Posts from — March 2008

I may own the Social Media Mom domain name but certainly there are some moms that are setting the stage in social media while maintaining motherhood at the same time and I have chosen, what I consider, to be the top 5, and I have featured them in this month’s roundup.

In no particular order, here are the top 5 Social Media Moms for March 2008:

1. Shana Albert - aka TheNanny612 - Shana blogs about her love of social media on Social Desire, and Collective Thoughts. She also has 3 busy children that she blogs about every once in a while and sells pre-school aged curiculum on her e-commerce site. Shana is one gal that I seem to see everywhere online whether it’s Sphinn, an interview somewhere or just Stumbling she is constantly finding great things to read and write about in the social media industry. She is also a great e-friend that I hope to meet in person someday!

2. Wendy Piersall - aka eMom - Wendy is very passionate about helping parents achieve success. She uses her awesome social media skills to maintain her blog, raise 3 children, and teach people to become entrepreneurs while maintaining a life balance. Is this even possible? Wendy is a perfect example of the answer to that, and you only need to read her blog to realize it. She compares her blog to raising a child and calls her readers “family”. She writes about growing pains and re-branding in a way that proves her knowledge and expertise in social media.

3. Debbie Weil - aka debbieweil - Debbie is a corporate and CEO blogging consultant. She is an established author and blogger. But even more rewarding than social media, Debbie says, her kids are her greatest accomplishment. Her oldest daughter is a doctor, her middle son is a lawyer and her youngest daughter is a marathon runner, chemistry researcher, and jewelry designer. She is the epitome of a stay at home mom turned career woman when the kids were out of college. She is a wonderful example to someone like me, who has been solely raising kids for the last 14 years, and is just now getting my career on.

4. Liz Strauss - aka lizstrauss -Building relationships that last takes care. Whether it be with family or in business, Liz Straus is definitely a mom that is able to identify, connect, and form relationships using social media. Her trick? “Relationships are everyone’s business, and every business is relationships,” explains Liz. She does a great job helping others reach their future by utilizing her blog, events and through her telephone sessions. Every bit the mompreneur, Liz is a successful and outstanding social media mom that I look forward to meeting someday.

5. Jennifer Osborne - aka jennosborne - Jenn is a very passionate person. She is passionate about social media and even more passionate about her 3 kids. She balances her work as a social media strategist at Search Engine People, and family, by making sure that when she is at home, her computer doesn’t come out till everyone is in bed. When her family’s needs are met Jenn will spend a couple of hours Stumbling. One thing I find extremely unique about Jenn is that she has made a conscious decision to not participate on Twitter. She does not want to take any more time away from her kids by adding one more social networking platform to her life and I commend her for her self discipline and having her priorities in order.

Moms everywhere are networking, engaging, and extremely interactive and these 5 moms have chosen to take their skills to the next level while maintaining a balance of work and family. I hope you will take some time to check out their blogs, follow them on Twitter and even Stumble some of their favorite sites.

Are you a mom participating in social media? Let me know what sites you are using to network and how you maintain the balance between work and family. I’d love to hear from you!

I am thrilled to announce that after many tears and much begging, Lee has been bugged by me gracious enough to include Social Media Mom in this week’s update on the Search Marketing Blog’s BigList.

This is quite an honor for me to be included with so many SEO and Social Media experts that I respect and admire. I would also like to extend a big thank you to those who left encouraging words when I wrote about not making the original Big List; Nick and Kimberly, you rock and will always be a part of my “big list”!

My family and I are really trying to reduce our carbon footprint. So much so we traded in one car for a hybrid. It is amazing the kind of mileage it gets and I am always happy saving money on gas as well as saving the planet. It got me thinking, though, how can we use social media to save our planet? Well, Chris Brogan has found a way…

“Thank you to Fred Wilson for turning me on to the really cool product, Eco-Safe. It’s a way to save an entire post to PDF, email it to a friend, etc. How cool is that? Save paper: use a PDF.”

Social Media Mom is out to change the world using her own unique voice. By placing the ECO-SAFE Merit Badge on my blog, I am using my voice and empowering others to participate in environmentally friendly behaviors on the web……

“Websites displaying the “ECO-SAFE Merit Badge” are providing environmentally friendly printing alternatives for their website visitors. As a collective group of people who use the Merit Badge, we are actively reducing the staggering number of web pages printed daily. Our live total of papers saved today is now at: 21,115 Let’s do better - place the Merit Badge on your site today.”

Shana tagged me for 8 random things about me and since Shana has become a wonderful e-friend to me, I could not possibly turn her down. Without further ado, here are 8 random things about me…….

1. I am big on enunciation and the correct use of words, to the point of being anal. It’s not like I was an English major or anything but I get so bothered when people say things like “libary” instead of library (forgetting the “r”). It drives me nuts.

2. If you didn’t already know, I am probably Starbucks biggest fan. I have actually planned trips around whether or not their was a Starbucks near enough so I can get my Chai, Latte or whatever.

3. I love to text my kids while they are at school. In fact I have done it so often that my oldest actually got his phone taken away at school.

4. I sleep with an Occlusal Guard on my teeth at night. The funny thing is, I don’t grind my teeth I clench them so hard that they are wearing down to the point of root canal. That’s what happens when you have four kids, two of which are teenagers, I am constantly clenching.

5. I get Botox regularly for the frown lines between my eyes. Yes, I am that vain. I don’t like wrinkles and signs of aging so I have opted for the quick fix of a few injections to make those lines disappear.

6. I love scary movies, really scary movies. Like Exorcist scary. I’m not much into the brainless slasher type movies. I like shows that have a good story and keep me on the edge of my seat.

7. I love severe weather. It is a huge blessing that we got transfered to the midwest 9 years ago because I have seen some of the most amazing storms. I often dream of tornadoes in which I am always trying to see them and not hide from them. I love lightning and thunder, the whole shebang! My kids think I am quite crazy while they hide in the basement during the tornado sirens.

8. I love to laugh and my husband is the funniest person I know. I am very lucky when it comes to humor because I did marry one with a fantastic wit. I like to make people laugh too but unfortunately I am not that funny. Except when I make my Facebook pets kick, punch and throw cake at each other then I think I am very funny.

Well, there are lots more weird things about me but surely it is time for me to tag some others. Mark Dykeman, Brian Wallace, and Search Buzz, tag, you’re it!

photo via Blaugh

The Internet can be a fun place but it can also be dangerous. It is a lot of work to monitor, limit, and oversee the time kids spend on it but in the end, it is well worth the added protection and peace of mind for a parent. Here are five things every parent needs to know when it comes to their kids and Internet Safety.

1. Almost everyone lies on the Internet - From age to e-mails, from looks to jobs, everyone at some point lies on the Internet. The reasons are endless and folks are full of justifiable excuses no matter how innocent it may seem but the fact remains, you can trust no one that you don’t really know.

2. No one is totally safe on the Internet - No matter how many firewalls or parental controls one sets up once a profile is set, anyone can have access, even through another’s account. The best way to protect your kids is to keep a close watch on your child while they spend their time on the Internet.

3. Inappropriate content does not always make kids feel uncomfortable - Unfortunately, when it comes to kids and hormones, what adults would consider “bad” does not always make a kid feel uncomfortable. Inappropriate content sightings can occur on any computer, as any Internet user knows and it is important to let kids know exactly what is and what is not acceptable on the Internet. Even in classrooms kids have been found accessing sites that contain porn, violent content, games, music sharing and hate sites. Lack of moderating by a parent or teacher is key.

4. Kids are never to young to be cyberbullied - Cyberbullying can be more damaging than even playground bullying. There is more permanence in the written word and the appeal of no accountability on the Internet can cause kids to act in ways they otherwise would never do. To make matters worse, there is the concern now of adults harassing kids on the Internet. According to i-Safe, 53% of teens admitted they had said hurtful things to someone online, while 7% said they did it “quite often”. Cyber bullying is on its way to becoming a full fledged crime with up to a year in prison so keep a close watch on your kids and who they are connecting with.

5. No doesn’t always mean no on the Internet - How many times have you asked to be taken off of some list only to be contacted again and again? The same thing goes for the Internet. Just because someone un-subscribes or cancels an account does not mean your registration information is thrown away forever. Quite the contrary in fact, and many things can happen as a result. Your information could be sold to who-knows-where if it hasn’t been already, you could be personally contacted about your membership cancellation with pressure to re-join, or simply be listed to receive a lifelong supply of spam e-mails. Just because an account is deleted does not mean that information about you is not on other person’s account.

There is a delicate balance between “spying” and “knowing” what your child is doing on-line. Spying is not a form of communication and it is important that we, as parents, break down the communication barriers with our kids and really talk with them about where they are going on the Internet, who they are participating in the social networks with, and how much time they are spending on-line. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, their safety is more important than their privacy!

According to Conversation Marketing there are 59 Things I Should Be Doing But Probably Aren’t when it comes to Internet Marketing and one of them is making sure that none of my pages takes more than 10 seconds to load. So I took Ian’s advice and I tested my site on a page load tester and I passed with flying colors. None of my pages took more than 6.5 seconds to load with a total of 16.34 seconds in all. Not bad for the ole’ mom.

If Internet Marketing is your thing, you definitely should check out the other 58 things you should be doing when it comes to your website, whether it is e-commerce or a blog, things like analytics, user friendly 404 pages and keywords are just a few things that might give you a decent internet marketing plan for the next few months.

Every time there is a holiday, I always look forward to checking in on Google’s home page to see their creative designs. They’ve had some really clever designs, from Martin Luther King Day to St. Patrick’s Day. But for some reason Easter was skipped this year and I want to know why. This Google logo is from the year 2000 and evidently they have not had one since.

I can’t imagine that it would be for religious reasons because not everyone celebrates Christmas and they had plenty of Google Christmas logos back in December. So what is the deal? Where is Easter? I mean, even bunny ears would have been cute. What do you think happened to Easter over at Google?

I am one of those people that absolutely hates it when I can’t do something myself and this last weekend was no exception.

When I made the switch to Wordpress several weeks ago I realized my Feedburner account was not being updated properly. Unfortunately for all of us, Brian out of town, and I decided to try and fix this problem myself. This turned out to be a bad decision on my part because, evidently, I broke it. Instead of changing my Feedburner account to Wordpress, I deleted it. Oops.

Anyway, long story short, Brian is back and my feed is fixed. Thank-You Brian! If you have already subscribed to Social Media Mom before I hope you will take the time subscribe again to this new feed, as the original feed is obsolete, and please know that I am working on being patient when Brian is out of town.