I love Ricky Martin, I love his bon bon and I love that he chose social media as the vehicle to let the world know that he is a homosexual, announcing on his blog and via twitter “I am proud to say that I am a fortunate homosexual man. I am very blessed to be who I am.”  I’m pretty sure I’m not the only fan that tried to stifle the word “really?”… NOT.  Ricky, honey, growing up in the arts, being turned down by all of my gay crushes… let’s just say that my gaydar is well trained and I’m so happy we can stop trying to fool one another.

Ricky writes, “Many people told me: “Ricky it’s not important”, “it’s not worth it”, “all the years you’ve worked and everything you’ve built will collapse”, “many people in the world are not ready to accept your truth, your reality, your nature.”

Is this still the reality?  Do you think we’d all have been “Livin’ La Vida Loca” if we knew Ricky was gay?  UH HELLO …. we all knew.  So YAH, I’d have to say yes, for me anyway.  I have to hope that tolerance grows over time and that people like American Idol, Adam Lambert, who took a little less time (several years less) than Clay Aiken to stop playin’ games, will pave the way and show artists that their real fans love them even if the chance of having dirty sex and bon bon lovin’ doesn’t exist.  Because we all know that if Ricky weren’t gay he’d soooo be my boy toy.  Just sayin’

It drives me nuts when traditional media writes slanted negative garbage, especially because they claim to be unbiased.  Traditional media is not unbiased.  Bloggers are not unbiased but they don’t claim to be, the whole point of being a blogger is being able to share your opinion (your bias) with people who are interested in reading it. 

I usually try to stay out of the blogger/brand drama but this (click HERE, dear husband of mine) article written by Michael S. Rosenwald in The Washington Post this morning was so negative and one sided that I just couldn’t stop my little fingers from tapping away.  The article explains how companies use social media to alter “word of mouth”.  My work as a social media consultant allows me to bridge both the blogger and the PR/agency/brand world.  I can assure you that the majority on the PR side are working hard to coordinate a true and honest experience with bloggers.  Likewise, the majority of bloggers bend over backwards to disclose relationships with brands and most of them have been doing it since way before the government stepped in.

Here’s the thing.  I didn’t truly appreciate the sensationalism of TV advertising until I had children.  One year for Christmas my kids absolutely had to have Floam.  Floam is this goopy beady foamy stuff you can mold and oooh it’s sooooo fun.  The commercials were placed in between kidlet programs and hypnotized my little beasties.  They were sold!  They had to have it!  Let’s just say that Santa delivered the goods and they were devastated…. this was their first lesson in “buyer beware”.  My eldest was most heartbroken.  It was cool stuff but not nearly as cool as the commercials said it would be.  This led to a great discussion and he now looks at all commercials with skepticism and I LOVE it!

The best online reviewers will tell you the good AND the bad.  The best bloggers will provide a recommendation for improvement or a feature they wish the manufacturer would include. This is helpful in providing feedback to the brand but it also allows the reader another dimension of information about a product.  An ad placed by the brand alone is one sided and sensational, as my kids learned from Floam.

I am an optimist and I like to think that most businesses are trying to deliver the best.  I was brought up to do my best and to always seek better.  Social media provides an enormous opportunity for companies to deliver their best and to strive for continuous improvement.  There will be those who do not use it appropriately but to overlook the positive is just plain stupid.

I was particularly interested in this portion of the article…

PR companies track people who post negative comments about everything from pizza to gadgets and then offer those naysayers free products or technical support, hoping to reverse the flow of opinion about their clients’ goods. Many start-ups sell online tools that scrutinize Twitter and Facebook to rank users’ online influence, helping manufacturers, hoteliers, restaurateurs and PR firms figure out who can best spread messages quickly.

Why is this bad?  If a company can reach out to people who have had a bad experience with a product or service and help them with the experience, isn’t that just good customer service?  Restaurants often comp a meal when the diner’s experience has been poor…. how is that different?  I was once given a free sandwich coupon at Einstein Bagel because they screwed up my order twice…. I was happy and I remember the gesture years later.  Reaching out to the most influential bloggers is no different than choosing to advertise in The Washington post vs. Ye Small Towne Gazzette.

What happened to presenting a balanced story? What pisses me off most is that many of us are out here working hard to “Blog with Integrity” and articles like this and the one in the New York Times a few weeks (Honey don’t bother Mommy…)  ago spew the negatives and portray bloggers and those of us involved with social media as sleazy and dishonest.  Our efforts to evangelize and explain the power and the good of social media, are taken a step back each time traditional media takes a slanted dig at our industry.  But…

Traditional media is drowning and articles that don’t show a balanced view of social media, well…. it is a little like re-arranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.

Ya’ll know I’m a sucker for a gal that takes the bull by the horns and makes it happen.  Heather Benes of Denver Colorado, just happens to be one of those spunky “make it happen” gals.

We all know that the most successful ideas come from providing the solution to a problem.


Heathers Problem?   “I would dig in my big black hole of a beach bag in search for goggles, sunscreen, or a band-aid and eventually would just end up dumping everything out of the bag.” 

Heather’s Solution?  On a family trip to the Cayman Islands with friends, Heather voiced her frustration to a friend, wishing that someone would design a bag that made sense.  Her friend looked at her and asked “Why don’t you design a bag?”

Heather didn’t just laugh it off, she picked up the phone and called China.

What?  Yep, she got a design together and started prototyping bags!  Fast forward to today and she now sells her bag, the LTD ( ‘LTD’ stands for “Livin’ the Dream”, which is a slightly sarcastic saying that Heather and her husband use to describe their busy lives managing careers, social calendars, two young boys and two rowdy dogs.) at local area boutiques and on the website BeachnBag.com!

Heather styled a waterproof and sturdy bag made of PVC with black and white trim.  She included a number of large and small pockets, colorful wet bags for swimsuits, and even designed a removable clutch.  Heather was kind enough to send me a bag last fall and I have used it for everything from soccer and ski gear to a carry-on bag during a recent trip.  In fact, one of the airport security screeners commented on the bag and said he wished more people would travel with such a bag!

BanteringBlonde readers can order an LTD bag today and receive 20% off during BeachnBag Spring Break Special! 

**I received a free LTD bag from BeachnBag.  I was not required to provide any services in return for the product.  The opinions printed here are mine based on my experience with the product.

I read Melissa Ford’s post on Blogher.com this morning about a young girl in the U.K. whose boss fired her in a post on her Facebook page.  The title Why you should rethink friending your boss on Facebook, caught my eye because I struggle with how exactly to use Facebook all the time.  In this case, the boss was clearly unprofessional, besides, it’s tacky to fire someone publicly …. aside from that, I think that you open yourself up to any number of similar scenarios simply by letting the lines blur in the first place.

I love Facebook for connecting me to the little boy down the street that threw a boulder on my head at the bus stop in first grade, for finding the high school boyfriend that didn’t have the balls to break up with me and just turned into an ass instead, for connecting me with the people at various stops on my journey. 

Businesses use Facebook as another social channel for marketing and building relationships.  I don’t particularly like it (but I help them use it cause it is a resource I can’t deny them).  I feel protective of what Facebook is for me.  I was involved in a conversation, nay debate, quite some time ago with James Andrews, @keyinfluencer.  The discussion was focused around why I would try to keep Facebook “personal” and that I am Facebook friends with my mom, but that I would not involve my business relationships in my Facebook activity.  James maintains that if I were truly authentic I would be the same on Facebook/”real life” as I would be in my business life and therefore keeping it separate is not necessary.  I AGREE.  100%.  In fact, the majority of my work now comes from people who seek me out primarily because of my social media presence/personality and they are fully aware of my no BS approach to things, so when I tell them their idea sucks, they listen to why instead of getting defensive and pissed off by my honesty.  But do I have to share my family pictures, my weekends, my bad days with everyone I encounter in my business world?  James would say, “Why not?  Wouldn’t you want them to know you better by seeing who you are on the weekend?  Wouldn’t that go further in building your relationship?”  Well, YES.  But….. 

If a client or PR rep that I am doing work with sends a friend request I typically accept.  We are in a current working relationship and I know them.  I’m fortunate enough to work with people that I would consider friends….. it is the nature of social media.  Not everyone can say that about their work or the people they work with and there have been times in my professional life where I would NEVER have opened my Facebook world to anyone I worked with.  Opening up my comfortably small list of FB friends scares me.  Right now my FB friends are a manageable number of connections that I have history with and I interact with most all of them on a regular basis.  If I friend JoeShmoe, whom I met in passing at a conference, I may some day be able to reconnect and network etc, right?  But isn’t that what Linked-In is for?

I like that I have thousands of twitter followers and I love the back and forth, the feedback, the fun of chatting with people in an environment that is at one moment silly/casual and at another moment sharing ideas, opinions, and resources.  I like twitter for that – as a “micro-blogging” platform I consider it an extension of this blog.  So then why would I not consider Facebook part of that extended package?  Why do I have to?  Isn’t there enough of me out there already?  What’s one more piece of me going to mean to you?

I like compartments.

I like that I can use different social platforms for different purposes.  You’ll never see my tweets on my FB updates – it would drive my FB friends insane… and I like them so I’m not going to do that.  Not all of my friends “get”, nor want to “get”, all that I do.  They “get” Facebook, as a means for looking up old high school friends, and sharing pictures etc.  This is the FB I love and I want to keep it a safe place for the people in my life that fear, loathe, or are resistant to social media. For them it is a window into my world and it becomes a platform for me to do precisely what James Andrews says we must all do.  Evangelize.  I am a social media evangelist and Facebook is a sort of congregation for me.  I can demonstrate the power of social media in a less noisy environment.  The conversations and questions that I get from people are awesome.  The curious stares turn into engagement in dialogue and finally, to understanding. 

I posted a question on my Facebook page to see what my friends would say.  I predict that the responses there will be widely different from the responses that would pop up here.  In fact, so far they are quite interesting.  I’ve even gotten several private messages… hmmm how authentic are those people? So tell me….


Do you “friend” your boss or co-workers on Facebook? Would you? Thoughts?

So Lady Gaga reaches a billion views.  I get that.  I can see the curiosity, the buzz, it makes sense.  She’s crazy and that is obviously her “schtick”.  The first time I saw the whole Kermit the Frog get-up I laughed and thought “nice.  she’ll get noticed, wonder what her music is like.”  No, I speak to myself rhetorically quite often, I didn’t really wonder. 

It seems we were just discussing the start of ski season but Easter is only about a week and a half away.  Some bunny sent me a virtual Easter Basket!  The fabulous Kelly from @childhood invited me to join the Hershey’s #BetterBasket blog hop to raise funds for the Children’s Miracle Network.  Hershey has partnered with the Children’s Miracle Network for over 20 years. CMN is a non-profit alliance of children’s hospitals dedicated to providing state-of-the-art care, life-saving research and preventative education across North America.

Hershey’s will donate $10 to The Children’s Miracle Network for every blog that participates in the Hershey’s #BetterBasket Blog Hop!  

– check out their sites, lots and lots going on with both of them!

HERSHEY’S BETTER BASKET BLOG HOP RULES

* Create a blog post of giving a virtual Easter Basket to another blogger

* Link back to person who gave you an Easter Basket.

* Let each person you are giving a Virtual Easter Basket know you have given them
a Basket.

* Leave your link at http://betterbasket.info/bloghop where you can also find the official rules of this #betterbasket blog hop and more information about Better Basket with Hershey’s.

* Hershey’s is donating 10$ per each blog participating to the Better Basket BlogHop to Children’s Miracle Network (up to total of $5,000 by blog posts written by April 4th, 2010).

* Please note that only one blog post by each blog url will count towards the
donation.

If I were an authentic blogger I’d tell you I’ve been oddly quiet lately because life has just been a series of potholes, and I fell into one… or ten.  Then I’d apologize for being away so long, ’cause I know you’ve been desperately waiting to see when my feed would update.  It just couldn’t be helped.  In the spirit of authenticity I’d let you know that I carried a 50 lb black garbage back of crap out to the trash yesterday.  Where’d it come from?  My desk.  **gasp**  Not you?  Shut up, I hear you.  You think there is no way that Super Blonde could possibly have been drowning in a sea of paper, only to surface between the sticky note with client “emergencies”, ever-changing passwords and unused brilliant ideas for everything from article topics, characters for my unwritten “I’m not a writer” novel, meeting schedules, and the pork tenderloin recipe I had intended to make last Tuesday before I looked up and the clock read 7:15…. thank you Papa John’s.  Yeah, that is authentically where I’ve been.  Pothole, shit hole, either way I’m tired of the hole and I’m glad its starting to disappear.