the hopes that you might try it.

The sauce is available at most major grocery chains – at least here in Santa Barbara. At $7.00 per jar, it’s not cheap, but you could easily feed 4-6 adults on a single jar of sauce – that’s pretty reasonable.

If any of you actually try the sauce, I’d love to know what you think. Am I smoking crack or is it really that good? For those interested, I paired it with a 2007 Estate Pinot Noir from Melville Winery.

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This week we’re contemplating how incompetent BP really is as well as dissecting the finales of Lost and Celebrity Apprentice. Were they satisfying to you?

Here the rest:

* Pac-Man Eats Up Work Time
* Ellen DeGeneres Starts Record Label
* “Life” Feedback from David S.

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This is a redux of a video that was put out awhile back. For those of you that are skeptical of social media and it’s impact, take a look.

The series finale for “Lost” is just a few hours away. Lots of people are treating it like the Superbowl or the Oscars, but will it really have a satisfying payoff? My money is on “no,” but we’ll know soon.

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I had a really good time taping this episode. I’m not sure why – I’m running on 4 hours sleep and I have an overwhelming to-do list. Something just felt good about turning up Slash and Poison and rocking out. I hope you guys dig it.

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On the show:

* Settling Into My New Place
* Crazy Garage Sale People
* Waitress Fired Over Facebook Post
* Naples Pizzarias Using Coffin Wood?
* Death Metal Teacher Fired

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I don’t often mix my two worlds, but I thought this piece I produced for MediaTrust’s Relevantly Speaking video series was pretty awesome. A couple months back in New York I got a chance to interview CNN’s SEO Coordinator, Topher Kohan. For those that don’t know, “SEO” stands for Search Engine Optimization. Topher’s job at CNN is to make sure that search engines like Google, Yahoo and Bing can find their news stories and other content accurately when people search for them. In addition to the SEO stuff, we talked about CNN’s fabulously successful iReport program as well as the impact that social media is having on how CNN reports news.

Quicktime Version

Last night was huge step in the democratization of media. The FOX show “House” aired it’s season finale which happened to be shot on the Canon 5D Mark II DSLR camera.

Why is this such big news? Well, that camera retails for under $2700. Normally House is shot on film with cameras and lenses that cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. Last night’s episode proved that the cost of equipment is no longer a barrier to entry on making broadcast-ready television.

I bought the Canon 5D in December of 2008. I had never owned a DSLR, but had seen the video that people like Vincent LaForet were getting out of these cameras and I had to try it. I ended up selling that camera and getting the Canon 7D about 8 months later. That camera was almost $1000 less and had more functionality at the time than the 5D. Canon has since remedied that with a firmware upgrade. Now there is a new camera called the T2i that costs $800 that has almost all the functionality of the 5D and 7D. That means there is no barrier to entry. For the price of a home video camera, you can now own the proper tools to help you shoot a film or make a television program.

When I started the American Cliche radio show back in June of 2005, I talked often about the democratization of media. The internet has allowed us to each have a voice and be able to tell whatever story we want. Since I started this show AC has been listened to almost 5 and a half million times. I think that’s pretty powerful.

AC’s success proves that we have the power to take the power away from radio, but television and film has been a tougher nut to crack. Shooting an entire episode of House on a sub-$3000 DSLR camera brought us much closer. If you have a great story and the talent to back it up, there are no excuses anymore. Get out there and do it.