When I drive a long distance with my high school senior kids in the car, it gives me time to ask what is trending and is hot with their friends. I’ve found that what happens with their generation is a very good indicator as to where businesses should be looking to build for the future. Temper that with a review with my older kid who is 25 and I get a great viewpoint of how businesses should be embracing certain new technologies and avoiding other ones that may be becoming passé.
In my most recent drive Tumblr came up several times with my kids, so I checked it out. You can view my own Tumblr page here at http://nancymccord.tumblr.com/. I call mine “Just Nancy” as it is a place for now for me to share just about anything.
This is what I have found using Tumblr and why you may want to consider using it.
1. It is actually incredibly simple to set up and actually fun to use.
2. It has a very nice smartphone integration that allows you to post photos, quick quotes, and just about anything on the go.
3. The desktop interface is cool, user-intuitive, and the smartphone app simple.
4. I love the ability to add multi-media and text simply.
5. It feels like there will be a more visual and different demographic on this platform and so may be a more energized platform than a blog for a business.
6. From my own initial testing to me this seems like this may be the place where you can merge all your online enterprises into one cohesive message.
It remains to be seen how I will use Tumblr for business, but for now, I am having plenty of fun checking it out.
Employing Family Members in Your Small Business Can be a Joy or Challenge.
Small businesses were just feted last week on Small Business Saturday and many small businesses are family operations. So, how do you keep the “family” out of a family business?
As a small business owner and family business owner, I have found that it is sometimes hard to keep the drama, that happens sometimes in family relationships, out of the business.
Here are my tips to keeping your family business professional.
1. Make sure that even with family members you keep it professional. When deadlines are missed, you’ve got to take corrective action just as you would with a regular employee. When tensions rise, it may be better to separate from hiring a certain family member than to jeopardize a family relationship.
2. Be careful who you hire in your family. Not every family member may be suited for working in your business.
3. If you hire your kids, make sure you put gates up between work and family. Your children can grow to resent that you are always in work mode and that they may feel that they are simply becoming employees.
4. Make sure to pay fairly so that family members do not begrudge your success or feel resentful by thinking that you have built your business at their expense.
5. Do not be afraid to separate from family members who cause too much work stress or drama for you. At some point you do have to consider that poorly performing employees (although they may be a family member) may need to be let go and that action may be a blessing for them and you in the long run.
Running a small business and especially when you introduce your children into your world can be exciting and stimulating for both you and your kids, but make sure that you are ready to take on the additional nuances that employing family members brings into your work world.
I have a Kindle Fire and use it to watch videos and TV shows that I have purchased from Amazon, but my husband likes to buy DVDs on Amazon and so these are not available for me to watch in the Kindle Cloud.
Here’s how to be able to watch the DVDs you buy on Amazon on your Kindle:
1. Go to the Kindle app store and get the free app called Flixter. Install it on your Kindle Fire.
2. When you buy the DVD from Amazon, you’ll get a coupon with the DVD package that allows you to use Digital HD Ultraviolet as your on-demand cloud storage to watch the video on any of your devices. Go to www.movieredeem.com and enter in your special unique code to add the Amazon movie or DVD to your collection. I selected as my merchant Flixter, as this is my Kindle Fire movie watching app.
3. Once you enter the code you will set up a Digital HD Ultraviolet account AND a Flixter account. Both work together to allow you access. Once your accounts are confirmed by email, you will now see your digital cloud copy of the movie you own in the “owned” section of both apps.
4. When you want to watch the video on your Kindle Fire, just open the Flixter app and stream your newly purchased video anywhere and anytime.
As you own the video online plus have a DVD copy, you can watch offline. It is really the best of all worlds!
If you have teens you already know Facebook, but do you know Ask? Ask is an app accessed from within Facebook that encourages your teens and children to tell all about themselves. Scary if you actually take the time to read what your kids and teens are posting there and the questions that are asked of them.
Here is a scenario that is playing out right now in our family as a cautionary tale. One of my kids has been pretty open about herself on Ask. All her answers to questions from Ask are then posted to her Facebook profile. Her Ask profile page and Facebook page are automatically linked by the app in Facebook.
Routinely she gets asked all kinds of questions by people many anonymously. She answers nearly all of them. Her young wisdom, sense of fun, and essence are clearly revealed at Ask. This is very troubling for a parent. Recently she got friended at Ask by a person called Tyler Damon Allen. This person has pushed his way into my daughter’s life and she has reacted as if this was a real and legitimate love interest. What got me concerned was all the emotional drama this person had:
1. Supposedly the same age as my daughter in school, but birth date was two years older.
2. Was a teen but did not have an online presence or even a Facebook page.
3. Stated he was in England because brother had cancer. Then decided he actually lived in New York.
4. Claimed he was going to commit suicide and needed my daughter to talk him down.
5. The next day claimed he had a serious longboarding accident (this is a skate board) and posted images of his body damaged. But there is snow in the ground right now in New York and England and you could only get these types of injuries if you were shirtless or boarding with a T-shirt on not a heavy coat due to weather.
6. Then Tyler D. Allen decided to create a Facebook page so he could chat directly with my daughter. His profile picture did not match his Ask Profile. Haircolor and facial features were different. Hmmmmm… I did a search and found his Facebook profile picture at a clip art site.
Scary scenario for any parent – right? You bet. If you have teens it is important to know what they are doing and sharing online. There are bad people out there not only sexual predators, but emotional predators.
This is what I did. I sent a friend request to Tyler and then sent him a Facebook message letting him know I was watching all online interaction and would not hesitate to report him to the authorities for cyber stalking as my daughter is a minor and that the legal penalties were fierce. I recommended that he cease all contact with my daughter. There are laws about cyber stalking especially when it comes to minors. The predator may be located half way around the world, but data shows that they may also be in your own community and may actually be a family or extended family member.
Sometimes an emotional predator will build a relationship and then move into the sexual arena. Anyway you look at it someone who is hiding their true identity and then interacting with your teen is a potential recipe for disaster. As parents we have to all work together to keep our kids safe by education, monitoring what is online about them, and stepping in when need be.
