DECEMBER 2013 • Vol. 19 No. 10
New York Society of Cosmetic Chemists
www.nyscc.org
How To Get Started and Get Connected: A Beginner’s Guide to Social Media …Articles by Judith Bernabe, Joseph Dunn, Alissa Frontauria, and Kristina Kannheiser • Art by Giorgino Macalino
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t seems like yesterday when we had rotary dialer phones. We saw the brick-sized mobile phone from the movie, Wall Street, and experienced the dawn of the dot-com age that has come and gone. Now, we are in what most writers call the social media age. The age of over communication: where the news hits Twitter as the reporters cover the scene on the spot and where everyone and everything as significant as the Pope to a random stick of gum is documented. Each amazing, irrelevant, outstanding, and hilarious posting, picture, tweet, and comment has found a permanent home in our digitized world. The Internet, our friend, an equipped ally, and sometimes frenemy, is full of useful tools that bring small businesses and big businesses to the 21st Century. We use it to obtain everything, from the simplest form of information like the best recipes, to the more technical such as scientific definitions and the latest breakthroughs in research. For most Gen X, Gen Y, and beyond, it is hard to imagine how people communicated before the age of the worldwide web. Now, we have tablets, smart phones, smart watches…these tech toys have us all hooked. If you are not already doing so, it is about time you utilize that smart phone. When three year olds are learning faster than thirty year olds, you know it is time to catch up or get left behind. Silly as it sounds, why is it important to catch up to the times? What is so fantastic about the social media sphere? Maybe those 554,750,000 twitter accounts, 1 billion Facebook fans, 1 million Instagram users, and the 200 million LinkedIn members are on to something that you are missing out on. Maybe, just maybe, staying connected is important in our daily lives. This is a polarizing topic in itself, but let us just assume that you are still reading and I am still somehow connecting with you. Do you want to know how to get started? Perhaps you would like to get informed and start keeping an eye on your seventeen year old, whose activities are perplexing and hard to understand. Perhaps you would like to be able to get in touch with old high school friends with whom you have lost contact? Wait, maybe you want to network and find a job?
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Get the latest news from CNN, ABC, FOX, Science Daily, NYSCC, and more. This digital manual was written to help you make the transition from being paperbound to digitally savvy.
Who can master the inner workings of every social media platform without the basics? Before we begin, a few words of caution: this is not for those who would like to stay off-grid. Read your corporate policy for social media accounts. Please take note that downloading these apps and signing up for these accounts require you to be agreeable to the terms and conditions as well as privacy policies of each social media tool. Be aware that when you do find your preferred platform in the social media realm, there lies the danger of getting addicted to it.
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J a n u a r y 1 5 , 2 0 1 4 • P i n e s M a n o r, E d i s o n , N e w J e r s e y
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