THE recipe for powerful, impactful success in all social media is…

GREAT WRITING is THE recipe for powerful, impactful success in all social media.

Here are my fav sites for this (and please share yours in the comments):

FIRST, check out digital writing 101 which focuses on core principles of digital rhetoric. Author Amy Goodloe is an educator who believes that “Digital environments have fundamentally changed the way people read and communicate. ” and that to communicate effectively in digital environments we need to move beyond the skills for “using mediums that are relics of the pre-digital world“.  I agree with her and am thankful for her site, which includes this hand-out on writing rhetorically aware blog posts and these recommendations for resources on writing for the web.

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Another thorough resource, also focused on online writing, is copyblogger, offering many resources, including this free free ebook on SEO copy writing tips and secrets (and it actually is free — you don’t even have to give out your email address).  Check out the impressive credentials of founder Brian Clark and you will be confident that you are learning from the best.

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Finally, I must mention the authoritative, well-organized resources at The Purdue OWL (Online Writing Lab) — an invaluable guide for mechanics, grammar, visual rhetoric, the writing process, and more.

Any advice?  Tips?  Resources?
Please share…..

5 Awesome Ways to Tame Your Social Media Feeds

Check out this post from DAILY TREK‘s recent blog and “find the good content, the content that’s actually worth your time, the stuff you really want to see.”

Business Tweeting 101 (also works for fb, blogging, g+)

It’s hard to convey the paradigm of building community in one short article — but if a business followed this advice from Time Magazine, they could be lucky enough to learn about community building by building community!

What other advice would you give to a business learning to use SMS?

Take a break and “snack” on a short relaxing game

Check out this assortment of relaxing casual online games, selected by Casual Girl Gamer!

Which is your favorite?

My favs are AUDITORIUM (shown above), which will “entrance you with great music, beautiful graphics and wickedly intelligent puzzles”.

AND

The lovely FLOWER REACTION:

LOOPS OF ZEN would be a favorite — but I’m peeved with it for wasting too much of my time….

Can you recommend any other short diversions for my “snack breaks”?

SMS, Doing Good, & The Future of Mankind

“A building has integrity just like a man. And just as seldom.”
― Ayn Rand, The Fountainhead

Twitter.com, as well as individuals, are promoting ways to do good through tweeting — these include crisis communication (as during the crises in Egypt and in Japan), fundraising, and building communities for support and innovation.

These uses within our current social structures do not fully mine the possibilities — as Ayn Rand pointed out about architecture in her seminal novel “The Fountainhead”, we must respond to new  resources with new structures, new techniques and even new ways of decision-making — we must change.

“Roark: Shall I tell you what’s wrong with it?

Dean: It’s the Parthenon!

Roark: Yes, God damn it, the Parthenon!… Look… the famous flutings on the famous columns – what are they there for?

To hide the joints in wood – when columns were made of wood, only these aren’t, they’re marble.

The triglyphs, what are they? Wood. Wooden beams, the way they had to be laid when people began to build wooden shacks.

Your Greeks took marble and they made copies of their wooden structures out of it, because others had done it that way.

Then your masters of the Renaissance came along and made copies in plaster of copies in marble of copies in wood.

Now here we are, making copies in steel and concrete of copies in plaster of copies in marble of copies of wood.

Why?… The Parthenon did not serve the same purpose as its wooden ancestor. An airline terminal does not serve the same purpose as the Parthenon.

Every form has its own meaning.

Every man creates his meaning and form and goal.”

– Ayn Rand, The Fountainhead

NOTE:  Image is from this article about the maverick architect John Lautner.

How can we do it?  How can we transform to use these new SMS tools to revolutionize the lot of humanity?

Image Size #Cheatsheet

Here’s something useful:  “If you are active on Facebook, Twitter, and Google+, you know that they use different image sizes for profiles and other features. Using the right image sizes to customize your profiles could save you some time. This cheat sheet by LunaMetrics shows you the right image sizes for Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and Google+”:

http://www.best-infographics.com/the-complete-social-media-image-size-cheatsheet/

Question:  Did they leave anything out?

What do you say about social media?

Here are some ideas from thenickyblog.com:

1. Social Media makes the world smaller and brings our Hearts Together. ~ @LoriMoreno

2. Twitter is a place where one person can help another person anywhere in the world. ~ @TweetSmarter

3. “Social media is not the answer to every problem, but it is undoubtedly a useful and powerful advance in learning.” ~ Unknown

4. Focus on how to be social, not on how to do social. ~  Jay Baer

5. “LinkedIn is for the people you know. Facebook is for the people you used to know. Twitter is for people you want to know” ~ Source unknown

6. “Don’t say anything online that you wouldn’t want plastered on a billboard with your face on it.” –Erin Bury (Sprouter community manager)

Also, check out the ideas here and here — and here!

And,
so
I repeat:
WHAT DO YOU THINK?