Social Media | SocialWayne.com by Wayne Sutton

Posts Tagged ‘Social Media’

Posted on February 24, 2012 - by Wayne Sutton

Suicide in Success, Race and Social Media

Suicide
Suicide is one of those topics that is not talked about enough like AIDS, HIV, and other serious issues that should be discussed more openly instead how to get more twitter followers or increasing your klout score. Suicide in tech and social media has been a topic more recently in the past year with the deaths of Ilya Zhitomirskiy, co-founder of at the age of 22 and Trey Pennington which both sent shock waves to their colleagues and those who they had a relationship with online.

For the black/African-American community suicide is hardly a thought for most as there’s enough black on black crime doing it’s damage. But recently with the deaths of Don Cornelius and Whitney Houston it has been in the news. Still some African-Americans are looking for someone to blame as the cause of the person to commit suicide vs looking at life, stress, pressure in general. What’s even worse is if it’s a celebrity, funerals have become big money publicity stunts for media and other parties involved. It’s a damn shame. Think about Michael Jackson’s funeral even though he didn’t kill himself and no I didn’t watch his funeral activities or Whitney Houston’s. In Don Cornelius and the other 30,000 a year suicide cases that happen a lot of people ask why? Why would someone want to commit suicide. Then there’s the religious side of things for the faith based community. That a person is going to hell or won’t’ be let in the pearly gates if they do and that starts another debate. Regardless of why people commit suicide we know that stress and/or something in their life has cause a reaction to create a need to want to end it all. One of those reactions is the goal of success.

Success
Success means something different to a lot of people. For many it’s money, or having material items or to be portrayed to have reached a status quo. For others it’s reaching a set of goals as to launching a company, completing task and/or being happy. But with the pressure of success and failures on the way to success it can create mountains of emotional turmoil that can lead for many, drinking, drugs, or other crazy activities to find an outlet to get away from everything. People are human, not robots and somewhere along the way it seems that we have forgotten about that and the line of judging others because you have a twitter, facebook, google+ or a blog gives everyone the right to judge others that can cause pressure that could lead to suicide. Just like how one status message can lead to job opportunity or a funding round it could also lead to someone’s death bed. You never know what mindset someone is in or what they’re going through.

Race
Race, race, race. It’s a never ending topic. Honestly I’m tired of talking about race but as a black man trying to make a name for myself and others in a primary white male industry it’s tough. Now it’s not just the industry but it’s my area of residence. I’m now in San Francisco and you all know it’s far from North Carolina. Some of the stories I’ve been told over the past five days have been mind blowing along with some of the reactions I’ve seen. A guy told me the other day that he used to work in Cupertino and he could go 30 days without seeing another black person. Stories like that along with being looked at like you’re about to rob a bank just cause you walking down the street or being talked to like you just saw your first computer last week. It’s insulting and sad. I’m not crying racist, it’s just the culture and if people don’t see or are not familiar with an intelligent black/brown person they’re first reaction is to think about what they know and what they see. That in San Francisco is a lot of homeless black people. It is what it is and it sucks.

I want people to look and treat me and others as humans as the same as the next person but despite how much accomplishments one or few African Americans have made we still have a long way to go. You may not think so or may think everything is ok but as the saying goes. You’ll never know what it’s like unless you ……..

Sidebar:
It’s crazy and stupid to see trending topics on twitter cause the riot police has been called because people are going crazy for a pair of shoes. Now I know everyone of those individuals are not black but majority are. What the hell are we doing people… my people? It’s 2012! If the shoes cost $250.00 and if 2,000 people take the $250 and put together that’s $500,000. That’s more than enough to fund or help get started 10 or more startups that could create jobs in the community. More on that in another rant post. I guess the same can be said for iPhone and other gadgets too.

Social Media.
Well… I don’t being like called a social media guy! But that’s my own fault. As an early adopter I used to call myself a social media strategist back in 2006 before 99% of the internet knew what twitter was and the sharks came. Guess I did a good job at marketing myself that but at the end of the day I’m an entrepreneur. Regardless what social media has done as the term has become main stream along with the platforms it has giving people a voice an outlet to say what’s on their mind at anytime. IMHO many shouldn’t say anything at all but we have the freedom of speech in America. Still as things continue to go from bad to worse kids are being bullied online, adults attacked verbally and the news media outlets covering it all just for a good story and ratings. It’s not going to change, only get worse. Like I’ve said years ago and in this post. Think before you post online and everyone is human. Put yourself in anyone shoes before you start attacking or judging. Music artist, actors, kids, family members, black, white, brown or whatever we’re all human.

Back to Suicide
Honestly, suicide is something I think about almost everyday. I’ve thought about it over the years. I think about it as an outlet to get away from life pressures from family expectations, online expectations, regrets and pain from the past or just wanting to reach goals now. I think about everything I wish I would have done different from instead of spending hours on twitter to learning how to code in 2006. From business deals and relationships. From making scarifies and moving hoping to make it big so one day my son will have a better life. From worrying about society and what other people will say. From just being tired. Despite what people may see online or I share, life is not a box of chocolate. Like I said on the CNN documentary, I won’t’ success so bad it hurts. As for me, what I consider success is not just money although that does help. It’s reaching a goal to be in a position where I can make a difference in the world to have impact to change hearts, minds and lives for the greater good of mankind. That drives me. I know it won’t come overnight and just like past years where I thought about suicide I would have a milestone saying, let’s see how this works or get to that point and go from there.

For now life continues as I deal with striving for success, breaking down racial barriers and using social media for the great good in the next chapter of my life.

Disclaimer:
Yep, I having a bad day but all will be well. Keep moving forward and if you’re thinking about suicide please find an outlet and someone to talk to immediately.

Posted on January 17, 2012 - by Wayne Sutton

Social Media By Demographics #infographic

Posted on December 31, 2011 - by Wayne Sutton

Guest Post: 3 Smart Ways for Small Business Viral Growth

About Guest Author: Victoria Kushner is a blogger and PR manager at Freemake.com. She writes about top multimedia apps and tech startups.

Nowadays everyone is talking about word of mouth promotion success. Viral marketing is a promising method, especially for small business and new companies. As matter of fact, viral campaigns bring substantial traffic, attract new audience and help build warm business-friendly atmosphere. Each business owner dreams about vast public support and good attitude to his/her startup.

However, many useful social media tools are still rarely implemented by small business. The reasons for such viral marketing reluctance are lack of knowledge, fear to fail or viral concept misinterpretation. Let’s dispel myths around viral marketing and explore 3 real viral growth cases that every business owner may apply to own company.

Cool Infographics

Infographics is a powerful viral tool. People love to share it. You can see thousands of Twitter updates with word “infographics”. If you plan to boost your company name mentions in social media – design impressive infographics.

First of all, you need thoroughly research your industry-related topics that may be interesting to wide audience. Visit such popular infographics galleries as visual.ly, Killer Infographics, or Daily Infographics and view ready infographics for your niche.

Then, work out ideas and connect them with your company product/services. Hire a designer and make your infographics dream come true.

Next step is to place your excellent infographics on your website and supply it with social sharing buttons. Don’t forget to promote it among your existing customers via newsletters, Facebook, Twitter feeds or offline announcements.

After that pitch bloggers and suggest your slide for magazines. If you target right journalists and make appealing image, people will talk about it. For, instance, “YouTube Killed TV” infographics has numerous tweets that reached people worldwide.

By Freemake, proud developer of YouTube Converter

Great YouTube Video

For complicated products or services, just an infographics will not do. In this case, try demo or promotional video. There’s no need to hire Hollywood producer or New York Video Agency. A video can simply show your company internal processes or have a video message from CEO. Audience is always excited to learn inside information and to meet real people who stand behind a small company.

Make your video unique, short and outstanding. Compare other YouTube videos and write compelling video title and description. Add as much information as your want. It’s important to put your website, social media links and contacts. Then, buy YouTube ads to drive extra traffic to your video channel – it’s cheap and does not require much online advertizing skills.

A vivid example of this viral tool success is Orabrush “Bad Breath” video that gained 16 million views and lots of comments.

Catchy Social Networks

Invite your current customer to join your Twitter, Facebook or Google+ pages. Offer incentives, coupons and exclusive bonuses to your social networks buddies. Logos Bible Software generated over $300 000 through Facebook promotion. They prepared custom discounts for each fan. The campaign resulted in mass social message distribution and additional orders. Follow Logos way and create active social community.

Posted on December 30, 2011 - by Wayne Sutton

Guest Post: Microsoft Socl: The Upcoming Social Network Project

About the author: Alia Haley is a blogger by profession. She loves writing on technology and luxury.
Beside this she is fond of games. She recently bought a Gaming Mouse for herself. These days she is
busy in writing an article on Suzuki Motorcycles.

There was a murmur heard in the Microsoft camp a couple of weeks before about the social networking project being carried out by the company. Later these things embarked at a place called Socl.com with a name Tulalip. The fact of the matter is that Tulalip happens to be a website which allows you everything right from getting any information to sharing it unlike you see in any social networking site. With passing time, more information has emerged out now in public making things clear. Microsoft has embarked with a project called Socl and dropping the Tulalip. This place will allow you to search for information and clubbing things with a complicated blend. Microsoft has tested the applications with limited users in a group along with a number of features as discussed under:
The UI or User Interface: On the face of it, people can call it somewhere a Facebook; however, it is still too early to trust this notion completely. This can only be said when Microsoft will eventually launch the social networking website. However, at the moment you can consider having the same design of three columns as seen on Facebook. These include the updates coming in the middle section, information at the right side and the navigations links on the left side. However, the difference comes with the input area which is placed at the top side area where you can you can update about your statuses just beside the question asking to do so. However, you can choose for a standard format rather treading this path.

The Tags: The Socl is taking a different route to this path and not just replicating things from FB. At Socl you get the choice of using tags with some specific subject trying from anybody’s status or search the query; thereby you can get result of anything having this searched tag. It is still unclear how it will work while you can use your RSS feeds or just try Google as well for you. This feature is still under the phase of testing, we can have a clear idea after it comes out.

The Videos: Having the presence of high end HTML5, Socl works out without any hassle or issue even when you will see the video being used at the right side. In this way the users can therefore do two things together, watching the videos from YouTube and put comments through the chat box window.

The Social Element: As you see how Google is using the social element in its search results since they think that it can pull out information which is unique from the users using their friends. With Socl you can expect similar thing in this direction, though we need to wait and watch this thing.

Knowing the fact that the Microsoft social networking site –Socl is under test, it’s a tough task to understand it completely at this juncture. People though feel that the company will bring something different rather than mere replicating things from Facebook or any other social media site. To survive indeed you need to be different, by just being a copy cat it will make things tough for the Socl to combat the giants of Social media.