Dedcucing Your Success to the Strength of Your Network

Planning for the future is an intimidating venture, particularly when you're not sure of where you are now. Such is often the case for students because school can be a very consistent and safe place; you know what's expected of you and what you have to do.

Today, my class of Humber College graduate PR students held and led our own class termed Future Camp. The idea behind the self-led class was to reinvoke the importance of strong social networks. And, what makes the network strong? Durability. A network that is maintained. Today, we organized how we're going to keep in touch with each other in the future so as to keep this meaningful network fluid and constant.


As we're planning, we maintain a live feed on Twitter with #futurecamp as the hash tag and within one afternoon, we trended in Canada in the top 20.

Some of the ideas we came up with were a USB time capsule. Who needs quaint cookie tins to bury in the ground to safeguard timely keepsakes, we've got USB now! It will take away from the tangible qualities of a time capsule but it is reflective of our time period, class content (social and digital media) and of where we are now technologically as students.


So far, these are our ideas to maintain our network:

• We'll maintain our network beginning with a regular, Why Not Wednedays # YnotW, a mid-week watering day and catch-up for us.



• A Facebook Page for us to maintain and update how awesomely successful we become.



• Open the time capsule in 5 years at a swanky party with US as the guests of honour. Venue to be determined.

Success is who you know. Your network is something you take with you, no matter where you go. Therefore, your network can be a reflection of your success. In a world of consistent change something that stays steady are the people you maintain relationships with. This network is as meaningful as you make it. Our PR network formed in a short, sweet four months is tight - and we're all rooting for the other!

In the meantime, peruse what some of the other Future Camp attendees had to say about the future.

Kali said this.

Catherine said that.

And our friend Patrick added...

Good Touch, Bad Touch; A How-To On Tags

Consider the world wide web. Consider specifically the amount of words printed each second within the web. How can we organize the relevancy of the online content flurry as it pertains to our own interests and how can we connect it with the interests others?

My post today intends to provide leadership amongst many explanations on the Internet to the better sources I found on what is a tag and how to use tags in your blog posts. But first, to differentiate between an oft-referred to idea of tagging; I don't mean this kind of a social tag!

We need to filter what we're interested in and share what may be of interest to others? Using tags is a good place to start. Tags are what the 'fancies' call meta-data which, simply defined, is data about data.

To use tags correctly, we must understand that the HOW and the WHAT of tags are mutually important; what tags are and how to incorporate them into our online work.

What's a tag? For example, if I published a post about the Haiti earthquake but specifically, I'm interested in what's happening to the needs of women with small babies or pregnant women imperiled by recent events. I would write and publish my blog accordingly but at the end, I could use some key words a.k.a. tags such as Haiti earthquake, pregnant women, or urgency so as to lead readers to my post and to organize keywords within my own blog.

This concept explains well what tags are and how they can be used effectively in our blogs. I liked it because it is simple and practical. Some people may need to top-up their understanding so, for a more in-depth written explanation on the what of tags, CLICK HERE.

Next is the HOW. Although tags are essentially very simple to input, we all learn differently so I've attempted to include the best how-to's for different learning types. This is the simplest pictorial explanation I found on how to input tags.

For a video explanation on how to tag, check out this video posted on YouTube.

Now that you're an expert, where can you practice your new savvy Internet tool? You can tag most things that you publish on the Internet. Other sites you can tag in addition to your blog include Twitter, Facebook, your mobile phone and most online sites that allow you to leave comments include a place to tag.

Here's what other two tagging pros have to say on the subject. Check them out as well!
Juggernaut Jaymes and Racey Rachael.

To link to more savvy how-to's, check our social media class list CLICK HERE!

Leave no stone unturned!