But we do wish our clients & partners a warm, happy holiday season. Here’s what it looks like at Nathan’s house, where even the animals are settling in for a long winter’s [cat]nap:

Here’s to Charlie Brown Christmas trees, old-style lights that are definitely not up to code, wearing (or, in this case, curling up on) warm winter clothing, and piping hot cocoa (not pictured).

Make 2011 a healthy and happy year ahead!

Merry merry,

A&B

Absolution. These people simply don’t know any better, I tell myself. Sure, it’s a basic rule of grammar, but how is anyone to be expected to know it when no one around them does either?

Cynicism. Dammit, these people should know better. Didn’t they have English teachers? Doesn’t anybody learn this stuff anymore? What’s wrong with parents these days? Aw, the world’s going to hell.

Smugness. You know what? You go ahead and use the word incorrectly. I will silently judge you, chuckling and feeling superior. I am in a secret club filled with people who know how to use semi-colons and when to capitalize the word president.

Preaching. I can’t take this anymore! I don’t care how much of a jackass I look like; I’m going out into the world and TEACHING people how to use this word correctly. I’ll be the friggin’ Johnny Appleseed of grammar.

Lather. Rinse. Repeat.

As you may have guessed, I’ve reached the preaching phase this morning. Here’s the peeve:

“I need to lay down.”
“I’m going to lay on the beach.”
“Buster! Lay down.”

I suppose I could waste a bunch of energy trying to explain why the above phrases should be using the word “lie” instead of “lay,” but instead I thought I’d share a project I did with my daughter one afternoon when she was about seven years old. I wrote the words and she drew the pictures. Since we created this, I have used it to educate many of my adult friends (after I’d cycled past the absolution, cynicism and smugness phases). May it edify you as well.

Click to view full-size drawing

Social media isn’t an exact science. But it is an important part of your marketing strategy. And it’s a time-consuming one - that’s why we’re here to give you support.

Social media can be exciting, fun and rewarding, or one big headache. What follows is a summary of our initial process in helping you develop a social media strategy for your business. Take a look!

Step 1. Let’s Discuss Your Goals. What are some specific goals you hope to achieve for your business? Identifying them will help us to build a social media strategy that supports them. Remember that social media alone will not be responsible for realizing your goals, but it can be instrumental. So what do you want? Some examples might be:

• To engage with/get 1 new person per day to be aware of the brand
• To get 1,000 followers/friends/fans by June
• To increase web traffic by 500 hits per week
• To reach 2,000 registered users in 6 months
• To convert 10% of registered users to active users

Step 2. Let’s Build a Plan. We’ll want to look at the many social media channels out there and develop a strategy for each one. Some things to think about:

A. Your channels can do many things. What do you anticipate using social media to do? Possibilities:

• Build credibility/reputation
• Build/increase brand awareness
• Customer service/brand management
• Offer valuable information to current or potential customers
• Engage with individuals or groups in your industry (to share resources/learn)
• Engage with individuals or groups in other industries/target markets (to attract new business)
• Improve search engine rankings/increase traffic
• Entertain

B. What channels would it make sense to use, and how?

• Facebook, MySpace
• Twitter
• YouTube, Vimeo, Flickr
• Digg, delicious, reddit, etc.
• SlideShare, presentation services
• Other

C. How often will you use these channels, and what will you post?

• Who posts what, and how frequently?
• What types of topics? (Funny, informative, personal, etc.)
• What will the approximate ratio be? (2:1 funny:informative?)
• How frequently will you engage with others?
• Whom will you engage with? (Industry leaders? Target market?)

Step 3. Execute and measure your strategy. Once we have determined your social media goals and strategy, it’s time to put it into action. Depending on your comfort level and budget, we can take an active role in the management (and measurement) of your social media strategy or a more passive one. Contact us for a price list of the different packages we offer.

“Dad, can you help me with something?”

“Sure, kiddo, what is it?”

“I need help with my project.”

This dialogue is happening on Facebook, which we let my 12-year old daughter have recently. These days she finds me about once a day on Facebook IM.

I tell her I don’t have much time to chat and offer her a couple of suggestions for the project she’s working on. The easier one is something she can do herself. The harder one I promise to help her with when I see her on Tuesday.

“Can’t you help me NOW?” she whines.

“I can’t – I’m going to be late as it is. Do the easier one and I’ll help you on Tuesday.”

This leads to an exchange where she continues to whine for help, and I continue to say I have to go. I tell her that when she won’t take no for an answer, I feel my help isn’t appreciated. She ignores me and continues to plead.

“I have to go now, dear.”

“Just help me with this.”

“I’m signing off now.”

“Just help.”

“Bye now. You’re welcome for the help.”

“Fine. Go then. BYE.”

“I said you’re WELCOME for the help.”

“BYE.”

I immediately pick up the phone and start dialing. I am probably muttering something like, “take that tone with ME; day I stand for that kind of GUFF; take me for, disresPECTful, mutter mutter mutter…“

It’s what’s known in the education world as a “teachable moment.” My daughter knows she’s being bratty, and gets put in her place when I call and give her an earful about respecting and appreciating the help that others give her. But then I realize she’s getting another lesson too: that when there’s attitude or conflict online, the way to clear it up is to immediately pick up the phone or connect in person.

She’s already had a few sour exchanges with friends online, and we’ve been proud of the way she’s conducted herself. (Of course, that doesn’t make the nasty things her friends said hurt any less.) And as she lives more of her life online in the coming years, she’ll be dealing with more malicious comments – as well as many more benign ones that only seem malicious without the context of body language and tone of voice. It feels good to set the example that if an online exchange is quickly going south, it’s always better, faster and more satisfying to pick up the phone and resolve it.

If I’m lucky, maybe she’ll appreciate that when she’s a little older. For now, I settle for this:

“So? Do you understand?”

“Yes. Whatever.”

“Please don’t use that word with me.”

“Okay.”

“Okay?”

“Okay. Sorry.”

“See you on Tuesday. Love you.”

“Love you too.”

And yes, it’s pretty damn stupid.

Mostly, though, I feel sorry for the poor blond sap in the commercial, who I’m sure is currently living a parallel life with Adam’s Scott’s character from Party Down:

(P.S. Are you listening, Improv Everywhere? I think there need to be REAL Starbucks Barista Impostors. If that makes sense.)

Enjoy:

You may not believe that the pursuit of beating the crap out of people for money is worthwhile, but I’m sure there’s a cause in your heart that is.

Follow it with this guy’s drive and determination:

Nod to the BrandBuilder.

It’s official: my daughter, who just entered 8th grade, finally has a Facebook account.

Her mother, stepfather and I resisted as long as possible, but the thinking was that she is a responsible kid, and that she should learn the proper use of social media with us there to guide her. Think of it as letting kids try a sip of wine at the dinner table, to curb potential rebellion later on.

But there were some hoops for our daughter to jump through. She had to create a pitch, detailing the types of information she believed were acceptable to share on Facebook and those that were not – and a list of consequences for any future violation of these terms.

So after sitting through a lovely little PowerPoint presentation replete with glossy Facebook icons and other social media imagery, we three parents banished her to the bedroom to discuss the proposal.

As we talked about the ways in which we could restrict what our daughter would be sharing with the world (no use of her real last name, tight privacy settings, multiple lists) and what we’d have little control over (her seeing inappropriate things that her friends’ friends may post), we became quite aware of our unique position as parents in this generation. Our folks certainly never had to contend with such sticky decisions. And by the time my daughter has children, many of the current unknowns are likely to have been ironed out.

But we Gen-Xers who adopted this newly formed social media in our mid-twenties are suddenly having to ask ourselves strange questions. Questions like: Are my profile settings tight enough for me to “friend” my own child? Or is she going to stumble on pictures of me in 2002, naked at a music festival, frolicking in the mud with my ex-girlfriend?

MySpace, and then Facebook, was the place where, as young adults, we shared information about our lives with our friends. It never occurred to us that any children would be able to see that stuff – much less our own. So we are stuck trying to reverse engineer a social media solution that’s appropriate for our kids. In addition to watching over their profiles, we are “excluding” them from our photo albums, from our status reports – from our blog posts about them getting Facebook. (Heh heh.) This effort is made even more challenging by the fact that we have to stay ahead of frequent changes to Facebook’s privacy settings, as the site seems hell-bent on getting its users to share more and more information with the world.

It’s been about a month since we gave in and let our daughter have an account, and since then she’s been very responsible with it. Her profile is way more “locked down” than any of her friends’ pages (a scary thought, 12-year olds having open profiles with all of their personal info on them), she’s sticking to her time limits, and she’s been careful not to get sucked into too many squabbles over IM or say things on people’s walls she wouldn’t say to them in real life. And I must admit I’ve enjoyed finding and posting silly pictures and videos on her page; because it’s still a novelty, she appreciates them way more than the other thousand friends who see the junk I post.

But it’s a tenuous success at best. Still I keep one eye on everything she does online. Still I worry about what rabbit hole she could fall down with just a few innocent clicks. And certain family members who like to post offensive things without considering that they are friends with my daughter have been surreptitiously “weeded out” of her feed. It’s a never-ending process of giving her a little more slack in the rope, a little more trust, and then snapping the rope taut when she’s about to go over a ledge. Let go, pull back. Let go, pull back.

Which, when you think about it, is what the entire experience of parenthood is all about.

Freelance Copywriter Not Willing to Do That (Anywhere)

• Unpaid internships where you are trying to get quality copywriting work without paying for it
• “Opportunities” to write 1,200-word articles for which you will pay a whopping $15 should you happen to like them
• SEO-obsessed clients who would rather have a robot that can write nonsensical (but high-ranking) text than a human being who can write comprehensible English
• Posts masquerading as real jobs only to be revealed as a “network of content creators” (read: more articles that pay $15 in the rare instance that they are purchased)
• People who need someone to spend 18 months writing their grandmother’s memoirs, to be compensated in back-end points “when the book gets published”
• Startup websites or blogs who want free content written now because in the next 90 days they are planning to “go totally viral and sell a ton of ad space”
• Businesses with complex and challenging content needs who believe that since “anyone can write,” the market value of a professional copywriter should be equivalent to that of a fry cook at Burger King

To all of these clients: thank you for your time and interest. I shall be certain to contact you in the future should my standards and professional self-worth take a hasty and significant nosedive.

PostingID: 8023734703

by Nathan Hartswick

So today is the first day of school for most kids in Vermont.

It can be exciting, terrifying and nervewracking, and that’s just for the parents. Think of how the kids must feel.

In honor of the day, can I brag a minute?

Here are a few things a teacher recently told us about our 12-year old daughter, who starts 8th grade today:

• She wrote 15 articles for the internal school newspaper last year and we had no idea. The teacher said they were always interesting, well-written, and (this is big, for our kid) on time. We were floored.
• She was grounded multiple times from computer use, and each time when her friends pressured her – hard – to use the Internet for gameplay during a free period at school, she refused, saying, “Trust is a hard thing to get back. I want my mom to trust me.” She never gave in.
• She got very passionate about the issue of cyber-bullying last year, writing papers on the subject and even speaking to the class about the dangerous things it can lead to. The teacher told us, “I really only thought about bullying during the two times a year we’re supposed to talk about it in class. But your daughter was so articulate and knowledgeable, it made me want to learn more. I went out and bought 3 books on teenage bullying, just so I could become a more effective teacher.”

What do you say when you hear stuff like this? I suppose my mother put it best when I told her this story:

“Isn’t it great when your kids turn into people you really like?”