The world is saturated with twits, tweets, and tweeps. Everyone, from Oprah to NPR has decided that this is the most brilliant application ever devised by man. They constantly cite it, talk about it, and overhype it to the Nth degree.

The one thing they never explain about twitter is how it is intended to be used. They don’t explain the reTweet, or spambot followers. They just tell random people to get online, and drop their thoughts, in 140 characters or less, of course.

It’s not their fault, really, as twitter doesn’t really have a defined purpose. The idea is that it is supposed to enable real-time communication, sort of a text message broadcast to the entire world. The actual purpose of tweets are left up to the users’ imaginations.

It was too much for me to get my mind wrapped around when I started, that is for sure. With this in mind, I’d like to tell you a couple uses that will make twitter a valuable investment of your time.

This article will serve a very practical purpose, both for the novice user of twitter, and for those who have lost interest: It’ll tell you how, what, and why to follow certain users, along with giving you the ability to find and organize that data in a meaningful manner.

With that in mind, let’s begin. There are around 7 major types of twitter users. Your interests will determine which of these folks it would be in your best interest to follow:

1. Newsies: The New York Times, Tribune Media, Huffington Post, Drudge Report, and various other news agencies use twitter as a point of distribution for their articles. Updates commonly carry newly published content, or respond to readers of their content, which will naturally drive new readers to their site.

2. Gurus: These people, like Tony Robbin or Robert Kiyosaki(of Rich Dad, Poor Dad fame) use their accounts to push out mini-seminars. Their updates range from the inspirational to motivational, deliver news updates, and of course, push product in-between.

3. Gossip Gals: They don’t miss a single controversy. It doesn’t matter how small, these girls(and guys—think Perez Hilton) won’t let it rest. While TMZ and the Smoking Gun throw out some really interesting stuff, I wouldn’t put it in the category of “news”.

4. Info-Marketers: Pushing everything from get-rich-schemes, to plugging their latest eBook, these folks peddle all things downloadable. They are always mentioning some resource that seems designed to help you make money, but will make them money instead.

5. Regular Marketers: Generally, tweeps of this ilk are pushing a physical product, or building up that brand. You’ll see everyone from tire companies to toilet paper purveyors interacting with their customers and fans. To spice things up, fun facts and interesting news are served with soft-sell promotional tactics.

6. Power Tweeters: This is an odd group. They generally tweet about anything and everything. Most of the time, they are female in gender, and are a mixture of Gossip Gals and Newsie fare, with a spatter of hometown chatter. They never sell anything. Many times, they will live-tweet their thoughts on concerts, television shows, and fashion.

7. Everyone Else: This encompasses roughly 97% of the twitterverse. They followed a few people, didn’t learn how to link, reTweet, or even reply inside of twitter. Eventually, they get tired of the whole thing, and move back to playing “Mafia Wars” on facebook.

While there are sub-groups within every group, these are where the lines are generally drawn. The most important takeaway from this breakdown is the following: Most people on twitter are trying to sell you something. Now that you know who’s online, how can you get the most out of twitter?

Glad you asked. The first thing to get is a twitter client. For the purpose of this article, we’re going with TweetDeck, a leader in the twitter client arena. It’s easy to use. Download it, open it up, enter your username and password…and magically, you have a bird’s eye view of everything happening in twitter(or at least who you are following, and their activity).

You’ll see your live twitter feed on the far left, in-between you’ll find any replies that have been made to your messages(if you’ve just opened an account, there won’t be any messages here), and on the far right, your direct messages(private messages between you and another user that are not broadcast to other users).

The first thing you should do is find twitterers who meet your basic informational needs. For that, I actually prefer to use google, as it generally does a better job of finding who, or what you are looking for than twitter’s native search service. Google your local station’s call sign and add twitter to the end.(e.g. WKPY twitter). Let’s say we were searching for a our local station in New Mexico. We’d follow @KOBTV. That will be useful for weather alerts, local news, and community events.

Next, get a national news feed you trust. CNN, MSNBC, and Fox all have twitter feeds kicking out news at the speed of type. You can now see what is making waves at the national level, along with any upcoming special reports.

Now comes the fun part…your interests. Love tech…grab @TechCrunch. Need your daily fix of stats and scores: Follow @ESPN. Pick 2-3 twittering entities that don’t overlap. For instance, unless you just love too much information, don’t follow ABC, NBC, and CBS news.

From there, it’s time to find interesting people to follow. See if your favorite celebrities, nobel laureates, or trashmen are online. Check out their profile online, either by searching google with their name, followed by twitter, or by going to their website, and finding out what it is. This is probably the greatest chance at interaction with the rich and infamous that you will get. Rainn Wilson(Dwight Schrute of “The Office”) is one celebrity with particularly interest thoughts, links, and conversation.

You have a base of good, solid tweets that you are now following. Here comes the fun part. There are people around the world having conversations about the latest news, movies, restaurants, whatever. Now, you just have to find them. Pull up the search feature in TweetDeck. There are two ways to search: hashtag, or plain text. Hashtags denote a post in a certain category. For instance, if you were looking for all the updates that include the President, but don’t actually mention him in the body, this is the easiest way to search. If you are just looking for all mentions of Barack Obama, you would enter his name in plain text.

Searching in TweetDeck will open a column that automatically updates each time the search term is mentioned. For instance, you could keep a column opened for any topics you are interested in, and monitor them in real-time. I like to keep an eye on precious metals, mining, and tire news(boring, I know). When I am monitoring twitter, I keep a #gold, #silver, #mining, and #tires tab open, so that I can keep abreast of what is happening. It’s like a stock ticker. Glance, see something you like, and read any article links that come through. If I see someone who is tweeting regularly about a topic I am interested in, I follow them, so I can see any of their general tweets as well. Rinse and repeat for each topic you have an interest in, and the list of people you follow will be over 100 in no time.

Now, for the bad part: Taking out the trash. Twitter is full of people who will spam you, by doing the most flattering thing of all: following your account. Since twitter sends you an email notification that someone is a follower, your curiosity makes you want to check them out. Many times, they will masquerade as a female in a bathing suit(or less). Their names will often be followed by a dash with a 4-digit number. You should immediately go to your follower page, and hit “report as spam”. This helps twitter eliminate them from the roster, and keeps any of your followers from checking their garbage out.

On a lesser note, I try to clean out people I follow from time-to-time. Some of them have reverted to inane chatter, instead of providing important news. Even worse, they are tweeting more often, and saying even less. If you are spending time in twitter, make sure that dump a few people to keep things uncluttered.

Some of you might be wondering how to get legitimate followers. It’s simple advice: Be you. If you are chatty, be chatty. Talk about your interests. ReTweet things from others that you find interesting. Be consistent. Spend time on twitter. The more you are engaged with others, the more likely it is that people will like, and follow what you have to say.

Now, let’s recap how to get the most out of twitter:

1. Know the major categories of Twitterers. Filter them out based upon your interests.

2. Get a twitter client, like TweetDeck, to help you manage the vast streams of information coming through.

3. Make sure you are following a local news station, national news station, and sources that cover any informational gaps that you might have.

4. Follow celebrities that are active and intelligent.

5. Use search and hashtags to sort out topics and people to follow that are of interest to you.

6. Take out the trash regularly to make sure your feed isn’t overloaded with garbage. Block or report bots as spam.

7. Gain more followers by contributing to the conversation, and being yourself.

That’s all for now. There are far more advanced methods of tweeting, following, and being heard. Most of those methods are custom rules, developed by each user. You wouldn’t think publishing a message would need rules. After all, how complex should sending out 140 characters be?

Evidently, as complex as we can possibly make something that has no definable purpose.

Kurt Hartman

“For women, balancing a career and family doesn’t have to be a high wire act – it just requires a bit of juggling,” says Laura Betterly, CEO of In Touch Media Group, Inc. (www.intouchmediagroup.com), a full-service marketing company that specializes in using the Internet as a public relations and advertising tool. “Prioritization, organization, and delegation are key to achieving the balance that allows a woman to enjoy a rich family life while also gaining fulfillment from her career.”

Betterly knows whereof she speaks. With a husband and two teenage boys, Betterly is among the 72 percent of mothers with children one year or older who are in the workforce. While acknowledging that her high-powered career allows her to take advantage of services that aren’t accessible to lower income mothers, Betterly maintains that every woman can develop the skills necessary to balance work and family.

“Prioritizing is the process of realizing that you can’t do it all, deciding what’s important, and not sweating the small stuff,” Betterly says. Although she likes to provide her family with home-cooked meals, Betterly would rather spend time with her sons than in front of the stove every night. “I go to a place called Get Cooking Now, where I can make twelve dishes in their kitchen all at once,” she says. “I bring them home, freeze them, and am able to give my family good, nutritious meals without a lot of preparation time or mess.”

Betterly also carves out more family time by being organized and streamlining other household tasks. “I do all of our personal banking and bill paying online, and use Quicken to track all of our expenditures and due dates,” she says. And, if you’re on Betterly’s gift list, you can count on the fact that what’s inside the box came from an online source. “I utilize the Internet for gift shopping, especially at holiday time,” she says. “I can find everything I’m looking for online, and I’d rather spend time with my husband and sons than traipse through shopping malls.”

Finally, Betterly is a firm believer in delegation. “Each member of the family has a list of jobs to do around the house, like taking out the garbage, washing the clothes, and doing the dishes,” she says. “By delegating chores, the boys have learned that their contributions are important to our family, and that we have more time for fun.”

And what does Betterly, her husband steve blom, and sons Craig and Chris do with their extra time? “We go to movies, concerts, visit friends, and barbecue,” she says. “Plus, I’m getting pretty good at play the Digital Dance Revolution video game with the boys.”

Betterly concludes, “As women, we don’t have to make a choice between work and family. With a few skills and some practice, we can juggle the two beautifully.”

Kris Nickerson
http://www.articlesbase.com/women’s-issues-articles/the-art-of-balancing-career-and-family-61729.html

Ramp up your marketing

Companies ranging small and large are increasingly turning to outside blogs, viral videos and websites such as Facebook, Twitter, FriendFeed and Digg — and their tens of millions of users — to reach consumers. Instead of cringing at the idea of relinquishing control to social media outlets, smart executives realize that there is more benefit in joining the conversation than fighting it. Instead of controlling information about your brand, your social media strategy should be about engagement.

Advertising as we know it is expensive; social media is cheap. For this reason, the recession is bad news for traditional marketers, while the same environment is full of opportunities for social media marketers. Setting up a company blog or a Facebook page is significantly less expensive than traditional marketing. Even creating your own community web site can be significantly cheaper than traditional advertising campaigns.

Social media marketing is not without risk. While every company wants to generate buzz, online backlash can be vicious. Recently a Motrin commercial aimed at moms created quite a stir. You can view the ad on YouTube as did another 210,000 people. The ad makes the apparently condescending claim that carrying babies in a sling is a painful experience for moms. According to moms, the ad was wrong and they made it loud and clear through social media applications such as Twitter. Some moms found the Motrin ad outright offensive, and they were quite vocal about it. You can catch them on YouTube. Of course, the disaster doesn’t end there. It continues on a myriad of blogs, and carries on in a Facebook page dedicated to boycotting Motrin. The backlash ad on YouTube can be viewed.

What to do when your target rejects your ad? Turn to social media. Instead of rejecting the market reaction Johnson & Johnson could have used social media applications to learn about their market prior to creating and publishing the controversial ad. There could have been a Facebook page created to learn about young moms and pain. There could have been a blog inviting moms to provide video testimonials on YouTube. The lesson learned in this case is to use social media to learn about your market, or be prepared to be taught very quickly and painfully.

Reduce your expenses

Save time and money on travel and use LinkedIn to network. Instead of driving to the other end of town fighting your way through traffic use the largest business social network to build new connections and to nurture existing ones. Only attend your most valuable networking events, and transfer as much of your networking as you can to the web. LinkedIn, Plaxo, and Facebook are some of the best social networking applications.

Reduce your legal fees through a fairly new social media site called Docstoc. It is a place to find and share professional documents such as contracts, confidentiality agreements, intellectual property documents and more. Docstoc is a social community resource that enables anyone to find and share professional documents. The site provides an opportunity for individuals and organizations to share their professional documents. Documents available on Docstoc can be easily searched, previewed and downloaded for free.

Decrease your recruiting costs as you hire your employees though Craigslist, which has quietly become one of the most visited websites in cyberspace. It offers a much cheaper way to recruit online, and your company can expect excellent response rates for your job posts.

Putting it all together

Are more companies turning to social media in this economy? They should if they want to improve their marketing efficiencies, enhance their customer service experience, or develop their research techniques. Social media allows companies to engage with the customers instead of shouting about their own wonderfulness. It offers ways to business to partner with the community in an effort to develop a better product. In the end everybody wins because both the company and the consumer end up with a better product.

Virtually all companies can benefit from using social media not just to create awareness, but also to become part of the conversation. Managing your corporate reputation is impossible without social media, and ignoring it can be outright devastating. Instead if fighting against it, embrace it as it rockets your business forward as it deepens your relationship with the only reason you are in business for, your customer.

George Meszaros
http://www.articlesbase.com/management-articles/fighting-recession-with-social-media-part-2-701961.html

Just connect yourself to the World Wide Web (www), which can be accessed through the Internet. You will find a lot of interesting and funny things to do when you log on to the World Wide Web. If you like reading jokes then you will be happy to know that there are a lot of websites, which makes jokes available to you. You don’t even have to pay a single penny to read these jokes. You will have a fun time reading the archives of funny jokes and you will not be able to keep yourself away from these websites. These websites also accept jokes from the readers. So if you are aware of any jokes, which you think is funny and interesting then you can also share the jokes with the other users by posting them on the websites that, accept jokes.

If you are a movie freak then you will be happy to know that there are certain sites that offer reviews on different movies. Even a user is allowed to post a review on a movie. You can check out how good or bad the movie is by going through the review or the summary of the movie. After that if you think that the movie is worthy to be watched then you can go watch it with your friends. The same thing goes for music. There are sites, which offer you songs, which you can listen to online. So before thinking of getting a new album by your favorite singer or group, check out their songs on the websites first. This way you will know whether the album is good or not. You can also read the review of the music albums over the Internet.

There are so many funny and interesting things to do over the Internet. You can even upload a funny video of your own and on a website and share it with other users. Likewise, you can also check out the funny videos uploaded by other users. You will also find websites that offers online games for the users. So if you are one of those people who love to play games then you will have great time playing the games available online.

Do you know what you IQ is? If you don’t then you can take an online assessment of your IQ. All that you will have to do is answer a few questions. There are so many websites that offers a free IQ assessment test to you. Just check out any one of those websites and find out your IQ score. There are also websites that accept writings for prizes. So if you are a budding writer or poet then submit your poetry or story to the website. You may just turn out to be a winner.

anonymous
http://www.articlesbase.com/free-articles/the-internet-is-full-of-funny-stuff-83859.html

So many people ask me about starting an AdWords campaign. They say, “I have no idea what this is going to cost, how many impressions I’ll get, or what will work. I have a product that will bring a $30 commission, what should my cost per click be?”

Here’s what I tell them: “$29.99, and that’s if you’re getting 100% conversion.” Of course, that won’t happen in the Internet marketing arena, so what can you spend? That’s the ultimate question. What are you willing to take and just flush down the toilet? Make sense?

It may and it may not. It depends on how new to the Internet marketing business world you are, and how well you know how AdWords works. So, let’s make this clear. If you want to advertise your business using Google AdWords, you have to decide how your Internet marketing business can afford to drop every day, until your AdWords campaign becomes viable.

You may be thinking, I can’t waste any money right now. If that’s true, then you probably shouldn’t be messing around with AdWords. There are so many other ways to advertise in Internet marketing, without using AdWords, and many of them are free. So, wait until you have the wherewithal to lose some money, and then, you should set a very specific budget for that kind of advertising.

But for this illustration, let’s figure that you can just flush away some money. But you have to first decide what your advertising budget is for your Internet marketing business, and what percentage of that you’re willing to spend on AdWords. It might be $100 a day, or it might be $3, but whatever that amount is, you set your AdWords daily budget at that figure.

Just remember that you’ll get fewer impressions with the lowest amounts, and fewer click-throughs. It’s possible that it will take a long time to see your ad circulated enough to do any evaluation of how well your ad works. But let’s just say that your daily budget is $50. You can just dump that $50 a day, and it won’t put a dent in your Internet marketing business, right? So, let’s just say that you only get clicks that cost you $10 a day for 7 days. You have $40 a day left over that you didn’t spend. OK, then, for the next seven days, you can boost your daily rate to $90 to see what happens.

Eventually, with a lot of testing and tracking, you’ll find a sweet spot. Your ad will be getting impressions and you’ll be getting clicks. It just takes time. You have to continually monitor the campaign and tweak it until it becomes profitable. A good ebook to read to get you into this game is Perry Marshall’s The Definitive Guide to AdWords. Get it and use what you learn inside.

Though my answer here may seem cloudy, it’s the truth. Nobody can tell you what your cost-per-click should be. Spend as much as your Internet marketing business can afford on AdWords and not a single cent more. When you see that the campaign is starting to work, you may change your strategy and spend more on AdWords. It just depends on how quickly you make changes and move forward. Just never become depressed or upset at how this is going. You have to keep moving ahead.

Here is the key to success. Never give up. Just don’t put expensive demands on your Internet marketing business’s budget to the point that you’re way in over your head. Your Internet marketing business will fail or you’ll be stuck paying huge credit card debts for years. If you don’t understand the system fully, learn it before jumping in head first. Be a little conservative, and plan your AdWords campaign wisely.

Tellman H. Knudson
http://www.articlesbase.com/marketing-articles/internet-marketing-taking-adwords-carefully-296811.html

The world is saturated with twits, tweets, and tweeps. Everyone, from Oprah to NPR has decided that this is the most brilliant application ever devised by man. They constantly cite it, talk about it, and overhype it to the Nth degree.

The one thing they never explain about twitter is how it is intended to be used. They don’t explain the reTweet, or spambot followers. They just tell random people to get online, and drop their thoughts, in 140 characters or less, of course.

It’s not their fault, really, as twitter doesn’t really have a defined purpose. The idea is that it is supposed to enable real-time communication, sort of a text message broadcast to the entire world. The actual purpose of tweets are left up to the users’ imaginations.

It was too much for me to get my mind wrapped around when I started, that is for sure. With this in mind, I’d like to tell you a couple uses that will make twitter a valuable investment of your time.

This article will serve a very practical purpose, both for the novice user of twitter, and for those who have lost interest: It’ll tell you how, what, and why to follow certain users, along with giving you the ability to find and organize that data in a meaningful manner.

With that in mind, let’s begin. There are around 7 major types of twitter users. Your interests will determine which of these folks it would be in your best interest to follow:

1. Newsies: The New York Times, Tribune Media, Huffington Post, Drudge Report, and various other news agencies use twitter as a point of distribution for their articles. Updates commonly carry newly published content, or respond to readers of their content, which will naturally drive new readers to their site.

2. Gurus: These people, like Tony Robbin or Robert Kiyosaki(of Rich Dad, Poor Dad fame) use their accounts to push out mini-seminars. Their updates range from the inspirational to motivational, deliver news updates, and of course, push product in-between.

3. Gossip Gals: They don’t miss a single controversy. It doesn’t matter how small, these girls(and guys—think Perez Hilton) won’t let it rest. While TMZ and the Smoking Gun throw out some really interesting stuff, I wouldn’t put it in the category of “news”.

4. Info-Marketers: Pushing everything from get-rich-schemes, to plugging their latest eBook, these folks peddle all things downloadable. They are always mentioning some resource that seems designed to help you make money, but will make them money instead.

5. Regular Marketers: Generally, tweeps of this ilk are pushing a physical product, or building up that brand. You’ll see everyone from tire companies to toilet paper purveyors interacting with their customers and fans. To spice things up, fun facts and interesting news are served with soft-sell promotional tactics.

6. Power Tweeters: This is an odd group. They generally tweet about anything and everything. Most of the time, they are female in gender, and are a mixture of Gossip Gals and Newsie fare, with a spatter of hometown chatter. They never sell anything. Many times, they will live-tweet their thoughts on concerts, television shows, and fashion.

7. Everyone Else: This encompasses roughly 97% of the twitterverse. They followed a few people, didn’t learn how to link, reTweet, or even reply inside of twitter. Eventually, they get tired of the whole thing, and move back to playing “Mafia Wars” on facebook.

While there are sub-groups within every group, these are where the lines are generally drawn. The most important takeaway from this breakdown is the following: Most people on twitter are trying to sell you something. Now that you know who’s online, how can you get the most out of twitter?

Glad you asked. The first thing to get is a twitter client. For the purpose of this article, we’re going with TweetDeck, a leader in the twitter client arena. It’s easy to use. Download it, open it up, enter your username and password…and magically, you have a bird’s eye view of everything happening in twitter(or at least who you are following, and their activity).

You’ll see your live twitter feed on the far left, in-between you’ll find any replies that have been made to your messages(if you’ve just opened an account, there won’t be any messages here), and on the far right, your direct messages(private messages between you and another user that are not broadcast to other users).

The first thing you should do is find twitterers who meet your basic informational needs. For that, I actually prefer to use google, as it generally does a better job of finding who, or what you are looking for than twitter’s native search service. Google your local station’s call sign and add twitter to the end.(e.g. WKPY twitter). Let’s say we were searching for a our local station in New Mexico. We’d follow @KOBTV. That will be useful for weather alerts, local news, and community events.

Next, get a national news feed you trust. CNN, MSNBC, and Fox all have twitter feeds kicking out news at the speed of type. You can now see what is making waves at the national level, along with any upcoming special reports.

Now comes the fun part…your interests. Love tech…grab @TechCrunch. Need your daily fix of stats and scores: Follow @ESPN. Pick 2-3 twittering entities that don’t overlap. For instance, unless you just love too much information, don’t follow ABC, NBC, and CBS news.

From there, it’s time to find interesting people to follow. See if your favorite celebrities, nobel laureates, or trashmen are online. Check out their profile online, either by searching google with their name, followed by twitter, or by going to their website, and finding out what it is. This is probably the greatest chance at interaction with the rich and infamous that you will get. Rainn Wilson(Dwight Schrute of “The Office”) is one celebrity with particularly interest thoughts, links, and conversation.

You have a base of good, solid tweets that you are now following. Here comes the fun part. There are people around the world having conversations about the latest news, movies, restaurants, whatever. Now, you just have to find them. Pull up the search feature in TweetDeck. There are two ways to search: hashtag, or plain text. Hashtags denote a post in a certain category. For instance, if you were looking for all the updates that include the President, but don’t actually mention him in the body, this is the easiest way to search. If you are just looking for all mentions of Barack Obama, you would enter his name in plain text.

Searching in TweetDeck will open a column that automatically updates each time the search term is mentioned. For instance, you could keep a column opened for any topics you are interested in, and monitor them in real-time. I like to keep an eye on precious metals, mining, and tire news(boring, I know). When I am monitoring twitter, I keep a #gold, #silver, #mining, and #tires tab open, so that I can keep abreast of what is happening. It’s like a stock ticker. Glance, see something you like, and read any article links that come through. If I see someone who is tweeting regularly about a topic I am interested in, I follow them, so I can see any of their general tweets as well. Rinse and repeat for each topic you have an interest in, and the list of people you follow will be over 100 in no time.

Now, for the bad part: Taking out the trash. Twitter is full of people who will spam you, by doing the most flattering thing of all: following your account. Since twitter sends you an email notification that someone is a follower, your curiosity makes you want to check them out. Many times, they will masquerade as a female in a bathing suit(or less). Their names will often be followed by a dash with a 4-digit number. You should immediately go to your follower page, and hit “report as spam”. This helps twitter eliminate them from the roster, and keeps any of your followers from checking their garbage out.

On a lesser note, I try to clean out people I follow from time-to-time. Some of them have reverted to inane chatter, instead of providing important news. Even worse, they are tweeting more often, and saying even less. If you are spending time in twitter, make sure that dump a few people to keep things uncluttered.

Some of you might be wondering how to get legitimate followers. It’s simple advice: Be you. If you are chatty, be chatty. Talk about your interests. ReTweet things from others that you find interesting. Be consistent. Spend time on twitter. The more you are engaged with others, the more likely it is that people will like, and follow what you have to say.

Now, let’s recap how to get the most out of twitter:

1. Know the major categories of Twitterers. Filter them out based upon your interests.

2. Get a twitter client, like TweetDeck, to help you manage the vast streams of information coming through.

3. Make sure you are following a local news station, national news station, and sources that cover any informational gaps that you might have.

4. Follow celebrities that are active and intelligent.

5. Use search and hashtags to sort out topics and people to follow that are of interest to you.

6. Take out the trash regularly to make sure your feed isn’t overloaded with garbage. Block or report bots as spam.

7. Gain more followers by contributing to the conversation, and being yourself.

That’s all for now. There are far more advanced methods of tweeting, following, and being heard. Most of those methods are custom rules, developed by each user. You wouldn’t think publishing a message would need rules. After all, how complex should sending out 140 characters be?

Evidently, as complex as we can possibly make something that has no definable purpose.

Kurt Hartman

“Prioritization, organization, and delegation are key to achieving the balance that allows a woman to enjoy a rich family life while also gaining fulfillment from her career,” says Laura Betterly, CEO of In Touch Media Group, Inc. (www.intouchmediagroup.com), a full-service marketing company that specializes in using the Internet as a public relations and advertising tool. “For women, balancing a career and family doesn’t have to be a high wire act – it just requires a bit of juggling.”

Betterly knows whereof she speaks. With a husband and two teenage boys, Betterly is among the 72 percent of mothers with children one year or older who are in the workforce. While acknowledging that her high-powered career allows her to take advantage of services that aren’t accessible to lower income mothers, Betterly maintains that every woman can develop the skills necessary to balance work and family.

“Prioritizing is the process of realizing that you can’t do it all, deciding what’s important, and not sweating the small stuff,” Betterly says. Although she likes to provide her family with home-cooked meals, Betterly would rather spend time with her sons than in front of the stove every night. “I go to a place called Get Cooking Now, where I can make twelve dishes in their kitchen all at once,” she says. “I bring them home, freeze them, and am able to give my family good, nutritious meals without a lot of preparation time or mess.”

Betterly also carves out more family time by being organized and streamlining other household tasks. “I do all of our personal banking and bill paying online, and use Quicken to track all of our expenditures and due dates,” she says. And, if you’re on Betterly’s gift list, you can count on the fact that what’s inside the box came from an online source. “I utilize the Internet for gift shopping, especially at holiday time,” she says. “I can find everything I’m looking for online, and I’d rather spend time with my husband and sons than traipse through shopping malls.”

Finally, Betterly is a firm believer in delegation. “Each member of the family has a list of jobs to do around the house, like taking out the garbage, washing the clothes, and doing the dishes,” she says. “By delegating chores, the boys have learned that their contributions are important to our family, and that we have more time for fun.”

And what does Betterly, her husband steve blom, and sons Craig and Chris do with their extra time? “We go to movies, concerts, visit friends, and barbecue,” she says. “Plus, I’m getting pretty good at play the Digital Dance Revolution video game with the boys.”

Betterly concludes, “As women, we don’t have to make a choice between work and family. With a few skills and some practice, we can juggle the two beautifully.”

Kris Nickerson
http://www.articlesbase.com/careers-articles/laura-betterly-tips-on-balancing-career-and-family-62958.html

As budgets are drying up entrepreneurs are turning, yet again, to technology, social media comes to the rescue. Words such as YouTube, Facebook, and LinkedIn would have been considered typos not too recently have become part of our corporate success dictionary. Social media offers companies inexpensive ways to improve their customer service, ramp up their customer service, learn more about their market, reduce their expenses, and more.

Improve your customer service

Having a conversation with your customers through social media is a new business skill. In an effort to improve its public image, Dell has made a conscious effort to connect with its customers through various social media channels such as blogs, forums, and various third-party websites. Dell had to appreciate that customers talked about their products online, and the company was forced to become part of the conversation. With a little help from their social media friend Dell managed to make improvements to its Latitude laptop. Note: It was a Dell laptop that exploded into flames at a conference in Japan.

Social media is the great equalizer as the story of Jeff Jarvis, an unhappy Dell customer, shows. Jarvis took on this giant of a company using his own blog. He managed to create awareness about customer concerns that had reached an international audience. Initially, Dell had ignored the blog voicing Jarvis’ concerns until his blog became the outlet for public conversation of customer issues. His blog, the BuzzMachine, has become the focus of Dell’s mistakes, poor customer service and flawed products.

The blogosphere doesn’t create the problems it simply brings them to light, and it makes it possible for business to address the issues at hand. Now, the CEOs of companies don’t have to take customer service managers word for it, they can learn about customer issues directly from the source. Some might argue that somehow this is a bad thing. On the contrary, with social media, companies and consumers can realize problems that need to be addressed. Customer engagement through social media could only hurt a company in the long run that is not interested in positive change. Instead of creating a problem social media brings a new level of efficiency to the corporate world.

Do more research

Market research is no longer a luxury only large companies can afford. Social media is the market research alternative for small and mid-size businesses that don’t have money to burn. Especially in a recession, market research is an essential part of a winning corporate strategy. Using social media, companies can carry out their own market research, and the best part is that it’s free.

Search for the topic of your choice on StumbleUpon and learn what people say. One of the greatest aspects of StumbleUpon is that marketers can easily find websites related to their market that they would never find on their own. Businesses can use this website to get instant feedback. The community is continually engaged providing constant opinion that result in a better product. A company might be developing new packaging for a product and get instant criticism from the online community. Something that might have taken weeks and months using traditional methods can be done in a matter of days or even hours. This method is not only fast, but it is also free.

LinkedIn, the social media outlet for grownups, is a rich and dynamic database, which can be searched, mined, and yield insightful and useful information to you and your business. Through its “Answers” feature LinkedIn serves as a valuable market research tool because it enables users to ask questions on virtually any topic, and expect to get answers quickly from the community. Executives can ask questions about products, services, trends, or any topic that might be useful to gain a better insight into their market. You can use the search feature to find people by industry, job title, company, or geographical location. The search results include vital corporate information.

Twitter, a micro blogging service, with its millions of users, offers a world of market intelligence for your business. Twitter is the killer app for marketers that are dying to become the fly on the wall as they are given the opportunity to listen in on public conversations about their market, social issues, products, services, or industry trends. Twitter provides near-real time intelligence on virtually any market.

Should StumbleUpon, LinkedIn, Twitter, or other social media applications going to be your only source of market research? Of course not, but social media offers an abundance of honest conversation from which business can gather a wide range of vital information.

George Meszaros
http://www.articlesbase.com/management-articles/fighting-recession-with-social-media-part-1-701976.html

Have you ever noticed that the really funny stuffs that you can see on the really funny aprons out there are usually one-liners? The reason is that one-liners are the best types of jokes. They hit your funny bone with one or two punchlines and you remember them the best. Sometimes, you might remember the one-liners on funny aprons more than the recipes you should be memorizing and that means you won’t make it as a chef but you will make it as a stand-up joker.

That’s the problem with being a chef too nowadays – people don’t just want to be taught how to cook, they want their chefs to be comedians as well. And that’s a tough job requirement to impose on a chef who already has to work under a pressure cooker environment coming up with four dishes to cook at one time that all have to look great, taste great and are completely original. You can already hear the chefs out there whining “and you want me to be a comedian on top of all that? Come on!”

Yes, it’s true that being a chef is a hard job. And we shouldn’t blame them if they find it hard to be comedians at the same time. Sometimes, the best jokes are those that are unexpected, like when a chef forgets a dish is on the stove and accidentally burns it. At that point, your favorite chef might turn to his audience and say “maybe you should pretend you didn’t see that.” A great one-liner that all chefs should keep in stock, in case they ever burn a dish and ruin their reputations with one swift TV show episode.

Sometimes, one-liners can also bring down the spirits of even the most inspired chef. Like, imagine a judge tasting a new pizza made by a chef then telling the chef “you can’t seem to make up your mind whether you want to make a pizza or a sandwich.” Oh my word, how many chefs have been slain to the core by such one-liners. One-liners like that can really make a chef want to become a golf caddy instead – or at least find kinder judges to taste their work when necessary.

That’s where funny aprons come into the picture – the really funny stuffs placed on funny aprons (if they happen to be really funny stuff, that is) help the chef to feel better and lighten up the tense atmosphere created by too much steam from their cooking responsibilities and too much hype about the chef’s expertise. A chef who takes his crafts so seriously, that he would live or die by how his/her audience perceives his/her cooking, will either die of hypertension at an early age, or shame when he/she received disapproval on his/her cooking. For this reason, chefs have junior chefs on hand all the time, actually – they keep the chef from committing suicide when his dish fails to produce accolades. Did that sound like a one-liner to you?

Vikram kuamr