Flo Schmo, the SMO Pro

Location: Moe’s Diner, Podunksville, USA

Characters: Moe, the owner and Flo the waitress and SMO pro

Scene: Flo, who has been on medical leave for the last two months, finally returns to her work at the diner. Moe is impatient to take up where they left off discussing his website. He asks her to take a short break and talk to him while he munches his fifth jelly-filled iced donut of the day.

Flo (wiping donut crumbs off the counter): “Moe, do you Twitter?”

Moe (looking sheepish): “Only when I’ve eaten too many beans…and I usually try to at least turn away from you gals first.”

Flo (giving him an exasperated look and shaking her head): “Not that, you fool! Twitter, as in the social networking/micro blogging site.”

Moe (perplexed): “The who de who de what?”

Flo “Social networking, Moe. It’s a website where you can sign up as a member and post little tiny snippets of text. You only have 140 characters so you have to be short and sweet. Anyone who is following your tweets can read them as you post them.”

Flo (shakes his head and takes another bite of donut): “You lost me. What’s that supposed to do for my website, anywho?”

Flo (dabbing at bit of jelly stuck in the corner of Moe’s mouth with her rag): “It gets the words out about you and what you do. The idea is to get a lot of followers, then post an interesting title, something that will catch their attention. You include a link to your content, usually a blog post. The hope is that your followers will be interested enough to click on the link. This does two things for you. Number one it drives traffic to your site. Number two, it creates another inbound link to your site.”

Moe (nodding): “I remember you saying something about traffic and links before.”

Flo (waving to a customer who’s come in the front door of the diner): “There’s not only Twitter, but MySpace, Facebook, FriendFeed – tons of ‘em. Get signed up for as many as you can and I’ll help you write the first posts. But then you gotta keep up on ‘em. Deal?” Flo stretches her hand across the counter to Moe.

Moe (taking her hand and kissing it instead of shaking it): “Deal! Now get back to work, Sweet Cheeks.”

Flo (walking away and muttering under her breath): “I don’t know why I put up with that man, honestly I don’t!”