Tag Archives: Facebook

My trash = your treasure, I

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Just one of the many tables filled with toys.

More than two full racks of clothes for kids organized by size and season!

Garage sale season has officially arrived as evidenced by the slew of signs on every corner in my small town. Do you love them or hate them? Do you find them dirty or intriguing? Do you stretch your neck when driving by in hopes of spotting that Blatz Beer sign you’ve been missing since you were 17? Or do you avoid them altogether for fear of finding that creepy plush Ronald McDonald doll that your mom taunted you with for years?

This very weekend I am playing hostess to the most epic of all Tiede garage sales. I have teetered down the attic steps with arms full of boxes, I have climbed up from the basement dragging comforters, luggage and home decor galore. But mostly, I have shed tears sorting through toys and clothes that my children have outgrown. As I mentioned in a previous blog, I welcome the maturing of my kids. I am not crying because they’ve outgrown the beautiful dresses and coolest toys ever. I’m crying because I’m cheap and I can’t believe we paid $25 for the Zhu Zhu Pet and Fun House that Noah played with for five minutes and now we’ll be lucky to sell for $2.00.

I’m so cheap, in fact, that I refuse to pay for a classified ad in the local newspaper. Do you know the going rate for classified ads? It costs $16 for 10 words and 60¢ for each additional word.  I can’t even get my street address and hours of operation in the ad for under $20 and that doesn’t allow me to begin describing the sheer awesomeness of my garage sale!

Then I remembered that I AM A DIGTAL MARKETER. I am a blogger. I am a tweeter. I am a Facebooker. I use Craig’s List. And I pin pins on Pinterest!

So I present to you, my faithful readers, a brazen and bold digital plug for the sale of my Tiede Treasures:

♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦

This Thursday beginning at 4:30pm sharp, you are all invited to attend the garage sale to end all garage sales. There will be more toys than FAO Schwartz. There will be baby essentials like wipe warmers, bouncy seats, and changing pads. There will be racks of clothes organized on hangers by size and season. There will be nursing pajamas with only minor Lansinoh stains…c’mon ladies, don’t judge — you know it’s inevitable. There will be a pink motorized jeep for your little princess. There will be an infant carrier for your newborn bundle of joy. There will be a Kelty backpack for your slightly older bundle of joy. There will be a One Step Ahead Sit n Stand stroller for your second bundle of joy. There will be home decor that I can no longer bear to look at on my walls and shelves, but there’s no shame in admitting that you can’t live without them. There will be beauty supplies. There will be one kick-ass pair of boots. There will be an interview-ready suit that I clearly don’t need because my job rocks. There will be kitchen rugs. There will be bathroom rugs. There will be shower curtains. Hey! I just realized that you can redecorate your entire bathroom at my garage sale!

Stop by and check out all of the goodies you will find in my garage and on my driveway this weekend. The children are not for sale, but almost everything else you see can be yours for a small price. The sale of my husband is negotiable.

Social Bowl XLVI

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I love social media. I love interacting with complete strangers on Twitter who teach me more about digital marketing than any semester in college. I love “Checking In” to the Boston Store on Foursquare only to find that I just earned $10 off a purchase of $30 or more. I love finding a new recipe on Pinterest that appears ultra complicated but only has four ingredients. I love seeing pictures on Facebook of my cousin’s new baby, Avery Jean, who I have yet to meet in person. I love getting an endorsement from a colleague on LinkedIn who refers to me as someone who “…is ready to deal with any situation and offers strong solutions.”

Even though I try to immerse myself in social media, the impact it had on yesterday’s Super Bowl XLVI was still mind-boggling to me. A Super Bowl Social Media Command Center was established in Indianapolis providing social media coverage 15 hours a day for a week leading up to the game.  The Super Bowl Host Committee selected 46 of the top influencers in social media to promote Indianapolis and the Super Bowl through social media. Twitter broke records both during Madonna’s halftime performance and again at the end of the game.

For me, YouTube gets my vote as the favorite social media channel for all things Super Bowl. I missed the National Anthem because I was busy loading “Fern Gully: The Last Rainforest” into the DVD player for my kids. Fortunately, I didn’t have to wait long to catch the performance online.

The commercials are a major draw for a large part of the population and as a marketer, I look forward to them every year. However, once again the kids make it nearly impossible to both watch and hear the clever multimillion dollar masterpieces. YouTube strikes again by providing a one-stop shop for every commercial aired during the Super Bowl at AdBlitz.

Couldn’t stay awake for the Vince Lombardi Trophy presentation or the game MVP announcement? You guessed it…YouTube has all of the highlights. I haven’t had the opportunity to sit down and watch them all yet, but I am really looking forward to reviewing the MVP announcement. David Beckham got that one, right?!

Seven reasons I won’t accept your friend request

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Do I really have 244 friends? It’s pretty hard to believe since I spent last Friday night sitting at home eating Combos and watching “Water for Elephants” On Demand while my husband was carousing with my cousins at buck camp. It’s not that I couldn’t have gotten a sitter for the kids — not one of those so-called friends invited me out. These days, 244 friends isn’t even a big number. But now that the novelty of Facebook has worn off a bit, I’ve gotten more selective about who I want added to my list of friends…and who I don’t want added.

1) If while riding the bus to school in third grade, you ripped the puffy hand-crocheted ball off the top of my hat (made with love by Grandma Adsit) and then proceeded to toss it around the bus, I will not accept your friend request.

2) If you are my 15-year-old babysitter, I will not accept your friend request.

3) If I have ever referred to you in my status update as the annoying co-worker who talks too loudly on the phone about your kid’s bodily fluids and the violent way in which they exited his body, I will not accept your friend request.

4) If we went to college together and you tried to kiss my boyfriend in the basement of the blue Pepsi house during cartoon cocktails at Springfest, I will not accept your friend request.

5) If you are the friend of a friend who wants a job at my company and thinks I can give you a positive referral, I will not accept your friend request.

6) If you don’t speak English, I will not accept your friend request. Not trying to discriminate, just seems like a moot point.

7) If I have absolutely positively no flipping idea who you are and neither do any of my actual friends, I will not accept your friend request.

On a side note, Google+ has a great feature in which you can assign people to an acquaintance circle or a friend circle. If you fall into the above category of 1, 3, 5, or 7, I would definitely add you to my Google+ circle of acquaintances. Sorry 2, 4, 6…not gonna happen.

Bad teacher

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Okay, I’m not Cameron Diaz bad, but even my own mom claims that I’m a bad teacher. Isn’t she contractually obligated to tell me that everything I do is amazing?

In the last several years, I’ve spent countless hours teaching my mom:

  • How to program the VCR
  • How to use a DVD player
  • How to use a universal remote
  • How to use a cell phone
  • How to search with Google
  • How to bookmark
  • How to create a Yahoo! e-mail account
  • How to buy me presents on Amazon
  • How to use a digital camera
  • How to attach photos to an e-mail
  • How to send photos to Walgreens
  • How to buy a Groupon
  • How to “ship to store”
  • How to reserve movies from Redbox
  • How to “friend” somebody on Facebook
  • How to “defriend” somebody on Facebook

While my mom has truly mastered a few of the items above, our lessons have left her performance less than stellar on a majority of these activities. She blames her lack of understanding on me for being a bad teacher. I will admit that I don’t read diaglog boxes, I grab the mouse from her hand, I click faster than a Kardashian marriage, and I swear a little. Apparently what I perceive as efficient, others find irritating. You say potato, I say potahto.

I pretended not to hear my mom a few weeks ago when she asked, “Should I be tweeting?” And again yesterday morning when she said, “I wish that I knew how to sell stuff on Craig’s List.” I literally ran from the room when she uttered the words, “I ordered a DVR last week.”

That said, my mom was my very first blog subscriber and she still doesn’t even know what is a blog. I truly love my mom for trying so hard to learn about technology, new media, and how I spend my days in eMarketing. I just wish that somebody else would teach her.