• the opportunity to contribute – easy sharing of information
• the opportunity to comment – your chance to have your say
• the opportunity to collaborate – work with anyone, anywhere to achieve a common goal
• the opportunity of conversation – getting involved in discussions with others
• the opportunity of community – building relationships online

I expanded on how each of the C’s formed a part of the online social experience at the time and the ideas were well received, this post can now be found here.

Whilst being a good base form which to start describing the ideas behind social media the phrase was primarily a headline, an attention bringer so – in that regard – was a throw away; useful at the time but not retained or revisited.

It, therefore, makes it more interesting to find that the phrase appears to have taken on a life of it’s own. The phrase has been adopted, repeated, altered and adapted but, regardless of how it is wrapped up, as one blog post put it:

“amongst the social media circles it is nearly universally agreed, the elements of a good social media strategy consist of the 5 C’s: conversation, community, collaboration, contribution and commenting.”

The Sixth C

Back in June 2008 social media was still primarily reserved for the geeks and the early adopters; the holy grail for any social media service was to achieve ubiquity, to enter the mainstream. Then, around 6 months ago, things changed. In one month Twitter saw over 1300% growth with celebrities and the mainstream media trying to claim social media as their own. Whether you are listening to local radio or national sports coverage or watching TV everyone is now talking about Twitter. It has truly entered the public consciousness in a way that not even Facebook with it’s millions of users has managed to do.

People are now using short status updates as a matter of course, supplementing and even, in some cases, bypassing other forms of communication. I believe we have reached the point where social media can honestly be described as an extension of our normal behaviour and it is still growing.

The importance of the social network in our society is finally starting to fulfil it’s potential and, with more and more companies interacting with their customers in this setting, it is rapidly becoming just another way to do business.

My original suggestion for The Sixth C can, therefore, finally be adopted: culture.

The emergence of Facebook Lite shortly after the aquisition of Friendfeed seems more than a coincidence but, according to TechCrunch it is designed for use in areas where download speeds are slow so we should not get over excited at present.

Potential

Whether or not Facebook Lite develops beyond a low bandwidth version of the site or becomes the frameowrk for something else remains to be seen. If it is kept free from all the clutter that plagues the normal version, then it could be the perfect vehicle for Friendfeed integration. If you add in additional import functionality then Lite has the potential to essentially become a Friendfeed clone – Facebook as it used to be: just for sharing info.

We don’t need to be told who has achieved what on Farmville, or poked, or invited to play Mafia Wars – this was the joy of the Friendfeed service and what really caught the imagination: a place to share, connect and discuss without the limitations of 140 characters.

Regardless of any change in functionality or version, however, a primary sticking point between the methods of operation of Facebook and Friendfeed is the actual friending behaviour. Facebook requires mutual friending but on Friendfeed (just like Twitter and other services) friending can be unilateral or not even required at all in order to interact with another user.

If Facebook could release a version without the need for mutual friending that includes full, real time search then we could be on to a winner.

The facts are that Facebook and Friendfeed are aimed at two disparate audiences for two disparate purposes with two completely distinct operating models. Facebook may have been “borrowing” some of the best ideas that Friendfeed had to offer and Friendfeed, in turn, may have been redesigned their interface to make it more familiar to users of other services but they (currently) remain at almost opposite ends of the social media spectrum.

Do we read between the lines from the announcement on the Friendfeed blog when it says that “Friendfeed will continue to operate normally for the time being” – does this mean that it will eventually be devoured by the Facebook monster and no longer exist as we know it? Most likely, but at present it is all speculation.

Cross-breeding functionality may well enhance both but the acquisition must be handled extremely carefully or the same cross breed could ruin both services and alienate both sets of users.

Community

Unfortunately, social media is a living paradox. It strives for openness and flexibility with accessibility from as many platforms as possible but, despite this surface flexibility, we are tied to the same back end. The constant battle between technological freedom and system dependence. We may be able to connect from anywhere but we are always connecting to the same thing.

But that is what social media is about. We have a choice of networks but a service is only as good as the people who use it, your friends and your community. I may use Twitter, you may use Plurk but without interaction they are meaningless. The choice exists but unless we get all of our friends, our community, to choose the same way we are talking to ourselves.

For all of the flexibility we crave we are governed, out of necessity, by the herd mentality and this is what has a lot of people running scared about the Friendfeed acquisition. If Friendfeed does get absorbed and cease to function as a separate entity what will the resulting offspring be like? Which features will come from either parent? Will we get a genetically perfect super child or end up with a Frankenstein’s monster and, ultimately, will we be able to persuade our community to migrate with us.

Fear of change

As a rule we fear change – at least BIG change – but change can be an extremely effective catalyst prompting new ideas and ways of achieving our goals. Whilst this fear may sometimes be justified it is, at the base level, often unfounded as the likes of Friendfeed are subject to constant change as the service evolves and grows over time. Perhaps the acquisition by Facebook is required for the next evolutionary jump to occur or, just as equally, it may cause an evolutionary dead end – the social media Neanderthal.

All we know is that the winds of change are blowing, their direction remains to be seen so we should all reserve judgement until the storm hits.

Sometimes we need to leave our comfort zones.

I am passionate about what I do and I like to be able to keep the lines of communition between myself and my clients open at all times.  It is important not only from an enquiries point of view for new and potential clients but also for good customer service for my existing clients.  Luckily I am able to do this wherever, whenever because I work away from home using my ‘portable office’.

There are many ‘mobile office’ solutions that allow you to ‘remotely access’ your home PC or allow you to ‘create a mobile desktop’ on the web, but these normally cost a monthly or annual fee.

I do not use any of these but I am still able to work efficiently and easily from my hotel room or from the car.

Luckily I have a wonderful mobile, it does pretty much everything apart from make the breakfast in the morning, and guess what it’s NOT an iPhone  I have the Nokia 5800 which does pretty much everything the iPhone (but at half the price) can do which means that I can use it like a PDA.  Yesterday whilst 412ft up the top of Blackpool Tower, I emailed various people, tweeted and edited a web page.  Yes I got some very odd looks, but I was able to keep up with events within my work life as they happened.  I have various applications installed that allow me to run my very own portable office ‘on the go’ including probably my most used application Gravity.

Gravity is an amazing little application that makes the view of Twitter better than Twitter itself.  The layout is great and very easy to read, the colours are calm and all the information you need is separated into windows which you can scroll across.  If you use TweetDeck or HootSuite it is very similar to this but on your phone.  The application running is very smooth and also helps to keep your bandwidth down if you are using mobile internet access.

I also use mobile versions of Facebook, LinkedIn, Email and more, not to mention podcasting applications and the ability to post a new blog post here through my phone.

My poor laptop (affectionately known as ‘Lappy’) is old.  It’s quite a basic model and has been bashed about, not to mention well used! But it does everything I need it too.  I am able to use all the software I need such as email, design and graphics software, laptops these days do not have to be expensive, if you can get on to the internet then most of the applications or software you need can be found by using ‘web versions.  I use my laptop in my hotel room in the evenings.  We always try to stay in a hotel that has WiFi access, this makes working in the evenings quicker than running the laptop web access through my mobile, which I admit I have done a few times in a tent!

That’s it, 2 things.  That’s all I need.  People are always amazed that I work on my holidays and when I say I’m taking everything I need, I normally joke that I am taking more office equipment than clothes, but in reality I can run my entire company with 2 pieces of hardware, both of which are portable.    I purposely streamlined the way I worked a few years ago, so that everything could  be run if needed on just a laptop and a mobile.  Just in case we had a power cut or couldn’t get home for whatever reason I knew that I could still keep my business running with these two options.  So I started using ‘web versions’ of applications on a regular basis and used my mobile’s applications on a day to day basis. Now, when I go on holiday, everything I need is already set up, ready and waiting for me.  My very own personal portable office, very cheaply put together, all the social media I need, anytime, anywhere, anyplace.

We are now very proud to be able to offer more in the way of both graphic and web design.  More options in our branding and social media management department, even our ‘about’ page has got bigger, and now all with the added extra of being able to provide you and/or your business with web hosting.  Yes you have heard me correctly, SBM is now a web host!

As we continue to grow we hope that you will follow us on our journey, why not follow us on Twitter @SquashBoxMedia for all the latest gossip (and ramblings).

Also, mark your diary for 10th August 2009 – Our Summer Bonanza!  We will be having a whole week dedicated to offers, freebies and special deals, we will be getting into the summer spirit with some games too, of course, all of our games will have prizes!

So keep watching this space, SBM welcomes YOU!

I can hear some of you gasping already.  Why would I want to keep a new account with 600 less followers than my old account?  It really is as simple as this, new start!

Both our old ‘followers’ and ‘following’ list was out of date.  There were users on their that I had not either spoken to in ages or I had never spoken too.  Now, by starting again, I can hand pick who I want to follow and am delighted that my fave ‘tweeps’ are following me back.  Not to mention all the new people I have met so far this week (and it’s only Tuesday!)

So If your Twitter account becomes compromised in some way and you have to start again, do not be too despondent.  Here are the ‘positives’ that you can draw out of the situation.

Fresh Start
Seeing your follower account go back  to zero is very disheartening, but now you can see very clearly who is following you and why as your followers base starts to build again.

Spring Clean
Now you have your new account, why not spring clean your ‘followed’ list?  Do you really need to follow all of them? Surely not

New Contacts
I have been lucky to have found some new contacts that I hadn’t found before since the having my new account.

Support
The followers that follow you over to your new account are the ones you know will support you.  These are your ‘true followers’ and it is great to sometimes be able to see the diamonds from the coal.

No Spammers
The spammer follower has now dramatically decreased, this, can only be a good thing.

So although it may be daunting starting again with a new account, there are many positives to be taken out of it.  Make the most of this new start!

Luckily, being in the job we are, we knew exactly what to do and how to limit the impact.  We already had procedures in place so that within just 2 hours we had a new account running and had kept in contact with our followers, informed twitter and started the ball rolling back into the Twitterverse.

Here is how you can help yourself if your Twitter account is compromised in some way.

1 – DON’T PANIC!  I know this is an easy thing to say and believe me it is hard not to panic, but don’t, just follow our steps to get your Twitter account up and running again (and to reclaim your sanity!)

2 – Announce on Twitter through your status update that you have been hacked/hijacked/impersonated/compromised and ask everyone on your list to retweet (RT) the message for you.

3 – Inform @twitter (Twitter support) and @ev (CEO of Twitter) of the situation.

4 – Go to http://twitter.zendesk.com/requests/new and submit a help request.  Use as much detail as you can about what has happened and press ‘Submit’.

5 – Start a new Twitter account as a temporary account that you can use (all will become clear on why you need this in a mo!) and follow everyone on your old account ‘following’ list.  Make sure you choose a very obscure password!

6 – Wait for the barrage of emails that you will receive from Twitter, most of these will be automated, however one will be asking you for more information so make sure you keep that one and reply to it as soon as possible.

7 – Ask your followers to retweet your new account name.

8 – Wait for the final reply from Twitter (final, at the moment that is) that will tell you that they may close your account whilst they investigate your situation.  Now you see why we say open a second account!

9 – Keep tweeting about what has happened so that all your followers know what has happened to you and so that they are aware that you have moved account.

10 – Keep track your old account, watch what happens your old accounts timeline,  keep an eye on your inbox and make sure you use all available channels to you to spread the word of what has happened.

Whatever happens to your old account and however long it takes Twitter to get it sorted, you know you have done everything you can to keep your profile up and running.  All your followers know what has happened, Twitter knows and more importantly you have regained control.  Don’t let the spammers and the hackers get away with it!

To keep in contact with us while our old account is being investigated after we became hacked, please follow @SallyWalker – see you on the flip side!

Now that the global economy appears to be on the upward curve of a major economic “downturn” it is obvious why things have failed. Hindsight is a marvellous thing but too often we don’t learn from what hindsight has shown us.

Perhaps, more importantly, we also don’t learn from those with the foresight to realise when things are about to go south. There were those who had been forecasting a major financial crash and there are those that have been forecasting problems ahead with the social media “industry”.

Social media has seen the expansion of the biggest online bubble since the whole dotcom boom and it was not hard to see that this level of growth was unsustainable.

Just like our economies, social media services have their own “interest rates”. The more compelling a service (just like a savings account) the more we invest our time in it and, consequently, the more “interest” is paid. If a service becomes less interesting we invest less and, as it can no longer support the same levels of excitement, the “interest rate” falls.

The relative rates between services and the cross over of features/interoperability can be seen as the social media equivalent of the exchange rate between currencies. The exchange rates between services will be in a constant state of flux depending on what facilities they offer and the perception the users have based on comparisons with similar offerings.

As far as ‘mainstream’ usage is concerned, Facebook is the equivalent of the US dollar against which all other services are judged. While those in other markets may not feel that the Facebook dollar is the most relevant currency, the market needs a point of reference and that falls to the service with which ‘Joe Public’ is most familiar.

Just as “real world” companies had been surviving on debt the social media sphere has existed on “borrowing” ideas from somewhere else, mimicking the functionality of other services. As there are only a finite number of ways you can communicate with someone else over the internet we obviously can’t go on with this borrowing. The credit (ideas) either runs out or no-one wants to lend to you. This is when we get the creation of walled gardens – businesses doing their own thing in isolation: a retreat from the global sense of openness that social media tried to instil in all of us.

Aggregators and other services quickly became a repository for rehashes of information held in other places – trading (and potentially profiting) on the returns made elsewhere – money for (essentially) nothing and, perhaps, can be seen as the social media equivalent of the fat cat bankers although, at present, there doesn’t appear to be the financial reward.

In the past 6 months it has been interesting to see that – like a number of banks – various social media services have ‘folded’; social media became too disjointed. The mistakes have been recognised in hindsight and measures taken before the whole industry collapsed like the proverbial house of cards.

To use LinkedIn effectively you need to follow some basic principles and here is my guide to using LinkedIn to it’s full potential (whilst still using the free version) and becoming a LinkedIn Rockstar.

Remember The Old Saying ‘It’s Quality NOT Quantity!

Showing you have 5423458 connections on LinkedIn does not make you any more professional than someone that has only 30 connections, because those 30 connections could be all people who are personally willing to ‘recommend’ you because you have worked with them in the past.  It is far better to invite people you actually know (or at least are known to you within your own network) than add strangers, this builds a stronger base for your network so that in time you can have more than 30 followers, but your core followers will become your tool for searching for new contacts.

Complete Your Profile

On your ‘edit your profile page’ there will be a small gizmo on the right hand side that tells you how complete your profile is, make sure you fill in all the required boxes on your profile and ask for as many recommendations as you can.  LinkedIn will tell you what you can do to make your profile 100% complete by showing you ‘Profile Tips’ which are also on the right hand side of your ‘edit profile’ page.

Profile Photo

It is far better to show a photo of yourself that shows your true personality than a logo or a ‘corporate’ image.  A face can say a million words, show your potential connections who you are and what you are like easily by choosing a photo that ’speaks’ to them and tells them what you are like as a person.

Use Your Profile Status

Many people forget how important this is!  Your LinkedIn status is just as important as your Twitter or Facebook statuses.  Add your latest blog post, show the world your latest feature, share your new products, whatever you want to shout about, use your LinkedIn status!

Keeping Your Profile Current

Check your profile content weekly.  This may sound quite bizarre as you would not write a CV or resume every week, but it surprising how your work life and your job role can change within a few days.  If you have achieved a goal or started a new role, tell people about it by editing your profile and keeping it up to date.

Strange Requests Or Dodgy Dealings – Just Leave Them Alone!

If you receive a strange request from someone or you receive a message in your LinkedIn inbox that does not sit right with you and your principles, do not pass it on.  Do not get involved and certainly do not encourage these people, which are probably scammers or even worse.  If you pass these ‘dodgy dealings’ on to your network it really does not bode well for your professional profile because if you think that in some way these requests are ‘not right’ than imagine what your network will think when you pass them on, it will look like you advocate them.

Connection Spring Cleaning

Sometimes, as with all walks of life, you find a bad contact within your network.  Someone who may be offering a service that you do not agree with or has proved themselves to be a spammer.  Disconnection is the only way, remove them from your connections and keep your network clean and tidy!

Join LinkedIn Groups

LinkedIn Groups are like mini communities found with in LinkedIn that each have an ‘interest’.  This could be ‘Twitter’ or ‘Designers’ or ‘WAHM’s’ or whatever.  Join these groups and get involved! Post discussions, answer questions and of course, connect!

Answers Section

Answering peoples questions in the ‘Answers Section’ will not only ‘hopefully’ raise your ‘expert’ level on LinkedIn but also it proves to potential clients and emloyers that you are able to share information to the masses, that you know what you are talking about and are willing to help others.

Out & About?  Use LinkedIn Mobile!

LinkedIn has it’s own mobile site that you can use whilst on the move, making it even easier to update your status or connect with new people.  Just point your mobile phone browser to:  http://m.linkedin.com – easy as that!

Use Your Profile Link

If you want to be seen, show people where you are!  Use your LinkedIn profile link on your website, emails, forums, social media sites, business cards, on your blog, in fact, link it everywhere!

——————————————————-
Author:  Sally Walker
Website:  http://www.squashboxmedia.com
Email:  sally@squashboxmedia.com
Twitter:  @SquashBoxMedia
LinkedIn:  http://www.linkedin.com/in/MrsSallyWalker

So here are my top ‘common sense’ tips for networking using the wonderful world of Twitter.

Firstly, let’s get the bad bits out of the way!

The Don’ts!

1) Celebrity Tweeters - Don’t go following every celebrity you see and tweet them when they come online just to say ‘hello’ and reply to every one of their tweets with ‘random’ replys. Not only does it make you look like a bit of a stalker it also unnecessary.  Celebs are real twitter users too, some are even human

2) Hashtags - Many people use hashtags (#tags) in their tweets to hopefully get their message seen by people searching on various topics (trends) that are in the current news.  However, this can cause serious problems, which Habitat UK found out only too well a couple of weeks ago. They were using hashtags relating to current topics such as the Iranian Election, iPhones, Masterchef competition and more, all completely unrelated to their products and services (more information on this story can be found here).  If you want/need to use hashtags, make sure that they relate to you and your business or profile in some way, or to conversation you are having.  There is no point having random trendy hashtags in your posts just to get in the searches, this just makes you a spammer.

3) Spam – While we are on the subject of spam (no not this kind of Spam ),  don’t do it, just don’t.  It’s annoying, people will block you and you will be a ‘Billy no mates’.  Spammers are the people whose stats look like this ‘178937 following – 3 followers – 0 updates’. You know the sort, we all have them follow us and we all block them because we know that at some point we are going to be told that their latest ‘innovation’ that costs ‘just £49.99′ will be the next best thing since sliced bread, however, we all know that these spammers are scammers!

4) Gain Followers Applications – Every now and again you will see a message pop up in your Twitter stream saying something like “I joined ‘add twitter app name here’ and now I have 40000 followers, you could too, sign up now!” – The problem with these applications is that not only do they spam your account (yes they actually use your account to spam from!) but you have to follow people in order to get followers and the people you are following/followers are probably not the people who care what you have to say or vice versa, not because of bad quality users but merely because of varying interests in topics.

5) Constantly Retweeting The Same Post – It’s not the best idea in the world to retweet the same message over and over (and over!) again. It does make you look like not only a bit of a spammer but also a bit of a plonker.  It is perfectly justifiable if you for example, you are in the UK and you are tweeting about a new blog post in the morning, then you retweet it again in the afternoon so the US users see your tweet and then perhaps once in the evening so the rest of the world users can see it, but retweeting 30 times about your cat falling off a chair, is not great!

So now that is all done and dusted, let’s get on to the good bits!

The Do’s!

1) Networking – Woohoo! Twitter is a great way to network, using tools like Twellow you can easily find people within your industry, people with the same interests and/or people geographically close to you.  Follow them and introduce yourself, build up a relationship by chatting with them, reading their website/blog and perhaps even offering to help out with projects.

2) Twitter Profile – Make sure you add a bio about yourself in your Twitter profile, it makes looking for contacts so much easier. People want to know all about you when they follow you, it is human nature, so give them an insight on what you do and where you are, makes networking quicker and easier.

3) Profile Background – You have this massive space on your profile background, make the most of it! Why not get yourself a custom Twitter background that has your information, links and contact details down the side.  It’s like having your own business card on your Twitter page.  We offer custom Twitter backgrounds here at SBM should you want one (Just thought I would crowbar that in!)

4) Global Chat - Many projects and collaborations have started by one Twitter user in one country chatting to another Twitter user half way across the world, it is instant, real time and FREE global chat.

5) Promote Yourself/Business – What better (and cheaper!) way for you to promote yourself, your products and services, your blog and your business than by using Twitter.  Go ahead, tell your followers your latest news, share your passion, let them know that you are great at what you do.

6) Ask for Help/Advice -Need a hand with something or have a question? Ask the world via Twitter, there is always someone who knows the answer!

7) Offer Help/Advice – Does someone want help with a project or need a question answered?  Then why not offer to help, this could also be the start of a great networking relationship too.

Make Someone Smile – OK I admit it, I have said in the past that random posts on Twitter are annoying, but sometimes, it’s good to send a message to someone with ‘giggle factor’  just to make them smile and brighten their day!

9) Finding Old Friends – Not heard from someone in a while? Are they on Twitter? Yes? Well there you go then, instant ‘friends reunited!’

10) Being Polite – Telling someone they are an &*@!%£^ @&%£!% is really not going to score you any brownie points with that person or the thousands of other users who have just seen your message on the main Twitter timeline!  Politeness and a warm friendly attitude is the best way to attract new followers and to join in with new networks and of course a great way to get you seen on the main Timeline too

There you go, these may be all ‘obvious’ tips but it is amazing how some people forget about common sense on Twitter

Happy Tweeting!

When most people think of a brand, they think of the logos of certain companies, you know the ones, you see a ‘tick’ or ‘correct mark’ what do you think? Nike. You see a red can of drink with white scroll text and what do you think? Coca Cola.  These are incredibly effective brands, however the reason they are effective is not just the logo, the secret is consistency.

Above is a sample of some of the world’s best known and easily identifiable brands.  Their logos are seen by millions of people, every day, all around the world.  You see their logos on their products, on advertising, in magazine articles, on the side of buses, websites, stationary and more.  Every time you see something that has their logo displayed that business is re-enforcing itself in your mind.  The more branding of that business you see, the more successful that business appears, plus it has the secondary effect of making both existing and potential clients and customers feel secure as they receive this ‘corporate image’ in their mind as a sign of professionalism.

But what if you are a small business owner, or maybe you are a Mum starting out your own home based company making chutney, does a small business still need branding? Yes!

Your customers want to see exactly who they are dealing with each and every time they contact you, whether that be via email, post, website or through social media profiles.  If your business image is consistent it will look professional, but getting it right matters.

You do not have to have bright and garish graphics to make a good logo, in fact you do not need graphics at all.  As you will see from the well known brands above, most of them are no more than 3 colours, some do not contain graphics. Let us take ‘Christian Dior’ as an example.

Christian Dior is a multi-million global brand.  The company branding is easily recognisable but look, no graphics.  It is simple text, yet we still all know by seeing it that this is ‘Christian Dior’ and we know from that logo that it screams ‘large business’ but why? Because of it’s consistency.  You see the same logo on clothes, perfume, advertisements, websites and more.  In fact every product and every service has that same logo displayed.

So how can a home made chutney, jams and preserves business (or any small business) use their brand to increase traffic to their company website or to give their business exposure, be consistant.  If you have a branding consultant / social media manager / social media coach, they will either guide and help you make a start on your branding yourself or actually manage your branding profile for you, which if you are a small business with fewer resources (and let’s face it, not as much cash flow as Christian Dior!) can be an excellent idea, even if it is on a part time basis paying by the hour.

I am your potential customer.  I am a busy working mum of 2 and I am looking for a good home made spiced fruit chutney.  I want to know that the chutney I am purchasing has been made using seasonal fruit and vegetables and I want my chutney to be made by the seller by hand, I do not want a product to be a ’supermakret’ brand made by machines on a production line.  All this information can be dealt with by my brain in a few seconds by looking at a logo and the branding of a business.  Pictures of fresh vegetables, the colours of nature and the earth, clear concise writing on labels, the use of the words ’seasonal, hand made or fresh’ and even irregular sized chutney jars all add to that ‘home made’ look rather than a supermarket brand.

So I find your online shop on the Internet and think ‘they look tasty!’ and I look around your website.  Your logo and branding is on every page of your website, when I email you to place an order, your signature contains your website address and maybe even matching email stationary or a virtual business card signature in your email.  If I place my order over the phone you answer the telephone with your company name.  When my order of this rather scrummy looking chutney arrives, it arrives with a compliment slip on it, with guess what, your logo, your brand, your business, YOU!  Your brand has sold me this chutney right from the start, your brand, no matter how small your business, is important and your brand is YOU, so let’s make the most of it!

Advertising for a small business owner can be hard, they may not have the financial cash flow available or the time to be able to spend on an advertising campaign, branding their company throughout their ‘windows of opportunity’ or even just to say ‘WE ARE HERE!’

A Social Media Manager (also known as a SMM/Community Manager) can be a life line to small businesses.  By hiring them on a part time basis and paying by the hour, a SMM soon becomes not only a source of ‘inside information’ but also an affordable way to keep your business (no matter how small) name in the fore front of exisiting and potential clients and customers minds.

SMM’s can be a valuable source of information, help and advice as well making sure that your company becomes a ‘brand’.  Making sure that no matter where your clients and customers look online to find you, your brand is consistant throughout all social media and community outlets.  SMM’s not only market your brand and your name but also listen to what is happening in the world around you.  What trends are starting/ending, what your customers are saying about you and are able to respond to clients questions and comments if required.

A good SMM will listen.  Listen to their client, listen to the social media trends and listen to competitors.  SMM’s become the eyes and ears of your business and are able to interact within ‘real time’ discussions, providing your customers with the latest up to the minute news regarding your business.

Imagine having an extra marketing, advertising and public relations department that you can call in, just when you need it, even if it is just for a couple of hours a week and then ask yourself do small businesses need a SMM?  Of course they do, maybe even more so than a large corporate company simply because they may have fewer resources available. A business is a business, no matter how big or small, no matter if it is a Mum working from home setting up her own home based business or if you are the CEO of a global corporate brand.  It is always good to have a little helping hand on your side.

Want to win your very own piece of digital art in the form of an email tag?  Then make sure you enter our giveaway!

Email tags are a great way to show your personality in emails, on your blog/website or in forums.  They are pieces of digital art with your first name on, great if you belong to email groups or forums!

Below is my email tag that I use on personal emails and within email group chats.  You can certainly see my ‘rock chick’ personality shining through!  Of course, we can create any design for you to match your personality!

Want one?  Then help us spread the word about our new look website by simply tweeting (and it is different from last time, just to keep you on your toes!) “Have you seen SquashBox Media’s new look? Head over there & peek at www.squashboxmedia.com or follow @squashboxmedia for more info!“  As before first 5 people to tweet wins a personalised tag!

People who entered before can enter again, we don’t mind!

Part 1 of our giveaway is for the first 5 people who tweet “Check out SquashBox Media’s new look at www.squashboxmedia.com – @SquashBoxMedia has a new ‘Twitter Giveaway’ too!” will receive a custom made Twitter background made for them by us here at SBM.

Once you have tweeted, simply email us at info@squashboxmedia.com and if you are one of the first 5 to email us, then you win!

And if you are not following us on Twitter, why not?   Follow us @SquashBoxMedia

Remember this is only Part 1 of the giveaway, there will more later today!

Easy Peasy eh?  Good luck!

But what are we doing to keep us up late and why do we do it? We have a special secret, we have power over the social media world and we are slowly taking over.

If you want a piece of news to spread quick, you don’t need to publish it in the daily newspaper or hire a TV crew to come round and interview you on the news. Just find a Mum who has a computer and let her do it for you.

Not only do we make news but we break news, we hear about events before they can be captured by TV and radio broadcasters or by reporters and journalists. This has never been more so than just recently with the US Election, Iran Election and also the ‘Expenses Row’ affair here in the UK.

Worldwide events are also captured by us Social Media Mums, probably most notable event at the moment was the death of Michael Jackson (RIP). We were not only able to communicate the news and messages but also to sift our way through all the rumours and post relevant information, much quicker than a news site.

Many of us work from home and in some capacity our work either directly involves Social Media or we use Social Media to convey our messages and promote our products/services. Being a Mum helps, as it means that we can not only multi-task, but what Mum doesn’t like to have a chat or a gossip? What better way to promote something than by getting millions of Mum’s worldwide to chat about it online.

As you know through SquashBoxMedia I am a freelance journalist and writer, social media manager, social media coach and more. I write on both Social Media topics and Parenting issues, an eclectic mix you may think, I use both skills every day to make things happen!

Never doubt the power of a Mum and certainly never doubt the power of a ‘Social Media Mum’ – we make and break news, but more importantly we keep the social media world revolving.

For my new project I needed a webhost that was not only reliable but had excellent customer service.  Luckily I had the perfect host in mind after I swapped this website from my old host to my new one, EvoHosting.

When I decided to get a new host I looked around to compare companies.  I compared price, uptime, support desks and more, I wanted a host that would be able to deal with awkward questions and would be able to offer advice and support should I need it.  EvoHosting came top on every topic I compared on.  From as little as £2.50 a month it certainly is good value but they do not compromise on service. They offer not only fast hosting and good support but various of ‘extras’ such as in-built scripts, addon domains, parked domains, SQL databases and more.

I have been chatting with Tim Mole, the Managing Director of EvoHosting who said “From day one I wanted to keep it so everyone can have personalised support and any extra help where needed.”  This is how ALL businesses should be run! What a treat to not only hear this comment but also to have it delivered.

So if you are looking for a new webhost, why not give EvoHosting a try, they get a thumbs up from me!

Before I start anything new, I also question whether or not I could actually ‘pull it off’, not just personally, but financially, time, how it will impact my family etc.  There is also that saying ‘don’t jump in with both feet’ which is true with some ideas, however if we all just dreamt about what we wanted to do and never actually did it, nothing would ever get done. So sometimes, going in with both feet is just what you need.

If you don’t think and dream big, how will you ever know just what you are capable of? If you don’t get out there and (to steal a popular sports brands phrase!) and ‘just do it’, how will you know whether or not you could make a difference?

It is easy to get bogged down with the ‘what if’s’ and to worry about what could go wrong, but even the most successful of business people have these niggling doubts at the start, you just need to ask yourself  ‘do I really want this?’  if the anwer is yes, then go for it.

For those of you who don’t know me very well, 12 years ago I was told I may have a brain tumour.  I was having a series of strokes and lost my speech, the feeling in my legs and the grip in my hands.  I was in a wheelchair and I that is where I thought I would stay, forever.  I was told I would never have children and the chance of me walking again or using my hands to grip were slim.  My world collapsed.  I was newly married, I had a great job and it was meant to be the happiest time of my life but then BANG, all my dreams stopped.

I admit I got very down with everything that happened, not only did my illness get worse but because I could not work, we (as a married couple) ended up in extreme financial difficulties.  At that point, I thought my life was over.

Or was it just the beginning?…..

Luckily I am married to someone who has more faith in me than anyone else in the world, even through the really bad times when he was being told I could die,  he was there saving my life, quite literally on two occassions, telling me to look forward and to keep going, that no matter what was in the way, I could do it, I would be able to beat this.  I am also quite stubborn and once he ‘flicked the switch’ inside me to fight, I started to push myself to get through it.

With therapy and support I started to walk again and use my hands, my speech became less and less slurred and finally in 1998 we had a massive breakthrough when I was told I was pregnant, I am sure you can imagine our joy.  This joy was later followed in 2000 when I fell pregnant again.

12 years on, I can not only walk, but I can run (although to be honest, I don’t like running, I don’t think Sally’s were actually born to run, we wobble ), I can write, cook, type (again, something that I can do but as you will notice from some of my posts, not that accurately, nothing to do with being ill, I just think my brain goes faster than my fingers!), I can do everything that I should be able to do.  More importantly, I am a Mum, somthing I never thought possible.

Life is hard, it throws things in our path that are so huge and so life stopping that it is a wonder that as a human race we haven’t just all sat down and shouted ‘WHAT IS THE POINT?’ but we don’t.  We carry on.  We dream about making things better and it is those dreams that you have to grab with both hands and really work hard to achieve.

So not only ‘think big, dream big’ but also ACHIEVE BIG!  Whether your ‘big’ is employment, work, family life, health or just trying to lose a few pounds on a diet, just go for it. Life is too short to waste away. You can do it!

As a  closet gamer (keep this under your hat though, I don’t want everyone to know……what do you mean it’s a bit late now? ) I run my World of Warcraft account rather like I would any social media or social networking site.  I have made a lot of good quality contacts through gaming that I would not have made through Facebook or LinkedIn, these contacts have not only brought me business but also a new window into my marketting.  I have also made a lot of good friends through gaming, which I have through Facebook or LinkedIn, so this is just the cherry on top of the cake!

Gaming, these days, is not only for adolescent teenagers who spend hours locked away in their rooms, a wide variety of people and ages play online interactive games just for the sheer relaxation of it.

So to prove my point I wanted to show you my comparison between both Facebook and World Of Warcraft, you’ll see that it really isn’t that different and in fact it could work wonders for your network.

Friends List

Of course the famouse ‘add friends’ aspect to Facebook is known throughout the land, you also have a friends list on World of Warcraft that works in a similar way.  It let’s you know when the are offline/online and tells you where they are in the game.

Groups

Facebook has literally thousands of groups on a wide variety of topics ranging from the serious to the stupid.  World of Warcraft has guilds.  Guilds work in the same way, you can chat and discuss things in your guild or work together to obtain a goal.  Through guild websites such as GuildOMatic you can even have forums, photo albums, calendars and more, just like a Facebook group.  Just like Facebook groups, there are serious and stupid guilds. There are guilds that are adult only and even business breakfast guilds where business people play for an hour at breakfast time before going to work to get themselves ready for the day, share new ideas about their business and make contacts, and before you think that is very odd, our local business advice centre offers the same type of business breakfast meeting in real life. (Obviously not playing games, but it’s still networking!)

Adding Applications

With Facebook you can add applications to enhance your personal profile and how you use the site itself.  The same is true of World of Warcraft, you have ‘add-ons’ that enhance how you play, chat and connect.

Private Messaging

Both Facebook and World of Warcraft have a private messaging system for all those networking discussions.

Playing Games

A lot of people add games to their profiles, whether it is to play solo or to compete with their friends.  World of Warcraft – I don’t really need to explain this one do I?

So there you have it, not such a big difference after all, however some of you more serious social media and social networking types may snub this post as gamer having a ramble.  I’ll let you into a secret, when you play games you have fun and you relax, the perfect time to network, as believe me most people playing the game are feeling the same way and they open up = easier to network with.  The true test of a good marketeer and networker is to connect with people no matter where you are or what you are doing, it works!

Not so silly after all eh?

We can help work with you and your products or services to make sure that each one is family friendly, not only in design and manafacture but also labelling, wording, advertising etc.  We know what other Mum’s are thinking, we can give you that insight and make your product stand out.

Mum’s talk.  We all talk together about what we like and what we don’t like.  Wouldn’t it be great to have that on your side?  Imagine all that free advertising!  Take a look at all the so-called ‘Mummy Bloggers’ (Mommy Bloggers if you are from the US!) out there, literally thousands. We are savvy, we know what we want and how we want it delivered to us.  We can give you all this inside information and advertise it on our blogs and websites.  A little insider information goes a long way!  There are so many Mum’s out there who are tech savvy and can network their way to the top using social media and social networking, this would be a great tool for you and your company.

Mum’s are naturally good marketeers, those of us who have websites and blogs, promote it.  We know how to do it and when to do it, we can get your company involved in, what I like to call ‘MLMM’ – Multi Level Mum Marketting!  One Mum passes information and a review to another, then another and so on.

We can not only help you develop your products or services but test run them too.  How better to test something for family safety, appeal or value for money, then letting a Mum get her hands on it.

Having  Mum on board in a ‘consultancy’ role would not only benefit your products and services but also your public relations outlook.  You want to appear family friendly, of course you do, then how better than to hire a Mum Consultant?

As a mum, we multi-task 24 hours a day.  We know how to work hard under pressure, by jove we do it all the time, and we do it well.

So come on businesses, listen up.  Mum’s really DO know best and we are there to help you too!

If you are a Mum in the UK and would like more information on this topic or would like to chat about it please email me, as I intend to get UK companies listening to us!

thisMoment.com say “It’s incredibly easy to capture Moments using our Moment Maker. Just give your Moment a name, and then easily add things like photos and video, how the Moment made you feel, who shared it with you, and much more. The Moment Maker connects with your existing Web services – including Facebook, Flickr, YouTube, and others – allowing you to illustrate your Moments with photos and video you’ve already uploaded to the Internet. You can even pull in publicly available content for any shots you may have missed, utilize high-quality professional media from our partners, and invite your friends so they can contribute as well.”   I would have to agree on how easy it is.  I went straight in without using any of the ‘how to’s’ or watching any videos and set up with my profile page, arranged a dedicated url, linked it with Facebook and Twitter and had my first moment published all in 7 minutes.

The site itself is very sleek and grown up looking with an ‘easy on the eye’ design and sophisticated colour scheme. Offering mobile web for any SmartPhone and a new iPhone application in the pipeline, navigation and access is certainly not an issue.

With Facebook, Twitter, Flickr and Picassa  intergration you can update all your contacts in one place, sharing your moment not only to thisMoment.com viewers but all over your social media/networking profiles.

The ability to add moments from past, present and future make this site stand out from the ’scrapbook’ trend.  For those of us who have scrapbooked in the real world (yes actually cutting out our die cut shapes and using our acid free 12×12 papers, come on your scrapbookers, you know what I am talking about!) you know that your scrapbooks are filled with moments of your past.  thisMoment.com allows you to add future events, which is not only very clever but also very uplifting.

The possibilities of how you could use thisMoment.com are wide and vast.  You could use it just as a photo album/scrapbook, or as a photo blog, or as a podcast blog, or as a calendar for both personal and business events.  You could even set up a business page and use this as another ‘latest news’ outlet.

I have been very impressed with all functionality of this new site as well as the sheer look of it.  Well done thisMoment.com – keep up the good work!

go on, spread the love...]]> http://www.squashboxmedia.com/2009/06/24/new-kid-on-the-block-thismoment-com/feed/ 0 http://www.squashboxmedia.com/2009/06/19/social-media-networking-do-mums-need-it/ http://www.squashboxmedia.com/2009/06/19/social-media-networking-do-mums-need-it/#comments Fri, 19 Jun 2009 15:22:37 +0000 Sally @ SquashBox Media http://www.walker-media.co.uk/?p=54 With all the fuss these days about social media, social networking, twitter this and plurk that, are all these ‘ways of communication’ actually needed by Mums?

There are a host of social media and networking sites these days, ranging from simple ideas like Twitter to full on website making profile page ideas such as Facebook or MySpace.

However, as a Mum, do you need them? Will they benefit you?

As Mum’s we have enough on our plate with housework, being a taxi for our children, cooking, cleaning, working out the weekly menu, doing the shopping, washing etc.  We might also have a full or part time job on top of all that, so do we really need endless websites to try and keep track of too? Well maybe…

As you know from previous articles I am not the biggest fan of social media.  I would much rather meet someone for a coffee and have a good old fashioned chinwag about life, than try and fit a conversation in 140 characters on twitter.  However, this is the time when, now this is going to be hard for me to say, but, I may have been a little harsh on poor little social media.

I am a member of Twitter, Facebook, MyBlogLog, BlogCatalog, Digg,FriendFeed to name a few, now that is quite a few sites for a self confessed Anti-Social Media mum BUT they do have a place in my online world.

Twitter is the tool I use most often.  I use it to meet new people, to let people know I have done a blog post,  to join in ongoing conversations and to have a giggle.  I don’t use it seriously like some professional bloggers do (in fact I mostly talk drivel on there), but I do meet new friends and us it to get word out.  It is a simple concept and that is it’s appeal.

Social Networking sites such as Facebook also offer a good place to meet new people and to hook up again with old friends, however, personally I find Facebook bland and boring, plus you get spammed but endless notifications of people inviting you to join various applications. No! I don’t want to install the ‘Do you have hairy armpits?’ application thank you very much!

You then have FriendFeed and websites like these, which import all your information from all the other sites and cram in all on to one page.  A nifty idea if you are out and about on your mobile phone, you only need to login to one site each time, so you can network to your hearts content!

Now after all that (are you still with me? Do you want to get yourself a cuppa and come back to read the rest?) you have the Mum-specific social networking sites.  Now, I have to admit, I find 95% of these sickly sweet and quite nauseating.  Yes, I am proud to be a mum, very proud, but I don’t need to have a 1000px banner on my website to tell me that nor do I want to talk about breastfeeding or how to knit a blanket all day.  I am a grown up and want to be treated like one, I am a woman as well as a mum, I HAVE NEEDS!  As much as my love my kids, I want to talk about other things too and even other aspects of family life.

So apart from the 95% of ‘Fluffy Mummy’ networking sites out there, there are some gems to be found….

Type-A Mom, although a US based site, does allow and encourage worldwide Mums to join and guess what, they treat you like a real person! The topics are all ‘mum’ or ‘family’ based but in a factual way.  You can get advice, network, meet other mums in a non-fluffy way, and not a pastel colour in site, brilliant!  A well designed, well thought out website and I support Type-A Mom 100%.

Wishpot.com, not strictly a networking site, but it hasn’t stopped me networking on there! Wishpot.com is a shopping list website where you can list items you have, want, need, wish for etc.  Wishpot opens it’s doors to its new Baby Registary soon, an excellent way to list exactly what you want or need for a new mum.  With ‘real mums’ on hand to give you ’straight down the line’ advice if you want it. Excellent and again I am right behind Wishpot.com!

And…before the cynical ones amongst my readers say “She’s only saying that because she is involved with them”…well thats the point, I am involved with them because I believe in them and what they do/represent.

So, do Mum’s need social media? No, we don’t NEED it, but if you want to spread the word about you, your business, your blog, meet new friends or even just to announce to the world that “I EXIST!”, then yes, it works wonders!

It really depends on how YOU use social media and what social media does for YOU.

So let’s recap on what the four main sections of social media are and what they do:

1) Blogging – Blogs have been around for a while now, an online journal where you can either post your inner most secrets or talk a load of rubbish, whatever you do with it, it is your space on the web.

2) Social Media Micro Chat – Sites such as Twitter, Plurk and Kwippy.  Originally started as a quick way of telling people where you were and what you are doing.  It’s not like that anymore

3) Social Bookmarking – Sites like Digg and StumbleUpon.  A place where you can share your blog posts with a wider audience and (hopefully) get other readers to say how great you are by telling these social bookmarking sites they like your posts too.

4) Social Networking - Facebook, MySpace, Bebo, LinkedIn etc.  A place where you can meet new friends/contatcs and search for old friends.

When these sites all started they all served a specific purpose, but now, if you look closely, there is no difference to any of them really, they are merging and it is the Social sites such as Twitter and Facebook that are taking over.

On Twitter, you can micro blog (a lot of people do this, you get little excerpts of their life in under 140 characters), you can spread the word about your newest blog post and ask people to comment on it, or even retweet it (retweet – repeating a message you have sent so others can see it), you can search for new contacts, look for old friends and make new ones. So Twitter, however simplistic it is, could in theory, wipe out the rest as you can do it all on one site.

Facebook too, does the same.  On Facebook you can have a full blog add-on application, so you can blog to your hearts content with a fully featured blog.  You can also spam people with your latest blog post and even get other people to show your blog feed (rss) on their profile (who needs Digg when you can do that eh?), Facebook also allows you to import your twitter feeds into your profile, or even more snazzy, you could use Facebook to Tweet, by constantly updating your Facebook status message.

So do we need them all? Is it a status symbol of ‘how many online presences can I have’? Is it good to have all of them for self promotion? Or will it end up with one site-does-all?

I think a lot of it depends on what YOU want out of it and HOW you use them?  Personally I like to have a few accounts because, being female, I like to keep up to date with all the latest news and I wouldn’t want to miss anything would I? 

I became an operator and moderator on various chat rooms and steadily my profile grew within the IRC world, through chatting to people and making contacts.  It was about that time too that I started to chat on ICQ – this was, at that point in time, THE messenger to use. I had various websites and I used both IRC and ICQ to let people know about them, I was also a web designer then (still am) and used this method of communication and networking to find new clients.

Now it is 2008, I use Twitter these days to chat to people in a massive chatroom, because let’s face it, that’s all the timeline is really.  I also use Yahoo Messenger and Skype to chat too people in a ‘messenger’ format, i.e. one to one chatting online.

But what’s really changed?  Back then we were making new contacts, networking, chatting and sharing information, isn’t that what we do now?  Perhaps social media has been around a lot longer than a lot of users may realise and does that make me an ‘early adopter’ or somewhat prehistoric?

We never really took IRC that seriously back in the 90’s but we still used it to our advantage.  You certainly didn’t have so called IRC experts or IRC managers to help raise your profile.

It also proves that a lot of social media marketing is just using your brain.  If you want to network - talk to other people, if you want to get your latest blog post seen – share it,  If you want people to come back to your blog or website – give them something worth coming back for.  The basics are common sense and have been since the good old IRC days, nothing much has really changed!

He wanted bold colours but simple navigation with a standard 3 column layout.

He also wanted to be able members to subscribe to newsletters and audio material.

““Fantastic! I had the most beautiful website designed for me in a matter of days! Couldn’t have asked for more!”

We were asked by Helen Lindop of Business Plus Baby (www.businessplusbaby.com) to create a simple Wordpress blog theme for her using colours she had chosen.  She wanted it to be airy and light with simple navigation but to look clean and professional.

We would also like to say congratulations to Helen as she has just had a baby boy called Thomas! Congrats!

We were able to create all this within 2 weeks and worked closely not only with the admins of the site but also with the community itself to ask what they wanted.

We created a unique space for this community and they were thrilled with the results.

They wanted to run an SMF forum but to have a unique design that signified “what they were all about”.

We do love a challenge so we created a dark and mysterious theme for the SMF forum and crated them a piece of digital art as their header graphic.

However, it is mostly filled with people messing about with various Facebook applications, sharing gifts, answering quizzes and sending those endless invites to various add-ons, games and even more applications (as if the 2384 you already have installed on your profile is not enough!).
So what about LinkedIn, what can that offer you? Is it any different to Facebook? Oh yes! LinkedIn is the Facebook for Grown Ups

If you think of the usability of Facebook plus having an online CV, you won’t be far wrong.
It has the same social networking abilities as Facebook, you can search for people just like you can on there. You can create or join groups, again just like Facebook. But the real difference is, LinkedIn puts you on a pedastool and shows you off in all your glory.

You are able to add the entire contents (should you wish to) of your resume (or CV if you live in the UK) to your LinkedIn profile so that prospective employers or other like minded people can search for you easily. This then opens up the world of social networking to the professional/business world more than ever.

LinkedIn has a nice, clean, simple layout. There are no flashing buttons and neon lights, which makes it look elegant and easy on the eye. Your profile information is laid out just like a resume. You can add links to all your websites and use the site as an online portfolio.

The connection/networking process of LinkedIn is very efficient. Unlike Facebook, you cannot connect with someone on LinkedIn if you do not know them in some way, however you can ask your fellow connections to ‘introduce’ you if they are already connected with them.

The ease of use and the sheer ‘professionalism’ of the networking side of LinkedIn makes this social networking site a little bit different from all the rest, which can only be a good thing!

2: Don’t be fooled in thinking that because something has a snazzy brand name, it has to be the best. Supermarket own brand baby wipes are just as good as brand name ones. The same with nappies, baby cream, breast pads etc. Yes brand name products are portrayed as being ‘The number 1 product’ however this is simply because they receive more commercial advertising time, which at the end of the day, they pay for!

3: Remember, you are going to grow! You are going to grow at a fast rate. First your breasts will grow, then your bump, then both together. So rather than buying a new maternity wardrobe every week, always buy one size bigger than you need. This will then last you right through until birth and even for a few days after birth. Stick to comfortable and lightweight material as most women get hotter, quicker, when pregnant.

4: Buy good supportive maternity underwear. This maybe more expensive than regular underwear and not as sexy, however, you will soon reap the benefit when your bump and breast are sore and achey! Also a small investment now means buying less underwear in the long run as you will not have to continue buying undies a size bigger each week!

5: Remember, your baby is going to grow! Just like you, once your baby is born, your baby will grow very quickly. Don’t go and buy a massive amount of ‘newborn’ size baby clothes, your baby will not be in these very long! Some babies, like both of my children for instance, went straight into 0-3 month size clothes, newborn size just didn’t fit. So be warned

6: Shop around for products and items. Most larger baby shops offer ‘baby registeries’ or ‘baby wish lists’, these are a good idea so that you do not forget everything (remember your basic essentials list you made right at point 1? Use this!), HOWEVER it does mean you, your family and friends have to buy all the items from the same shop, which can work out very expensive. So, just as you would with your food shopping, shop around! Look for offers, deals, items on sale etc. You can save yourselves literally hundreds of pounds if you shop around.

7: Another very important point to remember is, there is nothing wrong with secondhand! Ask your family, friends, neighbours and work colleagues if they have any baby items they don’t need any more. You may feel that you do not want your baby to have items that have been used by another. If this is how you feel, stop and think. 3-4 generations ago, every parent with more than one child would give the youngest ‘hand me downs’, it never did them any harm. As long as it is clean (and let’s face it, you can always wash it again!) then what is the problem? Let’s be sensible here, your baby is not going to need all this stuff for very long, so if you can get a pram from a friend for free, rather than paying £300 for it, doesn’t that just make good sense? Plus it then leaves that £300 free for something else. You can also ask your local Freecycle (www.freecycle.org) group for items too.

8: If you can afford it, buy yourself a blender. You may think “What is she talking about? She is meant to be saving me money, not making me spend it!” Ah, but this is a well worth investment and you can buy them for as little as £9 these days. A blender will serve you well throughout your pregnancy and for the first 6 months after your baby is born. When you are going through your morning sickness phase, you may not want to eat, this is where the blender comes in handy. You can whip yourself up a quick smoothie and just sip it. Use fresh fruit, honey to sweeten if desired and this will give you a nutritious and tasty drink that will help keep you going when you are feeling wobbly. When your baby is born, rather than buying pre-made jarred baby food, you will be able to use your blender to puree your own.

9: Buy a large cube size ice cube tray. A neat money saving and very healthy baby food trick. When using your blender to make and puree down your food for your baby, you will be doing it in large batches, fill up the ice cube tray with the food and freeze it. Then you will always have good home made baby food on hand.

10: Don’t panic. You may not have much money, but you are going to be a fantastic parent. Remember, money does not buy hugs, kisses, baby bathtimes, your baby’s first smile or that first time you hear the words ‘mamma’. You may not have much money, but you are rich in love!

1) Use the bad weather as a time to stay in and have a ‘doing weekend’. Get all those jobs done around the house that need doing. Make a list and tick them off once they are done. You will be amazed at just what and how quickly you can achieve all your jobs if you make a real go at it one weekend when the weather is bad.

2) Use it as an excuse to get romantic. Not that you need an excuse of course Get cosy in front of the fire, with a glass of your favourite tipple and snuggle up with your loved one. Put some music on and maybe some candles and just enjoy the cosiness of it.

3) Have a cosy family film night. Bring down all the quilts into your lounge, make the biggest bowl of popcorn you can find, grab those marshmallows, chocolates and other nibbles and get into your pyjamas. Get all your other half and your kids to do the same then snuggle up under the quilts and have a film night! You won’t need any heating on as you will be surrounded by quilts so it saves money too!

4) Use the time to try new recipes and try your hand at maybe something like baking or bread making. Nothing heats the house quicker than having the oven on, if you are using the oven to bake some tasty treats, then you can keep warm too!

5) Art and craft. Have a go at scrapbooking or cardmaking, or maybe even writing a poem or a short story. Kids love to work on craft projects and there are many good rainy day craft books you can buy, a couple of our favourites are: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Rainy-Activity-Priddy-Little-People/dp/0312492553/ref=sr_1_27?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1231779395&sr=8-27 and http://www.amazon.co.uk/365-Rainy-Activities-Vivienne-Bolton/dp/1840840455/ref=sr_1_34?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1231779427&sr=8-34

6) Plan some days out or holidays for the future. Spend the time indoors doing research on the areas you are visiting, find things to do, where to go etc.

7) You don’t have to stay in when it’s bad weather. No one is stopping you from wrapping yourselves up and going for a brisk walk! Bundle your kids up with loads of layers, thick coats, gloves, hats, wellies etc and then see how many animals you can see who are also out in the rain! Nature changes in the rain, you will see more worms, insects and even some birds like the rain so why not go out on a nature rainy treasure hunt!

Go through all your wardrobes and grab those recycling bags. A good time to try on clothes and see if you still want them or if they still fit. Can you recycle them? You could always place an ‘offered’ ad on your local Freecycle group to see if your old clothes can help anyone else?

9) I bet there is a book somewhere that you have been meaning to read, but as always you have been too busy. Now’s your chance, the weather is awful outside, so grab that book and chill out.

10) Enjoy it. Yup ENJOY IT! There is something liberating about walking in the rain and getting totally soaked. Obviously not recommended for kids BUT when you go out and get so soaked that you’re completely wet through it almost feels ‘naughty’ and it makes me giggle. All of nature is there to be experienced so getting wet is just part of the fun!

This is your standard maker that you can buy (see below), they make briquettes made from wet, mushy recycled paper and they cost betweet £14-£20 to buy.

However, we became worried about various reviews on websites, such as Amazon, stating that the general makers (not the heavy duty ones) tend to buckle and bend after a few bricks are made so we decided against the maker and make our own paper coal.

All you need to do is gather up all your recycled paper, cardboard, letters, envelopes, tissues, kitchen roll, newspapers etc (remove all plastic and staples first) and place it in a bucket of water and leave to soak overnight. The next day get in there (my kids loved doing this!) with your hands and start to agitate the paper around in the water so it breaks up and goes mushy.

Take out a bread roll sized ball of the mush and squeeze in your hands to form a tight ball whilst making sure you are squeezing as much water out as possible. Once squeezed the ball of mush will shrink from bread roll size to about the size of a lump of coal.

Leave all your paper coals to dry for about a week, somewhere warm and then you are ready to put them on the fire. As you can see they look just the right size!

We will be using these in conjunction with a log, rather than using 2-3 logs a night we will now be able to use just one with these little beauties helping out!

Keep warm free of charge whilst helping the planet!

I stand in the school playground and hear the other parents saying to one another “oh I can’t wait to dip my toes into the Mediteranean sea again” or “we are only going to New York for a week this year” and I stand and think, we will be lucky if we can afford to go camping this summer!
However there are ways and means to giving your kids a fantastic holiday, one they will enjoy and remember.

1: Try camping, if you think you will hate it (like I did!) just try it, it really isn’t as bad as you think! I love camping now and we go as often as we can afford. A campsite pitch can range between £13-£25 depending on what amenities the campsite offer, the location and the time of year. If you pick a campsite with EHU (electric hook up) this means you can have some luxury, like an electric kettle, a plug in light, a toaster, a fan heater or even a small TV!

2: Many travel agents will offer last minute deals, the later you leave it, the cheaper you can get your holiday. If you have time booked off work and can just ‘go’ then this is great idea.

3: Don’t pay the first price you are given by the travel agent. All travel agents can offer a discount on all holidays. The trick is to look disappointed and say “It’s is just over our budget, which is a shame, otherwise we could have booked right now”, what will probably happen is that the travel agent will ‘go and ask his/her supervisor if there is anything they can do” – sit and wait for your discount This can be from 5% to around 15%. Travel agents work on commission, they want you to book your holiday right now, with them, so use this to your advantage.

4: If travelling abroad, take cash (in your chosen currency) or travellers cheques with you rather than taking cash out while your are there or using your credit card as the charges abroard for this are very high!

5: Whether in this country or abroad, work out a budget and STICK TO IT! Then you don’t have that awful feeling when you come home of “I can’t afford to eat next week, I shouldn’t have bought that ‘kiss me quick hat’ after all!”

6: Take your medicines, sun cream, first aid kit and toiletries with you. We have a travel kit that we keep with basic medicines. plasters and first aid ’stuff’ in, this has been used on many occassions because not only does it save money, but if you are abroad and suddenly feel a bit under the weather, you have what you need with you. You can include things like Calpol sachets for the kids, paracetomol for you, upset tummy tablets, sore throat lozenges, plasters, antiseptic wipes, indigestion tablets etc. You never know when you might need these.

7: If you are going camping, take some food with you. A good idea is to have a camping store cupboard in a box. Take a foldable plastic crate and fill it with things like tins of beans, bottles of sauce, noodles, pasta, mixed herbs, salt and pepper, tea bags etc this will give you a head start when eating in your tent and nothing has to be kept in a fridge either.

8: If travelling abroad, look for the good old fashioned ‘package holiday’ where everything is included. These holidays are somewhat out of fashion these days, but are such good value.
9: Just because it is ‘Summer’, there is no law to say you have to have your main family holiday during this time! Why not have your main break away over the May half term or October half term instead, it will be quieter and cheaper.

10: Check out Travelodge – if you sign up to their newsletter you get regular emails about their offers and deals. Their latest deal was £9 rooms (a room is up to 4 people, en suite, hair dryer, tea and coffee making facilities, TV etc – they are lovely!) and we just managed to bag ourselves a summer holiday for £63 for the week! (more details in a later post!)

I am a bit of a geek, there is no denying it. I love digital art, I can write scripts and modules for various pieces of software, I can work my way around a computer easily and love my mobile phone Through the bits and bobs that I do, I see a lot of mothers who use information technology (that’s ‘computers and the internet’ to non-geeks) regularly. One hand on the pushchair, one hand on the blackberry checking their emails. But is this right for this day and age? Is this how motherhood is going to be from now on? Maybe, but you do need to get the balance right!

As much as I love my laptop, I love my kids more. Some mums seem to constantly tap away, morning, noon and night on their computer (I haven’t got as bad as that yet!) and I find that kind of sad. I used to do a lot of writing and would spend a lot of time on the laptop and so did my husband, we have both calmed down now as our family is more important. We both love gadgets and technology but recent times, financially, have stopped us from buying all the latest doodads and whizzygigs and we have been focusing on what really matters. The kids!

Over the past 18 months we have spent a lot of time in hospital with our children. Our youngest nearly died in November 2007 with meningococcal septicemia and since february our eldest has been suffering from HSP which means unless you leave the hospital you are unable to use your mobile phone because of safety risks. You certainly cannot take your PC with you!
My daughter was in hospital again this weekend with her HSP and I found that the only time I used my mobile was to (now you are probably going to faint so sit down ready) was to phone people!

So I may be a geek, I may be a mum geek, but I am a mum more than anything and that will always remain.

Childrens veggie gardens can be made from a small raised bed in your own garden, a large tub or if you don’t have a garden, they could have a window box!

Getting your children into gardening will teach them many values. They will realise where their food comes from, how plants grow, what plants need to survive, they will have fun and of course they will eat their own produce. Not only that but most kids like the mini-beasts that live in soil too, so this is an added kiddy bonus!

You may think that growing vegetables in such a small space is impossible, however there are loads of veggies that grow well in compact spaces.

1: We all know that carrots have very long roots, however, the variety Parmex are small and round! They look like little orange gold balls and only have a root length between 1? and 2? so perfect for containers, even window boxes.

2: All varieties of lettuces grow extremely well in containers. We had a yield here of around 30 lettuce heads all planted in a container, we are slowly getting through them!

3: Radishes are small, grow well when compacted and grow very quickly, perfect for kids!

4: Don’t think that cress can only be grown in a saucer with a wet paper towel like you used to do at school! Simply spread your cress seeds over the top of the soil in your container and water.

5: Tomatoes (ok not strictly a vegetable!) grow very well in containers as long as they are in the sun, however you can also grow them indoors on a sunny window sill.

6: Garlic takes a long time to grow, but is easy to plant and grow in a container or tub.

7: Chillis grow very well in a tub, we grew them last year and they were lovely.

8: Spinach will grow well in a container, just make sure it does not wilt in the sun.

9: Shallots need a container rather than a window box but grow very well and home grown shallots are lovely and sweet!

10: Herbs! Yes, I know, they are not vegetables! BUT you can also grow herbs in containers too!
Don’t forget to always use good quality organic compost. This is, now these days, inexpensive and you can even buy it local supermarkets as well as garden centres.

Check the packets of seeds or plant boxes to see when and how to plant each seedling or seed.
Make sure you always supply your kids with a packet of baby or hand wipes when they are gardening, just for those quick wash ups.

A pack of wax crayons – Better than felt tip pens or markers because there is no mess, better than coloured pencil crayons because you don’t need a pencil sharpener, better than paints, no water or mess!

A blank drawing pad or plain paper – Plenty you can do with paper (and your wax crayons), you can draw, play tic tac toe, play other paper based games, make folding paper art etc
A pack of playing cards – Always good for a quick game of snap, although we make them do a whisper version otherwise it frightens the life out you when you are driving and then suddenly here SNAP! from the back very loud!

A puzzle book – Always good for when they bored of drawing on their pads.

Car treasure hunt sheet – Make a list on A4 paper of all the things you are likely to see on a long journey (i.e. yellow car, windmill, bird, cow, lorry, motorbike etc) and once they have found all the items they win a small prize! (this can be anything from a sweetie to a hug from mum or dad!)

A couple of reading books – you can swap these for new ones as they read them and finish the books.

Magnetic games – most 99p and pound shops have in their toy aisle some small magentic travel games such as chess. backgammon, draughts etc. These are great for travelling as all the little pieces don’t get lost and they are small enough to fit in a pocket.

This all goes in a bag which sits in our car all the time so they can grab it as and when they want to.

We also play lots of travel games such as I spy, car bingo, guess the theme tune and more. We also let them choose the music if we are on a long journey, however this does mean that Colin and I now know every word to every High School Musical track on the CD!

I am quite an old-fashioned Mum. I like my kids to be polite, to eat all their food (you don’t eat your dinner, you don’t get your pudding!), to do their homework as soon as they get in from school so it’s over and done with etc. But I do let them use the family computer a lot as they use laptops at school and they need to know how to use one, not to mention, the need to learn internet safety.

The reason why I like Whyville, more than the rest of these ‘kiddie safe’ social networking sites is because each child has to go to Whyville School before they can use the site, the school teaches them internet safety and they have to pass a test before they can use the site.
But do kids social networking sites offer any other educational purpose? Suprisingly yes.
Most of these sites, use a form of currency to buy things in and around the site. For example, Neopets uses Neopoints which you earn from playing games, selling items and going to work. Whyville uses clams, earning them by playing games and working. MoshiMonsters uses rox, again earnt by playing games and working. This teaches children the value of ‘money’.
In each of these sites their are a multitude of games to play, this helps with co-ordination, reactions and spacial awareness. Some of the games are trivia based so this also helps to get them thinking.

All of these sites have methods of communication, whether it is talking directly to a person on Whyville or using ‘neomail’, Neopets own email system, to talk to one another. This helps with basic PC and typing skills, not to mention spelling, grammar, social interaction and internet safety awareness.

My children are ‘timed’ on the PC. This way I can see and limit how much time they are spending on these sites and because I have two children, it is a fair way of giving them equal time on the computer.

So as long as you kids are internet aware and you can sit down and supervise them, they can actually learn from these sites, although don’t tell them that!

More recently, Allen Stern stated on FriendFeed “i think sharing on google reader is finished – the value for so many sharers has continued to drop from my perspective” which garnered a number of contrary responses.

The real issue as I see it is that the value offered by various services has not been lessened rather it has been altered since the emergence of mashups with data from multiple services all feeding in to each other.

Isolation

Prior to aggregation services such as FriendFeed we looked at other services in isolation and everything had a set perceived value; you knew exactly what you were getting from your RSS reader or your social networking service.

Now we have aggregation and lifestreaming and it is becoming less clear where the boundaries of any function begin and end.

Distinctions

Lifestreaming is an over used term and is often employed when we really mean aggregation. Lifestreaming is traditionally more a Truman Show type experience (literally your life streamed) rather than aggregation which is the collection of your actions on different services in to one location, but what exactly is our stuff? Is our stream a record of our actions or a share of the content of others?

Are there now distinctions between sharing, aggregation, social bookmarking and the like or have they all merged in to one process? When are you just bookmarking as opposed to sharing? As Alexander said: it’s about your intention but, with the way services like FriendFeed operate, is intention enough?

The social contract

I discussed before about the implied social contract of blogging which has caused a number of arguments over exactly what bloggers owe their audiences and perhaps we should be asking if an implied social contract should extend to the way we utilise sharing and aggregation services.

One aspect of FriendFeed, as an example, causes a big divide in opinion and that is the way in which it handles multiple instances of the same item.

Consider the following scenario:

• User A has their Google Reader and Delicious streams fed in to FriendFeed
• User B has their StumbleUpon and Social Median streams fed in to FriendFeed
• User A shares a specific item in Google Reader and also bookmarks that item in Delicious
• User B stumbles the same item and also clips it on Social Median

Two users have between them now created four instances of the same item within FriendFeed and other users will create further duplication upon sharing the same item.

Is this enabling a wider audience to discuss the same item leading to wider ranges of opinion or is it leading to a fragmentation of the conversation and cluttering peoples streams with useless duplicates?

Intention

With isolated services out intention was clear – we would bookmark something for our own reference or share an item to our link blog but now just about any action we perform becomes a ’share’ if we have our online activities aggregated. This leads to a number of new questions:

• do we share things differently based on where we know the share will be seen?
• does our potential audience affect the actions we take on our subscribed services?
• should we be tailoring our behaviour to our online environment and the community that we are a part of?

Prevously, a single action would have one consequence but with aggregation thrown in to the mix we set off a chain of events. A bookmark or a Digg is no longer just that, it also becomes a share which contributes to the duplication on our aggregation services so should we be asking ourselves whether we need to perform the initial act based on our environment or whether we actually need to have these streams aggregated in the first place?

If a number of our ‘friends’ have shared an item and it already has multiple conversation threads do we hold back so as not to muddy the waters or do we go ahead with the share to boost the item up the rankings of a particular service (ReadBurner for Google Reader shares for example) but at the risk of clogging up our streams with further duplicates?

Is this a conflict of interests? Should we help an item gain more exposure or should we accede to the implied social contract and not clutter the streams of those subscribed to our updates?

Social dilemma or over-analysing?

What do you think?

Related Posts

• Who is our audience and what do we owe them?

Image by Andy Woo.

We have gone beyond just having an opinion and have all become armchair experts in just about everything – it’s no longer just reserved for sports fans thinking they can manage their team better than the “incompetent muppet” standing on the sidelines.

We feel that we can design things and suggest features better than those getting paid to do the job. In some cases users do have valid points and companies have used customer suggestions to improve their products but we should never lose sight of the fact that we are just one person and the designers and developers are catering for the needs of millions. What might be right for you may not be right for some (hmm, wasn’t that in the Different Strokes theme song?)

So, when a new product gets released in beta when does helpful, constructive criticism go too far and border of the realms of being over demanding?

Take Google Chrome for example.

Now I’m not going to remark on the feature set or the pros and cons of the fledgling browser as many others have already done that and better than I could (although I must admit that I like where Google are coming from) but I would like to comment on the reactions and expectations that are being thrown around the web.

Yes, this is Google and we should expect big things – in some respects I think we already have them, but we must never lose sight of the fact that Chrome is just a first beta; it’s an artists sketch before committing to getting the brushes dirty.

The first beta of Chrome has laid the foundations and put down some very good groundwork which will be fleshed out and perfected over the course of development so statements like “Chrome Not Ready For Enterprise” are pointless.

Of course it’s not and no-one should be suggesting otherwise.

Chrome will not be ready for enterprise for quite a while and will not be considered for enterprise use for even longer – at least in any enterprise with any integrity and a decent IT infrastructure. There are many more factors at play that just the features built in to the browser.

An enterprise environment will have procedures in place to test and approve any new software prior to deployment – beta software will never be considered. Not only do you have potential security or data corruption issues but you must also consider the reputation of your company. How would it look if you were connecting to third party services to access and manipulate sensitive data using an incomplete product? Not only would you tarnish your reputation but you would most likely be kicked off the service.

All we are saying…

Give Chrome a chance. Give any new product or service that comes out as beta a chance and stop making ridiculous demands of something which is, by definition, just a work in progress. This is what beta is all about regardless of who is behind it.

First look reviews and constructive criticism should be encouraged but outlandish statements and ridiculous demands get us nowhere.

A public beta is just the external face of a project and there will be a lot more going on behind the scenes both in terms of advancements of the technology involved and where the project is heading. As I have mentioned in the past, just because a company hasn’t said they will be doing X, Y or Z doesn’t mean it isn’t already on the table; you don’t want to give away all your secrets too early. You may not be able to deliver on all your promises (remember the Longhorn saga) so under promise and over deliver but, more importantly, you don’t want to give too much of a heads up to the competition.