Patti Fowler, the Internet Safety Coordinator for South Carolina's Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force, told WMBFNews.com that parents are probably not aware that most social media sites are restricted for children who are younger than 13. Fowler recently visited the St. James elementary school to talk about Internet safety with the students. In her presentation she explained to the students the dangers of posting personal information online. She also warned that many sexual predators use social media sites to target underage users. Mary Beth Heath, the principal of St. James Elementary School, said students can not get access to social media sites on school computers, but many of the students have access to those sites at home.

Parents would be wise to monitor what their children are doing online, and there are safeguards available to help. NetNanny and AppCertain are examples of tools designed to help parents be more aware of what their children are viewing and downloading online. These tools allow parents to monitor and block material that is viewed as inappropriate for underage viewing, and even allow different levels of restrictions for multiple kids.

A Nanny for Your Child's Internet Safety

Net Nanny is an award-winning parental control solution. It has five different products that help parents to monitor and block their child's online content. Right now, Net Nanny is teaming up with LifeLock, an online protection solution, to offer families a full package of protection against identity theft, cyber bullying, and online predators. Parents who sign up for a one-year LifeLock membership can also receive a year subscription to Net Nanny for about $100. This two-for-one opportunity will let parents block pornography from their child's computer, mask profanity, monitor social media interaction, control access, monitor instant message, and control video game usage.

Be Certain of Your Child's Internet Use

Designed for parents whose children use iOS-based mobile devices like the iPhone, iPod Touch, or iPad, AppCertain is a new monitoring application that sends email alerts to parents to let them know when their child has downloaded an app, what the app does, and whether the app is appropriate for their child to view. TechCrunch.com's Sarah Perez says that while this tool will be good for monitoring children's online activity, it can also let users know if an application is virus free before it is downloaded.

Parents who are interested in downloading a beta version of this app can access it through Tech Crunch's site.

What are you doing to keep your kids safe on the internet?

Kate Warner

Kate is a stay-at-home mom who loves to share recipes and design ideas with her online friends.

The post Internet Safety: Apps to Protect Your Children appeared first on Mom it Forward.

If you have a lively and interactive Facebook page and follow Facebook marketing tips, your blog or business will flourish in the love of your followers; but if you have a cemetery of forgotten posts, you might never take off to your full potential.

5 Facebook Marketing Tips to Get Your Business Into the Spotlight

Whether you have a natural talent for the social media frenzy, here are a few simple tips for how to make your Facebook page a lively coffeehouse of ideas and activities.

1. Pose a weekly question to your readers.

In order to engage interaction, post a question of the week or question of the day that will entice your viewers to comment on your page. Here are a few question ideas:

• Include a quiz about people featured in your store/business.
• Post a picture for people to guess where it was taken.
• Ask a weekly question. You can choose topics that relate to your business or that would intrigue your audience.
• Put up an image of a word jumble of a local landmark and ask people to name it.

2. Ask fans to share their best tips.

Ask fans to share tips on their favorite local restaurants, favorite designers, or travel locations. Match it with the theme of your business.

3. Ask fans to submit their favorite quotes.

Get fans to share on your page by asking them for their favorite quotes. Award the person who gets the most likes on their quote a free gift. Your wall can be filled with inspirational posts—and fans can get their friends involved in the contest, increasing your business’s exposure to new networks. Keep in mind that Facebook has strict rules on promotions and giveaways, so be sure to check out their Terms of Service before running a contest.

4. Name the local celebrity game.

Feature a photo of a local celebrity, a well-known store owner, or person of interest, and see who can name him or her. Follow Facebook's Terms of Service and award the winner appropriately.

5. Host a nomination contest.

Have readers nominate a special man or woman that exemplifies the image or theme of your business or who has shown themselves worthy of some gratitude and credit. Consider featuring that person in an interview on your website or have them be featured as a recipient of a special gift from your business. For example: March 8^th is International Woman’s Day. Nominate a woman who is truly amazing and kicks butt while doing it.

With Facebook becoming such a huge influencer in the success of a business, make sure your Facebook is an open place that allows your customers to feel engaged and connected to your business on a personal level. It can make all the difference in how your customers feel about you and your business. Be sure to show them you care!

What kind of things have you done with your Facebook to create a successful social media presence?

The post Facebook Marketing Tips: 5 Ideas for Increasing Engagement on Your Page appeared first on Mom it Forward.

When using Pinterest with your business hat on, you should look at the site as a place to show all the different aspects of your brand or business, not just the products you produce. It can be a great way to display the breadth of content that is available through your brand and other ways for users/customers to connect with your brand.

How to Build Your Brand Using Pinterest

Here are a few tips to help make the most of Pinterest.

Make your profile compelling and link to your website.

This may seem basic, but how many of us see abbreviated business descriptions on Twitter and Facebook? Be sure to include a link to your brand’s website and a well thought out description of your brand.

Create pinboards for all of your content or product areas.

Whether your brand is a blog, service oriented business, or product producer, use Pinterest to highlight all the different aspects of your brand. These pinboards can show the breadth of your skills, products, or content and entice new people to become followers. These pinboards can effectively highlight reoccurring features on your blog, especially photos or projects.

Pin your visuals, photos or infographics and others’, too.

Once your pinboards are created, pin the images you use on your site on the boards. The better the content you include, the more likely people will start following you and make their way back to your site. By adding pins of other people or brand’s content to your pinboards, you are extending your reach, showing compelling content beyond your brand and not just self-promoting.

Fill your pin and pinboard descriptions with keywords.

By filling your descriptions with keywords it will make them more searchable. Using words like “cute” or “fun” might be easy, but it doesn’t allow for others to find your content easily.

Have a “follow” button on your site and “pin it” button on posts or product pages.

Just like with Facebook and Twitter follow buttons, have your Pinterest button prominently displayed on your site. By having "pin it" buttons on each of your blog posts or product pages, it allows your followers to quickly pin images, content, or products they like. Each time someone else pins your content, it links back to your site and will display for their followers to view.

Use #hashtags in your description.

Pinterest, like Twitter, supports the use of hashtags. By adding hashtags in the descriptions of your pins, it makes them easily searchable.

Add links to your content in the description of your pin.

The pinned image is supposed to be linked back to the original source of the content. However, sometimes these get broken. By adding the link in the description, it makes it easy for someone to find the source. With that said, make sure your links are short.

Hopefully these tips and a little bit of well spent time can help you build your brand using Pinterest and help you find some new followers that may not have found you before.

Are you on Pinterest? How do you use Pinterest to get more traction on your blog or site?

Sarah is the mom to two boys, a mompreneur, an aspiring author, a technology geek and passionate blogger. Since her oldest child was born in 2005, she has been a stay-at-home mom and in 2009 she started her blog The Will to See. The Will to See is her outlet and forum that chronicles her experiences, including raising children with vision and GI issues, becoming a mompreneur, and learning how to write a book. She also writes for ShePosts and Girl Power Hour.

The post Social Media: How to Build Your Brand Using Pinterest appeared first on Mom it Forward.

Maybe I am biased because I've been friends with one of the conference's co-founders, Jyl Johnson Pattee, for years, and I went as a volunteer. I spent almost every waking minute registering participants, taking notes in workshops, handling microphones, and tweeting whenever I got a chance. I was quite literally immersed because I was so busy. This was my second year attending the conference, but the first in which I also chose to immerse myself as much as possible in the experience. Doing so wasn't easy, as I take my responsibilities as a stay-at-home mother quite seriously and have rarely been away from my kids for more than a day at a time. But I was hungry to meet new people, cement relationships with those I already knew, soak up precious knowledge, and bask in the spirit of change and empowerment shared by the Ignite and keynote speakers.

So, specifically, here's what helped me see my true potential at evo:

• Associating with other women who are earnestly striving to, and many times succeeding at, changing their little corner of the world. Bloggers in general tend to be people who are more honest, funny, interesting, and willing to share than others. Bloggers at Evo are even more so.
• The Ignite presentations Thursday night. For an hour and a half, in quick five-minute intervals, a powerful group of women shared stories of how their souls had been laid bared by trials, and how they were able to turn them into positive experiences through the power of community and clinging tenaciously to their dreams. Anyone who has experienced a crushing challenge knows how hard it can be to tell it to others, much less to turn it into an inspiring story, but these women did it. The evening was capped by a magical flash mob by Jenny Eckton (see below), who was the example of a woman sticking her chin up at the forces keeping her from her dream of dancing in front of a crowd.
• The workshops on photography, food preparation, writing, etc. were all very hands-on, In-depth, and engaging. My favorite was the one on Writing and Publishing, taught by Ellen Seidman of LoveThatMax and Heather Morgan Shott of Parents magazine.

I wasn't the only one transformed by evo. In the many recap posts written about it and shared on evo's Facebook page, these are the types of comments that have been shared:

From Dennissa Valdivieso Ramirez of Denny on the Spot: "I seriously could have gone on talking about the wonderful classes, the amazing food, all the wonderful sponsors, the amazing giveaways, swag bags full of goodies, the family-oriented feel [of] the whole conference, the hot air balloons, gondolas, the amazing resort, lemon bars, the dancing. But I will just say it was AMAZING."

From Caryn Payzant: "I finally broke down and cut off my closing party wristband today. Just wanted to keep the reminder of such a fabulous conference on me as long as possible."

And from Jenny Eckton of Formerly Phread, an Ignite speaker and organizer of the flash mob: "Thanks to Jyl, Rachael, and the entire evo team for the opportunities, and for the abounding potential shared throughout the conference."

Seeing your True Potential can be thrilling. Getting closer to becoming the best you can be awesome. evo can help you reach yours.

Were you able to attend evo? What was your favorite part of the weekend?

Feature photo courtesy of Flickr and NoBiggieBlog.

The post evo: Seeing Your True Potential at evo appeared first on Mom it Forward.

This relationship might not seem obvious at first. Most social media links are not easily crawlable by search engines, if they are available at all, and social media done poorly might be seen as a duplicate content risk.

However, the search engines have actively begun using social media cues in determining their results. In particular, Google has been including Google+ results and Bing has been integrating with Facebook.

But the benefits go beyond direct integration and include getting more links from non-social media sites and crawlable sections of social media profiles. As such, it’s crucial that webmasters know how to exploit social media to their SEO advantage and how to make that part of their Web development strategy.

How Social Media Efforts Can Help Your SEO Efforts

1. Build SEO-Friendly Social Media Profiles

While it’s true that many parts of social media profiles are hidden from the search results, most have parts that are public. Use those parts to promote your keywords and link to yourself.

For example, use your Twitter bio to include relevant keywords. Likewise, make sure that your Facebook Page is fully public and that it’s filled with relevant content and links. LinkedIn also sports a public profile that can include relevant information and the same goes for Google+.

If you can, open up your privacy settings as wide as you can and are comfortable. The more that’s public, the more the search engines can see and the easier it will be for your profiles to get noticed.

2. Create Engaging Content

This is easily the most difficult step in this list, but also the most important. You need to create a solid library of content that people want to read and can’t help but share. This means learning everything you can about your audience and writing content that speaks directly to them.

Pay special attention to your titles as they will likely be the only part seen on many social media sites and will be what draws people to click your links and re-share your work.

Likewise, always include images with your posts because many social networking sites, including Facebook and Google+, will use the images on your page, which will help attract attention to your work when it is shared.

Finally, cover the topics that your audience wants to see and that their friends might feel is useful. In short, try to create content for your core readers but keep in mind the potential for a broader audience that is connected to them.

3. Promote and Participate

Once you’ve got your content and your accounts set up, you need to develop a plan to promote your content and participate in social media.

On your site, this means integrating yourself with the social networks you choose. While you don’t want to go overboard and saturate your site with buttons and banners, providing a convenient way for others to share your content is crucial to get people to take the next step.

But more importantly, you need to take the time and participate in social media, putting your accounts to good work. Remember that all social media is not merely about putting up signs pointing to you. Social media is a two-way street and you need to share, retweet, and support others just as you want them to share and support you.

Be active in your various social media accounts, seek out new friends, and participate in conversations. If people like you and your brand, they are much more likely to share your content online and help you build good SEO.

In the end, it’s important to remember that a good social media plan is part of a good SEO strategy.

With the growing importance of social media in search engine results, it’s becoming nearly impossible to rank well, especially for competitive terms if you aren’t performing well with social media.

SEO and social media now go hand-in-hand. There is no way you can ignore either because of the way they feed off of each other.

Are you active on social media sites? Have you found that it has helped your blog's SEO?

Featured image courtesy of Flickr.

This guest post is written by Lior Levin, a marketing consultant for various online companies such as an html company, and a task management tool company.

The post How Social Media Efforts Can Help Your SEO Efforts appeared first on Mom it Forward.

When keeping in touch with those far away, it is sometimes hard to find a time you can both chat on the phone. Social media makes it possible for quick communication that allows everyone to be connected with each other while doing their other daily tasks.

Facebook is a great way to see what loved ones are up to. You can view a friend’s status and their pictures so you know what they’re doing even if you don’t get the chance to talk to them.

Skype is a fun way to both see and talk to those at a distance. Using a webcam allows you to see the person you're talking to and feel as if they are right there with you. But you do need to find a time when both sides of the computer screen can meet.

With social media at our finger tips, it is easy to send text messages as well. Email and instant messaging can be a quick way to communicate one on one.

Social media can be used to strengthen relationships and connect with those you love. Even if friends or family live at a distance, you can still be a part of their lives and show you care. Use social media to your advantage!

The post Social Media: How to Connect With Loved Ones appeared first on Mom it Forward.

But there was a time when I had to pull away from social media for awhile.

Living for Social Media

I have been speaking and teaching for years on parenting and family on a personal blog, as we had so many unusual circumstances and challenges raising wild boys. As I began to increase my activity on Facebook, Twitter and my blog, every scene or circumstance in my life was directed in my head like a Facebook timeline update. “ACTION … aaaaaaand cut!”

It was cute when my boys were small. Adorable little lessons of boys and bugs and life analogies, from a child’s perspective, can inspire us all. Raising boys requires a LOT of humor, and they provided great fodder for that humorous perspective. But then they got older.

Everything we did as a family, that may end up being a goofy flub or a great laugh, my boys would say, “Mom, you’re not gonna Facebook this, are you?” And I realized one day how much my Twitter and website and Facebook page were controlling my reaction and response.

Social media was writing my life, instead of just journaling my life. I had to take a break and get unplugged for awhile.

Recording memories is not a bad thing, but when we cannot enjoy the moment because we have to charge the camera and make sure the lighting is right, and fix our hair, and tweet again, instead of just looking our family in the eye and hear them, and enjoy them, or make them dinner, something is wrong.

How to Live Unplugged

One remedy for us is traveling home. When we visit my parents, there is little internet, minimal TV, a lot of gardening to pick, woods  to hike, fields to romp, and nature everywhere. It is a heaven for boys, and for a mom who wants to unplug for awhile.

I still love to blog about my boys and our joys. It is a ministry and I hope that our experiences will make a difference in the lives of others, if only to relate and offer a humorous perspective.

But they are older now, teens themselves, so we try to discuss it first. We also try to help them realize all they are posting should be edifying and considerate of others. And some things are just better left un-posted. I want them to feel the freedom of being kids, enjoy the moment and plant memories that may take years to savor and truly appreciate.

Our goal this summer is to create as many offline, humorous memories as possible. We will work in the garden, walk the woods, and chase some fireflies. If they think they are too old for fireflies, then they can sit on the porch in the rocker, and laugh at their mother chasing fireflies.

During those fabulous goofy times that are so great, I am sure the writer in me will still think, “This would make a really great post.” But I won’t be instantly worried about my hair or make up, or the phones losing their charge. I will just be gazing, adoringly at my beautiful boys growing before my eyes. Literally.

Then I will intentionally NOT post about it, but just hold it in my heart, as a memory unplugged, and  cherished. Which makes it even more special. Of course, I can still scrapbook about it in my latter years. … aaaaand cut.

What memories do you plan to create for your family this summer?

Visit Sophia Dare at www.yourdaringlife.com, sophiadare on Twitter and Facebook.

The post Social Media: How to Live Unplugged appeared first on Mom it Forward.

There are many games, both online and off, that have social benefits, like Spent and Frontiers, which aim to increase awareness of what it's like to be homeless or in a war zone. Some of these games teach, like the many PBS online games for kids that teach healthy eating, STEM, and reading skills. The book Gamer Generation, which I reviewed recently, lists many games designed for adults and kids, that are beneficial in a variety of ways to the people who play them. And then there are games that have actual benefits in real life that encourage philanthropic thoughts and action.

4 Games and Apps with Real-World Benefits

Tilt World

An iPhone, iPod Touch, or iPad app by XEOPlay, this game follows the efforts of little tadpole Flip to save his forest home. Gameplay is simple tilting. The more points acquired in the app, the more real trees are planted by WeForest in Madagascar, to restore the local ecosystem and economy.

Evoke

This online social network game is designed to empower people all over the world to come up with creative solutions to our most urgent social problems. Top players earn online mentorships with experienced social innovators and business leaders from around the world, seed funding for new ventures, and travel scholarships to share their vision for the future at the EVOKE Summit in Washington, D.C.

FreeRice

This is an easy word game played at FreeRice.com. For every word defined correctly (multiple choice) by a player, 10 grains of rice is donated through the World Food Program to help end world hunger.

GWAP

When you play a game at Gwap (Games With a Purpose), you, along with a peer player, are training computers to solve problems for humans all over the world. While these benefits are less directly beneficial in the here-and-now, they are still noteworthy.

This list is far from comprehensive, and we encourage you to comment if you know of others that could be added to this list.

Do you know of any online games or apps that allow you to make real-world contributions?

The post Games: 4 Games and Apps with Real-World Benefits appeared first on Mom it Forward.

We’re always connecting, messaging, updating, checking, following, friending, sending, and exploring new and unique ways to share our message. When we have to abide by the 160 character limits for texting and 140 character limits for Tweeting, we need to get creative with our wording. The words are the bait for our readers, but with a limit to an article or a Twitpic, text with icons is really the hook. The Facebook status updates that generally catch our eyes are the ones with images or a link to a story.

Posting messages with character limits makes us tap into our creative outlets. There is a way to amplify the true meaning of messages by adding more life, impact, and color to entice readers and followers to want more. Zlango Icon Messaging adds that extra ingredient into the messaging mix so a message of 140 characters can get across in 3 words and bring that extra flare that words alone couldn’t portray.

Zlango Icon Messaging is not just for texting but also for social updating. Being connected to more than just one social network takes time to manage. Without having to switch applications, it is possible to update your Facebook, Twitter, Google Plus and any other social network from inside the application.

How to Update your Social Circles:

There are several sites that sync your social networks to update all of them with one post. This feature is called ZlangOut and allows for more efficient social updating. Hootsuite is a great tool that allows you to look at the feeds from all your social networks on one screen. Zlango is not a management tool but allows you to update everything from one place.

Social media is changing the way we share experiences with our friends and communities from anywhere, about everything. Now we’re ready to share these experiences with real personal expression beyond the characters. We don’t watch TV in B&W, so there’s no reason we should tweet, facebook and Google Plus, let alone text message in plain B&W text either.  Zlango brought texting to life with the world’s first icon messaging app, and is now with ZlangOut to bring personal, colorful expression straight from the mobile phone to all our favorite social networks.

Are you a social media junkie? What are you favorite social media applications?

Cidney Carver is the Community Manager at Zlango Icon Messaging, and the liaison between the Zlango team and their millions of users worldwide. What’s new?

Follow Zlango @ Twitter.com/Zlango

Connect with the blog @ Zlangoblog.com

Friend us @ Facebook.com/Zlango

The post Communication: Social Media Updates with Visual Impact appeared first on Mom it Forward.

According to a number of recent surveys and reports, social media marketing is not only effective at boosting a company’s profile, it is actually providing a wide range of benefits. In fact, it’s so effective that far more companies are using social media to connect with customers than those who are not.

8 Ways Social Media Marketing Can Benefit Your Business

Here are eight ways social media marketing can benefit your business:

1.) Increase Website Traffic

A 2011 report by the Social Media Examiner found that 88 percent of business owners surveyed use social media, from blogs to Facebook to YouTube, as a way of generating exposure for their businesses. Better yet, while a high number of social media marketers are seeing results for their efforts, 49 percent also enjoyed cost savings through social media investments.

2.) Manage Marketing Channels and Actions

Besides being easy to set up, business owners are able to meet customers where they’re already spending time and make connections for a minimal investment of time. Entrepreneur Magazine reported that “67 percent of owners said the fact that social media marketing is easier to master and utilize brought them around. That’s up from 54 percent in the previous survey. And it didn’t hurt a bit that 51 percent of these surveyed merchants and business people discovered that their customers prefer to use media channels.”

3.) Interact With Customers

In a 2011 survey of small business owners, e-mail marketing firm Constant Contact found the following: “Facebook continues to be the social media tool of choice — but Twitter is gaining ground, both in terms of usage and effectiveness. 60 percent of those using Twitter found it to be an effective tool to connect with customers — up from 47 percent in the spring.” These tools make it easy to interact with customers, an approach to social media adopted by 60% of the business owners surveyed.

4.) Improve Search Rankings With Google+

With the recent addition of Google’s Search Plus that integrates a user’s Google+ network with search results, a company profile on Google+ and Google+ buttons on a website can help increase a business’s exposure in Google’s searches. Chris Brogan writes, “[Google+] makes it a lot easier for people to find--and shop at--your business. Run a hamburger business in Milwaukee? Post "best hamburgers in Milwaukee." You should see more customers walking through your door in no time flat.”

5.) Achieve Greater Product Awareness

Though Facebook has helped brands increase their visibility, Facebook’s new “Actions” option will help customers specify what they’re doing with particular brands—a real step forward in brand awareness. Search Engine Journal reports, “These Actions let users specifically indicate their interaction with a location, products, and more. For example, one may visit a local coffee shop and indicate they “bought” a particular drink. Immediately, that action is posted on their wall and their average of 130 friends can interact with that action.  Others may comment, share, or even visit that store the next day to see for themselves.”

6.) Conduct Market Research on Social Media

As early as 2008 marketing executives caught on to the value of social media for tracking customer preferences, with 59% of respondents to an eMarketer Survey stating that they use social networks in order to track the responses and preferences of their customers. Social networks break down walls and create opportunities to interact with customers.

7.) Increase Sales Through Social Media Marketing

Though many businesses are still focusing on increasing brand awareness and connection points with customers through their social media efforts, there are some real returns that companies report. According to a 2011 report by Wildfire Marketing, 58 percent of their respondents point to increased sales and partnerships. This is a number that will only grow as businesses become more adept at turning social media connections into conversions.

8.) Generate Leads With Social Media Marketing

Besides generating exposure and sales, social media also increases the number of sales leads for business owners. The Social Media Examiner shares, “By spending as little as 6 hours per week, 52% of marketers see lead generation benefits with social media.”

Social media is now, without any doubt, an essential tool for any business that wants to increase interaction with customers, build brand awareness, and expand revenue opportunities.

How has social media changed your life? What are your favorite social media tools?

Picture courtesy of flickr.

This guest post is written by Lior Levin, a marketing consultant for an inspection company that offers Pre shipment inspections and, who also consults for a company that provides a  to do list application for businesses and individuals.

The post Technology: 8 Reasons Why Social Media is Essential for Your Business appeared first on Mom it Forward.