Zach Driscoll was about 5 years old when he saw Conway Twitty live in Portland.

“My grandma was infatuated with him. Every time he would come to Oregon, we had to see him,” Driscoll said.

At what was the Portland Coliseum, Driscoll and his grandmother got seats close up. Driscoll wore chaps and a cowboy hat. Whenever Twitty danced or pointed, Driscoll did, too. Soon the country star couldn’t stop laughing at the small boy imitating him.

“He had me brought on stage. I remember everything seemed big and loud,” Driscoll said. “I remember being so afraid I turned around and jumped right back into my grandma’s arms.”

That year Driscoll started singing. He has not stopped.

Link to PDF: Sublimity musician’s bluegrass roots go back to his childhood

Published: July 13, 2011 in The Stayton Mail

Are you new to the world of Twitter and wondering what you’re doing there? While Facebook is based on personal connections that have already been formed in real life, Twitter often connects people working in similar fields who have never met before based on the interest level of their posts.

So how interesting is it, really, to hear about what a total stranger (who might just be there only to sell you something) had for lunch that day?

I use Twitter for a few different reasons, and keep a work and personal account. I started my personal account to promote a travel blog I ran for a year and a half. I’m a journalist, so my work account is a must. Journalists seem to be one of the fastest-growing groups of Twitter users; not just basic newspaper and TV station accounts that post links to stories, but individual journalists themselves trying to self-promote and/or increase audience engagement or their media brand.

Engagement is key in Twitter. Your “reach,” a metric that judges your audience and impact, is influenced by how well you interact with your followers and how often your followers respond to you and broadcast your posts.

Figure out these metrics for your individual account by inputting your name into the website www.Klout.com. There are a few other websites out there that analyze social media metrics. You should check this periodically (but don’t get too fixated on metrics) to judge the success of your efforts and whether you need to rethink your strategy. Time is everything in social media; Facebook and Twitter can be huge time sucks if you don’t use it smartly.

There’s a few ways to interact on Twitter.

“Retweets” are basically reposting someone else’s post word for word. When you “retweet” a post you don’t add anything to the conversation, you just amplify someone’s post to your followers, which is theoretically a different circle than the original group of followers that first saw the post. Every post has a link on the bottom right hand corner of the tweet; hover your mouse below the text and you’ll see “Reply” and “Retweet.” After you click “retweet,” it will ask you whether you want to broadcast that message to your followers; click yes.

When someone retweets your post, it’s etiquette to say “Thanks for the RT!” or “Thank you for retweeting @(user name)”. Also, it increases your level of interaction, which boosts your metrics.

Personalize the retweet by making it a mention rather than a straight-out retweet. Mention the person who posted the link, copy and paste just the link and say something interesting about the link. That increases your retweet potential. Also, I find when someone does nothing but retweet other people’s news, my eyes tend to glaze over. I want to know what you think about it and why it’s interesting to you. Humor also goes a long way.

“Mentions” are @(insert twitter name here). They look like this: <<<@denise_or What do you think?>>> Mentions are in my opinion the most important and most powerful tool for interacting. Mentions help you engage in a conversation and get to know your followers on a more personal level.

Keep track of who mentions you through the @(insert user name here) link. In the old Twitter it’s on the right sidebar. In the new Twitter it’s underneath the “What’s happening” text box.

Mentions help avoid the impression that you’re just there to sell something. Twitter is a great way to self promote. But people are turned off by those who are obviously only tweeting to promote themselves or their brand and don’t interact with others.

Another way to interact is to use hashtags. Hashtags look like this: <<<<#oscars>>>; the numerical sign makes the word a hyperlink that is easy to search for posts that are talking about that topic. It’s also a way to amplify your reach. If you say something interesting about a “trending topic” – those top five or six phrases or words that Twitter always keeps on a sidebar – people might start to follow you.

A useful hashtag is #followfriday, a trend that keeps on trending; mention several of your followers that you recommend other users should follow and include that hashtag on Fridays.

Just be careful with how much you use hashtags. Too many hashtags in 140 characters can be as annoying as egregious self-promoters. Use hashtags selectively to best amplify your reach.

Struggling with how to find followers to add? Big users of Twitter are government agencies and nonprofits. I follow agencies at the federal, state and local level and nonprofits that I’m interested in. I also follow some businesses, especially restaurants I like or farms. After I follow a certain organization, I check out their list of followers. Though I will find a lot of news media following them as well, I search for the real people. They’re not always transparent!

It’s polite to reciprocate whomever follows you, even if you think they’re not up your alley. I will stop following posts that seem like spam after a while or if they stop being interesting. I try to weed out my followers to the real people who say interesting or relevant things or organizations that post links and news I am interested in.

So after you ramp up your followers, amplify your reach and have a lot of posts coming through your feed, how do you sort through all the noise? Because there will inevitably be a lot of noise, especially if you have more than one interest.

There are several organizational tools you can use. The first and most handy since it doesn’t involve downloading software is lists. On your profile, where all your tweets are, you’ll see a tab that says “Lists” – scroll to “Create new.” You can manage your tweets by subject area (i.e. journalists) or by whatever organizational method is most relevant to your list of followers.

There are also several programs that will allow you to manage several social media pages at once. HootSuite is popular. I like Tweetdeck. These involve installing a program on your computer that lets you keep track of and organize tweets from your followers more efficiently.

Part of the danger of Twitter is that there is so much information from so many different sources. If you don’t keep on top of it and don’t find a way of organizing it efficiently, it can become useless noise that takes over all your time. On the other side of that, you can become so overwhelmed with all the noise that you’ll drop off interacting. But if you can find a way to manage Twitter and other social media vehicles in a way that suits your lifestyle, it can be a great way of personally interacting with customers, engaging new clients and boosting your brand.

Another thing to remember about Twitter is that it is great for up-to-the-second, need-to-know news. Twitter is useful for certain kinds of “news tweeting” but not others. I don’t want up-to-the-minute tweets about someone’s first day of school, unless there’s something parents need to know about and they need quick access to that information, like the power went out or the start time changed.

But you can get real time results during election night. You can find out about a coupon deal at your favorite café. You can tweet your thoughts about a show that’s worth talking about like the Oscars. Or even what you’re seeing from your unique location about a meteor shower that people are watching around the world.

The trick to Twitter is this: no one wants to know what sandwich you ate for lunch today. But if you had a fantastic sandwich at a great restaurant that everyone should check out, find that restaurant’s Twitter account, mention it in a post and let all your followers know what you ordered.

You can get a lot of great news tips through Twitter. It’s fun to be the first to hear about breaking news, even before TV stations report it. Judging from the revolutions in Egypt and Libya, and protests happening all over the Middle East, as well as some major recent natural disasters, social media vehicles like Twitter have the potential to be game changers. Especially with smart phones changing the way we access the Internet and news about what’s going on in the world, Twitter can have a lot of power. Or it can just be a trend.

The key is defining how and why you use it for your organization or personal life, and making your use of it efficient, consistent and relevant.

Denise Ruttan

It’s the first period of the day, so the Stayton High School students in teacher Alan Kirby’s AP U.S. History elective class on the 1960s are sleepy — but they’re listening.

These juniors and seniors have been studying the Vietnam War for six weeks out of textbooks and projects. Now they’re getting some living history.

Phil Richards of Stayton stands in front of a projector screen that flashes fuzzy pictures of the country where he spent 13 months of his life, the country that has changed so much that he does not recognize it anymore, the country that he does not want to ever visit again.

“My daughter Courtney volunteered me three years ago to talk to her history class. I have nothing prepared. I come here to elicit a few questions and give a brief rundown of my experience,” Richards says.

He grew up on a chicken farm in a small town in Southern California. Richards was drafted into the Army and shipped out to Vietnam in 1968.

“Quite frankly, I don’t know how to relate to you something that is real history for you, something that happened before you were born,” Richards says. “For me the Civil War or World War II is history and that’s hard for me to relate to, the same as it’s hard for you to relate to Vietnam.”

Link to PDF: Vietnam veteran tells teens of war

Published May 26, 2010 in The Stayton Mail by Denise Ruttan

Denise’s Note: I initiated, developed and implemented a summer column in 2010 from the perspective of a first-time gardener in Stayton’s community garden based on my own experiences.

There’s been a lot of talk about babies lately in my family. My sister-in-law is expecting, and my mother is ready to be a grandmother.

Well, Mom, a whole lot of little ones have just joined the brood. But their names are pepper, potato, sugar pea and roma bush bean.

I started my plot in Stayton’s community garden.

Link to PDF: New life sprouting in community garden

Published May 12, 2010 in The Stayton Mail by Denise Ruttan

A new lifeguard program at Stayton Family Memorial Pool teaches 11- to 14-year-olds job and life skills as well as basic CPR and rescue techniques.

This is the first summer for the Junior Lifeguard GuardStart program, a precursor to the official lifeguard certification classes — and the program filled up quickly, pool manager Rebekah Meeks said.

Eleven out of 12 spaces were filled this summer. The program ends the first week of August.

The program is an opportunity for kids to test the waters of whether they want to become a lifeguard.

“This is a job for them,” Meeks said. “They have to come dressed in their guard shirt and bring their guard pack just like a regular lifeguard.”

If kids participate every year, it could also translate into a paying job…

Link to PDF: Kids learn life-saving skills

Published July 28, 2010 in The Stayton Mail by Denise Ruttan

The Hobson-Gehlen building on Second Avenue and Florence Street in downtown Stayton has seen better days.

Its windows are broken. The letters ARA are all that is left of a worn-out “garage” printed on the false-front facade. Inside, faded hints of the building’s past whisper tales of a long history.

The building, built in 1883, is one of Stayton’s oldest in a town that has a low survival rate for structures built before 1950.

When the Hobson-Gehlen building was put on the market recently, the “for sale” sign has put the spotlight on the viability of historic preservation in Stayton.

Link to PDF: Historic building puts spotlight on policies

Published June 16, 2010 in The Stayton Mail by Denise Ruttan

A national organization advocating the separation of church and state is concerned about Aumsville’s use of the phrase ”belief in God” in regards to “staff team values” on its city Web site.

An Aumsville resident, Andy Antonson, contacted the Columbia chapter of Americans United for the Separation of Church and State. The organization has nearly 75,000 members nationally and publicizes local situations involving the separation of church and state.

Antonson, a Buddhist, initially wrote to the city, saying the statement “supports a single view regarding faith and excludes those who do not share this view,” according to a press release from Americans United. After writing to the city, Antonson contacted American United.

Link to PDF: Religious reference generates complaint

Published Aug. 7, 2009 in Statesman Journal by Denise Ruttan

 

 

Surrounded by rolling grain and grass fields that stretch to the horizon is a family-owned farm in Scio known as the dairy that milks sheep.

Ancient Heritage Dairy, which has produced artisanal farmstead cheese from sheep’s and cow’s milk since 2006, is part of a collection of Oregon artisanal cheesemakers that has been gaining national attention.

Link to PDF: Cheese made from sheep’s milk translates to awards and attention

Published Feb. 16, 2011 in The Stayton Mail by Denise Ruttan

 

Waldport, Oregon, August 2009

Published: From Santiam To Coast blog

At Noris Dairy in Crabtree, between Scio and Albany, the milkman still delivers glass bottles to doorstops in Portland, Eugene and Corvallis.

They still make the kind of milk in which the cream rises to the top. The dairy also is certified organic.

“It’s a lot healthier, better for your heart and your arteries,” said Angela Spelt of Noris Dairy.

But dairies such as Noris — that process, bottle, distribute and market its own milk — are rare. The closure of Mallorie’s Dairy in Silverton last month has left only four producer-handlers in the state.

For some consumers, having that tight connection with a specific dairy and knowing where their milk comes from is important.

Link to PDF: Do you know the origin of your milk?

Published Feb. 3, 2011 in Statesman Journal – A1 – by Denise Ruttan and Cara Pallone