Posts from — April 2008

This guest post comes from Doriano Carta, aka Paisano - Paisano is the founding father of the American Pai Blog, and the sixth in my series of Social Media Dads.

My son Nicholas had a special project for school that seemed extra interesting to me. They were covering the basics of business, which I thought was very cool for nine-year olds to learn. Each student had to come up with a unique product and/or service to pitch to their fellow classmates. They had a dollar limit on how much to spend and had to document exactly how much they spent and had to come up with pricing. They then had to learn how to determine how much profit they would earn by applying the formula of income generated subtracted by the amount they’d spent on manufacturing their product or service. I found it quite fascinating to hear my gameboy, soccer playing boy talking about business and revenue streams.

The EGGcelent Idea

Nicholas showed me his cute idea of The EggFamily which was simply leftover plastic Easter eggs that he had colored and decorated into different funny looking characters including pet eggs. He said he thought his friends would love it because they were into collecting funny looking things like Pokemon. I thought that was rather clever but what he said next blew me away. “Dad, I was thinking, wouldn’t it be cool if I had a website for anyone who bought an egg family?” I looked at the wife who was just smiling and shaking her head no as if to answer my silent question of “Did you give him the idea?” I asked him why he thought a website would be cool. “Well, we all like going to that Webkinz website. Why not one for the egg family members?” I scratched my head and chuckled, thinking “That’s my boy, all right”. He added, “I could charge them each $5 a month for a basic account which will mean $60 a year!” I had to stop my prepubescent Donald Trump in his tracks before he got too carried away. “Woah…woah…woah. Why would they pay $5 a month? What’s going to be on this website?” He stopped calculating his windfall long enough to reply “We can add a live chat room so we can all send messages like we do on Club Penguin.” I interrupted again, “WE?” He gave me that infamous devilish grin and I knew I was toast, “Uh, hello, Dad…what do you do for a living? mr. Computer man!”

So, off we went to build his social network for egg family members and their owners. All I did was launch a free wiki and let him do most of the work. He painstakingly worked on all the graphics, using a paint program to design the logo and image of an egg family. He came up with all the corny but cute slogans like “We’ll Crack You UP!” It was a wonderful experience watching your child use their mind and creativity and I enjoyed the time we spent together on this project. Best of all, it was all his idea and he was so proud.

The Big Pay Off

Nicholas brought his eggsamples (sorry, see where he gets it from?) to school and gave his presentation to the class. Needless to say it was a big hit. Everyone wanted to own an egg family along with the website membership with live chat room. Nicholas told me that he laughed as his classmates were literally throwing their play money at him as they stormed to sign up for their very own egg family. He gave them all the website address and later that evening several of them started appearing in the EggChat room where they had a good time.

Final Thoughts

I hate to sound like an old fart but I find it so amazing that kids today can be so entrepreneurial so young. I think it’s incredible how tech savvy they all are too. I started all three of my children on computers at around two years of age so that doesn’t shock me as much as it should. I’m filled with wonder and hope for the future every time I try to teach my children something because ultimately I’m the one who learns the most from the experience.

Follow Paisano on Twitter here

This guest post comes from Matt McGee. Matt is the author of the Matt McGee blog and founder of @U2, the the oldest independent site for U2 fans on the web. He is the fifth in my series featuring the Top Social Media Dads.

“Social Media Dad … Raising a Social Media Son?”

My son wants to start blogging. He’s 10 years old.

Should we let him?

That’s top of mind these days for this Social Media Dad (and my wife), who’s thrilled that his son knows what blogs are and wants to have his own, but also a little bit concerned about him becoming more of a Social Media Son than a Do-Well-In-School Son.

Not long ago, I was sitting on the couch in the family room, banging away on my laptop (no doubt writing a blog post, reading a blog post, or playing/working on Mixx, StumbleUpon, Sphinn, or maybe Yahoo! Answers), when my son said the magic words: “Dad, I want to do a blog.”

I stopped everything I was doing.

“Really?,” I said. “Why do you want to start a blog?” Because it looks fun, he said.

“What would you write about?” He didn’t quite know what I meant, so I explained to him that most blogs have a theme or topic that they focus on, like my Small Business SEM blog is about search marketing for small businesses.

“I guess I’d write about video games and sports and maybe school,” he said.

I told him I’d think about and let him know, but it would have to wait a little while because of all the travel I had coming up (which is almost over).

He’s still waiting for an answer. I’m still thinking about it. Like this:

• He’s a great kid and gets very good grades. I’m pretty sure it won’t impact his schoolwork negatively. We can always tell him that he can’t turn his computer on until all the homework is done.
• The one school subject he doesn’t like is writing. So, maybe blogging will help with that. He’ll be forced to come up with an idea, put it in words, etc. — but without the pressure of a pre-assigned topic and deadline. It might be really good for him.
• Think of all the money he could make! We Social Media Dads and Moms don’t click on ads, but 10-year-olds do! Seriously, we could slap some AdSense ads on his blog, and you know his classmates and other kids his age will click on those video game ads every time they see his blog! This is better than giving him an allowance — it’s teaching him how to make money online with a blog. You won’t learn that stuff in 4th grade, I can tell you that.

There’s also an SEO-related reason for him to start blogging: I registered his name as a .com domain not long after he was born (his 6-year-old sister has her .com name domain, too). If he starts using that domain now, starts putting content on it, letting the domain grow over time, he could be well on his way to having a highly trusted, authoritative domain by the time he really needs to use it. Nice.

So, the question again: Should we let him? I think we probably will. And this Social Media Dad will have a Social Media Son. Look for him soon your favorite social news or bookmarking site. And vote up his stuff, would ya?

You can find Matt on FriendFeed here.

I just wanted to interrupt my series on Social Media Dads to take a minute to say thank you to some very special people.

Let me begin by thanking Jason Falls, for sharing with us about the birth of his daughter and how being a social media dad is not only good for him but good for his kids.

Thank you to Mark Dykeman who not only proves balance between family and work can be attained but it’s really the “dad” part that is the most important.

Thank you to Jeff Quipp for sharing with us the 6 P’s of Social Media Parenting and the similarities between parenting and good social media development.

And let me end by thanking Darren Rowse for teaching us all to approach social media with child-like abandonment at times, in order to have fun with it.

I would also like to thank all of my new subscribers, readers and Twitter followers and welcome you to the Social Media Mom blog.

My series featuring the top Social Media Dads continues next week with even more awesome dads and their social media tips, tricks, and family anecdotes. You won’t want to miss it!

photo by Athary

This guest post comes from Darren Rowse. Darren is the blogger behind ProBlogger and a co-author of the soon to be released ProBlogger Book - a book about how bloggers can improve their blogs and make a living from the medium. Darren is the fourth in my series featuring the Top Social Media Dads.

4 Tips for Social Media Toddlers

My son is fast approaching the age of 2 (he’ll reach that milestone at the start of July) and watching him grow and develop is one of the most wonderful experiences that I’ve ever had.

It’s a period of life where there are such remarkable changes occurring on a daily basis. In the last year he’s:

learned to take his first steps and then progress to running

discovered an ability to communicate, first through gestures and sounds and then through forming those sounds into single words and more recently discovering that it’s more effective to put two or more words together

-discovered how to get his way to make others laugh (and get angry)

-started comprehending how to follow rules

-learned how to feed himself (well partly - it’s still messy)

-to make messes (and when he’s in the mood to clean them up)

The list grows every day. It’s very exciting to watch - although there are ‘those days’ where everything he tries seems to lead to tears and frustration.

So what’s this got to do with social media?

Social media feels like it’s been around for ever - but the realization that I had this week was that many of us are still learning to use it.

For me the journey started juts five years ago with my first blog. I added to my online presence in more recent times by starting to use Facebook, Twitter, StumbleUpon and many other ’social media’ sites - but every day that I use them I come to the realization that most of us are like toddlers and are on a journey of discovery.

I’m a Social Media Toddler

It’s an exciting journey most days - but one that also has ‘those days’ of frustration.

So what can my little Son teach us about getting through our toddler years as social media users:

Experiment - one of the main things that my wife and I are attempting to instill in our young one is to encourage him to experiment and try new things. This happens in a number of spheres of his life including ‘new food’ (surely there’s only so many bananas and jam sandwiches someone so small can consume!), new skills, new words, new people etc.

The more experiments he does the more he learns he can do, the more discoveries he makes, the more mistakes he makes, the more experiences he has. The result of all this is growth, maturity, development and understanding.

The same is true with social media. Many bloggers that I come across tell me that social media doesn’t ‘work’. When I unpack this with them I find that most simply set up profiles on social media sites and never actually try anything on them. The more you experiment with mediums like Twitter and Facebook the more you’ll discover on what does and doesn’t ‘work’ in helping you to achieve your goals.

Develop What Works - when my son makes a new discovery in life he will become obsessed with it. If you’ve hung around with young children you know what I mean. This week his ‘thing’ is to say ‘Bye’ to things. Everytime he leaves a room he turns around to it and begins to say ‘Bye’ to everything in it that he can name. ‘Bye Light’. ‘Bye Chair’. ‘Bye Mummee’. ‘Bye Poo’ (when changing nappy), ‘Bye Wiggles’. ‘Bye Ball’. He’s obsessed with saying bye to things.

What’s he doing? He’s cementing in his mind that ability to recognize that he’s leaving something. He’s developing his vocabulary, ability to name things and he’s putting words together in ways that he’s never done before. He’s also being very cute (until you want to quickly leave a room and he insists on saying ‘bye’ to every item in it). He has made a discovery and he’s honing his skills with it and taking it to the next level.

As Social Media Toddlers we can learn a thing or two from this. Experimenting is not enough - take what you learn that ‘works’ and repeat it. If you ask a particular type of question on Twitter and get 10 times as many replies as normal, you might just be onto something. Try it again. If you use an add-on on Facebook that your friends respond to well - keep using it and finding ways to take it to the next level. If you write something on your blog and get a ton of traffic from StumbleUpon develop the idea in future posts and work out what it was about the original post that connected with people so you can draw on the lesson again.

Watch Others - alongside ‘experimenting’ on his own, I’d say that my son learns mainly through watching those around him. Sometimes I’ll be doing something (washing the dishes, working on my laptop, weeding the garden….) and he’ll have gone all quiet. At first I panic a little because he rarely goes all quiet unless he’s emptying the linen cupboard or using his crayons to redecorate his bedroom walls - but more often than not he’s gone all quiet because he’s simply sitting there watching me.

Ten minutes later I’ll find him studiously doing something that is his attempt at what I was just doing (smashing dishes in the pantry, using an old keyboard that I gave him while sitting in front of the TV or pulling out plants in the backyard). OK - so he doesn’t always get it right, but he is learning so much by watching and listening to those around him.

As Social Media Toddlers I think this is key. There are literally millions of bloggers, Twitterers, Facebook users and participants in the social media space. Many of these people are making incredible discoveries about the mediums everyday. Take time out each day to observe what they are learning and experimenting with and ask yourself how it might be applied to your own situation. While not everything that works for someone else will work for you in your situation - a lot is transferable or adaptable. Watch, learn and apply what others are doing!

Have Fun and be Free - I wish I could be 2 again somedays. My Son’s life is so simple, so innocent and so much fun. He doesn’t get bogged down on what others think about him, he enters into things with such energy and passion, he floats from one thing to another without feeling the constraints of having to do things certain ways.

So many of us as Social Media Toddlers seem to get bogged down by the way things should be done or by being concerned of how others will receive us - but perhaps we need to approach it with a little more with childlike abandonment.

You can follow Darren on Twitter here.

This guest post comes from Jason Falls- Jason is the author of the Social Media Explorer blog, and is the third in my series featuring the Top Social Media Dads.

Why Being A Social Media Dad Is Good For My Children

It’s hard to successfully explain to people what social media really is and why I spend so much time doing it, studying it and thinking about it. My passion for social media is only rivaled by my love for my family and friends. While there is always difficulty striking a balance between one’s professional and personal life, my children will always come first. But being involved in social media puts them there.

Bear with me.

Being a social media dad will have long-lasting, positive effects on my son and soon-to-arrive daughter. (We’re due May 6, but may even have her by the time you read this.) I believe this because the essence of social media – how to behave, how to enjoy and how to succeed – revolves around the core values we all want to teach our children:

1. Be honest
2. Be kind
3. Share

In a lot of ways what we as social media thinkers and counselors are trying to teach the world – whether it be businesses, brands, marketers or just mom and dad – is that to thrive on the social web you just have to be a good person. Honesty, transparency, honor, humility and kindness make people and organizations social media savvy. We are teaching others to have respect for self and others, to do the right thing because it’s the right thing to do and to share and be selfless when it comes to the community.

My wife had a pre-labor scare last week and was hospitalized for monitoring. That morning, I filed a Twitter entry briefly explaining the situation and asking for happy thoughts. When I arrived home that night to put Grant to bed while Nancy slept at the local hospital, I discovered over 80 replies and direct messages from my social media community of friends wishing us well, praying for her and the baby and offering their assistance should I need it. I don’t cry much, but I did that night. And not because of the uncertainty of the well-being of my wife or daughter, but because I was blessed to have an army of friends to offer up whatever needs to be in dire circumstance.

These are the results of social media. Conversation makes us human and leads to community, which makes us whole.

All of the aforementioned qualities are life lessons I want to teach my children. Fortunately for me, what I do everyday reinforces them.

I am a social media dad. My children will reap the benefits of that in multitudes of ways.

Since this post was written, Jason and his wife, Nancy, have since given birth to a beautiful baby girl named Katie! Congratulations to the Falls family!

You can follow Jason on Twitter here.

This guest post comes from Jeff Quipp - Jeff is the President and CEO of Search Engine People Inc, and is the second in my series featuring the Top Social Media Dads.

Jeff’s 3 kids … and of course Sydney with dirt all over her face (true to form).

The 6 P’s of Social Media Parenting

As a father of three kids, and a self-professed social media addict, I was really excited when Kristen asked if I’d care to do a post on her site about social media dads. I thought about potential topics, and it occurred to me; I see a lot of similarities between parenting and good social media development. In fact, many of the skills and personality traits are very similar in nature … I like to consider them the 6 P’s:

1. Planning - the ability to look to the future, and assess what will be needed. This is very important in every aspect of raising a child or succeeding with social media. Consider, before a child is born, names must be considered, rooms painted, infant car seats installed, strollers bought, cribs purchased, and so forth. Before taking a trip with baby, bottles, diapers, toys, clothes, medicines … must all be packed.

The same is true of social media; a good deal of time goes into planning for success. I’ve heard it said “unless you know where you’re going, any road will get you there”, so plan for success.

2. Participating - being truly involved! Children need to know they’re important and loved, and truth be told, so too do friends on social networks (well maybe not loved, but at least supported). Since actions speak louder than words, only by getting truly involved in the site or with your children, will you truly get to know them, their interests, their fears, their intricateness. It is exactly this type of participation that results in confident, secure, children and young adults, and powerful profiles on social media sites.

3. Patience - is a virtue! You spend the first 6 months of parenting (and social media) doting on every little noise your precious baby (your profile) makes, with no expectation of reciprocation (a ‘hot’ submission). You change dirty bums (read … vote for crappy submissions when asked), forgo vacations (there’s no one to cover for you after all), miss playoff games (not really!), and go without sleep for days (just how it sounds), all without complaint. The baby’s innocence and the promise of that first smile (the traffic from a hot submission) is the reward. But it takes lots of patience. Babies don’t automatically become kind, responsible, successful adults without first having a lot of time and effort invested in them.

As your child grows (and social media algorithms evolve) and you encounter new types of issues, again you’ve got to be patient enough to work through the problems, and look for the silver lining. Problems are after all, opportunities in disguise.

4. Passion - parenting isn’t and shouldn’t be an “I’ll give it a whirl” type thing … and neither is social media. You’ve got to be passionate about it; eat, sleep, and dream it. Without passion, you can’t get fully into the necessary mind space to be exceptional, and exceptional should always be the goal where children or social media are concerned. Of course there’s a lot to be said about moderation too, but you’ve got to care, and care deeply. This caring and passion is what drives us to continually strive to be better … better parents, better social media marketers, better people!

5. Persistence - if at first you don’t succeed … try, try, again!. This is a truism in parenting, and in social media. We learn from our mistakes, and we should encourage our kids in that same fashion. Not making mistakes means we’re not trying … and if we’re not trying, we’re not learning. How can we be the best we can be at social media … how can our kids be the best they can be … if they’re not encouraged to make mistakes.

There are however, two caveats:
1. never make the same mistake twice
2. be persistent in finding a solution … don’t give up!

6. Perspective - is crucial to the long term sanity of parents and social media marketers. Problems will always surface. Some issues will be big, some small, and some are mere figments of our imagination. The key is to be level headed, to know the type of response each merits, and to not respond too harshly. In the end, the problem could almost always be worse, a perhaps the situation could even be viewed from a positive position. Is the glass half empty or half full? Maybe being cut from the hockey team was a good thing for your son … he’ll be inspired to try even harder going forward. Improved algorithms have only led to more searches being performed in the search industry, meaning more jobs for SEOs … not less. Perhaps the same will be true for social media?

In the end, those same skills that make many of us good parents, seem to also make us good at social media. I wonder if this means that all those who excel in the social media space but do not have kids …. will/would make wonderful parents? That’s the key to proving a good theory isn’t it … having the theory actually predict the future. If that’s the case, Neil Patel … I believe you’re gonna be a great parent one day!

You can find Jeff on Facebook here.

This guest post comes from Mark Dykeman - Mark is the founding father of the Broadcasting Brain Blog, and the first in our series of Social Media Dads.

Social Media Dad, am I?

I have great respect for moms who maintain a household, a job, various relationships and obligations, and then manage to make their mark in social media. Kristen Munson aka Social Media Mom and Shana Albert aka TheNanny612, in addition to being great contacts and, dare I say it, friends, are social media powerhouses. For that matter, all five ladies profiled in Kristen’s recent top 5 social media moms post are all awesome on multiple levels.

Here on the Y side of the chromosome pairing, there are a lot of great dads, or dads who are great, who are kicking up a storm in social media. I couldn’t even begin to rank them – it’s too darn hard and there are too many, just like Kristen’s list is woefully incomplete.

I talk a lot about being a “broadcasting brain” (as we all are), but the fact is that I’m also a husband and a father. In addition to have a strong, level-headed, and wonderful wife, I have two bright and charming kids: a boy and a girl. I’m very happy to have one child of each sex because it broadens the experiences that you have as a parent. It’s kind of like being in the Peace Corps: “the toughest job you’ll ever love.”

There’s no doubt that being both a husband and a parent has helped my writing by giving me a broader pool of experiences to draw upon. I’ve used the occasional personal anecdote in speeches, articles, blog posts, you name it.

But, with all due respect to Kristen and all of these other great bloggers, I define myself a bit differently. I use social media and I try to use the things that I learn in social media in other parts of my life, but it doesn’t define me. In fact, the lessons I’ve learned as a family man have no doubt influenced what I write about and how I write.

I do love social media, but it doesn’t rule my life. Some people might want to incorporate social media into their identity, but I’m content to make it a less prominent part of my life.

Instead of being known as a good social media dad, I’d much rather be known as a good dad who uses social media. If I don’t get the “dad” part right, then the “social media” part doesn’t mean anything at all. It’s hard to balance the desires of an avocation with the needs of parenthood at times, but I do think it’s important for me to have a foothold in both roles.

Social media dad, am I?
Yes, I am. But I try hard not to forget that it’s the “dad” part that matters most.

Are you using Twitter? Are you following so many people, in hopes to have them follow you, that you can’t keep track of even one conversation? Are you following people you don’t even want to follow out of guilt because they are following you? If you answered yes, to any of these questions you may be experiencing Twitter Bondage and there is hope!

Twitter pro, Kim Dushinski, has a fantastic post on the Twitter Do’s and Twitter Don’ts that will not only encourage you to say “no” to people you don’t want to follow, but explain how to escape Twitter bondage by just being “yourself”……….

“Tweet what you want about whatever topics you want. It is up to your Followers to decide whether or not they want to join in. If you have a multifaceted life (like we all do) it is OK to tweet both personal and work related topics. I would suggest finding a balance if you are using Twitter for professional reasons or you might drive away work-minded followers. But don’t be afraid to share some of yourself too.”

“You don’t have to follow everyone back who follows you. Certainly not the bots or the spammers, but even real people. Maybe someone tweets about something all the time that is simply not of interest to you or maybe contrary to what you believe. Just don’t follow them and don’t feel guilty about it. They chose to follow you. Also, it is OK to give yourself a limit of how many people you want to follow.”

I am somewhat relieved that Kim put this great list together. I have read countless posts that tell you you must follow a gazillion people to get a gazillion to follow you, or that you should definitely follow everyone who follows you. The truth is, no has the time to read everyone they follow so why not just follow the ones you want to read?

This last weekend I was out of town and I came home to about 25 new Twitter followers. Once I weeded through the Twitter spam (personal yachts.com), I was able to decide who I wanted to follow. Kim’s post made me realize that it’s not about following people as much as it is about following conversations and I have been feeling guilty if I did not follow everyone who follows me. Now I am happy to say that I am free from Twitter Bondage and able to enjoy the conversations of my choice.

BTW, If you want to follow me on Twitter……