Gluten-Free Fun

Monday, November 2, 2015

HAChat Tomorrow: How to Navigate the Holidays with a Chronic Illness

Tomorrow, November 3, I am co-hosting a WEGOHealth health advocate Twitter chat at 3pm EST. During this hour-long Twitter conversation, I will address your questions and biggest challenges of how to survive the holidays while managing your health. I will give some gluten-free tips, wellness suggestions, and provide you with some ideas to make your holidays more enjoyable.

To participate, follow the hashtag #HAchat on Twitter this Tuesday at 3pm EST or you can follow along at http://hubs.ly/H01lG0Z0.

Labels: event, gluten-free, holidays, live, twitter, WEGO Health

Monday, June 16, 2014

Where is Gluten-Free Fun on Facebook?

Dear Readers,

Facebook has change their ways again. With these new changes, many of my Gluten-Free Fun Facebook posts are no longer showing up in your news feeds. Unless I start paying to advertise on Facebook, you may miss many of my posts. This makes me sad. I get ZERO revenue from this blog which means I have no budget for advertising.

According to fellow blogger and social media expert Derek Halpern's blog:

According to AdAge, Facebook said, “We expect organic distribution of an individual page’s posts to gradually decline over time…” And a Facebook spokesperson said, “the best way to get your stuff seen if you’re a business is to pay for it.”

This means you may not receive my content anymore via my Gluten-Free Fun Facebook page because it doesn’t make sense for me to pay Facebook to send you my Gluten-Free Fun news you can read for free.

There are a few things you can do to keep seeing my content.

1. Read my Gluten-Free Fun blog. You are here, so you are reading. YAY!

2. Like my Gluten-Free Fun page on Facebook, but update to "Get Notifications." By doing this you will always see my Facebook posts. See the image below to know where to look

https://www.facebook.com/GlutenFreeFun

3. Follow @GFreeFun on Twitter. I often post and link back to my Facebook page.

Thank you for your loyalty and your support! It means the world to me.

~Erin

Labels: facebook, Gluten-Free Fun, social media, twitter

Tuesday, May 27, 2014

#PositiveCeliac on Twitter

It's the last week of Celiac Awareness Month and I've posted a lot less than usual this month. Today, I would like to let a little secret out of the bag. While I have been quiet on my blog, I have been secretly tweeting and retweeting as @PositiveCeliac all month long.

Back in the beginning of April, I emailed Taylor of Gluten Away after seeing some of his positive tweets to the gluten-free community. At the time of my email, I felt really down about our Celiac world. Taylor was one of the few people keeping his chin up and trying to encourage the community instead of complaining like many others were doing via social media. I thought we needed more of this in our world and Taylor was a great person to connect with via social media.

Note: If you don't know Taylor, meet him by reading his blog. He is a teenager who continues to blow me away with his social media presence and amazing maturity at such a young age!

Taylor and I sent a few brainstorming emails back and forth about ways to promote positivity in our community. We both shared the idea of spreading the message of celiac hope and words of encouragement via Twitter. He convinced me that #celiacpositivity was a bit long and suddenly #positiveceliac was born.

I wasn't feeling great at the end of April so I couldn't move forward with exactly what I had hoped to do during May's Celiac Awareness Month. Behind the scenes, I knew I still wanted to do something and Twitter seemed like the easiest thing to do. On April 30th, the eve of Celiac Awareness Month, @positiveceliac was launched and the rest is history.

It has been a really exciting social media experiment to see #PositiveCeliac grow organically this month. Taylor and many other bloggers have embraced this hashtag and have run with it amazingly. I've read stories of hope, inspiration, and healing. I've seen that the community is not full of haters, bullies, and complainers. I've been reminded that there are people doing good with their celiac diagnosis and not claiming to be unloved social outcasts to anyone who will listen. There are people that have embraced their celiac diagnosis wholeheartedly instead of throwing a pity party. They are celebrating their new and healthy gluten-free lives while living with a disease that is treated with food! My hope for the future of the gluten-free and celiac community is slowly being restored.

So my secret is now out...
I am @PositiveCeliac.

It's been therapeutic and fun to be behind this Twitter handle during Celiac Awareness Month. I plan to keep on tweeting and retweeting your messages of living your most #PositiveCeliac life. Keep them coming. This campaign will continue throughout the year. A special thanks to Taylor who has been keeping the #PositiveCeliac trend alive all month long! I couldn't have done this without him.

For those of you not on Twitter, you can read the tweets here:

Tweets about "#positiveceliac"

Labels: Celiac Awareness Month, PositiveCeliac, twitter

Friday, January 3, 2014

WEGO Health Awards Nominee: Gluten-Free Fun on Twitter

I reluctantly joined Twitter in 2010 after Jill from Glow Gluten-Free told me it was a great way to reach out to my readers. I slowly made my way into the Twittersphere only to realize that Jill was correct. I could "talk" to my followers and loved the instant gratification. I started participating in Twitter chats, connected with lots of cool people, and even started using Twitter to plan my vacations. It was an awesome and very powerful tool that I was glad I joined.

Now, almost 3.5 years later, I am so honored to be nominated for this year's WEGO Health Awards for "Best in Show: Twitter." According to the WEGO website, "Best in Show: Twitter is for the Twitter addict who wields their reach for good and spreads #information for all." Ha! Yes, I am a full-fledged Twitter addict these days. With more than 4,500 followers, I am constantly blown away that so many people want to connect with me, read my Tweets, and respond to what I have to say. I appreciate all of you and thank you dearly for considering me one of the gluten-free best on Twitter!

Do you follow me on Twitter? If not, you can find me at @gfreefun. Stop by and say hello.

If you think I am a Master Tweeter or just like my blog Gluten-Free Fun, I would love your endorsement on the WEGO Health Awards nomination page. Don't like me on Twitter, but like my blog or like me on Facebook? I would love a nomination for that too. Thank you in advance!

Labels: Best in Show, Gluten-Free Fun, nominee, twitter, WEGO Health

Thursday, March 10, 2011

Pleased to Tweet You: Gluten-Free Fun

Last week, I was honored to be featured in the NFCA's Celiac Central March Newsletter. They have a relatively new featured called "Pleased to Tweet You" which features a prominent gluten-free "Tweeter". For those of you unfamiliar with the social networking site Twitter, a "Tweeter" is someone that posts regularly on the website via "tweets" which are brief 140-character conversations.

I was very late to the Twitter game and only joined at the end of September 2010 after being convinced by Dan of Renegade Kitchen and Jill of Glow Gluten-Free that this was THE tool to use on the Internet. They were 100% correct. In only one month of using Twitter, my blog readership jumped by more than 50% and my Facebook fan page nearly doubled in size. Clearly I had a been missing out on an entire gluten-free audience that I never knew about before joining Twitter.

Since September, I have connected with some really amazing gluten-free people and companies. I even attended the awesome Food Fete event last week that I had no clue about before reading a post on Twitter. For those of you bloggers or readers not on Twitter, I suggest you join today. I was afraid to get sucked into another social media website, but this is really an amazing and powerful tool. There are lots of symbols and abbreviations like @, #, and #FF that take some time getting used to, but you will quickly get the hang of it. Hopefully you will realize, like I did, that there is a wealth of information that can be expressed in 140 characters or less.

Here is my "Pleased to Tweet You" interview that I did with Cheryl of the NFCA last week. You can also find it on the NFCA's Celiac Central March Newsletter page.

Gluten-Free Fun on Twitter

Pleased to Tweet You

Each month, "Pleased to Tweet You" will highlight an individual who chatted with @CeliacAwareness on Twitter. If you’d like to be featured, follow @CeliacAwareness and say hello!

Name: Erin Smith

Find her on Twitter: @gfreefun

Tweeting since: September 2010

1. How long have you been gluten-free?
I was diagnosed with celiac disease as a toddler in 1981 so I am celebrating 30 years of being gluten-free this year!! I like to think of myself as a Celiac Disease veteran.

2. What do you like to tweet about (events, recipes, news articles, etc.)?
Every morning, I tweet about my daily blog postings on Gluten-Free Fun (which has been around since January 2007). Throughout the day, I tweet about interesting gluten-free articles and blogs I read, gluten-free events, and also general tweets to friends I have made on Twitter. As the lead organizer of the NYC Celiac Disease Meetup group, I also tweet about all of our upcoming events.

3. Why do you follow NFCA (@CeliacAwareness)?
Besides thinking the staff of NFCA are all awesome, I think the materials that the NFCA provides free-of-charge on their website are really outstanding and thorough. Whenever @CeliacAwarness posts a new tweet, I go directly to the website to learn more. I can spend hours on the NFCA website looking at the both educational and entertaining materials including gluten-free tax tips, fun videos like “Sex and the Celiac,” recent celiac disease news items, and upcoming events.

4. What's your favorite gluten-free dish?
I have so many gluten-free favorites, so this is a tough question. I love to cook but lately two of my favorites are Gluten-Free Bisquick Bacon Pie and homemade gluten-free lasagna. When I go out to eat in NYC, I love the Nutella galette at Bar Breton, the socca at Nizza NYC, and the nachos at Heartland Brewery Midtown West.

5. What's one thing you can do now that you couldn't do before going gluten-free?
Since I was diagnosed with celiac disease at such a young age, I don’t know anything else other than being gluten-free. Over the past few years, I have accepted my disease more than ever before and I am much more open to actually talking about having celiac disease. I used to be embarrassed and not want other people to know why I was avoiding eating in social settings, why I had different bread, etc. In the past 5 or 6 years, I have fully embraced my gluten-free lifestyle so I spend more time being an advocate for celiac disease rather than being embarrassed and hiding who I am.

6. In 140 characters or less, why should others join the gluten-free community on Twitter?
The gf community on Twitter is knowledgeable, passionate, and a great support system. I love "meeting" new people every day!

* Erin’s blog, Gluten-Free Fun, is in the running for Women’s Health "Blogs We Love" 2011. Learn how you can help her get noticed and spread the gluten-free message.

Labels: "gluten-free fun", "NFCA", twitter

Tuesday, June 16, 2009

Gluten-Free on Twitter

Labels: "gluten free", twitter