This week you will:

• Create a blog post on your strategy for the Social Media Challenge.
• Create a blog post on the logic of using hashtags.
• Join Instagram, Twitter, Facebook and Pinterest.

This week you will create 2 blog posts. First, will blog about your strategy for the Social Media Challenge, and include an infographic, photo or video that represents your strategy.

Next, you will blog about hashtags and include an infographic, photo or video that represents hashtags,

Next you will join Instagram, Twitter, Facebook and Pinterest.

Complete and submit your self-assessment of your week 12 learning.

Please remember, before you begin your activities, read and watch this week's topic summary content.

Whenever you learn, let go and have some fun, don't take yourself too seriously.

This week you will create 2 blog posts. First, you will blog about spreading your ideas with social media and include an infographic, photo or video that represent

Why #hashtags rule and how to use them properly

Jul 25, 2014, 12:19pm EDT Media & Marketing,

#UnderstandingTheHashtag

It’s best to know the purpose of a hashtag before you can understand how to use it. Started on Twitter as a way to organize and search content, the hashtag has now spread to Facebook, Google+, Google, and other platforms. The hashtag is the way we now manage and monitor digital content.

#WhoCanUseHashtags

Anyone can! Big brands build hashtags to create and monitor a conversation surrounding a specific topic. Individuals use hashtags to either take part in a larger conversation or begin a conversation of their own.

#TopHashtags

You can monitor a hashtag in the search option of Twitter or you can visit sites like Hashtagify.me and check out what’s being talked about, the top influencers, and even usage patterns. There is even a Twitter Account for @hashtag that monitors conversations and all things hashtags.

#BasicRulesofaHashtag

When getting started with using hashtags for your own purposes, consider these important rules:

• Always use the # before your chosen keywords.
• Do not use punctuation or spaces in hashtags. If there are numerous keywords in a hashtag, #theyshouldallflowtogether in one fluid phrase.
• Never put characters immediately before the #. For example, it wouldn't be: news#WorldCup. Instead, you'd write: #WorldCupNews
• Use letters and numbers, never numbers alone. Using all numbers like #1 will not generate a positive search but #No1insports will.
• Keep it brief! Some people use too many words in a hashtag. Use the most distinguishable keywords or phrase as possible.

Use hashtags to make your content more searchable, and to add a fresh element to your social media marketing.

Social Media Strategy- Rules you can use

1. Invest your time. There are no shortcuts. Social media marketing takes time, energy, creativity and above all, commitment.
2. Contribute value. People will only care what you have to say if you consistently contribute something of value.
3. Position yourself as an expert. Earn the trust you’re after.
4. Keep the noise down. The infographic advises you say meaningful stuff or nothing at all. That’s too black and while for me. I propose you can goof around now and then, but don’t be a relentless noisemaker.
5. Offer concise morsels of advice. Rambling’s a no-no. Get to the point.
6. Don’t overdo the self-promotion. You’ll be labeled “spammer” and cast into to social media purgatory.
7. Keep it real. Be authentic and draw from your experiences, knowledge, and sense of humor.
8. Give followers an opportunity to speak up. Like any conversation, if you want to make friends, you can’t monopolize it. Listen and converse.
9. Keep up with topics and trends. Things move and change fast online. Try to keep up and adapt.
10. Follow-up with new connections. When someone does you the favor of following, follow-up. Express your appreciation. (I love this tip.)
11. Mind your manners. People may disagree with you or send an abrasive comment your way now and then. Chill. Take the high road.
12. Be patient. Results can’t be rushed. Think long-term and be a nurturer.
13. Ration yourself. “Don’t be an obsessive joiner,” says the infographic. Joining groups is a good thing. But spreading yourself too thin is not.

Have fun. If you’re not enjoying social media, it’s not for you.

Thanks @JudyLM -Thanks Social Metric Pros

Strategy: make yourself memorable

Create a consistent look and feel on all your social media platforms. Your choice of color, style and tone are branding aspects that should be consistent across all of your channels. For example, if you use a blue color scheme on your personal website, don’t use a yellow one on your Facebook page.

1. Find a color palette and use it consistently. The idea is to make yourself memorable. People are more likely to remember you if you use a consistent look and feel on all platforms.
   • Get a base color hex code.
   • Use the Paletton.com application. enter hex code in the box in lower left. It is designed to create palettes of colors that work well together according to classical color theories.
2. Choose a distinctive color scheme and use it in all of your social profiles, including about.me and Google+.
3. Change your profile images to one image. Use the same profile image for all of your channels.
4. Update each profile with the most most current information,(i.e, work info, website URL, social links, etc.)
   • Include your areas of expertise that define who you are and what you do.
   • Include main keywords in your area of expertise.

Mindset

Every so often a truly groundbreaking idea comes along. This is one. Mindset explains:

• Why brains and talent don’t bring success
• How they can stand in the way of it
• Why praising brains and talent doesn’t foster self-esteem and accomplishment, but jeopardizes them
• How teaching a simple idea about the brain raises grades and productivity
• What all great CEOs, parents, teachers, athletes know

Mindset is a simple idea discovered by world-renowned Stanford University psychologist Carol Dweck in decades of research on achievement and success—a simple idea that makes all the difference.

In a fixed mindset, people believe their basic qualities, like their intelligence or talent, are simply fixed traits. They spend their time documenting their intelligence or talent instead of developing them. They also believe that talent alone creates success—without effort. They’re wrong.

In a growth mindset, people believe that their most basic abilities can be developed through dedication and hard work—brains and talent are just the starting point. This view creates a love of learning and a resilience that is essential for great accomplishment. Virtually all great people have had these qualities.

The Mindsets

Mindsets are beliefs—beliefs about yourself and your most basic qualities. Think about your intelligence, your talents, your personality. Are these qualities simply fixed traits, carved in stone and that’s that? Or are they things you can cultivate throughout your life?

People with a fixed mindset believe that their traits are just givens. They have a certain amount of brains and talent and nothing can change that. If they have a lot, they’re all set, but if they don’t... So people in this mindset worry about their traits and how adequate they are. They have something to prove to themselves and others.

People with a growth mindset, on the other hand, see their qualities as things that can be developed through their dedication and effort. Sure they’re happy if they’re brainy or talented, but that’s just the starting point. They understand that no one has ever accomplished great things—not Mozart, Darwin, or Michael Jordan—without years of passionate practice and learning.

Why People Differ

Since the dawn of time, people have thought differently, acted differently, and fared differently from each other. It was guaranteed that someone would ask the question of why people differed why some people are smarter or more moral – and whether there was something that made them permanently different. Experts lined up on both sides. Some claimed that there was a strong physical basis for these differences, making them unavoidable and unalterable. Through the ages these alleged physical differences have included bumps on the skull (phrenology), the size and shape of the skull (craniology), and, today, genes.

Others pointed to the strong differences in people’s backgrounds, experiences, training, or ways of learning. It may surprise you to know that a big champion of this view was Alfred Binet, the inventor of the IQ test. Wasn’t the IQ test meant to summarize children’s unchangeable intelligence? In fact, no. Binet, a Frenchman working in Paris in the early 20th century, designed this test to identify children who were not profiting from the Paris public schools, so that new educational programs could be designed to get them back on track. Without denying individual differences in children’s intellects, he believed that education and practice could bring about fundamental changes in intelligence. Here is a quote from one of his major books, Modern Ideas About Children, in which he summarizes his work with hundreds of children with learning difficulties:

“A few modern philosopher’s assert that an individual's intelligence is a fixed quantity, a quantity which cannot be increased. We must protest and react against this brutal pessimism.... With practice, training, and above all, method, we manage to increase our attention, our memory, our judgment and literally to become more intelligent than we were before.”

Who’s right? Today most experts agree that it’s not either/or. It’s not nature or nurture, genes or environment. From conception on, there’s a constant give and take between the two. In fact, as Gilbert Gottlieb, an eminent neuroscientist put it, not only do genes and environment cooperate as we develop, but genes require input from the environment to work properly.

At the same time, scientists are learning that people have more capacity for life-long learning and brain development than they ever thought. Of course, each person has a unique genetic endowment. People may start with different temperaments and different aptitudes, but it is clear that experience, training, and personal effort take them the rest of the way. Robert Sternberg, the present-day guru of intelligence writes that the major factor in whether people achieve expertise “is not some fixed prior ability, but purposeful engagement.” Or, as his forerunner, Binet, recognized, it’s not always the people who start out the smartest who end up the smartest.

What Does this Mean for You?

It’s one thing to have pundits spouting their opinions about scientific issues. It’s another thing to understand how these views apply to you. For twenty years, research has shown that the view you adopt for yourself profoundly affects the way you lead your life. It can determine whether you become the person you want to be and whether you commit to and accomplish the things you value. How does this happen? How can a simple belief have the power to transform your psychology and, as a result, your life?

Believing that your qualities are carved in stone—the fixed mindset—creates an urgency to prove yourself over and over. If you have only a certain amount of intelligence, a certain personality, and a certain moral character, well then you’d better prove that you have a healthy dose of them. It simply wouldn’t do to look or feel deficient in these most basic characteristics…I’ve seen so many people with this one consuming goal of proving themselves—in the classroom, in their careers, and in their relationships. Every situation calls for a confirmation of their intelligence, personality, or character. Every situation is evaluated: Will I succeed or fail? Will I look smart or dumb? Will I be accepted or rejected? Will I feel like a winner or a loser? But doesn’t our society value intelligence, personality and character? Isn’t it normal to want these traits? Yes, but...

There’s another mindset in which these traits are not simply a hand you’re dealt and have to live with, always trying to convince yourself and others that you have a royal flush when you’re secretly worried it’s a pair of tens. In this mindset, the hand you’re dealt is just the starting point for development. This growth mindset is based on the belief that your basic qualities are things you can cultivate through your efforts. Although people may differ in every which way—in their initial talents and aptitudes, interests, or temperaments – everyone can change and grow through application and experience.

Do people with this mindset believe that anyone can be anything, that anyone with proper motivation or education can become Einstein or Beethoven? No, but they believe that a person’s true potential is unknown (and unknowable), that it’s impossible to foresee what can be accomplished with years of passion, toil, and training.

Did you know that Darwin and Tolstoy were considered ordinary children? That Ben Hogan, one of the greatest golfers of all time, was completely uncoordinated and graceless as a child? That the photographer Cindy Sherman, who has been on virtually every list of the most important artists of the 20th century, failed her first photography course? That Geraldine Page, one of our greatest actresses, was advised to give it up for lack of talent?

You can see how the belief that cherished qualities can be developed creates a passion for learning. Why waste time proving over and over how great you are, when you could be getting better? Why hide deficiencies instead of overcoming them? Why look for friends or partners who will just shore up your self-esteem instead of ones who will also challenge you to grow? And why seek out the tried and true, instead of experiences that will stretch you? The passion for stretching yourself and sticking to it, even (or especially) when it’s not going well, is the hallmark of the growth mindset. This is the mindset that allows people to thrive during some of the most challenging times in their lives.

Every marketing challenge revolves around these questions

• WHO are you trying to reach? (If the answer is 'everyone', start over.)
• HOW will they become aware of what you have to offer?
• WHAT story are you telling/living/spreading?
• DOES that story resonate with the worldview these people already have? (What do they believe? What do they want?)
• WHERE is the fear that prevents action?
• WHEN do you expect people to take action? If the answer is 'now', what keeps people from saying, 'later'? It's safer that way.
• WHY? What will these people tell their friends? By Seth Godin