Teach Your Children to Help Homeless Pets

A Chihuahua ready for adoption.

Teach your children the true meaning of giving have then use part of their Christmas cash or gift cards to help a homeless animal. If you join your kids in making a donation, you can use it as an end of the year tax write-off to help pets and yourself.

Here’s an example Let’s say grandma gave a child a $25 gift card from Wal-Mart. The toy they want is $20, leaving them an extra $5. Spend it on a fleece blanket and take it to your local animal shelter. Blankets, towels, old bedding and warm clothes make great donations to both animal shelters—for use as bedding—and human shelters to keep people warm, too.

Another great way to help animals in general is by donating to two national organizations The Human Society of the United States and the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.

Personal preference is to donate materials or money, and volunteer some of your time, at a local pet rescue. Bring your kids—even if you don’t have pets, or are considering getting one—so they get to meet the critters. The dogs and cats will love the attention, and your kids will have a blast. In addition, you can teach your children the responsibilities of pet ownership, such as regularly feeding and cleaning up after them.

Let’s say you have a specific breed of dog or cat and you want that breed. There are rescue organizations for every breed imaginable. Consider first searching online for a local or nearby rescue. If not, use this list to touch base with a national group that can help you find a local organization.

According to PetVR, the top dog breeds, followed by a link to an associated rescue group are:

1.      Labrador retrievers

2.      Golden retrievers

3.      Yorkshire terriers

4.      German shepards

5.      Beagles

6.      Dachshunds

7.      Boxers

8.      Poodles and mixes

9.      Shi Tzu’s

10.  Miniature Schnauzers

11.  Chihuahuas

12.  Pugs

13.  Bulldogs

14.  Pomeranians

15.  Cocker Spaniels

16.  Rottweilers

17.  Boston Terriers

18.  Shetland Sheepdogs

19.  Maltese

20.  German Shorthaired Pointers

Siamese are beautiful, independent and loving.

Some people like their pets to purr or they live in areas where dogs are not allowed, but cats are. If you want a registered purebred cat, visit the Cat Fanciers’ Association website.

According to home fashion maven Martha Stewart, the top 10 cat breeds (and—according to me—associated rescue groups) are:

1.      Persians

2.      Maine Coon

3.      Exotics (shorthaired Persians)

4.      Ragdoll

5.      Sphynx

6.      Siamese (multiple breeds, with some people consider Ragdolls a Siamese)

7.      Abyssinian

8.      American Shorthair (a common breed often found at shelters)

9.      Cornish Rex

10.  Birman

I will not personally vouch for any of these organizations since all 11 of my cats and three dogs are rescues. However, any help you can give any of these animals is greatly appreciated.

Speaking as a life-long pet owner, thank-you for any help you can give.

Six Simple Steps to More Effective Documents

Have you ever worked your tail off writing a document and sent it out only to find no one bothered to read it? If so, the odds are good you are taking the wrong the approach.

Consider using the reader-centric “What’s in it for me?” and “Think like a reader” method.

This method is simple and far more effective because it is based on what the readers—not the writers—want.

The traditional method is: write it, send it, hope someone reads it and replies to you.

The reader-centric method follows these deceptively easy steps, all of which take more work but also offer greater rewards.

Step 1: Create your message. Determine the general message you want to get out.

Step 2: Determine who will get your message. This is the most time consuming step because it involves researching your audience or audiences and understanding the needs of each group.

Step 3: Modify your message based on the needs of each group that will be receiving it. Every group has different needs and different wants. Ignore them at your peril.

Step 4: Write your documents so they clearly explain the benefits of your message to them. Use the advertising adage of, “Tell ‘em. Tell ‘em what you told ‘em. Tell ‘em again” to repeat how they will benefit from your message.

Those four steps are the most critical. The next two optional steps will help you immensely, though.

Step 5: Run your documents through a small group of people outside your immediate organization. Use people with similar needs and desires to your target groups. Ask them for feedback on your documents then modify your documents based on their comments.

Step 6: Set up a method of asking for and using feedback from wider audiences. Social media is perfect for this. Asking people on your company Facebook page, “What do you think?” gets them involved. The greater your readers’ involvement, the better your documents will be.

Please contact me directly with any questions, comments or suggestions on improving this document. I can be reached at mailto:davereyn83@gmail.com.

Expand Your Reach With Multiple Social Media Accounts

The author.

Summary

A lot of people use social media daily, typically accessing one account per type. There are advantages to keeping your work and personal online lives separate. Follow these tips to create and manage multiple accounts on Facebook and Twitter.

By the Numbers

Social Media is a hot topic these days, and for good reason. Literally millions of people—and billions isn’t far away—regularly use at least one on-line program to interact with others.

With more than 272 million people using the Internet in North America alone, and more than 2 billion users worldwide, interacting on-line is extremely common. (Source: http://bit.ly/t0uEBB). Of those, four in five actively use social media. (Source: http://bit.ly/tzNxgy).

Facebook tops virtually all lists with 800 million active users of which roughly half use the service daily. The average user connects with 135 friends and family, but not always frequently (source: http://www.facebook.com/press/info.php?statistics). This is up from 350 million in 2009 (source: http://royal.pingdom.com/2010/01/22/internet-2009-in-numbers/) and 600 million in 2010 (source: http://bit.ly/vMP8xQ).

Next on the list is Twitter, with more than 100 million registered users. How many use the service daily is open for debate, as this story illustrates.

YouTube, which is limited to video only, served more than 1 billion videos each day in 2009, according to the 2009 http:// royal.pingdom.com story and 2 billion daily in 2010 according to the same source (http://bit.ly/vMP8xQ).

Users will also access, and create, a whole heck of a lot of blogs with more than 152 million of the “web logs” available online, again according to http://bit.ly/vMP8xQ, which is the most recent number available. WordPress alone hosted 15.1 million blogs in January, 2011. (Source: http://bit.ly/vKoYcc). Statistics for Blogger, which is owned by Google, are not available.

As the above numbers indicate, an awful lot of people are getting news, information and social contacts from on-line sources. While I’ve been unable to find statistics to verify this, it’s probably accurate to say that most people use Facebook, and—according to the Nielsen study above—most people use more than one social media service. These same users often have one Facebook account, one Twitter account, one photo sharing account, one blog, etc.

The Advantage of Having One Account Per Social Media Platform

The majority of people find it convenient to have and use one account for each social media, such as Facebook, Twitter and for professional interaction, LinkedIn. These comments may range from the work-related, “We’ve got a new product or service” to the personal, as in “I’m here. Join me.”

Many people mix business and personal comments in their social media content and for good reason: it’s easier. It takes less effort and less time to keep up with one account in each platform than it does to have multiple accounts.

The downside is that your friends know about your business dealings and your clients—and sometimes your boss—know about your friends and “after hours” activities.

For example, saying you went out and got drunk and told everyone your boss is an idiot, smoked some weed, spent time with a hooker then did some gay bashing is likely to have one result: putting you on the unemployment line. While this kind of activity is extremely stupid in the first place, it’s severity is far worse when spread across the Internet.

Consider Multiple Social Media Accounts

When in doubt, keep your personal life private. This means having one set of social media accounts strictly for friends and family and another for work-related functions.

Facebook, for example, lets users control who can see their comments. Click here for a list of basic Facebook privacy controls.

Twitter is a program where anyone can read your comments if they follow you, but you cannot control who those followers are. The only way to control who reads your tweets (Twitter comments) is by carefully monitoring your followers then adjusting your comments based on them.

Another option for both Facebook and Twitter is to create one account for work and another for personal use.

Let’s say you are single, live in a metropolitan area and like dogs. You could easily create one user profile for dates and dating, a second for interesting places and activities and a third related to dogs. When you want to talk about dogs, you can post a comment on your Facebook page devoted to them such the (made up) “Woof-Woof-Me.” If you’ve got a comment about a favorite restaurant—beyond using ratings services such as Yelp—you could have a Twitter account like MyFavoriteEats and a separate one for your dog friends.

You can always share links between them, so if you have someone to hang out with on your personal Facebook page, you can invite them to follow your MyFavoriteEats Twitter account.

How to Set Up Multiple Social Media Accounts

Since Twitter requires a different email address for each account, your first step is to create a series of them. This way you can access the same electronic mailbox for each series of accounts. For example, all of your work-related Facebook and Twitter comments can go to a Hotmail account while your personal stuff goes to a Gmail account and your hobby accounts link to a Yahoo email.

To keep things simple, use the same basic contact information on each email account. For example, MyWork@gmail.com and MyWork@hotmail.com, then MyPlay@gmail.com andMyPlay@hotmail.com.

Next, you will want to keep these accounts secure, so spend some time creating passwords.

There are two schools of thought: using one password on all accounts makes it easy to remember but also easier for someone else to access your accounts. Having different passwords give you more security at the expense of remembering more data. Pick a combination, such as one basic password with easily-remembered variations, that works for you.

So know you have created your series of email accounts, one for each string of social media accounts.

Next, go into Facebook and create a new user account. Facebook remembers your settings. Do the same for Twitter and each other social media platform or service.

Your third step involves logging out from each social media service then creating your second identity with them using your second email account. Follow the same procedure for each additional identity.

Once you have taken the time to set each account up, it’s just a matter of logging off one account and logging on to another before you are ready to post your comments.

It’s also becoming easier to share your comments between social media outlets. For example, LinkedIn lets you automatically add your Twitter feed comments to your LinkedIn profile.

Contact me directly with any questions or comments. I can be reached at davereyn83@gmail.com, davereyn83@hotmail.com and davereyn83@me.com.

To Post on a Blog

Follow these steps when you want to include links to web pages as part of blog posts. This process is independent of the software used to create both the blog and the page you are linking to.

Step 1: Open your blog page and select New Post. In a second tab of the same browser session, find the document you want to link to.

Step 2: Write your blog post and give it a headline (Capitalizing the First Letter of Every Word is a Common Headline Style).

Step 3: Make sure you blog posts describes the page you are linking to.

Step 4: Add a “click here” comment where you want the link to start.

Step 5: Copy the Internet address (the part that starts with http://) from the page you are linking to.

Step 6: Using Blogger, look for the icon that looks like a chain link and click on it.

Step 7: Paste the Internet address in the open part of the link window.

When you become comfortable after having done this a few times, these steps are enough. However, it’s a good idea initially to click on the “check link” box after you paste your link. If you’ve done it right, you should go directly to your website.