How Not to Use Social Media

by Carol Yelverton

Social media is everywhere we want to be these days, providing new ways to share our lives, personally and professionally. We use these platforms in wide and narrow strokes, sharing with large twitter empires or carefully constructed neighborhoods of facebook friends, depending on our needs and wants. Whether through social networks, video/picture sites or the idea trains we call blogs, we have a voice within many, unique types of emerging communities. And, social media is becoming more and more important in promoting and marketing our ideas, businesses, and even ourselves.

Succeeding at effective communication through social media can sometimes feel a little daunting. What  do we do and how do we do it well? Well, it may be easier to start with an eye on the things these new channels will not help us accomplish.

Don’t use social media:

To Dump Content: Instead of downloading tons of content, social media allows us to engage people in our information. Think less about declaring yourself and more about conversing on topics of mutual interest. Standard websites are better spots for lots and lots of content.

To Finish a Thought Instead of Begin It: Social media is all about bringing fresh ideas or approaches into a larger discussion. It just is not an autocratic platform. Share your thoughts, contribute to conversations, support and encourage your communities, instead.

To Insert – Rather than Define – Your Brand: Your brand stands alone…social media gives you a means to provide context and meaning to it. If you have a business or cause to promote, share it out. Open it up for others to comment on. That will allow brand definition to occur. There’s lots of self promotion in social media and the best of is not communicated through old school, persuasive advertisements. The approach is to introduce your brand as a natural part of the conversation.

To Hide Your Motives: This is all about transparency. Use these open channels to free up ideas. The social community is incredibly open to new thinking.

To Compete: Think of social media as a series of channels offering collaborative, intuitive communication processes. These are communities of practice and interests where we cross pollinate knowledge, ideas and understanding. This is a hard one for some business folks to get their heads around. Yet, social media is a landscape for sharing. If the idea of competing is that it helps you stand out and win, think about this occurring because your ability to engage has made you a valued community member, instead.

To Function in a Vacuum: It’s not about you, alone. Ask others how they are. Listen. Whatever social media channels you operate within, think of yourself as a citizen of the community. Be part of it. That’s true engagement.

Social Media and the Explosion of Ideas

By Carol Yelverton

I have two gmail, one Emerson College & three yahoo email addresses, two twitter accounts & memberships on facebook, Linkedin, MySpace, youtube, flick’r, digg, delicious, yahoo buzz and stumbleupon. I run a small social network and a blog.

I’m social.

Here’s why: I believe that social media can transform society.

Brian Solis, one of the pioneers of this medium, wisely got this way back in 2007 when he defined social media as ” The democratization of content and the understanding of the role people play in the process of not only reading and disseminating information, but also how they share and create content for others to participate. It is a shift from a broadcast mechanism to a many-to-many model, rooted in a conversational format between authors and people. ”

We are now empowered to communicate out loud together in ways we never have before. This has provoked us, creating a thought expansion which we are living out in a variety of ways

Certainly, we are developing promising ways to do business. Just as we believed we had search engine optimization figured out, our new ROI model is revolving around the engagement we find on twitter and youtube. And marketers have new, tight, direct funnels to prime target audiences.

We are also building new neighborhoods. We’re rekindling relationships with old friends on facebook, as we create connection with those we never would have otherwise encountered on twitter.

And we are shaping ideas about ourselves through the economic tumult of this Great Recession and the uncertainties we find about our place in the world, as well. We are practicing politics, building coalitions, exchanging music, art & culture, and sharing news & information according to our pace and interests.

Social media is truly an explosion of ideas, a confluence of information and practices interwoven through these multiple social media channels, as we elect to participate in them. It’s not something being done to us. It’s something we are participating in creating.

What truly excites me about all of these tools are the new rules of engagement. Social media is transparent. It is a free-form exercise of conversation and spirit. I have found incredible generosity in discussions and in the sharing of ideas I have experienced. It’s is a far cry from proprietary thinking around intellectual property. The populist flow of social media is causing incredible growth to occur because the end result really is greater than the sum of its parts. We are all making something happen.

A social movement is a group action based on ideas around political or social issues. It’s no stretch to starting thinking about social media as a social movement. We are growing our own areas of need and interest. In doing this, we are moving our world forward. This is social change at its most basic and profound level.

Ideas and information are moving around the internet at speeds of light. Through social media interaction ripples and reaction are transforming outcomes. What are your pet interests? How has social media changed them…and what can these new tools do in the future to create even better results?

Great history is often not made, but occurs through the natural course of human action. We are just past the threshold of this new form of communication, which just really may, in its transparency, speed and innate sense of community, transform our thinking as people on this planet.

The Recovery Party

By Carol Yelverton

Home sales are up and, with a 3.5% annual rate in the third quarter of the year, the latest economic numbers show the deep recession has ended. The news this week from Ford was deeply encouraging, too: a $1 billion profit for the third quarter. Yet, this surging economy hasn’t quite figured out how to take the American people along for the ride. Unemployment was at its highest level in 26 years last month and all signs indicate it may get higher. This is kind of like throwing a party but forgetting to send out the invitations.

Many Americans, like John Herrholz,  continue to struggle.

John worked for many years as a television engineer. He joined an audio & web encoding service in 2007. By 2008 the company was already retracting and John was laid off. His wife, Barbe, has had her counter hours at Dunkin Donuts cut from 24 to 16. The only health insurance they have is catastrophic.John spends at least half his week looking for a full time job. And, he’s picked up some work as a field engineer for TV sports events.

Meantime, the Herrholz’s son was laid off. He, his girlfriend and their child were evicted. “They then moved into my home to have a roof over their heads and once he got back to work, to save some money to get back out on their own. I am not sure if the lesson will be learned for a while, but I hope that he will see what unconditional love is.” says John. “If I can keep healthy and keep finding some work, I should come out ahead in a couple of years. I am trying to see the glass as half full, not the other way… Like many other issues, failure is not an option.”

So, at this point how can job creation join the recovery party? Economic stimulus plans tied to alternative energy and construction can help. So, too, can an alignment of the stock market’s emerging growth in sound, ethical practices, and in a strong infusion of support for emerging and existing small businesses.

Multi-Billion Dollar Alternative Energy Investment Grants Create Jobs & Grow Renewable Sources

As part of the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act, President Barack Obama announced $3.4 billion in Smart Grid Investment Grant awards on Tuesday. The private sector has promised to match these funds creating a total public-private investment worth over $8 billion.

It’s projected that tens of thousands of jobs will be created through these efforts.  In developing a stronger system for our electrical grid to operate on, plans have been built in to incorporate alternative energy. It may be possible for the United States to get 20 percent or more of our electrical energy from renewable sources by 2020.

Global Recession Trends

The worldwide recession is showing some signs of backing down. South Korea today reports major growth in manufacturing. Both capital and consumer spending are up, as well. Unlike the recent economic jump-starts seen in the United States, unemployment is declining in South Korea. This is a significant trend for solid recovery.

It’s a different story in Japan, though. Today, new Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama said that pulling his country out of its recession is his top priority. Job creation, cutting public works spending and even providing families with cash are some of the ideas on the table.

Experts see rebounding economy shedding jobs

Carolyn Lochhead, Chronicle Washington Bureau

Sunday, October 25, 2009

(10-25) 04:00 PDT Washington –

Forget a jobless recovery. The economy may be entering a recovery with job losses.

Third-quarter estimates this week are expected to show that the economy grew for the first time since the quarter ending in June 2008. Despite the estimated 3 percent expansion and a stock market that has been on a tear since March, hundreds of thousands of people are still being laid off each month.

Eight million jobs have been lost nationwide since the recession began two years ago, and by some measures workers face the worst job market since the Depression. The average laid-off worker has been without a job for 61/2 months, a post-World War II record. Many of those workers will never recover financially.

California’s hole, deepened by a state budget mess and volatile tax system, is far worse: Unemployment is at

12.2 percent, third highest in the nation; and adding discouraged and part-time workers puts it over 20 percent.

“It’s not even a jobless recovery; it’s a recovery with more job losses,” said UCLA economist Lee Ohanian. “The idea of having essentially no net job creation after a remarkably severe recession is a real pathology for the U.S. economy.”

‘Painfully weak’ job growth

Top White House economist Christina Romer of UC Berkeley told Congress on Thursday that employment growth could remain “painfully weak” through next year, and that the largest effect from the $787 billion stimulus enacted in February, mainly aid to states, is past. By mid-2010, she said, the stimulus will no longer contribute to growth.

Alarms are ringing at the White House and in Congress. But with a mind-boggling $1.4 trillion deficit this year, Democrats have used up their bullets. The word stimulus has such a bad connotation that the term has been banished from new efforts to goose the economy and help workers, such as extending unemployment benefits, sending $250 checks to seniors and a program the White House announced to help small businesses get loans.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-San Francisco, and top House Democrats met for four hours with economists Wednesday, amid criticism from the left that the stimulus was poorly targeted on jobs. Calls have mounted for a tax credit to hire workers, much like one tried three decades ago during the Carter administration, but there is little appetite in Congress or the administration for more stimulus spending.

Romer and Vice President Joe Biden’s economist, Jared Bernstein, cited high deficits in downplaying calls for a new stimulus. “Remember, stimulus by definition is temporary,” Bernstein said. “In the interest of fiscal rectitude, we need to ramp the spending down no later than necessary.”

Even under optimistic assumptions, it could take seven straight years of solid growth just to get employment back to where it was before the downturn, a Rutgers University analysis found.

Almost no one is expecting job growth to roar back, given its anemic increase in the last decade, when the economy generated on average 1 million jobs a year, less than half as many as during the booms of the 1980s and 1990s. Median income actually fell more than $2,000 over the decade.

Employment mystery

Economists are puzzled as to why job growth has slowed, citing everything from higher health care costs, to higher productivity, to Chinese currency manipulation.

“The answer is, we don’t know,” said Tim Bartik, a liberal economist with the Upjohn Institute for Employment Research in Michigan who is proposing a tax credit for employers who hire new workers.

At a cost of $21,000 per job created, he said, a tax credit is far cheaper than the average $112,000 cost of each job created by the stimulus, as calculated by the administration.

Michael Boskin, former top economist in the George H.W. Bush administration, favors a cut in payroll taxes. He said the current stimulus has been “marginally effective at best, and at immense expense,” describing it as mainly a “patchwork of wish lists for various constituencies.”

University of Maryland economist Peter Morici said the administration’s efforts to restore growth by directing spending to such things as alternative energy are too expensive for the number of jobs created and ignore larger problems in the economy.

’70s French model

“If we’re going to have 1970s French policies, we’re going to have 1970s French unemployment,” Morici said, referring to government direction of investment that many people blamed for chronically high unemployment in Europe. The rapidly weakening dollar should boost exports and reduce imports, helping U.S. producers, but because China keeps its currency, the yuan, artificially pegged to the dollar, U.S. competitiveness against China will not improve.

“You can’t grow with a huge trade deficit,” Morici said. “If you don’t revalue the Chinese yuan against the dollar you can’t get out of this mess, and if you don’t do something about oil imports you can’t get out of this mess. Industrial policies won’t fix it.”

E-mail Carolyn Lochhead at clochhead@sfchronicle.com.

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/10/25/MNMR1A9PMQ.DTL

This article appeared on page A – 1 of the San Francisco Chronicle

Recession Wines

Wine enthusiasts have seen prices fall on significant vintages this past year. The latest news from Pernod Ricard, the parent company for Mumm Champagne, reporting a significant drop in sales for their first quarter wasn’t surprising. Now, cnet is reporting that Amazon.com is pulling back from a $30 million dollar online wine investment.
While the business is in a tailspin, wine consumers are finding a small perk through these tough days as quality vintages are more accessible. So, where are the deals?

The Beverage Tasting Institute has compiled some of the best wine values – meaning quality vintages at reasonable prices. A few standouts:
Reds Under $10: Ravenswood 2007 Vintner’s Blend, 92 pts
Reds Under $8 : L’Enclave des Papes 2007 Cuvee Prestige, 93 pts
Whites Under $15 : Daniel Gehrs 2008 Chenin Blanc, 93 pts
Whites Under $10: Hogue 2008 Riesling, 90 pts
Top Value ‘Box Wine’ : Black Box 2007 Shiraz, 90 pts
Top Value Sparkling: Cavit NV Lunetta, 88 pts

See the full results here http://www.tastings.com/wine/features.html?features_id=71 with tasting notes on http://www.tastings.com

Designing Design Careers In A Recession

Content Provided By Braintrack.com

Email Print

Braintrack.com (ARA) – The negative impact of the recession on the design industry is undeniable. Designers are losing jobs, and cash-strapped clients are delaying or dropping projects.

Yet, there may be a silver lining, say industry experts, who assert that a recession may spark innovation, discourage waste, and encourage the use of less-expensive and more durable materials and gadgets – possibly made of common utensils and accessories.

During an economic downturn, fashion designers and interior designers can refocus on sustainable goods that are easier on the wallet. Such an approach would be in synch with Americans’ overall reevaluation of their spending habits and lifestyles and their renewed attention to eco-friendly and sustainable buildings and products.

A recession may be a good time for research and development resulting in self-initiated projects. Designers are shifting their own and public attention away from consumer goods to the more basic needs of infrastructure, housing, city planning, transit and energy.

In fact, designers may be well-suited temperamentally and creatively for a recession, accustomed as they are to fresh perspectives, collaboration and finding simple solutions to complex problems. Interior designers, for example, might focus on redesign or sustainability projects.

According to Cecilia Dean, the editor of Visionaire, as quoted in The New York Times: “As much as the recession has been terrible, it cleaned house a little bit. When there is a lot of money, there are also a lot of people giving their opinions, and the designer gets lost. Creativity blossoms when resources are limited.”

Historically, recessions have led to a boom in creativity. According to Michael Cannell, also quoted in a New York Times article, the Great Depression gave rise to the flourishing movement of modernism, because it addressed the “middle-class need for a pared-down life without servants and other Victorian trappings” and “offered affordable, intelligent design for a broad audience.” The lean years of the 1940s inspired furniture made of such cheap materials as plastic, resin and plywood.

“The challenge will be about finding the sweet spot between affordability and durability,” says Julie Lasky, editor-in-chief of I.D. magazine (quoted in the same article).

Design schools

A recession may also be a good time to enroll in or go back to design school. Typically, when unemployment increases and times are tough, people tend to acquire more skills and knowledge and try to make themselves more marketable through more education.
The first step is to define your design interests and look for a school that matches them. Consulting those already working in the field can help clarify your goals.

Employers looking for interior designers generally prefer to hire people who have earned bachelors degrees from recognized interior design schools. The requirements for fashion design careers and graphic design careers are a bit easier, where an associate degree may be sufficient. When selecting a school, find out if financial assistance in the form of scholarships, loans or work-study programs is available.

Ascertain if the faculty is working in the particular design industry of interest and if the school is accredited by an organization such as the National Association of Schools of Art and Design. Make a point of getting information on the job placement history of the school, and ask for a list of employers who have hired their graduates to get a sense of how the school is regarded. Also inquire about the opportunity for apprenticeships and internships, as this will help you evaluate whether the field is right for you before you fully commit to a certain career path. Internships can also lead to employment after you graduate. Not all schools offer this assistance.

Lastly, choose a school that offers a broad-based curriculum. Business and marketing classes, no matter what your future field or the economy, give you an advantage.

While sitting out the recession, Michael Bierut of the Design Observer Group makes several suggestions: Be frugal. Ask yourself what you really need to do your work, and “get rid of everything else,” he writes.

Don’t make foolish choices out of desperation, such as taking on a shady client or starting a project without a contract, Bierut cautions. Take your time with projects, and take the time not for “deliberated, goal-oriented” networking but the “joy of human companionship.”

Courtesy of ARAcontent

White House to Convene Conference to Boost Small Business

Recognizing the role small business plays in restarting the economy, President Barack Obama today announced plans for a summit to address lending issues. Speaking to a gathering at the Metropolitan Archives in Landover, Maryland the President spoke to the impact the Great Recession has had on small business owners.
Acknowledging that more credit is needed to help businesses stay afloat, Obama announced that both the Treasury Secretary and Small Business Administration head are being tasked to bring new ideas to the table. President Obama said,” I’ve asked Tim Geithner and Karen Mills to convene a conference in the coming weeks that will bring together regulators, congressional leaders, lenders and small businesses to determine what additional steps we can take to get credit flowing to small businesses that want to expand and create more jobs. Of all the steps we’re taking to move this economy from recession to recovery, I continue to believe that the success of our small businesses will be a foundation upon which our future prosperity is built. So we will continue to do whatever we can to help these businesses grow and thrive. And I’m confident that the steps we announced today will do that for small business owners across the country, men and women we hear from every day.”

Newly Formed ‘Coalition for New Credit Models’ Urges Financial Changes to Help Economy Recover

As the U.S. economy struggles through an unprecedented recession, many economists believe strong, new credit and loan procedures need to be fast tracked through Washington to revive small businesses and help them move themselves through this current financial storm. A group of social enterprise, non-profit and for-profit enterprises have combined forces to create The Coalition for New Credit Models. They believe new technologies, products and business models need to be used to do this.

Founding member Nicolas Perkin, Chief Executive Officer of The Receivables Exchange, said, “Now more than ever,  America’s businesses should have unfettered access to alternative and reliable sources of capital to meet their business financing needs. As the economy regains momentum and technology continues to accelerate the pace at which business is conducted around the world, only innovation and an uncompromised focus on transparency and responsible financing models will drive sustainable growth and prevent businesses from being reliant on a single source of funding, and thereby exposed to unnecessary risk.”

The Coalition for New Credit Models recommends that Congress and the Administration:

1. Adopt legislation classifying person-to-person lending as a consumer banking service, not a securities offering.
2. Create a liquidity fund to provide capital for companies making small consumer loans to underbanked individuals.
3. Establish a federal backstop for small and mid-sized businesses to provide access to working capital through electronic marketplaces.
4. Enable the emergence of a robust U.S.-based private company stock market to provide the exit path necessary to attract investment capital back to this country, bolstering domestic small businesses, innovation and job growth.
5. Create a Start Up Liaison at Treasury Department or within banking regulators to guide and fast-track the development of new financial products by start-up companies and organizations seeking to innovate the way consumers and businesses raise and access capital.

More information is available on this website: http://www.newcreditmodels.com/