Part 1 of an ongoing series called Cadet Chronicles. Follow the adventures of  Caitlyn Arigo, Whizbang’s Assistant Navigator.

Oh My Gosh !!! I am so embarrassed! I’m not sure how I can face my co-workers tomorrow after a day like today… I just want to crawl under a rock and hide forever.  I almost lost my boss’ credit card!!! As the new girl  in the office, naturally I am the one who has to run the random office errands.  Today my errands seemed fairly simple:

1. Drop off a package at a client’s office. 2. Go to Staples and buy some rubber bands for Frank (the boss-man).

I thought I could handle the pressure. WRONG!  Everything seemed to be going smoothly until I stuck my hand in my pocket at Staples and realized my boss’ credit card was GONE!  Of course I start panicking, I tried to remember where I’d been while I frantically patted myself down to check any additional pockets and searched through my purse.  After that was a major FAIL, I proceeded to frantically tear my car apart in the Staples parking lot.  All I could think about was how I had to find that credit card before anyone found out. Suddenly my phone started ringing; of course the office was calling.  I attempted to conceal my panic and the shame of losing my boss’ credit card, when I hear Molly (Whizbang’s project manager) tell me that Frank’s credit card had been found in our client’s parking lot.  So much for pretending this never happened.

As I crossed town once again I began dreading my return back to the office.  “Come on Caitlyn! How stupid can you be that you could lose your BOSS’ credit card?” I thought to myself.  Thankfully I only had a half hour left of work when I got back today, leaving little time to be ridiculed by my co-workers about how I’m already losing my marbles.  Uggg… I can’t go back tomorrow and be the butt of all the jokes again!!! I’ve never been so mortified at work!!! Now I’m just going to be known as the irresponsible newbie.  I wonder if other people have had similar experiences where they were embarrassed at work.

Until next time….

by Jose Molina, Creative Technician

Making connections in the social networking world is pretty much the most important part of it. It’s also important to know how to go about making friends on all the different social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter and Linked-In and as you may imagine, they are all completely different strategies. This week we’re going to focus on Facebook.

1. Right off the bat it’s important to know that you should never set up a “personal” Facebook profile for a business. It’s not only a violation of the Facebook terms of service but Facebook will be able bring your profile down at any time.

2. Once your fan page is up and running (full of posts, pictures, and interesting material) go through your friends list and invite the ones that are relevant to your business. Don’t spam all your friends! Remember, “quality over quantity”.

3. Once your friends start “liking” your fan page you will organically start gaining more followers because the action of them liking your fan page will show up in the newsfeeds of the friends that joined and so forth.

4. Once you feel like your organic following has slowed down a considerable amount you will need to recruit 2 or 3 other friends to invite their friends to “like” your fan page. In case you were unaware of this fact, you are only allowed to invite the people in your friends list to “like” fan pages. By asking friends to add their friends you will be spreading your net wide.

5. If you feel you need to gain more fans than what you’ve been receiving doing steps 1-4, you can always take out a Facebook ad which will appear in the pages of people in your target market!

Once you have gained a healthy amount of fans remember to post regularly as your posts will multiply by the number of fans that you have which will create the Facebook presence that you want. For example, if you have 600 fans and you post 6 times a month, you will appear in 3600 newsfeeds a month. Look for my next post when I’ll be covering Twitter!

by Ellen Curtis, Creative Commander

So one of the happiest events in recent years for writers is the explosion of Social Media.  If you haven’t heard, content is king these days. Now there are a multitude of avenues for us word wrestlers to show our prowess. There are blogs, Facebook, Twitter, Scribd and a million other venues. While we happily take words to the mat, non-writers sit in terror looking as if they’re in a match with The Rock (before he took up acting). If you are among this group, I offer a few tips I have picked up along the 25 years I have been knocking about on a keyboard to get you out in the writing ring.

5. Write about what you know. OK this tip isn’t anything new. I’m sure you have heard this from one or more English teachers. But the reason you’ve heard it over and over again is because it’s true. When I had to decide what I wanted to write for this blog the easiest path was to write about writing. That’s something I know and have no problem meeting word count. If you are asked to write about something you don’t know, write about how you don’t know about the subject or how you researched it to learn more about it.

4. Google your way through it. No doubt whatever you’re writing about someone else has written something similar. For example, when I googled “writing content for non-writers” there were 42,100,00 results.  I randomly clicked on “Writing tips for non-writers who don’t want to work at writing” http://bit.ly/aFKwKC. The post covers, amongst other things, punctuation, grammar and spelling. I could write an entire new post about that post.

3. Forget grammar, punctuation and spelling.  Nothing stops a writer in their tracks more than thinking about if they are writing correctly. Just get it out. I am certain you know someone who prides himself or herself as on being an English aficionado. You know the types. They walk with an air of superiority and rightly so.  They actually paid attention in English class and remembered all the rules and the exceptions to the rules. Make them your friend. They will happily edit your work (They can’t help themselves.) and in a worse case scenario will offer to rewrite it for you to spare you a citation from the English police.

2. Take the easy way out with a list.  Maybe you can’t write, but you can make a list. We do it every day with grocery lists, to do lists, contact lists and so on and so on. Making a list helps you organize your thoughts and prohibits meandering writing. Take this post. It’s a list.

1. Write for someone you know. This is one of the oldest copywriter tricks. When you write, imagine you’re sitting with a person you know and telling him or her what you’re writing about. When I write for Rosies Workwear, I think I’m sitting with my neighbor who ranches. When I write for The Spice Hunter, I think of my friend who is a total foodie. When I write this post, I imagine that I am sitting with an old former colleague of mine. This keeps your writing honest, simple and conversational.