Book Review: “Pinterest For Dummies” by Kelby Carr and Giveaway

Pinterest has, seemingly overnight, become the hottest new social media website. I have been an avid pinner for the past several months and I absolutely love it. I can, and have on many occasions, spent several hours on Pinterest, and whenever I introduce the website to someone, I always warn them of its amazing ability to lure you in and keep you entertained until you realize that there was something you were supposed to be doing. It’s hard to believe that Pinterest was initially launched in 2010, only because it is just now becoming so popular, but it just goes to show you that in the internet world. it may take years for what you are doing to catch on, but it could very well have the ability to catch on in a big, …

Help Walmart and Feeding America Fight Hunger This Spring

This is a Sponsored post written by me on behalf of The Walmart Foundation. All opinions are 100% mine.

More than 50 million Americans don’t know where their next meal is coming from. Usually we hear most about helping those in need during the Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays, which is when most charitable giving is done. This makes sense, but poverty and hunger affects millions of people every single day, not just during the holidays of selfless giving.

As the instability of the national job market continues, more families are finding themselves in need of a little help, and springtime traditionally brings a decrease in food and charitable donations to food banks across the country. To help increase meals for those in need during the spring hunger gap, Walmart has teamed up with Feeding America …

How Social is B2B? [Infographic]

We have long known that social networking is an excellent playground for businesses to connect with and attract potential customers, but how many businesses are actually utilizing this technology, and what type of success are they achieving with their efforts?

The following infographic breaks down what social services businesses are using the most and how drastically social network usage and micro-blogging has increased deals and sales for all types of businesses.

Is it Gender or Skills that Make a Good Social Media Marketer?

Ten years ago I started working for my husband providing marketing services for his software business. At the time, we were not married and he lived in another state therefore most of our communication was done over the phone. He didn’t have any background in marketing, and figured since I had taken some college courses related to marketing I could turn his business around.

How I wish social media was then what it is today. We were lucky to at least have Instant Messenger.

According to ComScore 2010 US Digital Year in Review women spend more time social networking than men. Women spent approximately 16.8% on social sites in December of 2010 while men spent only 12%.

Today, social media tools are just as much associated with businesses as well as personal lives. Some researchers …

New Missouri Law Bans Teachers From Being Facebook Friends with Students

Missouri Governor Jay Nixon recently signed a new bill into law that bans “student-teacher friendships” on social networking websites like Facebook and Twitter, or any networking website that is exclusive and allows for private communication. The law is intended to keep the personal interactions teachers have with students at an absolute minimum outside of the classroom and to ensure that all relationships are public and strictly professional.

This law is not a bad idea, in theory. There are few advantages for students to have constant access to their teachers outside of the classroom atmosphere and without the supervision of fellow teachers, principals and school boards. The world of social media could arguably aid in teachers’ abilities to mentor and tutor students through group chats, email and instant messaging, but teachers already work a tremendous amount of …

President Obama’s First Twitter Town Hall Event Yields Over 70,000 Tweets

During the 2008 presidential election, one aspect of Barack Obama’s candidacy that make him appeal to the young voters of this country was his and his campaign’s smart use of trending technology. He was the candidate with a Twitter account, who had a blog, and who had made himself an almost-reachable presence to the people who favored him up until election day. Now that he is President of the United States, he has kept up this web service communication with his constituents, and yesterday he answered burning political questions via a Twitter Town Hall event.

The event was hosted by Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey and to kick off the event, President Obama tweeted from his @whitehouse account about reducing the deficit, a theme that played out heavily …