Many of my mom friends comment how overwhelming social media is and I suggest taking things slow until you find your social media "mojo". For moms, I suggest a great place to start is Facebook for social and LinkedIn if you want to make business contacts. Start off setting privacy levels as high as possible, then open things as you see fit.
Guy Kawasaki (a.k.a How to Change the World blog and Alltop) wrote a good post about using LinkedIn. Some good links to find information about using Facebook is on the Facebook website, Mahalo – How to use Facebook article and Mashable's article on privacy settings.
Next I suggest Twitter for those that want to have a "public" online community to share information with. David Pogue just wrote a book about Twitter and Mashable has a post about using Twitter on the go. Twitter can be compared to texting – but onto a "public" website where your "followers" can read and respond to what you are doing at that moment (only 140 characters allowed). You can either open your updates to the public or restrict to only those you approve. Some start out with protected updates but then switch to public to be more open. I always tell my friends that ask my advice about social media privacy – to NOT put any private information online, especially on Twitter. Twitter should only be a place to share information about yourself that is public.
I enjoy sharing what I am doing, reading, posting, struggling with and most of all reading my followers Twitters and replying to them. I will be posting more about Twitter, but for now I want to share my latest social media test: using TwitPic. Twitpic is a way to share pictures on Twitter (many celebrities use it) by taking a picture with your smartphone and sending it to the TwitPic application – which then posts it on Twitter. I don't like posting pictures of my kids in public forums, so I will probably use it to post pictures with my blogging friends (who are already public) and pictures of events.
Here is my first real TwitPic – I took a picture with my BlackBerry and sent it to Twitpic. It was a picture taken at our family and friends trip to the beach on July 4th. I took the picture of my foot (with my strawberry colored toes) and one of my 6 year old twins (with sandy covered toes). He is constantly growing, just looking at the picture makes me realize his foot is growing as well!
My test picture was of a grenade water ballon – but I had to take that quick and get out of the way!
Blogs are so interactive where we get lots of informative on any topics nice job keep it up !!
Great suggestions – once you get the hang of Facebook, Twitter is pretty easy as your Facebook status updates are essential what twitter is all about. There is also an app that will turn your twitter updates into your Facebook status and vice versa.
I’ve found that FB is a great way to connect with a closed network, but not great for expanding the network. Twitter has been a very good way to engage with customers and to develop a conversation with users (who would not likely be a FB friend).
hey beth i’m just starting to navigate the digital waters as well.
i’ve started a blog to promote my most recent book, Guts and Grace but my goal is to build relationships.
i’d welcome any thoughts you might have on how to make my blog more personal.
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