Designed by: Kate Mock

Just three days ago on January 31, the Susan G. Komen Foundation announced they would no longer fund grants which provide mammograms and breast cancer screening for low income women at Planned Parenthood.

This decision tears an enormous chasm between two pro-women organizations. The split, seemingly caused by differences surrounding abortion, has rocked the Social Media World.

Today, Planned Parenthood’s Facebook page has over 230,000 fans (wouldn’t it be curious to know how many fans their page had on 1/30/12?) with more than 10,000 fans actively talking about Planned Parenthood. Immediately after the announcement, Planned Parenthood launched their own campaign “Still Standing with Planned Parenthood”  —many women and men around the US are now changing their Facebook profile pictures to the “Still Standing” logo to show their solidarity with Planned Parenthood.

By contrast, the Susan G. Komen (SGK) Facebook page seems to be on lock down. When visiting the page, visitors only see the messages posted directly by SGK. Delving further into the page, you’ll notice hundreds of comments each hour. It appears SGK is not currently responding to fan comments.

In addition, others have created their own case Facebook pages—for instance newly created De-fund the Komen Foundation has doubled the number of likes to their page in just one day. A new Facebook App, which seems to center around this controversy, was also just released.

It seems as though people are now scrutinizing SKG funding: how much actually goes to cancer research and helping women versus administrative expenses? How has Social Media influence impacted this? Would it still be happening without this week’s announcement? Support for Planned Parenthood has surged with over $1 million in donations collected since the SGK announcement including the support from NYC Mayor Mike Bloomberg who is matching every donation made to Planned Parenthood, up to $250,000.  If that trend keeps up, Planned Parenthood will be able to continue to fund breast cancer screening through private donations. The unforeseen groundswell created by this announcement has quickly surpassed SGK’s commitment to Planned Parenthood. At the end of this public debacle, astonishingly enough, Planned Parenthood might actually end up with a more diverse and more engaged support base.

In addition to Facebook , Twitter is awash with messages asking for donations to Planned Parenthood, requests to boycott SGK events and more. Many wonder about the power of 140 characters—Planned Parenthood and Susan G. Komen Foundation have quickly discovered this answer in the past few days.

Companies and organizations often wonder what power there is in Social Media vehicles such as Facebook and Twitter. The events of the past few days clearly point to the ability for people all across the US (if not the world) to organize quickly and voice in mass and as one in either their support and praise for a cause or disappoint and disapproval.

The unfortunate thing about this all comes down to this statement made by Patrick Hurd, who is CEO of Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Virginia: “cancer doesn’t care if you’re pro-choice, anti-choice, progressive, conservative,” Hurd said. “Victims of cancer could care less about people’s politics.”

It is evident that this is an explosive topic and we’re not looking to take a position either way. We are simply fascinated at the rate and ability of change caused by Social Media. We will continue to watch this unfold over the next few days and are curious to see how this will change the face of the Susan G. Komen Foundation as well as the face of fundraising for Breast Cancer. This is one to watch as this story is far from over.

This post was a collective effort by Karen Eborall and Jesy Herron.

Name: Barb Miller
Part of town: Monfort Heights

Blog: Mighty Inspiration
Blog Platform: WordPress

How long have you been blogging?
Off and on a couple of years ago

What category would you say your blog falls?
Inspiration or Family

Why did you start blogging?
I wrote a book that was published – MIGHTY INSPIRATION, Love Letters from God which got me inspired to continue to write and connect with people.

What’s your most memorable experience as a result of your blog?
The most memorable thing for me is to realize that people I don’t even know find that my writing touches them. I worried I was writing to myself.

What’s one tip you’d give someone thinking about blogging?
Don’t stress out about it or hold yourself to unreasonable standards. Blog when you have something to say and don’t “force it”.

Want to have your blog featured in the CWB Blogger Spotlight?

Click here to submit it.

With the recent announcement that the popular online photo editing site Picnik is shutting down, a lot of us are frantically trying to figure out how we’ll edit photos for our blogs after April.   While it may feel like our photo editing worlds are crashing around us, there are lots of great alternatives out there.

Here are just a few we discovered today while looking for a Picnik replacement:

1. BeFunky (per Matthew Dooley) web-based, mobile app available
2. Picture2Life web-based, mobile app available
3. Pixer.us web-based
4. PhotoShop Express web-based, mobile app available
5. Pixlr web-based, mobile app available
6. Splashup
7. Phixr web-based
8. FastStone (per Christiaan Todd) download nec.
9. GIMP (per Christiaan Todd) download nec., mobile app available

While there are some differences among these – some of the cool options, storage, look/feel (some are very photoshop-esque), for the most part they all felt pretty similar with regards to offerings. It’s really going to come down to the individual user and how they like the user experience and what their needs are. Are you just looking to edit a photo – resize, crop etc. or are you wanting to change the look and feel, add snazzy effects. For those of you who regularly use programs in Adobe, you’ll probably be most comfortable with Photoshop Express, Pixlr, Splashup and Gimp.  FastStone seems like it would appeal to professional photographers.

If you have any other’s you’d recommend, or if you have experience with any of the above and would like to elaborate, feel free to leave us a comment with your thoughts. As the weeks go on I’m sure I’ll find a replacement for picnik…… fingers crossed

So you’ve started a blog. You’ve determined your topic, you’ve customized your template, and you’ve written some posts. Now the question is, how to bring readers to your site?

Here are five easy and effective options to consider:

1)      Find Your Community – Find like-minded blogs, communities and forums (same niche, target audience) and engage in the discussions taking place there. Add the RSS feeds to your reader so you can watch for topics that would be appropriate for you to weigh in on.

2)      Use Social Networks – Set up accounts with networks like Twitter & Facebook to share links to your posts.  Applications like TweetDeck & HootSuite are great resources for scheduling posts in advance.  Please note that while these are great tools for sharing your content, remember to keep the “Social” in social media and also engage in conversations and RT others when appropriate.

3)      Guest Bloggers – Invite other bloggers in your category to contribute a guest post to your blog. Not only will you be able to promote that they are sharing a guest post, but more than likely they will promote their post through their networks, potentially opening you up to new audiences and readers.

4)      Tag, Tag, Tag – Want to help people find your blog when searching the internet? Use Tags. When creating tags, use specific terms that you think people would use when searching for the information you are sharing. Example: You are a food writer and you write a post about Taste of Belgium’s delicious new restaurant downtown.  When tagging, you’d want to use very specific search phrases that would bring people to your post like “Taste of Belgium,” “Taste of Belgium Review,” “Cincinnati Belgium Restaurants,” etc.”  You would not want to use broad terms like “Restaurant,” or “Belgium Restaurants.”

5)      Leverage Your Analytics Results – You can learn a lot about your readers by reviewing your blog’s stats. Analytics tools like Google Analytics or Get Clicky (we LOVE Get Clicky) allow you to see what topics are driving the most traffic to your blog as well as the search terms and referring sites that are bringing them there. Not only does this allow you to understand the topics that your readers like best (thus you should continue to write about), but it allows you to see which blogs are sharing your content and that you should continue (or start) to nurture relationships with.

There are of course lots of other things you can be doing to drive traffic to your blog. Please feel free to share your thoughts in the comments below!

Cross-post from Hoperatives.com:

Attention bloggers!

Registration is now open for the 5B: Believers in Better Beer, Bites and Blogging Conference to be held Saturday, February 11, 2012 at the Cincinnati Convention Center. For more information and to begin the application process, go to http://www.hoperatives.com/?page_id=9709 and follow the instructions there.

 

Cheers and here’s to better beer! (And bites and blogging!)

Carla and Tom

Cross post from Hoperatives.com:

Hoperatives in conjunction with Cincy Winter Beerfest is proud to announce the 5B: Believers in Better Beer, Bites and Blogging Conference to be held Saturday, February 11, 2012. 5B is a one-day blogging conference featuring sessions on beer blogging, food blogging and blogging in general. Bloggers will sign up for one of the three tracks (beer, bites or blogging) but will be able to attend sessions in any of the three tracks. We plan to have panels featuring local chefs and brewers who are in town for the Cincy Winter Beerfest plus sessions with blogging advice no matter what your subject matter is. Topics being discussed include food photography dos and don’ts, how to deal with public relations agencies, when is it time to take your blog to the 2.0 version and more.

 

We are pleased to also announce that we have some great collaborators in this effort. Julie Niesen Gosdin of wine me, dine me (in Cincinnati) will be serving as our Chief Food Blogger and helping us with all things foodie. Susan Wenner Jackson along with other members of the Cincinnati Women Bloggers organization will be our Chief Blogging Bloggers and aiding us in organizing the more general blogging subjects.

 

Registration for 5B: Believers in Better Beer, Bites and Blogging Conference is just $50.00 which includes a general admission ticket for the Friday night session of the Cincy Winter Beerfest and a Connoisseur ticket for the Saturday night session. The Connoisseur ticket gets you early entry into the Beerfest, access into the Connoisseur Reception Area (which will include appetizer bites from twelve local chef driven restaurants, rare beer list, private restrooms) and a special Connoisseurs only entrance area. 5B attendees who wish to upgrade to a Connoisseur ticket for the Friday night session as well can do so for only additional $25.00 ($75.00 total).

 

Registration will be opened later this month. Bloggers registering for this event must be affiliated with an active blog (at least eight posts in the last two months).