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Are you a sports fan? Do you follow your favorite sports team on Twitter or on Facebook? It is also fun to search YouTube if you want to see interviews with your favorite players or highlights from a key game. College and professional football fans are chomping at the bit for the football season to take off. Or perhaps you are still rooting for your favorite baseball team to win the World Series. Since my Colorado Rockies keep falling into a downward spiral, I am turning my attention to football, which is my very favorite sport anyway. As a lifelong [...]

Tonight I did something that some might find rather quaint. I wrote personal notes on birthday cards and anniversary cards and enclosed some photos. Tomorrow I will put these notes into the US mail. What’s the occasion you might wonder? The occasion is my niece’s wedding that took place just under a month ago. Seeing the pure joy on the face of my niece and her new husband during their wedding reminds me that family is all about celebrating and honoring the love that binds us together. While there I took photos on my smart phone, but the ones I [...]

Where do you volunteer?  What groups or clubs do you belong to? Where do you donate money? Perhaps you are involved with your church, your child’s school, your favorite charity, or maybe a service club or other organization. One way you can help the entities where you volunteer is participate on that entity’s Facebook Page.  For example, you could post on your church’s Facebook Page that the minister gave an especially powerful sermon. Or if your child’s parent teacher organization or your favorite charity is having a fundraiser, you can set that up as an event on the Facebook Page [...]

When I first got started on Facebook and on LinkedIn, I dove into a number of books to help me better understand these social media sites. The very first book I read was Facebook for Dummies by Carolyn Abram and Leah Pearlman. Written in easy to follow language and logically organized, this book was my Facebook “Bible” for some time. This year Carolyn Abram wrote Facebook for Dummies – Portable Edition. It reviews much of the basic information from the original book, plus it has sections on the newer iterations of Facebook, such as the Timeline. I especially like it [...]

When you got started with social media, was it your idea? Or did someone else drag you into being active in that site? How did you decide which site to start with? How do you decide now that you have at least some experience with social media? I remember when I got my first friend request for Facebook. It was from a fellow in my Toastmasters clubs who had decided not to renew his membership because he and his wife were expecting a baby in a few months. Oh yes, I should mention that Toastmasters is an organization that helps [...]

Recently I gave a talk about what I like about being on Facebook. To help craft my talk, I queried both my Facebook friends and my LinkedIn connections as to what they liked about their Facebook experience. Here is the gist of my talk: The main reason people join Facebook and stay on Facebook is to stay in touch with other people. Not only to stay in touch, but to strengthen the relationships with these people. Since the cave days, we as a species have been social creatures. Facebook simply enables us to be more social with people we rarely [...]

A couple days ago I spoke on LinkedIn’s Groups and Answers features to members of Business Women for Women, a Denver area networking and education group for women business owners. Since there were so many questions about Groups, I figured it was time to write a blog post on this topic. Have you found your way to LinkedIn yet? I hope so, because this professionally oriented social media site truly has something for everyone.  Plus it is SO much more than simply a place to post your resume and ask for recommendations. When you are a member of Group on [...]

If you were like me, you probably held back signing up for the Timeline format of Facebook until you saw enough other friends on Facebook converting to it.  I finally switched over to it shortly before the date that Facebook said they were switching everyone over to it. Once I got more comfortable with the Timeline format, I didn’t really mind it, just as I have adapted  (sometimes grudgingly) to all the other changes on Facebook.  The way I figure it, Facebook provides me at no charge a very nifty way to stay in touch with people I care about. [...]

Being a Newbie Starting this blog as the Boomers’ Social Media Tutor has forced me to learn a lot. Sure, I can write, but the rest of the process has frankly been rather intimidating. Each night I promise myself I will actually figure out the logistics of the posting process. Then I find something else to do instead. Something I know how to do, like cruise around on Facebook or work a crossword puzzle. Being that my role as a social media tutor is helping the newbies to Facebook and LinkedIn (and other social media sites once I figure them [...]