January 4, 2012

Let’s give them something to talk about on Facebook

A new article on Social Media Today caught my attention this morning. Brad Smith a blogger out of San Diego talks about that “People are talking about this” tool you may have noticed on Facebook.

Besides the usual recommendations of a call to action and posting during peak hours, he also explains how the algorithm works, noting that the most valuable update you can use on your Facebook Page is video.

On a personal note, I recently got a new phone that takes excellent video, which I may start employing in this blog. For the moment, I just started creating short snippets which I added to my YouTube channel, now reachable on your right.

In the interim, at least I can leave you all with this clip in order to go along with the trend…

 

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January 2, 2012

First Things First for the Social Media Savvy in 2012

Happy New Year!

Now that we have that out of the way, let’s talk about what the Self-Employed-Social-Media-Maven-types should do to help get the year off to a great start!

Know who your “Friends” are--Hey it’s a New Year. So this is a time to quit some bad habits and start some new ones. One ghttp://www.clarisaclarity.com/wp-admin/post-new.phpood habit to employ with your use of Social Media is to segregate your personal and professional life online.  How does one do that?  Pages baby! Pages.  Keep personal info about family life or non work related friends on the personal page of your Facebook Account. Create a separate page for your business. This is also a good time to go through your “Friends” list and designate who they really are. Are they work acquaintances or friends from school?  Don’t remember who some of those folks are?  Consider them potential clients. If that doesn’t seem right it’s OK to un-Friend them. They will likely never know.

Share your Goals and encourage others to contribute to them–The great thing about the New Year, is that it’s a chance to start over. So consider some reachable goals, like how many Facebook/Twitter/Google+/Tumblr followers you want to gain in the new year, or how many blog entries you want to write.  Encourage followers/clients/customers to send you their questions to answer in your blog. This not only engages your audience but will encourage them to refer others to your site.

Make a Communications Plan–Do you know how often you want to be in touch with your clients?  Do you have annual events or a new product or service to offer this year?  Knowing how and when you are going to share that information with your Social Media audience is a good way to manage your goals. Develop an effective message and let that be a guidepost for you. Make a schedule for when and how you will get your message out. It doesn’t have to all come out at once. Sometimes putting information out a little at a time, can help keep your audience engaged and help create anticipation.

Go Offline! What?  Yes, you read that right. Go offline. Social Media is most effective when followed up by real life interactions. So get out there and meet people one on one. Go to mixers or host an event of your own to show your audience how much you really appreciate them.  Social Media may get their attention, but individual contact is more likely to get their business.

A New Year offers new opportunities, new challenges and new ideas. Here’s hoping we can all make the most of it.

My very best to you all for a great 2012!

 

 

 

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December 19, 2011

Holiday Week Guide for the Self-Employed

The holiday season is a little different when you are out working on your own. There are no treats brought in by co-workers, no Secret Santa, and no forced frivolity.  One thing that is the same is an interesting combination of work slow down and end of year activity. So I decided to make a Holiday Week Guide for the self employed…

  • Close out all outstanding invoices for the year It’s good to remind clients that in just about all cases consulting services are a business expense and therefore deductible.
  • Send Thank You Notes/Holiday greetings No matter what holiday you celebrate, be it Hanukkah, Solstice, Festivus or Christmas, it’s always good to celebrate the season and thank valuable clients for their business. If none of the holidays above apply you can send a New Year greeting.
  • Start compiling expenses for the year As soon as the holidays are through, BAM!  It’s tax season. If you have a light work load for the next two weeks consider starting your spreadsheets, getting all those receipts together. Get everything staged so once the New Year rolls around you can have your end of year numbers ready for when the W2′s and 1099′s start to arrive.
  • Throw yourself a holiday party As a self-employed consultant, I do miss out on some perks of having a gig with a standard brick and mortar.  So for me, having a holiday party meant meeting my sister and a friend at a local watering hole, from where we decided to track a flock of Pub Crawling Santas. A good time was had by all.

Happy Holidays Everybody!

 

 

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December 15, 2011

Information Age Archetypes

Comments now have their own ArchetypesEverything is faster in the information age: news, gossip, trends, revolutions. They spread with lightning speed and so does the culture that this information propagates.

In a short amount of time we have developed archetypes for how we participate on line. Linda Holmes of the NPR Monkey See blog breaks it down for us.

What’s most interesting about our participation in online discussions is the passive aggressive nature of it all. Through the veil of the computer screen, we feel free to rail, insinuate and insult. Some may say that the information age has increased dialogue, but I can’t help but notice that in many ways the quality of our dialogue has decreased.

If what we are saying is similar enough to consider them to be archetypes, one might hope that we could find some common chords. Nevertheless, at least there are words.

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December 9, 2011

Is it Crap or Craptastick?

The Crap-o-Meter a new app coming soon!

It’s hard to imagine what more we could want as  journalists in the height of the information age. We have so many tools at our fingertips:  instant video, blogs, microblogs, and a multitude of outlets via Social Media. But, as a writer, and a reader how do you sort through it all? How do you sort through the crap?

Clearly, what we need is a Crap-o-Meter.  I’m thinking a small icon, that looks like a pile of poop and tells how many people think a given story is utter crap.  Whether or not this would prevent prudent readers from reading said story to verify its crappiness, such a tool  would at least give the reader fair warning.

To be fair, the Crap-o-Meter should also have an alternate rating for articles that are Craptastick.  These are articles that don’t necessarily provide us with useful information, but do make great antidotes over cocktails.

Of course, such a tool could be the cause of much strife over what is Crap and what is Craptastick. And then the we’d have to categorize all of the pursuant discourse as well.

What would follow would be the implied bullying campaign organized by masses who flock to an article that they don’t agree with to dub it as Crap, only to lead to a rapid rise in traffic by those who believe it’s not Crap. And suddenly the Crap-o-Meter loses it’s meaning.  We then start to seek out articles that are dubbed as Crap, and then Crap and Crappy become the new words for cool.”Hey have you been to that new bar? I hear it’s pretty crappy!”

At this point we no longer know what’s Crap and what isn’t and end up wasting a lot of time reading pointless articles in hope that something meaningful might be gleaned.  But I think there’s a solution for that too. You see what we would need is an app that…ah crap!

 

 

 

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