All posts tagged social media

Social media: do we really have to share everything?

I’m eating the company dogfood, as it were, by selling my house through an estate agent that is a client of ours. I have become the use case. So here I am, on a page featuring the particulars my house, faced with Tweet and Facebook ‘Like’ buttons. My first thought is: I’m not putting the [...]

Why even introverts should mouth off online

There was a post by Seth Godin some time ago that completely changed the way I act on the web (of course, now I can’t even find the blighter).

I went from passively lurking on Facebook and silently reading loads of websites to setting up three blogs, commenting on other people’s content, and starting to yammer on Twitter. Double-yammer in fact. Okay, I confess, triple-yammer.

So what happened? I have quite a lot of introverted qualities. I struggle a bit meeting new people, even talking to them on the phone, even chatting with them online. I’ll admit it – even playing anonymous multiplayer games.

When my friend Roger’s book about psychology and the teaching of Jesus was first published, he reacted to my congratulations by asking ‘is it too late to take it all back?’ That’s how I feel whenever I publish a blog post. Or send a tweet. Or ‘like’ something on Facebook.

It gets easier the more I do it, but the feeling is still there.

So why do I put myself through this? Why not slip back into the silent ranks of people who only watch from the sidelines, or who leave the arena completely?

How to loosen the collar of your web copy

Social media has made the web more of a conversation (it was already pretty chatty). Companies who want to maintain a one-sided, sales pitch relationship with their customers come off as stiffs. For many businesses with web sites, adopting a tone of voice online that is a little less formal, a little more smart casual, will help their users to connect with them.

I am not talking about LOL-ing up your copy with txtspk, slang and swearwords FTW! But undoing the top button and taking off the tie will allow you to appear friendly, trustworthy, approachable and willing to interact. Here are 9 practical tips to soften up your style:

Generation Y and the Web: what’s the relationship?

What have Millennials, Job Snobs, Echo Boomers, the Net Generation, First Digitals, Peter Pan generation, and Trophy kids all got in common?

They are all names thrown at Generation Y. Although you can never actually define a generation – these things will always be gross generalisations – people talk about a generation born between the late 1970’s and the mid 1990’s. Let’s say 1979–1994.

From my basic, generalised grasp of what Generation Y is about, we’re talking: