We worry that IM, texting, Facebook are spoiling human intimacy, but Stefana Broadbent’s research shows how communication tech is capable of cultivating deeper relationships, bringing love across barriers like distance and workplace rules.

Stefana Broadbent watches us while we talk (and IM, and text). She is one of a new class of ethnographers who study the way our social habits and relationships function and mutate in the digital age.

Note: Thee source of this post come from TED – Ideas Worth Spreading

Just finished reading the book Crush It by Gary Vaynerchuk. Great book (only 150 pages) about following your passion and the use of social media to achieve these dreams. Some of you might not know Gary, he is the founder behind Wine Library TV. Gary has quite a story of were he came from, growing up in New York working for his father, and his passion and entrepreneurial spirit.

Gary has some great suggestions and examples as to how you can turn your passion into your personal brand and business. One of Gary’s strategies was the use of social media to market his brand!

Leveraging social network platforms into effective conduits for your personal brand is all about building word of mouth. ~ Gary Vaynerchuk

Chapters 5 and 6 – Create Great Content and Choose Your Platforms – provide great advice as to how to create your content and distribute it through the various social media platforms. Chapter 11 – Start Monetizing – provides some ideas as to how you can start making money from your brand – granted you need to build your followers and brand first. In Appendix A – Did You Forget Anything – Gary provides a quick checklist to help you get started.

I highly recommend this as a great introduction book to anyone interested in how they can turn what they know, and are passionate about, into their dreams of doing it for a living!

Take your blog for a walk today! I been recently looking over my blog trying to determine how to make it better. Looking over the frequency of posts something has come to my attention… I don’t play with my blog very much.

Having a blog is very much like having a family pet, in this case lets say a dog. Having a dog is a big commitment, at least thats what I tell my kids. Maybe this is why I have two cats, lets face it cats are a low maintenance pet. You do have to change the litter every few days, feed them and maybe leave the toilet seat up so they can get a drink! But they don’t need to be walked, played with or even given much attention – pretty much they are completely indifferent to your existence!

Dogs on the other hand need to be walked, cleaned and are constantly looking for attention. If you don’t do these things then what ends up happening; dogs start crapping all over the house, getting into trouble. and can eventually get mean and turn on their owners.

This is much what having a blog is like. You have to constantly pay attention to your blog, you have to feed it and take it for walks. If you don’t pay any attention to your blog then it can get old and mean, and turn on it’s owner, by telling everyone that you don’t take blogging seriously.

So what am I trying to say in this rambling of dogs and cats? If you are considering starting a blog to promote your business or organization, remember blogs (i.e. dogs) need constant attention. So I am making a New Year’s resolution to trying and walk my blog (write a post) at least once a week. Let’s see how this resolution turns out!

I have been recently viewing the plethora of posts on Facebook, Twitter, etc. from various people and organizations. I assume these people or organizations are attempting to leverage social media as one of their marketing strategies. One thing that was quite alarming was the number of posts that had no follow through in terms of responses to comments made by viewers.

The whole point of utilizing social media is to engage in conversation with your followers or customers. Utilizing social media, as one of your marketing strategies, should not be treated like the traditional approaches; whereby, you shotgun information out on as many mediums as possible in hopes that a percentage of recipients will respond (i.e. leads in traditional marketing terms) and you will be able to convert these into opportunities.

The point of social media is to engage with people in order to learn more about them, and they can learn more about yourself and organization. Only once they feel comfortable, and start to trust you, will there be an opportunity for your business. Now this may sound a little manipulative, in terms of attempting to establish trust, with the intention of try to generate business. However, I believe if you are sincere, whereby you really believe that you are trying to help them with need or a problem, than this shouldn’t be an issue. One of the best definitions for marketing I have ever heard is…

Marketing is getting people who have a specific need or problem to know, like, and trust you.

Remember, the point of using social media is to engage with your followers and customers. Therefore, be sure to take every opportunity to respond to comments made by your viewers.

I have just recently designed, developed and launched a new website for my client Quest Wellness. This was my first website developed on the awesome CMS (Content Management System) Expression Engine. Expression Engine had a bit of a learning curve to it, however once I mastered this I find it to be one the best and most flexible CMS I have ever worked with.

So what else did I do besides the website. I integrated the website blog and event calendar into their Facebook Fan Page and Twitter account. So now when Quest Wellness updates their blog, or adds upcoming events, their social media sites will be updated automatically. Also, the website and relevant pages where optimized for search engines (i.e. Google, Yahoo, etc.) based on key words and phrases.

In terms of measuring the results of these effort I have integrated their website, Fan Page and Twitter account with analytics so that they can see how many visitors the get, how long the visitors stay at the site and what the visitors are looking at. This is important to understand in order to determine which of their marketing activities are successful.

If you would like to learn more about this project, or what I could do for your company or organization, please do not hesitate to contact me.