Word Cloud Envy: Making Your Own

Word cloud made from this blog’s URL. All copyrights reserved 2013, Debbie Morrow.

Words are powerful. They can make you laugh, cry, become enraged, and motivate you. These are some of the reasons word clouds rock. They allow our brains to take in a lot of information within a split second. When well crafted, they can send a message loud and clear.

In today’s world of scanned reading, word clouds can give the immediacy of information without any investment on the participant. For that reason alone, companies should try a variety of word clouds focusing on one message until they find one that is effective. Yet, word clouds are also known to help a site’s SEO (Search Engine Optimization).

For those interested in making their own word clouds – even in different shapes, here are a few websites to make your own cloud envy:

Social Media: Company Policy, Employee Responsibility, and Censorship

English: Infographic on how Social Media are being used, and how everything is changed by them. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

When Blogging Goes Wrong

One would think that what we do in our spare time away from our job should not reflect or impact our employment.  Unfortunately, how a person interacts and posts on social media websites can damage their image, ruin their career or even an associated business.

The latest example is when Steven Landsburg, a University of Rochester professor blogged his opinion on rape. The outrage and response from readers has placed pressure on U of R administrators to either fire or censor the professor.

Should Companies Censor?

There are practical reasons employees should be censored and there are reasons (namely the First Amendment) for allowing free, untethered thought.  For companies working entirely hard on maintaining good public relations, having a rogue employee spouting their views can damage the image of their business.

Yet, preventing employees from freedom of speech can have a negative effect as well. For this reason, companies are now placing guidelines for how employees can use social media instead of attempting to deny the use entirely.

A Picture Paints a Thousand Words

Many companies are using social media to hire and get a more intimate look at their future employees. They have experts that can get into anyone’s Facebook page, track tweets and other activity on the web. The image a person creates online can either make or break a deal.

Is it Ethical?

What is your product?

Reblogged from twizzness:

There are literally millions of people using social media. Some use it for business, some use it to stay connected with the news, but, what about those users who use it to shop?

Think of social media as one big shopping centre, it has everything, from the latest must have products to a must have service that’s required.

So how does it work for your business?

Read more… 256 more words

Some good words of advice on using social media and public image.

New Media Tip: Linking and Embedding specific sections of a YouTube video

Reblogged from New Media Interchange:

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When sharing YouTube videos, we often just link to the entire video and let people decide what they want to watch. While this is fine for short videos, sometimes we would rather refer people to just a specific portion of a much longer video. Perhaps we are highlighting a quote, tip or idea.

YouTube provides some basic tools for specifying a start time when linking or embedding a video, but with the addition of a few parameters to the video URL, you can direct viewers to a very specific segment.

Read more… 284 more words, 1 more video

Adding great media to your site is good. But learning how to customize a video to focusing on the message you want to share rather than the entire footage- is even better!

Can the Human Race Survive the Negative Side of Social Media?

How often do we speak face to face anymore? Image courtesy of Ed Yourdon from Flickr 3754271881

Social media has changed how we buy, sell, and communicate. There are so many positive effects to using digital communication that it’s hard to see the negative side. Yet, with our human behavior evolving with the latest technological tools, can our human race survive?

Human beings are meant to be social. We adapt to our culture, we learn the norms of interactions, appropriate behaviors, and scholars say it’s what develops our personality. But what happens when most of our interactions are with cold hard devices instead of face-to-face human exchange?

Body Language

How many times have you read an email and you weren’t quite sure how to take the message? Was the person angry, sarcastic, kidding…or what? That’s because the human race communicates with eye contact, mannerisms, facial expressions, body positions and more.

No matter how many emoticons we put into a message, they cannot replace the cues that have helped us survive as human beings. They’ve helped us decide the flight or fight response or even fall in love at first sight.

Will we eventually lose the ability to interact appropriately in social situations such as parties, dates, and other events? Will more and more people decline going to these events because of their ineptness to communicate in person?

A Challenge

Since we really don’t have clear answers for my questions, I offer my readers a challenge:

Boost Brand Popularity Using Social Media

Reblogged from Random Pages:

Investing in social media marketing will work for your business given its popularity. Here are some statistics that will justify the necessity of considering social media for your small business:

• 51 percent of Facebook fans are likely to buy a brand that they like so marketing in social media will definitely boost your brand.
• Almost 60 percent of small businesses spend less than $100 on social media marketing…

Read more… 369 more words

Some really good tips and stats for social media.

Notes From A Webinar: The Changing Face of Advertising

Social Networks Image courtesy of Photopin.com and FredCavazza.net.

Facebook is the number one social network site with the ability to reach over 1 billion users and customers.  Facebook doesn’t always pass your news feed on to others. An algorithm called EdgeRank determines what shows up on other people’s feeds.

There are 3 aspects of how the EdgeRank algorithm works:

• It measures the likes, interactions, and comments between users to recognize what those connections (users) care about.
• Content is more likely used if attached with links and comments.
• As something gets older, it loses importance. The longer a post experiences shares, comments, and engagement, the longer the post stays in the news feed.

The Marriage Between Traditional Media

and New Media

Today, a marketing business plan needs to use both traditional media and the new media to be successful. Hard copy advertising and supplements can be used as activation tools to generate a larger fan base which in turn, leads to a larger customer base.

The Entercom Marketing Group suggests using a cyclical strategy for raising fan rate and engagement. By creating more dialog, photos, and asking simple or provoking questions with just a yes, no, or “Like” response, businesses should gain a larger fan base.

Using Promotions to Gain Customers