Just wanted to share a link to a great article from Social Media Club regarding personal branding. It starts off as a sequel to another post about convincing people to join Twitter. Once someone joins, there’s that feeling of “now what?” This explains what comes next. Enjoy.
History loves to keep track of Presidential firsts. Calvin Coolidge was the first President to make a radio broadcast. First president to appear on black & white television? FDR of course. And Obama had the honor of giving the first presidential Tweet in 2010, but on the @redcross instead of his own account.
This week another media first occurred when Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) announced his bid for president via video on his Twitter account. His message also made him the first person to throw their hat into the ring for the 2016 Presidential Election.
The move to jump ahead of the rest of the pack and get his name out there via social media has sparked a positive consensus in the mainstream media. On the other hand, there have also already been some actions that have been considered missteps by his campaign.
For instance, the Senator failed to secure tedcruz.com. Instead it belongs to another Ted Cruz who uses it to simply post this message: 
The other point of contention seems to be that some people don’t like Cruz’s logo. The intention seems to be some sort of flame or torch superimposed with the American flag. Unfortunately the end result has inspired opinions ranging from a burning upside-down flag to an American version of the Al Jazeera logo.
I’m sure that as election season proceeds ad nauseam for months on end, we will see many presidential media firsts. We will also see any number of manufactured scandals and conflicts among the candidates as they continue to jump into the race. No doubt the media, both new and traditional, will be right there with them, tweeting and posting every word and photo. For the next eighteen months.
Wondering which social media platform is going to win the big game on Sunday? Look no further. Fluent did the work for you, surveying over 5,000 people to see how they would be using social media during the Superbowl. Facebook won by a landslide with 44.3%. Twitter barely racked up 18%. Check out the rest of the survey here.
As social media professionals, getting more followers on Twitter is usually a good thing. Until you started scrolling through them and realize that a lot of them are just spam or “egg-heads,” so called because there is no picture, just Twitter’s default egg shaped graphic.
Ready to clean house and get some real numbers? Try this Google Script from Amit Agarwal at Digital Inspiration. According to LifeHacker, “It looks at the URL of each of your followers’ Twitter avatar and pulls any with the word “default” in there.” Continue reading
Want to improve your Twitter posts? Check out Spruce. Go to their website, type in your Tweet and choose one of their background photos or upload your own. You can even pick from multiple fonts to upgrade the text itself. Once you click the Tweet button it will prompt you to give the site permission to access and link to your Twitter account.
If you prefer, you can also use Spruce to post to Facebook as well. Once permission is given the site will post for you.
As social media has become more and more prevalent over the years we have seen it become an indispensable tool in our daily lives to conduct business and social activities. In the process it has also been used to both improve and destroy lives.
On September 11th 2014, in the city of Philadelphia, the public was able to see first hand how social media can be used for both good and evil. On that evening, two gay men were attacked as they walked down the sidewalk by a group of intoxicated men and women.
A surveillance video was later released by the police and went viral along with the story. This is when an army of social media crusaders took over, starting with a twitter user named Greg Bennet. He managed to get a picture of the attackers that had been taken of them earlier in the evening and posted it, asking for assistance in identifying them. Continue reading
“Never be bullied into silence. Never allow yourself to be made a victim. Accept no one’s definition of your life; define yourself.” – Harvey Fierstein
Zelda Williams has been through hell in the past month. On August 11th she lost her father, the iconic and brilliant Robin Williams, to suicide. As if that wasn’t devastating enough for her, she was immediately made the victim of brutal cyber bullying.
Trolls on Twitter went on the attack, sending doctored photos of her father’s dead body and making a multitude of derogatory comments. Twitter VP Del Harvey stepped up and stated it would “not tolerate abuse of this nature,” Continue reading
One of the aspects of social media is that whatever trends is a force to be reckoned with. A story may begin on Twitter, for instance, but if it’s strong enough it will ride the wave of media down through the ranks to more traditional and widespread media outlets.
We’ve recently been gifted with a couple of great stories about women in sports. These in turn spread beyond their traditional regions of newsworthiness and into the ether, in this case influencing other young women who wish to pursue their interests in sports.
For instance the story of the female pitcher that took her team to the Little League World Series went from Connecticut to nationwide in less than twenty-four hours thanks to social media.
One that I paid close attention to was the hiring of Becky Hammon by the San Antonio Spurs. Her story expanded over and over from San Antonio to ESPN.
Well, Robin Thicke has something else to add to his list of “Things never to do again.” Along with “don’t let everyone know you’re a misogynist” he can now add “don’t give the public the opportunity to crucify you in public, because they will.”
VH1 had the brilliant idea to ask the Twitter-verse for questions to ask Robin Thicke on air during an interview using #askthicke. The questions quickly devolved into a deluge of negative comments about his music’s misogyny. According to the New York Times:
What happened was a tsunami of anti-Thicke resentment: stored-up agita spurred by the sexual aggression in his 2013 hit “Blurred Lines”; frustration with how he dodged complicity for his eroticized duet with Miley Cyrus at the 2013 MTV Video Music Awards, leaving Ms. Cyrus as the stained one; and discomfort with his very public attempts to reconcile with Ms. Patton, from whom he is separated, because of his unspecified indiscretions.
And if you want something else to dislike him for, check out E!’s story on his latest album Paula and The 33 Creepiest, Most Uncomfortable Lyrics on Robin Thicke’s New Album. It is supposed to be dedicated to his soon-to-be ex-wife in a last ditch effort to win her back. Based on these lyrics and the current reaction to the album, it doesn’t look good.
I don’t profess to be an expert on social media. Like most of us, I’m a student who is constantly learning, and I have no problems searching out the best teachers to learn from.
I recently came across a great article giving advice on how small businesses can best use social media to their best advantage. Over on Social Media Today, Richard Wood wrote a great article on this subject that you can find here.
New Media Monster 