I enjoy using Twitter to learn interesting tidbits, Facebook to keep up with my friends, family and favorite brands and Google Reader to keep up with news and blogs. And Google+ to … well, whatever Google+ is supposed to do. And, like many of you, I listen to radio and podcasts, read magazines, receive marketing materials in the mail and see banner ads on the websites I visit. Some I choose; some I don’t. But if I consumed it all, I’d do nothing else all day. (And some days, I don’t.)

While many of us crave information, there are a few simple things you can do to give yourself a little more of your own time back.

1.    Set inbox rules. You signed up for Chili’s coupons, Michael’s rewards emails and Pottery Barn sales announcements — and who wants to give up their Target discounts?! But if you stop to look at your inbox each time one of these emails comes through, you might go mad. Create a folder in your inbox and set some rules, so the marketing emails YOU WANT go into this folder. (And if you don’t want them, unsubscribe!) Then, on a set day every week, comb through them and print the coupons you’ll use and mark sales dates on your calendar. Alternatively, you can have a “junk” email address. I have one account that I use only for these types of marketing emails.
2.    Manage your Facebook news feed. You have friends who are over-posters. We ALL have those friends. And you don’t want to un-friend someone you truly like just because she happens to spend too much of her time online. Every so often, you’d like to check in and see how she’s doing. You don’t, however, need to know what she had for breakfast today. Remember — you can hide people. They won’t know, and your news feed will be more pertinent. You can also rely on Facebook’s “Top News” feature to filter your feed for you.
3.    Choose your marketing messages carefully. On Facebook, I follow a lot of things — friends’ businesses, TV shows I love and brands I’m loyal to. But every so often, I revisit that list. Is their content enriching? Coupons from Neutrogena? Free shipping from Origins? I’ll take it! New content and updates on the cast from Grey’s Anatomy? Not giving that up either. On the other hand, while I’m a huge fan of Disney, seldom do I learn anything here that I won’t learn elsewhere. And since I don’t have a season pass to Disneyland, I can probably stop following the theme park — even though I real-world “like” them.
4.    Eliminate repeats. Smart content marketers know the value in re-purposing content. For example, I subscribe to Women’s Health magazine. I also get emails from them — daily. And I follow them on Facebook. I promise you that the content, while valuable, is being repurposed. The fat-burning breakfasts article on their website is — but it’s coming to me via Facebook, Twitter and email. Time to dump the repeats and reduce the clutter.

If you love information, I don’t blame you. But we simply don’t have an infinite time supply to do everything we need to live our lives AND get all this great content. As a consumer, you have some control. And as marketers, we have a responsibility to continue to create valuable content that people actually want.

Whether you’re blogging, updating social media pages or setting up your website, don’t be afraid to keep it short. Few people will take the time to read and absorb all that content you worked so hard on. Respect your audience’s time constraints, and provide valuable content — briefly.

About Michelle
Michelle Lauer is a senior at Arizona State University, majoring in journalism with an emphasis in public relations. In her junior year, Michelle served as a senator for the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism in the downtown campus student government and as a teacher’s assistant in an upper division statistics course. Michelle has also interned for the Arizona Democratic Party.

Social media just hurt my street cred, I realized the other day as I sheepishly picked cilantro out of my front teeth. I noticed my faux pas after uploading to Facebook a picture of myself eating a chipotle burrito (recommended on Yelp) from a taco truck whose location I found on Twitter. After a thread of jeering comments from a dozen friends from high school, college, debate camp and my friend’s friend’s surprise birthday party, I learned a small lesson about my online presentation.

Through social media, we share information, experiences, data, opinions and pretty much every other facet of the human social experience. And these online tools have become an increasingly vital part of self-promotion, whether for your own personal branding or to market a company.

And it’s not going away any time soon. Social media sites like Facebook, YouTube, Flickr, Twitter and blogs are rising exponentially. According to Mashable.com, this month Twitter surpassed 200 million tweets posted in a single day. Two years ago, users posted only 10 million tweets daily.

Social media has instigated global interconnectivity, and even more significant for many of us, it has removed third-party marketing agents from the producer-consumer relationship, allowing individual companies to reach their audiences directly. However, as more and more individuals, companies and movements log in to their social media sites, the challenge to effectively present yourself virtually becomes increasingly difficult.

Many social media faux pas are easily avoidable. Here are just a few to get you started.
1.    Edit your work. The occasional typo will happen, but gross spelling and grammar errors distract viewers and discourage them from reading on.
2.    Provide details. Too little information about you or your company can appear sketchy. Individuals can appear to be social media voyeurs, while companies risk seeming unprofessional and incomplete in their marketing efforts.
3.    Choose your tone carefully. What you post should reflect your brand. When a disconnect from your personality or your company’s brand, overly formal language or informal updates can take away from the image you’re trying to portray.
4.    Reconsider jokes. Think about whether your humor will translate well in written text. It may have been just hilarious when you told that joke at your housewarming party last week, but it could alienate connections over the web.
5.    Remember the purpose. Social media is about making connections. So, go, connect and spread your message — but don’t forget to interact. That means two-way communication, not just broadcasting.
6.    Be yourself. When you’re representing yourself, you are free to be yourself. It’s your site! Give it your own flavor, but don’t leave a sour taste in our mouths (or cilantro in our teeth).

About Michelle
Michelle Lauer is a senior at Arizona State University, majoring in journalism with an emphasis in public relations. In her junior year, Michelle served as a senator for the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism in the downtown campus student government and as a teacher’s assistant in an upper division statistics course. Michelle has also interned for the Arizona Democratic Party.

Are you laughing at the mere suggestion?

I’m proud to say that my business holiday cards have been concepted and written — and are currently in layout. I’ll print them by Aug. 1. It’s all part of Active Voice Communications’ annual plan. Last year, I was a little slower — wrapping up in September/October. And that (somehow) felt late.

Why do I want you to write holiday copy in July? Because I feel nearly certain it will be better as a result. The sooner you start mulling your concept, the less likely you’ll be putting crap on a page just to get it out the door.

Plus, have you ever had a November-December that didn’t somehow get busier than you’d expected? During these months, you’re making plans with family. You’re trying to finish projects that absolutely must close by Dec. 31. You’re sending out cards. Your personal and professional time is packed. So, wouldn’t it help if you finished your client thank-yous in September-October? Heck, schedule your family photo in October, and get your personal holiday cards addressed too.

There’s no shame in smart planning. It yields a better product — and will save you headaches and stress later.

So, what kinds of things do YOU plan for in advance to better balance your time and ease stress?

And that depends … Do you want more business or less business?

Here’s the thing about having a website these days: It lends credibility. (Provided the site isn’t truly awful.)

When my husband and I were planning our wedding, we asked our venue for string quartet recommendations. They provided three. We eliminated one immediately because they didn’t have a website. To us, having a website (even if it only contained a couple pages) was the mark of a real company doing real work. It demonstrated professionalism.

Some people think they don’t need a website because all of their business comes through referral or a large percentage of their prospects aren’t likely online anyway. But let’s say you’re selling a service to seniors. Even if Grandpa Ed isn’t Web savvy, his daughter probably is. And she’ll want to be able to research you.

If you want to advance in search rankings, you’ll need a robust site that’s updated frequently, but for small businesses, this isn’t always possible with a small marketing budget. You can get by with a professionally designed website with well written content. But these days, it’s getting harder and harder to get by without a website at all.

Here’s what my dad told me: Lying makes it worse.

One Sunday morning when I was 8, I realized I couldn’t finish the plate of pancakes I’d helped myself to. For some reason, I felt the worst thing I could do was throw away those pancakes. My dad sat in the next room, as I claimed I was done and cleverly stashed the remnants in the garbage disposal. The true genius of my plan was that I didn’t turn on the disposal. Hence, he’d never know.

Um, wrong.

I could’ve admitted to throwing away breakfast, apologized and maybe agreed that I shouldn’t have been so greedy at the table — and honestly, that would’ve ended it. But instead, I lied.

And guess what? SO MUCH WORSE.

I’m pretty sure that it would take a couple more times of losing my friend time or phone privileges before I learned that no matter what I had done, lying would only make it worse. Oh, and also: The truth always comes out eventually. I learned these things before the transparency of social media and the evolution of “gotcha” journalism. (Not that I’m perfect, mind you, but the lesson has stuck.)

So, to members of Congress and other politicians, c-level execs, professionals running a marketing or PR department, and anyone in the public eye, I implore you: Enough with the lying. The public relations nightmares that follow an ill-advised decision will be bad. You bet. But my dad, who, as it turns out, is right about a lot of things, has been proven right time and again about this: Lying will only make it worse.

But they don’t.

Whether your job requires you to write on a regular basis or you write in your free time, writer’s block is a frustrating experience. If you’re struggling to get words on the page, here are a few ideas to consider:

1. Take a break. Continuing to stare at the screen is only going to frustrate you further. So, take a break. Go for a walk, clean your office, run some errands.

2. Sleep on it. No, don’t go take a nap, but if your deadline allows, set aside the project for a day while you work on other tasks. I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve woken up with a great headline or a fun way to begin a story.

3. Meditate. Admittedly, I’ve never had the patience to meditate. I wish I did. But for some people, meditation brings peace and calm, and clears clutter from the brain.

4. De-clutter. It can be hard to focus on your work when your desk is messy and your office is a disaster zone.

5. Write something else. Most likely, the block you’re experiencing is connected to one particular project. And the fact that you’re struggling with it is driving you crazy and making you question your abilities. So, remind yourself that you’re a good writer. Go write something else and then come back to this project. It doesn’t have to be a work project. Write a blog post, a short story or a poem. Anything that gets those creative juices flowing again.

6. Give yourself a break. Don’t be so hard on yourself! Writer’s block happens to everyone. Work through it, and make a mental note of how you conquered it.

Politicians have long spewed vitriol. But is our problem necessarily tone and language? As a writer, I understand the weight of words. But for me, the bigger issue — and it goes far beyond our nation’s capital — is that we simply don’t listen. Thanks to social media and other tools, we all have a microphone. So, we talk and talk. We blog. We tweet. We update our statuses.

Personally, professionally, politically — there is little listening and much talking. I’ve noticed a number of friends and colleagues on Facebook and Twitter, for example, who don’t engage with others. They only broadcast. All talking, no listening.

In business, it would often do us well to just shut up. A few months ago, I interviewed Peter Sheahan for an article in Speaker Magazine, a publication produced by the National Speakers Association for its members. Sheahan is an entrepreneur, thought leader, author and highly sought-after speaker. During our conversation, he shared an anecdote about the power of listening.

He recalled a sales call where he listened for 28 minutes — and spoke for just one. He got the job. He attributed it to listening and being willing to learn what the client’s problem was.

“It’s because I’m not saying, ‘Here’s my view of the world,’” he explained. “Instead, I’m asking, ‘What’s your view of the world?’”

The fascination with broadcasting our views isn’t just about politicians and 24-hour news channels. It’s about how we ALL interact with our spouses, our friends, our business associates.

Personally, I’ve found that the people who talk all the time … I’ve stopped listening. I don’t have time to see if in all of their talking, there’s a nugget of genius. But people who mostly listen and speak only at strategic opportunities? Now, those are people worth listening to, I’ve learned.

The next time you sit down in a meeting, bring a stopwatch (heck, your iPhone probably has an app for that). Pay attention to how much of the time you spend talking and how much you spend listening. Are you taking the time to really understand the issues facing your company or department? Are you listening to all perspectives? More than that, even if you aren’t talking, are you actively listening to each speaker, or are you too busy writing your to-do list or thinking of what you’ll say when it is your turn to speak?

Bottom line is this: We could all be better listeners. I know I could. So now, I’d like to hear from you. What have you done to improve your listening skills? What have you noticed about talkers vs. listeners?

Check out the billboard here.

Here’s the deal. “Literally” means it actually happened. Like, for real. Not metaphorically. Not figuratively.

So, when you said you “literally died,” that can’t be so, because … ya know, you’d be dead. Or your “jaw literally dropped to the ground.” Um, no, it didn’t. I know you don’t want to say your jaw figuratively dropped to the floor. But that’s what you mean.

But to make things confusing, Merriam-Webster offers up two definitions: the first, meaning actually. The second is this: in effect, virtually. My favorite part of the entry is this explanation: Since some people take sense 2 to be the opposite of sense 1, it has been frequently criticized as a misuse. Instead, the use is pure hyperbole intended to gain emphasis, but it often appears in contexts where no additional emphasis is necessary.

I would argue that indeed these are contradictory definitions — and that the examples above require no additional emphasis. But I’d be curious to hear what you think. I also think we’d be fine if, say, no one ever used the word “literally” again.

The other piece of the problem is the overuse of the word. “I literally ran 5 miles today.” OK, well, I’m assuming you wouldn’t tell me you figuratively ran 5 miles today. So, let’s just go with: “I ran 5 miles today.” Same with “I literally waited in the doctor’s office for 45 minutes.” I have a doctor, too, so I know that’s likely not an exaggeration. But if it IS an exaggeration, then “literally” is used incorrectly once again.

OK, enough of my rant. If you’re a fellow “literally” hater, you might get a kick out of David Cross’ take on it. My friend Karen shared it with me recently, and it’s quite funny — with awesome examples that I wanted to claim as my own. Please note: There is profanity, so if the words you can’t say on television aren’t your cup of tea, you might want to skip this one. Otherwise, you can literally find the comedic bit here.