Wordless Wednesday - S.F. Love

Paper Hearts

I guess it is just that time of year when everyone is sick...me included. As a mom having a cold is just not allowed. Working from home and being a mom is really, really, not allowed. So what does this mom due when she is feeling ucky and would like nothing more than to curl up in bed...well, for starters try to keep her very inquisitive almost 5 yr old DD busy so that she doesn't make gigantic messes. In an effort to keep little Miss.Mess Maker entertained I discovered that she didn't know how to make a paper heart.
Here are some pictures of the fun DD had while I tried to get some work done.

Just in case you forgot how to make a paper heart here is what you will need;

Paper and Crayons
Oops, almost forgot you will also need scissors to cut out your heart (no pun intended).
Next you will want to fold a single sheet of paper in half.
Draw your half heart on the side of the paper that is folded (not the side with the edges of the paper). We found that using a dark crayon made it easier to see when you the lines when you cut it out.
First heart! Not bad at all.

The second heart came out a bit better. DD found it easier when I drew the heart and she cut it out.
Lots of great hearts! DD made one into a card for a friend at school.

Week in Pictures

Why anchor your efforts in social media with a blog.

Now that we know what social media is and why it is important let’s move on to some best practices. While we are all out on the web posting updates on Twitter, reviews of restaurants and such on Foursquare, pictures and articles on Facebook, it can quickly become over whelming (or a waste of your efforts) if you do not have a place to anchor it all, like a blog.

To have a conversation in person you have two or more people (two or more identities) engaging one another. The same is true for conversations on-line; to create an on-line identity you need to designate a space to where that identity lives. A blog or some other similar space holder is essential to the creation of your identity or on-line persona.

If you are a business it is important to maintain a business persona along with a personal voice. A blog or even a Facebook Fan page can act as a place holder for a company’s on-line persona. Having one or a few people in the company acting as the company’s on-line voice can be a great way to promote and communicate with your customer base, find partnerships, and grow brand awareness through viral marketing.

Once you have a persona, an online voice, taking the next step in pushing content, creating community and having conversations will be a natural next step.

Social Media Part 1 of many

It is an amazing world we live in. Technology has made the world smaller than it ever was before by connecting people all over the world through social media. So what is social media really? Well, let's break it up into the two terms that we use to define it: social & media. I think social is fairly easy to understand that it is how we in engage with others (or at least I am going to define it that way…). Media we will think of as information that way we are not limited by a classical understanding by which one would limit the channels to which the information could and would come from. You could ignore my definition and opt for the Wikipedia definition and I think you will still be able to derive the same conclusions that I have in the following posts.

Types of social media include things like e-mails, chat rooms, message boards, LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, blogs, and I would venture to say that most things that you can find on-line would have some component of social media that they participate in.

Why is social media important? To answer that we need to consider what makes human being, well, human beings. I think at the heart of it is that we are by nature social beings and as we create, invent, and dream up technology we inherently look for ways to connect with others. These new and old technologies have made it possible for us to connect or “socialize” in ways we that were not possible in the old world before computers and telephones before that. Communities are no longer bound by geography and can be based on a simple love of rocks, trees, comic books, skateboards, art, music, pain - sorrows, tribulations, motherhood, fatherhood; it really is limitless in complexity and simplicity. These artificial communities exist not only in the abstract sense but they also have a firm foot in the here and now.

What does this translate to in “real life”? Marketers (like me) and businesses look to these communities as a way to market or hand sell to their consumers. We want to meet and speak to our customers and target market when, where, and however we can, on-line communities offer that possibility in a unique way.

Social media has become the heart and blood of how many companies find and sell to their customers. So the importance of social media is not only to the media, marketers, businesses, and sales people, but also to the consumer who can and do frame how they are marketed to. Consumers have a new voice and a new power for change.

We have seen various examples of this recently:

Toyota, Southwest, Tiger Woods, Sigg, and many more companies/celebrities have found out what happens when consumers have a voice and a viral voice at that.

Dreamy Voyage

Written By: James Mayhew
Illustrated By: Jackie Morris

Starlight Sailor is a new favorite of mine. I love the moody blue and gold that linger throughout this fantastic book. One of my all time favorite poems from when I was a child are combined with new life and versus. The red dragon, unicorn, and humpback whales make the the voyage of the paper boat only that much more special for the reader.

I would recommend this as a great gift for a special child in your life!




*I am an employee of Barefoot Books.