You’ve Got to Read This: August 30, 2011

How often do you unplug? How many social media platforms do you participate in? Are you feeling a bit burnt, overloaded and stretched thin trying to keep up with it all? Yeah? Then, quick, read this short post by Simon Mainwaring at Fast Company: Top 10 Ways to Keep Social Media from Driving You Insane. I like #7, Refresh.

Cindy King collected advice from several Social Media Examiner writers in 21 Dangerous Blogging Mistakes (and How to Fix Them). Don’t steer away because the post focuses on mistakes, it’s really an excellent primer on effective blogging. Pay attention to Mistake #9, Bad Writing. (Said with just a bit of self-interest.)

Instead of a blog post, my next recommendation is a Prezi. What’s a Prezi? A more visually appealing alternative to PowerPoint. Maddie Grant at Socialfish shared a Prezi by Carie Lewis of The Humane Society. It’s the best advice I’ve seen about Facebook in a long time: Why I Don’t “Like” You. You need to read this if you, your business or your organization has a Facebook page. You’ll thank me, or Maddie, or even better, Carie, later.

You can always count on Andrew Hannelly at TMG Custom Media for good advice, the kind of advice that people normally pay for. If you want to know why your email subscribers stop subscribing, he’ll give you seven reasons. And, he’ll tell you what you can do about it. If you follow his advice, and it works, at least buy the man a beer.

I’ve always been a language nut. I’ve studied Portuguese, French, Spanish, Italian, German and Chinese, and learned enough of a few others to get by as a tourist. Can I speak any of them now? Heck, no, if you don’t use it, you lose it, cliché, but true. One of the cool things about studying languages is the insight it gives you into how other people perceive and deal with the world around them. When you study Chinese, it’s like traveling to another culture’s brain without leaving your living room.

I was reminded of that when reading this interesting post by Emily Badger at the Miller-McCune blog, Rescuing Endangered Languages Means Saving Ideas. Here’s what she means by that:

“Language systems don’t merely translate universal ideas into different spellings; they encode different concepts. And when we lose a language, we risk losing those concepts. A lot of concepts are on the edge of oblivion — out of about 7,000 languages spoken in the world today, half are projected to disappear by the end of the century, if not sooner. That’s an amazing amount of knowledge.”

That’s all for this week. Go learn a language and happy reading!

raleigh freelance writer blogger copywriter
photo by Mike Licht

Author: deirdrereid

Deirdre is a freelance writer for companies serving the association market. After more than 20 years managing associations and restaurants, she's enjoying the good life as a ghostblogger and content marketing writer for the association community. Away from her laptop, you can find her walking in the woods, enjoying live music, reading hundreds of newsletters, watching hockey, cooking, hanging at the local brewery or tap room, or relaxing in a comfy chair with a good Kindle book and a glass of something tasty in hand.

4 thoughts on “You’ve Got to Read This: August 30, 2011”

    1. You bet! Every organization should have a social media policy as part of their employee handbook, even if the organization is not using social media. Their Facebook page and blog should have community guidelines as well.

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