Oct 17
Love0

Girls Charged with Felony after Cyberbullying via Facebook and Text

By Social Media

I don’t mean to come across as celebrating the misfortunes of others — in fact, I’m not — but I am happy that Florida police took cyberbullying seriously. NPR reports a 14-year-old and a 12-year-old harassed a classmate, bullying her via Facebook messages and texts and in person, leading to the suicide of the victim, a seventh-grader.  Both girls have been charged with felony aggravated stalking.

As a mom of a kid who endured middle school bullying, it infuriates me how often kids tap into technology to torment others. Further, it infuriates me how little parents pay attention to what their kids are doing online. If you’re a parent who has allowed your kids to use the internet and/or a cell phone, it is your responsibility to talk to them about responsible use. It is critical that you pay attention to their posts and their friends’ posts. It is NOT OK to shrug off social media as “something kids do” and think that you don’t need to know how to use these tools and, further, teach your children how to use them properly. It’s just way too easy for kids to feel anonymous and safe doing something terribly wrong online, simply because not enough of the right people are paying attention.

If you don’t know enough about online tools to keep up with your kids, get some help. Take a class or watch an online tutorial. Ask a friend. Ask me! But don’t let your kids be attacked virtually without anyone of authority knowing about it.

Oct 08
Love0

I Do Not Have Ninja Skills: What to do about Endorsements on LinkedIn

By Social Media

emersonI suspect that Ms. Caroline Emerson is just looking for her 15 minutes of fame on this blog with this question, posed via Twitter.

LinkedIn endorsements are stupid. I wrote about their lack of effectiveness back in May, 2013, when they were introduced and people were getting endorsed for skills like “manslaughter” and “beer drinking.”

The problem is, LinkedIn so persistently asks users to endorse those in their networks, that it’s inevitable that you’re going to have people endorsing you for skills you have, and skills you don’t. You don’t have to accept endorsements. That’s the first step. But in case life moves too fast and you’re not really paying attention, and you suddenly end up with endorsements you don’t want, here’s what to do. Go to Profile –> Edit Profile. Scroll down to Skills & Expertise and find the edit button on the top right. You can add or remove your existing endorsements…

skills

 

 

Or you can manage them, which enables you to get rid of the morons in your connections who have inappropriately endorsed you (if that’s the case).

manage

 

See that green check mark at the top right? If you get really frustrated with the whole thing, you can stop displaying endorsements at any time.

There you go, Caroline Emerson. I hope that helps.

Sep 26
Love1

Barilla’s Big Gay Mistake

By Communications, Public Relations, Social Media

Barilla_Logo_ClaimUS_RGB_posOnce again a brand is about to bite the dust over attempting to alienate a segment of its customer population. In a ridiculous statement, the chairman of the pasta company has said that they will not feature any gay families in its advertising. This has naturally created a social media firestorm of pasta-eaters banning the brand. When I see this kind of story, I can never imagine how such a moronic position happened in the first place, much less how it made it into mainstream media. barilla quote

Brand representatives are scrambling, asserting that the statement was a “mistake” and trying to retract and correct, positioning chairman Guido Barilla supports gay marriage (but not gay adoption.) In any case, he definitely doesn’t want gay people eating Barilla pasta.

#boycottbarilla is the trending hashtag, if you’re interested in following such things.

Me? I’m going for some homemade pasta.

What does Barilla need to do to fix this?

  1. Apologize! “we’re sorry for being insensitive to people everywhere who love our pasta. We definitely will have people of all genders, races, sexual orientations and pasta preferences in all of our advertising going forward,” would be a good start.
  2. Probably fire, or seriously demote Guido Barilla. He’s made that bed.
  3. Make a large donation to a gay rights organization asap.
  4.  Launch a new campaign that demonstrates INCLUSION of all people who may or may not want to eat pasta. Jeez. Is it really that hard?

I don’t know about you, but I’m really sick of politics getting in the way of my food choices.

 

Sep 26
Love0

In a Client’s Words: Working with UVa Intramural-Recreational Sports

By Communications, Marketing, Social Media

I am, of course, proud of all of my clients, what they learn, how they apply what they learn to every day work and how they follow through on the execution of a strategic communications plan. However, right now, I’m extra super proud of Carol Spry at the University of Virginia. Carol is in the Intramural-Recreational Sports marketing department and what we’ve done together is take that program from a very print-focused, traditional marketing world to a very social, web-friendly, responsive and interconnected (read: UVa student friendly!) platform, and Carol is right at the core of making all of that happen.

In this video, produced by the HR department of UVa, Carol talks about her job at the University. See if you can spot my cameo!

My UVa Job – Carol Spry from My UVA Job on Vimeo.

Sep 18
Love0

Blogs Not Dead, just Better

By Social Media

A friend asked me a couple of weeks ago if blogs were passé. Some are, sure. There are thousands of dead blogs and retired, dispassionate bloggers. Blog readers have become more selective and demanding. The result? Better blogs.

We’ve reared back from the “everyone must blog” culture and filtered down to some really interesting, sometimes short-term, but definitely purposeful blogs. The difference? They’re interesting. Well-written. Often, they cover a specific topic, time period, experience, series, etc. Like a book, a blog can be seen as a body of work. The good ones are cohesive.

An example that came to my attention this week was written about in the New York Times. In it, a middle class, white family in South Africa moves from their comfortable suburban home to the slums for a month. Their blog about the experience, Mamelodi for a Month  http://mamelodiforamonth.co.za has inspired controversy. Sometimes referred to as “extreme empathy” this is the kind of experiential content that launched the career of Morgan Spurlock, of Supersize Me, the man who ate nothing but food from McDonald’s for 30 days. Spurlock then created the series, 30 Days — a documentary project that featured individuals being inserted into communities that had completely different values, belief systems, religions, cultural ideas or professions.

Extreme empathy is definitely a blog trend, and certainly creates interesting and sometimes controversial content for the consumer. Is there a way you can insert extreme empathy into your blogging, either personally or as a corporation? What can we learn from those who undertake the giant leap out of their comfort zone, in order to report back to the rest of us from the “other side?”