Friends

Just don’t do it. The key component of social media is the “social” aspect of it– that is, to interact with other people and to be, well, social. Purchasing your fans gives you no advantage in social media, only to … Read More

If you’re new to using social media for your business, it can admittedly be overwhelming.  I have friends, long time college veterans of Facebook, who have disabled their Facebook accounts for personal reasons, only to come back later, barraged with … Read More

There is an abundance of information and content floating around in the internet, but the question is, what is the best? Surely, we all don’t have time to go aimlessly searching for good articles, links, facts and information everyday to … Read More

But as your friends, fans and followers await your status updates… how many times have you looked at the blank box and thought ‘What the heck do I type in there?’ You’re not alone. As social media becomes an increasingly important tool for business, it becomes harder to know just how to use it effectively.

I think that surprises are harder and harder to pull off these days with the high use of social media, but leave it to my wife and friends to know better than to post anything on their FB pages or Twitter accounts about their plans for the evening.

I love that my social life and my social media life are becoming very intertwined.  Slowly but surely, Facebook is sort of defining relationships in a way that was never possible before, and has only become a recent occurrence. When … Read More

My easy-to-navigate tabs disappeared at the top of the page and they were replaced by a paragraph of somewhat-meaningless facts about me – where I went to college, who I married, the languages I speak – and a filmstrip of pictures that were so weirdly cropped that it looked like some kind of artistic slide show of my various body parts. It was messy and cluttered – not to mention the fact that someone would have to look 3 inches down the page to see the really important stuff – like where I checked in from while Christmas shopping this morning, the three latest things I ‘like’ or how I feel about having to go back to work tomorrow.

Here’s something that gets me into arguments with other social media people: I won’t “friend” (yes, it’s a verb) anyone I don’t know. I’m not going to click on every face that shows up in the ‘People You May Know’ column on my home page. Because once we’re friends, you’re going to be let into my life.

That’s not to say that I’ve had deep, soul-searching conversations with all of my Facebook friends. I haven’t. But there has been some kind of interaction with all of them. If someone sends me a friend request, and I don’t know them – or if I really want to connect with someone who I haven’t actually met – I’ll send a Facebook message instead of the friend request. Hopefully, we’ll have some dialog and at some point, that conversation will move into a ‘friend’ ship.