Author: Nancy McCord

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Why You Can’t Farm Out Social Networking

You just can’t fake it when it comes to social networking. Sorry, it’s just not something that you can farm out to someone to do for you, you just have to do it yourself.

In fact that is the real value of social networking versus blogging or your website, it is you reacting with other people on a one to one basis. You can’t fake or ghost-do this!

I personally have seen some people actually hire social media coaches – now, there is value in that for novices who have just not gotten with the program to help assure that you have all the “boxes on your ticket checked”. I personally no longer set up Facebook or LinkedIn accounts for clients. I have found simply that it is impossible to speak for them effectively on highly personal issues such as favorite books, personal background and interests.

I love social networking, as I know that it is simply impossible to cheat on the creation of connections, but how you use social networking to your benefit is up to you. If all you do is add one more connection as if it is a numbers game, then you are really missing the absolute best aspect of it, which is to connect personally with other.

For me, I am now speaking to members of the French speaking family I lived with for one year in high school in Brussels on a foreign exchange program on a several times a week basis now versus at Christmas time. That’s just one example of a personal connection that has been reignited with Facebook in this case. Do you have an example you’d want to share about your experience with social networking? Do it now by clicking comments and tell me.

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Keeping Tabs on Your Website Placement

Have you looked lately at your website’s organic placement? The majority of my business comes in from our high listing in the organic search results for the majority of our important keyword phrases. I know this and monitor my own website’s placement at a minimum of once a month.

What I have done is researched the popular search phrases that I want to place on. I have then optimized my source code to organically place for these terms. Once a month I review all the terms and update my placement and the placement of key client’s on my search engine results page.

To make it easy to track my results I made a word document with the term and inserted the Google, Yahoo, and MSN returns page address that shows my placement. When I want to do a review, I click the link in the Word document, use Control+F to open the search box and enter my domain, this allows me to count back up to the top of the page to know my own placement immediately. I then log the placement on the same Word document so I have a running tally of where I am. This allows me to identify if my month’s efforts or last page update made a difference up or down.

After I document my placement, I will typically go and tweak my home page or section home page in an effort to improve my own placement for those specific terms.

If you are not tracking your own website placement you should. You should be using your organic placement as a key metric to identify if what you are doing is working for you. A website that doesn’t work for you is not worth your time and money investment.

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Teaching Your Kids About Piracy

I just found out this weekend that two of my kids had just started to download named star’s music from YouTube.com. They had found music videos and had used YouTube MP3 converter software, which they had downloaded free, to strip the music file from the video; essentially getting music for free. Yikes! Not only is downloading anything from the YouTube.com website a direct violation of YouTube’s terms of service, but it is plain and simple stealing song revenue from the artist.

I took immediate action and removed the software and removed the songs from their music players and computers. As I had a talk about piracy with all four of my kids and the reality of what could happen, some topics came up which I thought I would share as you consider if you should have this same talk with your kids.

1. They all said they did not know this was a violation on YouTube.com. I took time to show all four kids where to find the terms of use in the footer and encouraged them to always take time to read this before they assumed that they could do anything they wanted with the content.

2. One child asked “if is is illegal, why did the software maker create a program that allows people to do something illegal?” Well, that actually is a very good question, and truthfully I don’t know why YouTube and other sites don’t make a real effort to squash this type of free software. My question back to my kids was “just because you can, doesn’t make it right does it?”

I made a deal with my kids that I would help them buy music in a legitimate way and that music piracy keeps our favorite artist from making more music that we will love when we steal music from them. That’s what piracy is, it is stealing and our kids need to know that. For us music piracy simply does not match our family values.

Do you know how your kids are getting their music? If you haven’t asked, it’s time that you did. You may be as surprised as I was to find out that they thought what they were doing was okay.

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Our Kids – Generation Text and How To Deal With Them

I am reading an excellent book right now called Generation Text Raising Well-Adjusted Kids in an Age of Instant Everything by Dr. Michael Osit. I have to say that I clearly see my 19 year old college student and triplet 11 year olds as being Generation Text kids. This book “speaks” to me on many different levels as I try to be the very best Mom that I can be.

The book is excellent and if you as a parent and have ever had issues with your kids not getting off the computer when you tell them, kids performing under their real capability in school, and issues with kids being too connected to games and cell phones at the expense of real world activities, this is a book that you really must read.

My kids hate that I am reading it as I am using many of the no-nonsense practical tips for parents that so far for me are really working. I don’t review many books in my blog, although I am an avid reader, but this book really stands out as a winner.

Dr. Michael Osit give such insight into Generation Text kids and the issues that we as parents have raising them that you would think that the book was written just for you and your family in mind. One concrete thing that I have done to help my own kids breakout of the Generation Text entitlement mentality is to institute a schedule of daily activities for my younger kids, and to help my older kid with real lessons in time management and a procedure on how to push yourself to performance not mediocrity.

So far the entire family has bought in to these new concepts as a team embracing the change. As a result of the new schedule and better time management, my house has never looked so clean and my kids so happy. In fact, homework and music practice was even done before dinner without a struggle!

If you are like my family and you struggle with kids pushing the limits to game constantly either on Fiesta, video games, or DS Games, the chores never seem to get done – as playtime has taken over work time, or your kids seem to just be surfing through school without understanding that a C is not okay in the grand scheme of things, then this is the book that you have been waiting for.

I have linked the title of the book in this post to Amazon so you can check it out. I am not being paid to review the book nor have an affiliate link tied to the Amazon link – I get nothing for recommending the book to you. I just think that you would strongly benefit from reading it if you have kids from age 10 to 20 years of age.