Tag Archives: social media

Have you ever been stuck naming a new project?

Posted on by Sarah Cooley
2

Enter Mixnomer! Mixnomer is this cool new web tool that helps you find a domain name for that new idea, blog, company, or side project that you’ve been wanting to get off the ground. It’s what I used to find the name for Simply Curated and it helped me find a great domain that I never would have thought to try.

The tool is super easy to use, enter keywords or possible words you’d like in the name. Let’s say you want to open a vegan bakery (not the most original startup idea, but just go with it). I enter the keywords vegan, bakery, baking, treats, cakes, simple, healthy, chocolate, tasty, delish. Then I enter the prefixes little, and the. Then pick some suffixes like, ous, ly, and shop. Mix it up and here’s what I got.

More options than I could show you! Mixnomer not only shows you the available domain, but if the twitter username is available as well. Right now the list is ordered by the number of characters in the URL. But I can rearrange to show my favorites on top.

Some of my favorites from this search were DELISHVEGAN.COM, LITTLETASTY.COM, THEDELISH.COM, lots of options I would have never thought would be available domains.

So play around with it, I’d love to see what cool domains you guys come up with! (full disclosure, mixnomer is a company I have been consulting for, but I honestly think it’s an awesome product!)

Blog update

Posted on by Sarah Cooley
1

Well by know you all know that Random Sarah has been neglected. Tumblr indeed has won. But you will be happy to know that I will be posting here more frequently for a class I am taking. So for a short time at least, you will get the old Sarah back. The one who updates her blog regularly, and has lots of great stuff to write about new media.

But if you’re interested in what’s been keeping me busy these days while I’m not updating my blog, I’ll tell you. I’ve been doing some consulting work with a few clients while going to school full time. I’ve also rebranded my tumblr blog and opened a online store selling vintage home goods.

There are of course a bunch of other projects I always have floating around my head at any given time that I’d like to explore. Most recently I’ve been wanting to teach a skillshare class on the importance of copy in social media. But chances are before I get a chance to put a whole class together it will probably just become a blog post here.

 

Great Use of Social Media: February 11

Posted on by Sarah Cooley
2

In an effort to blog more I’ve decided to start a new feature on RandomSarah.com called Great Use of Social Media of the Day. I see companies and startups doing awesome things with social media all the time, but I don’t always mention it. This is my way to sharing great use cases for social media!

Today’s great use of social media example comes from Rent the Runway. Today Rent the Runway launched a tumblr account. (which I thought was nice since I do like their regular blog. +1) but the bigger news was after I followed them on tumblr I saw this post.

While backstage at the Christian Siriano show at NY Fashion Week they posted a picture to their tumblr. (+1) Then they prompted readers to go vote on which pieces they should buy from the collection. (+1) If you don’t know anything about Rent the Runway, they allow users to rent dresses (and other accessories). The reason this is awesome is because they are involving the user directly in the decision making process. And this will effect the user directly because if RTR buys the dress they liked, then they can rent it!

The way they are allowing users to vote it via Facebook. (+2) The reason this is so brilliant is that it’s growing their Facebook community (you have to like their Facebook page in order to like the photos of the dresses, so they are gaining Facebook likes and interactions are the same time!)

They put all the photos in an album on their Facebook page, and users are liking and commenting on the dresses.

So hat tip to you, Rent the Runway, you are my Great Use of Social Media of the day. Your total, +5!

Everything’s already a Community

Posted on by Sarah Cooley
1

This post is going to be a variation of the review I wrote on Lunch.com’s SXSW community (client) of a panel called Community Management: Future Skills You’ll Need to Know, and the panelists were @saulcolt @glusman @thorpus @seamuscondron @ambercadabra @sarahprevette. The review I wrote was titled “You already have a community”.

My favorite points from that session were:

  • You can teach anybody social media, but for community management to succeed, it needs to be a senior role.
  • We are in danger of slinging around “community” as this big buzzword, but you ALREADY HAVE COMMUNITY, it’s called your CUSTOMERS!
  • Your community tells you when you have a community
  • If no one is saying your brand sucks on twitter, you’re doing it wrong. You want that opportunity to start that conversation.
  • You can’t tell your community what to do, you can only advise them. You don’t own your community, it’s their community.

Please read my review for more specific notes on that panel. But my big take away from that session was, You already have a community, it doesn’t matter what kind of business you are, or whatever kind of brand you are! This made me realize that even I have a community around my personal brand, and I need to actively manage my community.

I have been thinking about community a lot this last week, and I realized that I often find myself only talking about community as it refers to tech, or tech companies. But EVERYTHING is a community. Both in the physical location sense, and in the sense that you are probably a part of more communities then you realize. I realized that I am a part of the social media community, but I am also a part of the cancer community, the online video community, the vegan community, the health community and the New York City community.

I am interacting with all of these people, across all of these different communities, without even trying! Just my being myself, and that is awesome!

So I wanted everyone to reply in the comments with what communities they feel they interact with every day?

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A hard post to write…

Posted on by Sarah Cooley
12

But I know I have to write it.

Over the past 4 months I have been living in Philadelphia, and working for Comcast Interactive Media. I worked on a project producing a series of tutorial videos. It was a very different job for me. There was a lot of managing. Managing people, managing expectations, managing outside agencies… it was a very big project. But my contract is ending on Jan. 15th so it’s on to hopefully better things.

So I had to make a decision, stay in Philly and look for another job, or move back to NYC? After talking with my family and close friends I have decided to do something that I didn’t want to do, but I know I have to do. Go back to school.

When I first started blogging there were 2 things that I worked very hard to keep under wraps.

#1 – that I was still in school

#2 – how young I was

I don’t really remember why I decided to do that, but from my point of view at the time, they were both negative things. I had a number of friends my age who were still in school and also in the social media/ blogging podcasting space, but for some reason whenever they were mentioned, they were always “student bloggers” and in my head that sounded like it was something less than everyone else. I didn’t think that they deserved less credit because they were young, or still in school. I also feel like the “student blogger” was being put in a box. It became a specific category that I didn’t want to be a part of. The age thing I always wanted to keep under wraps because I wanted my work to speak for itself.

I have very strong opinions about higher education. I don’t like it, I didn’t think I needed it, and I think the whole system in general is broken. I’ve written a little about education before. Once I had finished 4 years of school, I was done. I didn’t graduate, I just couldn’t take it anymore, I didn’t see the point. But while I still feel this way somewhat, I have decided to go back to school and finish my degree in Media Studies.

I can only hope that this doesn’t set me back career wise.

So…now that I got that off my chest, I’m moving back to NYC and I’m looking for a job. Not an internship people, I might be going back to school, but I don’t think that takes away from my level of experience. Ideally I would like to find some work in community management, social media consulting (I know I hate that term, but there is not other way to put it) Something that doesn’t require me to be in an office all of the time (since I will have classes, etc)

If you hear of anything, please let me know.

I wanted to thank all of my friends and mentors for being so great and supportive to me with this decision.