Beautiful Social Media.

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Let’s face it. We are all attracted to
beauty. We turn our heads to gaze at good looking people. Our jaws drop when we see a rainbow or a tree that’s awash in gold and orange in October. Or, how ‘bout a turquoise ocean and a white sandy beach? You just want to be there, forever, right? 

If you’re not actually there and looking at a photo instead, you can still feel the wonder and imagine that you really are there.

And all that imagery you see on the “small screen” influences how you see the brand that posted the image.

Okay, small business owners: How does that translate to your social media efforts? Any photo you post represents your brand and the way you want your customers to think about you. Let’s say you’re the owner of a yoga studio and you sell items related to living a calmer, less stress laden life such as soothing soaps and oils. 


Besides posting products and touting your services, are you also posting photos from nature? Calm scenes in fern filled woods, a field of flowers with blue skies above, a park area with a person blissfully reading a book on a bench; you get the idea.

The images you share can take the viewer to another place for just a moment while learning more about you. It will also give them reason to stop by your page more often; a picture IS worth a thousand words. However, more importantly, social media is not a sales tool; at least not in a direct sense. 

Imagery is important to create a “photographic memory” for your brand when the day comes and the consumer needs your product or service. Using the example above, perhaps that consumer enjoys your page and is unemployed at the moment. Let’s say that consumer finally lands the job he or she has been looking for. 

Now they want to start taking those yoga classes and they already know you! You’ve already created a strong relationship with this consumer!

The example above may not entirely relate to your business, however, beauty is universal. Beauty can be that hot green motorcycle or the conveyer belts that your products travel on as they’re being packaged. Beauty can be found in the design of just about anything! 

The takeaway is: Share your story of what is beautiful about your business!  

Gordon Lightfoot sang about beautiful things in this song from the 1970’s (see below). To learn more about the beauty of social media stop by our website, or stop by on Twitter, Facebook, or Google+.       

How Absurd, Facebook! Part 2

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Courtesy of /www.decontrabas.com

Thank you Facebook for providing enough fodder to write about this subject twice! For part 1, click here. Oh, I could write even more; at any rate, the absurdities continue!  Hang on to your photos of cute kitties and enjoy the ride! 

#5 A friend decides to rummage through your old photos and likes a few; suddenly, old news is new again as others see the post in their feed and it gets a second life. Yes, Facebook works in mysterious ways; do check the date on what’s in your newsfeed. Now, this occurrence is actually a good thing in most cases unless you forgot to delete that photo where your slip was showing. 

#6 Ever “like” a comment or post and then your “like” just doesn’t stick? Get some better glue Facebook! 

#7 Are you a page owner who has had the misfortune of having to ban someone from your page? First, the “offender” has to have made a recent post since you’ll never find them in the vast list of fans which only goes back to around the last one hundred or so. 

Then, when you do finally ban them, they can still see all the posts (since most pages are public are public this is usually the case), share your posts AND rejoin your page! Facebook, either change the rules and make a banning a true banning, or, if you want to be wimps about it, call your current criteria “first offense”; you know, more like a wrist slapping!

#8 Double trouble: Applies to personal profiles, pages, and groups. Have you ever made a post that appears to not have posted? It’s still sitting there with the post button in full color glory? What do you do? Of course, you hit post again, and suddenly you’ve got TWO posts of the same thing. OOOPS…and apologies; there’s no clear solution for this one!

#9 Friend recommendations. While making recommendations of folks to friend is a noble practice, many are people I have no common friends with and lots of them come “complete” without a profile photo! What’s up with that, Facebook? Time to reprogram that algorithm? 

And a woman turned up in the recommendations today with the same name as someone I used to work with, however, it wasn’t her! And no, it’s not a common name either. 

Whew; writing about absurdities can exhaust you. Good thing there’s caffeine; Gordon Lightfoot sang about that second cup back in the 70’s. Sounds like a plan. And to avoid even more absurdities, visit us on our website, or on Twitter, Facebook, or Google+.