The @ sign needs to watch its back if it wants to hold on to its status as the most influential keyboard character of the Internet age. Yon hash sign (#) has a lean and hungry look. In fact, Facebook’s long-awaited announcement earlier this month that hashtags are now active and clickable on Facebook means […]

The world keeps spinning, and pinners keep on pinning. In the weeks since I wrote my article Pinterest Pointers: 9 Tips for Using the Third-Largest Social Media Site Professionally back in January, Pinterest has continued to cement its position as one of the top-tier players in the social media world. Research shows that Pinterest’s traffic […]

If you’re a social media-savvy creative professional — and since you’re reading this, I’ve got a pretty good hunch you are — you probably already have a professional profile on LinkedIn. But in addition to profiles for individuals, these days LinkedIn also offers pages for companies. Figure 1: Peachpit Press’s page on LinkedIn is a […]

Getting the word out has never been something you can do all by yourself: It takes a village. Even Paul Revere, as he galloped from town to town in 1775, needed to enlist the help of influential networkers in each community to make sure his message got to everyone who needed to hear it. In […]

Sharing links is a big part of what makes Facebook’s social media world go ‘round. If you’re an active Facebooker, you may take pride in curating a steady stream of entertaining, informative, and thought-provoking articles, blog posts, and videos to share with your audience — in addition to sharing links to your own creative work […]

Ever see the movie Searching for Bobby Fischer? There’s a brilliant scene where Ben Kingsley, as the chess teacher, dramatically sweeps all of the pieces off the chess board and onto the floor. He does that because he wants the young chess prodigy he’s coaching to learn how to visualize all the possibilities of the […]

Excerpted from Facebook Me! A Guide to Socializing, Sharing, and Promoting on Facebook, Second Edition by Dave Awl. Copyright © 2011. Used with permission of Pearson Education, Inc. and Peachpit Press. Facebook tools like status updates, Notes, Pages, photos, and videos make it easy to grab the attention of your friends and fans—and give you […]

Facebook has had some ups and downs over the last few months. There was that little kerfuffle about its Terms of Use, which you might recall reading about, oh, everywhere. And a wildly unpopular redesign earlier this year left many users confused. But despite those missteps, there are still plenty of reasons to like Facebook. […]

The popularity of LinkedIn.com, the professional networking site, has hit a tipping point. When I joined LinkedIn a few years ago, for the most part I only found colleagues in tech-related professions on LinkedIn. These days, people in all sorts of professions — from accountants to actor-slash-waiters — are popping up with new profiles. With […]