Encouraging Positive Self-Esteem in Pre-Teens

As posted & published in Voxy

The pre-teen years, is arguably one of the most hardest times in a child’s life. Their age says they are expected to start acting like adults, but still have many child-like restrictions.

Although a lot of my work is based on the teen years, over the last decade, we’ve seen a great rise in pre-teens trying to copy-cat teenage behaviour. Revealing clothing, experimental phases, and conflicts with parents are all teenage-inspired actions, that pre-teens are starting to show, which have never existed before.

Let’s dissect what healthy self-esteem looks like. Healthy self-esteem shows a person is in their comfort zone as a human being. It means they take care of themselves – whether through clothing choices, a healthy diet, or how they compare themselves to their peers.

The obvious self-esteem issue for girls, and one that is starting to affect boys too is inevitably their weight, which often stems on into teenage-hood and their adult lives. Looking at the glass half-empty, I must mention things like obesity, bulimia and anorexia. These seem to be common household terms these days, which shows the need to teach girls about the value of their temple of a body is greater than ever. Of course, looking at all the Photoshopped photos of beautiful Size Minus-10 models in magazines cannot be healthy, so there’s two approaches I’ve heard of and practice when speaking to girls about weight issues.

Pamela Marker was the New Zealand Girlfriend Magazine Editor a few years back. I was never fond of girly magazines growing up, because just like any other girl, I would fall into depression after seeing the skinny models showing off what I didn’t have (i.e. a stick figure), which would motivate me enough to do a massive two hour workout, after which celebratory pizza was always in order. Obviously it was not a healthy option.
What made me look twice at Girlfriend magazine after Pamela came onto the team was her strive to help girls gain better self esteem – not destroy it. They would have the occasional model in there, but always tried to keep Photoshop to a minimum. The technique Pamela often used when speaking to girls was showing them the ‘before’ and ‘after’ Photoshop photos. No girl could feel bad after seeing how much graphical work goes into making one photo of a model. Think the famous Dove Video that went viral, which showed how a normal-looking woman was transformed into an intensified photo, to the point where if you saw the actual person on the street, you wouldn’t recognize them in a million years.

Paula Abdul, after admitting her bulimia issues in her youth suggests every girl should lie down on a large piece of paper and have a friend outline her. When you stand up, basically, you see that you’re actually not fat like you think, in fact, it gives you a newly found confidence.

Although having a healthy self-esteem is not only about weight, but it’s definitely a starting point. The hype of gym memberships (yes, pre-teens are starting to go to the gym now!!), whether you look fat in a top, whether you haven’t been kissed because you’re ‘fat’…all these first world problems derive from a healthy outlook on your physical appearance.

Eva-Maria's recently published second book 'Shush, You!' features more quick tips about, among other things, how to help your preteens and teens understand the importance of a healthy self-esteem, so make sure you check it out here.

What are some of the ways you’ve found to help your pre-teen see their physical beauty?

Erasing Boredom for Teens This Christmas

Many times during my years as a family coach, I’ve been asked about how parents can make sure teens aren’t falling into a ‘bored rut’ during the school holidays when one or both parents are still hard at work, and it’s especially important to ask this question at a time and age like this when buying them the latest Xbox game and plonking them down in front of the TV for the holidays seems like the easiest option.

The key aspect of boredom is being unproductive, and many young people get very impatient when there’s ‘nothing to do’ – after all, they’re in their element when there’s something going on all the time – think the instant gratification of a world they’ve grown up in.

So here are a few tips I’ve picked up on, and have found actually work as win-win solutions for pre-teens & teens and their parents

Tip 1: Give Them Their Own Time
With the end of the school year, teens feel like they’ve finally got some sense of freedom, and with the exams having just passed, they need to relax. Give them the time to sleep in, or even laze around the TV sometimes.

Tip 2: Decide on the Rules of Having Friends Over
Do you have to know their friends who are coming over? Are you even happy for them to have their friends over? Whatever decision you make around this, make the rules clear – rules are easier to bypass for teens when they haven’t been verbally communicated by you, the parent.

Tip 3: Get Them To Plan Out Their Week
I thought this was the most lame thing I had ever heard when a colleague told me about this, but it works. When you pose the challenge to your teens to plan out their week, it gives them time to search online to see what’s going on in the local area, and actually realize there is a world outside of their house!

Tip 4: Give Them the Task of Making Dinner
With all the cooking shows going around, many younger people are getting into cooking (think Junior MasterChef). When you’re leaving for work, leave them a budget and the challenge to surprise you with dinner.

Tip 5: Busy Business
Plant an idea in their head about starting up a business. Or perhaps start with getting them to list some of your household’s unwanted items on eBay – it could be their pocket money! With the internet, anything is possible

Tip 6: Hand them a Camera or Art Supplies, and watch…
Young people have a wild imagination, so help harness and unleash this through art – this will give them hours of time to spend on something that will help them express their creativity.

Tip 7: Endorse Sport
Suggest some sports they can go play with their friends – if you have the equipment for it, just hand it to them – they may have forgotten you still have that set of tennis racquets in the garage!

Tip 8: Writing Christmas Cards
If they are totally bored, give them the Christmas Cards you need to write to family and friends, and get them to write messages in each card, and sign for the whole family. Not only is it a lovely gesture to get a Christmas Card from a family friend that was written by one of their kids, but it’ll tick one more thing off your list AND give your teen something useful to spend their time on.

Tip 9: Decorate the Christmas Tree
Same as above – great fun for teens, and a task that ‘just needs to be done’ for you, that actually gets done!

What are some of the ways you get your teenagers out of the ‘boredom rut’?

Taking a Holiday with your Teens

Christmas can become one of the most stressful times of year very quickly – with work commitments, as well as the worry of where to go on holiday, can all become too much very quickly. So if you’re thinking of taking a holiday this festive season with the family, here are a few quick tips about how you can make the holiday time as stress-free as possible.

In sync with my newly released second book ‘Shush, You!’ I stand by the belief that you can improve relationships with your kids through small actions in 5 minutes a day or less, so this article is in hope that you can achieve that on holiday!

1. If you don’t know where to go, ask your kids!

2. Give your teen a time frame and budget, and let them come up with a travel itinerary.

3. Don’t ban iPods or cell phones – simply dedicate some time to when you can discuss something as a family during the trip.

4. If you’re taking your work on holiday, make sure you dedicate your time to it for an X amount of time every day.

5. Make a rule that if it’s a family trip, the whole family goes. No exceptions. That also narrows your chances of coming back to an un-supervised party house.

6. When conflicts arise, cut them on the spot. Take them for a walk and have a good chat to them.

7. Most of all, remember to have fun! Without banning anything, or starting up arguments, remember why you went on holiday, and that was to bond, and have fun!

What other tips would you recommend when going away on holiday?

Happy Holidaying!

Gen Y: Handling Recession

I hadn’t really dedicated much time to stop and think about how youth were affected by the recession, until I got an e-mail from a magazine in Sydney, asking what I thought on the matter.

I did the research to see what others have been saying on the topic, called around some friends, and even got together with some to interview them. It turns out, most of us didn’t notice it. I reflected this feedback to my own experiences. To be perfectly honest, while speakers around the world are complaining that organisations are having to deal with budget cuts, and all the rest, they as speakers are getting a smaller fee than what they have been getting during previous years. As I’ve only started in business on my own during the recession years, they have been the best years in business of my whole life…because they were my first! Those youth who entered the workforce during the recession, entered at a time when resources were rare, and their perceived value of the work they do may be lower than it actually is…it will be interesting to see whether our Baby Boomer and Gen X employers will take advantage of this once the economy picks up in future years. Why does this sound like a contradiction to the lazy and demanding Gen Y everyone describes? Because I only described the part of Gen Y that are in their late-teens, early-twenties who entered the workforce during the recession, not before. The part of Gen Y who entered the workforce before recession struck were those demanding, ill-mannered youth giving us all a bad name.

Gen Y are the bubble wrapped generation. I hope you enjoyed playing bullrush, rugby, or pretending to be superman running around the playground in a cape, because our generation missed out on all these things while growing up. Thank you Political Correctness. What’s more, is that we’re the generation that were babied from Day One. Society set many restrictions to what we are allowed to do, so as a generation, we’ve grown up a little less witty, or able to in some ways think for ourselves. What dumb kids, huh? Not quite…if you put yourself in our position, our whole lives, we’ve been told what we are allowed and not allowed to do, so we’ve learned to act, or rather not act at all within restrictions, because if we put a foot wrong, maybe we’ll get told off! We are not the most daring of generations, as we’ve been raised to be cautious at all times to not put a foot wrong. When entering the workforce, it’s important to set out the exact rules for youth when giving them responsibility so that they are clear around the exact guidelines of what they can and can’t do. Otherwise you will find them in your office every day, asking yet another small question, wanting your guidance, practicing their rehearsed cautiousness yet again.

Although Gen Y can be viewed as a whole bunch of bad news, there is one major advantage of this generation in the world. They are technology-savvy. Although the knowledge around technology has been viewed as a downfall, where youth are dedicating their time to ‘useless’ technology activities, imagine the power youth can have when gearing all that tech-knowledge into positive actions! Do you think you could gear their knowledge into perhaps executing your Social Media Strategy? Or perhaps having them as the ‘voice of tech’ in board meetings? Although this may sound like too much responsibility, or that you’re putting in too much trust into someone who’s not ‘that experienced’, why not give it a try…firstly, you have nothing to lose, and secondly, you don’t know what you don’t know…and youth may just know it!

How much trust are you willing to put into younger generations during these post-recession times?

Keeping Safe on the Roads

Over the past few weeks with the Rugby World Cup, I must say it’s been quite a record for how many times I’ve been breath tested! I think it’s awesome that the Police are so onto-it at this time. I guess many would say it’s nothing special – they better be onto-it during such an international event. But having said this, when the World Cup is over, the dangers on the roads won’t stop, and it’s likely that although there will be less Police officers breath-testing and patrolling our roads, there a number of ways you can help minimize the risks of a young person in your home ending up in a deadly situation.

If you think the teen in your home isn’t behind the wheel right now, it’s possible they will be very soon. There’s been an increase in younger drivers on the roads over the last years, so here is a short three-point checklist of what you can do to help the youth in your home be as safe as possible on the roads – now, and in future:

Set the Rules
First thing many caregivers forget to do. Whether your teen is preparing to get their learner’s license, or are already on their restricted or full, you must set some rules in place so you’re both on the same page.
The obvious rules are that the legal rules must be followed. “No Johnny, you can’t take the car out now – it’s past 10pm, and that’s your curfew for your restricted licence”

The second set of rules are those that you are comfortable with, for example, if you have a car you’re sharing with your teen, a great idea is to come up with a schedule of when the car is free for them to use, or rostering on who has possession of the car on what days or times of the week. Another rule for them to follow is their existing curfew – is this in line with when they are legally allowed to be behind the wheel?

Be firm, allow for one-off cases, but don’t let one-off cases of a missed curfew, for example, to become the norm.

Help and Trust
Obviously they will need your help to actually learn to drive! My parents hired a driving instructor to help me smooth out the ‘kinks’ I had after learning to drive with Dad. You don’t need to hire an instructor, but they are very useful in the sense that they know what assessors will be looking out for when your teen goes to get their next level of license, and will be able to alert them to these ‘small things’.

The most you can do is pass on your knowledge of the roads if you drive, and the hardest part at the end…will be to just trust them to go out there…but not before you take note of the third, and last point…

Educate
Please, please, please tell us what to watch out for on the roads! If you don’t tell us, who will? Yes – that’s right, we’ll have to learn from mistakes…by which time, it might be about $5000 too late! Just like there are legal rules set in place such as driving sober and not being out past a certain time with some stages of licenses, we’re looking for your wisdom to educate us how to do things ‘right’, or properly. One of the first things my Dad told me when I got behind the wheel with him in the front seat was to watch out for driving too close to the parked cars. For two reasons:
1. I might hit one
2. Someone might be opening their door without looking, or estimating the distance between my car and their door
Not so much the first one, but the second one has saved me a number of times, and gosh am I glad Daddy was there to tell me to watch out for this, because I can almost guarantee I wouldn’t have even thought of people flinging their car doors into my car, but I assure you it happens.

So now it’s your turn…what piece of wisdom can you pass onto your teen about driving safer on the roads?
Oh, one more thing – do tell them to drive sober (we need to actually hear it from you in a stern voice).

Drive Safely!

Epic Change, and Engaging People Online as a Charity

Recently while browsing online, I came across a fantastic charity called Epic Change that I felt needs to have its word spread to those who haven’t yet come across it. It is a charity that is behind many successful American Social Media Campaigns such as Tweetsgiving and others. They use a very similar engagement process for all their projects, which is way too cool to be kept a secret, thus I wanted to spread the word for what they’re doing.

I couldn’t have said it better myself. Epic Change’s Mission in their word: Epic Change amplifies the voices and impact of grassroots changemakers and social entrepreneurs.
Epic Change collects donations from people like you and I, and put this into communities with lack of resources to give people the opportunity to utilize their skills to come up with an entrepreneurial idea in their area, using the micro loan given to them by Epic Change.
As an online-operating project, you can bet that the majority of your donation will actually be going toward those loans!

An inspiring story of Epic Change’s $35,000 impact on a School in Tanzania can be found here - I was totally sold on the idea after reading this – what an amazing opportunity to help a community, as well as give them the opportunity to have a ‘story’ to share for the rest of their lives.

Now to go a step further, I want to dissect Epic Change’s process as an organisation, because it really is a fantastic one that utilizes four basic principles that are valuable for any non-profit, or even business organisation who want to achieve success online.

Epic Change’s 4 Step Process

Step 1: Raise Money
First of all, after reading all about the amazing work Epic Change or their project is doing, they ask for a donation. They make it easy by allowing you a number of online and offline ways to donate, and in some cases will actually spell out what influence exactly your amount will have on those they are helping.

Step 2: Make a Change
This goes on from Step 1 – they actually tell you how your donation will influence others. In the example of Epic Change’s actual website, they are very transparent that your funds will go towards giving out loans to help those wanting to create positive change within communities. How cool is that! You’re contributing to business growth just by doing a good deed. It’s based on the ‘teach them how to fish’ principle, and boy, is that powerful when you know your funds are going towards something.

Step 3: Share the Story
By donating, you are becoming part of the story that you can pass on. It’s a feel-good factor that your donations are contributing to the success of others.

Step 4: Pay it Forward
Become a part of history! Some of Epic Change’s projects offer you the option to spread the word through your networks online by a one-click action that will send out a message to say you’re supporting the cause. What more would you want – a whole army of people that are your personal supporters out there to their networks. How cool!

So are you using the four step process in your Social Media? Give it a try…you never know what might come out of it!

Benefits of Using Facebook & Twitter

Time and time again, business courses, workshops, general media and people are going on about using Social Media for business.
People are pretty much sold on the benefits of it, but are still unsure – what is my ROI? What will I get out of it? How do I know this is beneficial for my business?

Simply speaking, Social Media is merely another platform for your brand to be seen by the public. Just like newspaper and TV advertising, Social Media is a medium for promoting what you do, and letting people know of the benefits you can bring their current situation.

At the same time, Social Media also doubles as a networking tool. Think about how much time you currently spend talking on the phone, replying to e-mails, networking at events, and any other ways you use to socialize and network for your personal and business use. To really make Social Media work for you, you’d need to invest the same amount of time you currently spend networking, and do it through social networks.

Social Media gives people the opportunity to combine marketing strategies with networking into one. The nature of Social Networking helps you network, and when coupled with basic marketing principals, it can fully succeed no matter what way you need it to. The way to market on Social Media is to spend time on there. Unlike setting up a billboard and have it bring value to each person who sees it, you need to bring that value with individual comments, joining in with discussions, being forward enough to introduce yourself to potential clients, and bringing value by sharing links to articles, products and services you recommend.

So what ARE the benefits of using Social Networking Sites like Twitter and Facebook?

Engage with your target market. Through the power of Social Media, it’s all about the amount and quality of content you produce and share with your target audience. The relevance to your audience and value you produce makes sure you are positioned to be as much of an expert in your field as your words portray. The amount of content you produce gives you the advantage to make sure your audience never forget about you, but also as we all know, we all have our own lives and people just aren’t sitting at their computer waiting for your next update, so you need to make sure you catch them when they finally do get round to logging onto their social networks. So that’s where the repetition and amount of time you keep putting yourself out there will amount to valuable engagement with your target market.

Getting straight feedback. Sure it may sometimes be from the general public, but it’s very valuable information for you to obtain about how others perceive your services and benefits of doing business with you through the internet.

Instantly reaching out to your potential clients. The beauty of the internet is that the entire world, news, advice and events can be uploaded and circulated instantly. As soon as you have any new press releases, or content to share, upload it! The benefit of the internet is that it has the power to update the world about events as they happen. Once something happens and you wait until tomorrow morning to report on it, chances are it won’t be as current or someone else would have taken the space of being ‘the first reporter’ of the happenings.

Get the inside scoop about your industry. Social Media is public. And that can be a good thing. This means you can find out valuable information about your competitors, and any current events or news happening within your industry. This can also be a great opportunity to tie in popular current events with the relevance of your work. A friend of mine races Suzuki Swifts, and he loves the singer Taylor Swift, so he called his car ‘Taylor The Swift’ and made a Facebook Fan Page for it. So when the big mishap happened at the Music Awards when Kanye West interrupted Taylor Swift’s acceptance speech, everyone around the world of all ages were talking about how unfair this was on Taylor, people were searching the internet for the video clips, opinions, forums and pages about this event. Coincidentally, although for most people a race car driver wasn’t going to be of interest, because of the amounts of people searching the name ‘Taylor Swift’ guided their Google searches to my friend’s ‘Taylor the Swift’ Facebook Page. Almost overnight, his Fan page grew from about 100 of his friends and fans to about 700 fans. That’s a 600% increase! How would you like to increase your target, pin-pointed audience online by 600%?

Raise awareness of your brand. Through your involvement in Social Media, you have the power to not only connect and engage your target audience, but by doing so, you will also be raising the awareness of your brand. Of course we can’t all be McDonald’s with the yellow arches, but we can certainly try become the expert in our industry through the value of our content we produce and share with our online audience. Just make sure you’re including your website, logo, and anything else that will give your brand association with your name online, so when people say ‘Eva-Maria’ online now, if they are within my target audience and don’t necessarily know my name, they will at least be able to identify with my bestselling book’s title ‘You Shut Up!’ because I always make sure I’m consistent with my subject, brand and content.

Promote your Content. Once you write anything – a press release, article, blog post or update on your life, use your social networks to update the rest of the world. By keeping in constant touch with people online, you’re ultimately building awareness of your being, expertise and important-ness online.

What would it take to convince you to get onto those Social Networks?

Teen Suicide

It’s not news that New Zealand has one of the highest rates for teen suicide in the world. It’s a sad thought that our dear country has this kind of history that keeps repeating itself, but there are definitely some sound ways parents and relatives can make the growing up years a little easier.

Here’s my stance on it: depression is real, no doubt about it. However, at some point of our lives, we have those days when we don’t feel like getting out of bed, when we feel lonely and when we just don’t want to talk to anyone. Those feeling are normal. Like I say, if you were to quickly diagnose people generally feeling ‘sad’, should we have a tax on emotions like ‘love’ aswell?

Depression is real – I’m not saying it’s not, but we all have those days when we feel a little ‘emo’, or ‘depressed’ if you must. If this goes on for a little longer than a day, a week, month, then yes – professional help is needed. But you can actually stop this unwinding of events! Don’t let that sad stage of a teen’s life turn into ‘depression’. There are three things to remember:

Communicate
Whenever you notice something, talk to them! Even if they don’t want to, keep talking to them – even the small things count “How was your day darling?”, “What do you think about….” Get them involved in conversations, family activities – anything. Just keep that communication going, because when the time comes, they will open up about what’s bothering them. More times than never, parents seem to drift off and stop talking because they don’t want to deal with another snappy answer – this is just them taking some of their issues out little by little. Keep talking, talking, talking.

Support
Did your teen have an interesting idea? Do they need a lift from you somewhere? Do they need to talk to you? Be open to support them in their decisions. At the end of the day, if you tell them not to do something, as much as I hate to say it, psychologically that makes them want to do these things even more; to try these things to find out what all the fuss is about. Don’t let it get that far – if they hear the word ‘no’ from you often enough, that translates into ‘I don’t care about you’ to a teen sometimes, and that’s exactly what you don’t want. If you must say ‘no’ to some things – a tattoo, a party they want to go to, a business venture they might want to start up by dropping out of school, say ‘no’ as much as you want, but don’t forget the reasons behind it and tell them about this. This will automatically put them into the ‘understanding’ mindset, and just like it would be perfect for you to read their mind, give them something to work off by giving them your side of the story – what you’re thinking, and why you’re thinking it.

Love
I cannot stress this point enough. When you don’t say a happy ‘Good Morning’, ask for their opinion, say ‘no’ to anything they want to do, that all translates into ‘I don’t care or love you’. Wrong, wrong, wrong! A great book about the ‘5 Love Languages’ talks about how different people show their love for each other. With a teenager, you don’t necessarily need to study that book, unless you have the time – small things count. My parents always remember to tell me they love me, heck when I was little, after Mum had been away in another city, just her bringing back some cheap lollies from the plane as a ‘gift’ got my brother and I excited – you can express your love through so many different ways – don’t forget that it can stretch out further than a simple ‘I love you’; it can be anything from a small gift, to a gesture of love (“Would you like some tea?”), to just sitting down when they need to talk to you the most and hearing what they have to say.

How do you communicate, support and love the teen in your life? As hard as it may be, they hold so much energy and power to balance out the world; to make something out of themselves, and to make the world a better place – if not now, then definitely in future. Cherish and love them – who would want to end their life when they’re surrounded by love and understanding? No one is my guess!

Google Plus…the future…?

Recently, I’ve been bombarded by invitations to join the Google Plus social network. There’s been a lot of talk around how Google is trying to conceive ‘the new Facebook’, and even rumours that Google is thinking of partnering with Facebook because they’ll never be able to re-create the revolutionized social networking aspect that Facebook has created to date.

What are your thoughts? Have you tried it? Are Google trying to be wannabes, or is this really going to revolutionize the way we view social networking?

Comment on my video below, or on YouTube

My Generation - Generation SMART

The term Generation SMART is one I’ve coined over the past couple of years and it covers the 15 to 25 year olds of the world. It’s an important generation – with half of the population under the age of 25, we as a society need to listen and understand what those hooligans are all about, right. I can see people in the audience going yeah right girl, convince me they’re smart. They’re not necessarily smarter than you, they’re SMART because of the world they’re immersed in.

Think back to your teen years. What were you like as a young person? Think back to what you were going through and feeling when you were 13, 16, 18…go on – take a moment.

You know what you just felt?
You felt exactly what young people today feel. We are no different to how you used to be. The only difference between you and us is that you’ve forgotten what it’s like!
Ten feet tall and bulletproof? How about Twenty feet tall and superman! We know we can do anything! You had that attitude way back when, and look where it got you? Tell me all these years have been a waste of time? The attitudes, energy and passion of young people is something I wish I could bottle up and sell to the depressed old men out there who look angry going to work in their suits to sit in a cubicle every day. You see, our emotions and attitudes haven’t changed – the only thing that’s changed is that you grew up.

Although there are many similarities between younger and older generations today, the current young generation comes down to five simple things.
Generation SMART can be broken down into five simple words:
Swift, Mobile, Accessible, Ready, Transparent...get it...acronym for SMART!

Swift
Young people are fast. They always have been. Perhaps not THE fastest, but definitely fast-ER. And in many respects, they have no way of channelling this speed at which they can achieve and do things.

Mobile
This generation is more likely to travel, change jobs and houses more regularly than any other generation. A longitudinal study in Auckland concluded that the under 25-year old newlyweds are more likely to move houses within the first year of getting married. How’s that for the big dream of owning one and only house for the rest of your married life? Generation SMART have more access to travel, cars…they can travel halfway across the country in a night if they wanted to. Back in the day, it was a big deal to have a car…these days more than half of teenagers out there own one!

Accessible
Generation SMART are more accessible – with the advances in technology, you can make contact with them whenever you need. This generation is easier to reach than other young generations have been, only because of the technology that’s out there…and it doesn’t only extend to cell phones – GPS systems, security systems and everything else can help keep track to increase accessibility to youth.

Ready
We’re ready…ready to take action! Coupled with our speed, want to help, and thinking we’re invincible, we’re ready for the challenges you set in front of us…we won’t always succeed, but the main this is we’re ready.

Transparent
With the age of Facebook, young people are now becoming more transparent – with their thoughts, feelings, and everything in between. Some have no shame putting up intricate details of their lives, while some hide certain facts, knowing these may been seen by any one on the web. Generation SMART are transparent because they understand that their lives are an open book…should they choose to narrate it through some of the new means.

As you can see, there are some aspects that relate to when you were younger, but some that may be a bit new, but realistically, the only thing that different in today’s world is the environment we live in.

There is no miracle cure to make Generation SMART see things the way you do, but there are definitely ways to understand them – how they think and perceive the world because of the environment they were immersed in from Day 1. We can always learn to understand, so why not start today…all you need to do is perhaps something as simple as…strike a conversation.

Get your Business Social-Mediazed!

Although I’m a huge advocate for Social Media, but at the end of the day, it’s merely a marketing platform, and just like you, as a business, don’t visit every business networking event, your business also doesn’t need to be on every social networking site, so here’s a few tips to help you be as productive as possible in your online ventures:

- Have a reason. Sit down and ask yourself: what do I hope to achieve through social media? Is it to drive traffic to my site? Or will I get more business by sharing articles and links that will be useful to my potential clients and become a trustworthy brand by being an information hub?

- Do your research. Numbers are available everywhere – as a business, take a look at the social media sites that attract your demographic, and use those. If you’re a business selling office chairs to large corporates, your primary audience won’t be found on Bebo, which is made up of the Gen Y & Z audience with a passion for socializing with their age group.

- Find time. Social Media can become daunting if you get stuck on checking your profile every time a new alert comes into your inbox. Set aside, say, half an hour every Monday morning to reply to messages and update your personal/business page and stick to it.

- Automate it. A couple of useful tools our clients love are ping.fm and futuretweets.com. Ping lets you update all your social networks at once with the same message. Say you’ve done your half an hour of updating on Monday but come Tuesday and an important press release just appeared in a local paper about your company. You can log onto Ping and send a link to update all your profiles without logging onto each one individually. FutureTweets is a great partner for businesses on Twitter - you can schedule a series of tweets to go out to your Twitter audience at different days and times. Free, quick and easy!

And if you need any extra consulting, or a full-time person to do everything to get your business social-mediazed for success, let us know – our team of Social-Media savvy youth are ready to add success to your business exposure and profits.

Catch you soon,
Eva-Maria
eva@socialnetworkingnz.co.nz
www.socialnetworkingnz.co.nz

....WOW technology's gone far! For the video version of this blog post, watch it here:

Parenting Teenagers of Today...my latest two cents...

Cell phones, laptops...today’s teens seem to have it all! But in reality, even though our environment has changed over the years, relationship dynamics haven’t. Even in the 21^st century, a baby, child, or even teenager needs the same amount of care and support as they always have, but for some reason parents tend to think their parenting needs to somehow mould into today’s PC society.

How many parents are guilty of creating a Facebook account not to actually use it but take advantage of the opportunity to see what their kids are up to? Don’t get me wrong – there are situations when parents want to know what their kids are up to if they’re living on the other side of the world, but when youth are in their teen years, they just want to be left alone. Remember yourself – didn’t you want the world to leave you alone when you were that age?

Sure, today’s technology has given parents more ways of protecting their kids from harm, but there’s a fine line between spying and protecting, so going back to some good old fashioned tips of building a solid relationship with your kids, here’s some advice and proven methods to refer to when you’re just not sure what to do...

You Shut Up
Everyone loves to be heard.
Next time you’re talking to your teen, or even if there is an argument or misunderstanding, no matter how badly you want to speak over them, yell, scream or add your 2 cents worth, take a breath and hear them out first. One of the following things may happen:
a) You may hear a story that’ll change your mind about what you were about to say
b) They may blurt out some silly heat-of-the moment comment that you can share at dinner tonight

c) You would have prepared your teen to let them listen to you, by psychologically respecting their right to speak. This means they will subconsciously make a note of this, so when they’ve finished, they will be more inclined to listen to you without interruption.

Be the Parent – Communicate your Values in full
Of course, no one can hold their kids’ hands for the rest of their lives, but you can teach them make rational choices, especially as they enter into the teen years...
Every adult is likely to have been on both ends of this scenario which didn’t leave anyone happy:
“Mum, Dad can I go to that party tonight?”
“No!”
“But why??”
“Because we said so”
The moral is: next time you have an opinion or make a decision, explain and back these up with reasons behind it to your teen! Humans are curious by nature, and youth aren’t exempt from it, so feed this curiosity – voice your reasons.
This not only provides solid ground for your point, but when done enough times will instil those decision-making skills in your teen, so next time they make a decision, they’ll have an automatic reaction to question it and think “Is this a good enough reason/choice for my actions?”

Trust and give MORE responsibility
Next time there is an opportunity to give your teen a responsibility, from cooking dinner for the family to leaving them the house for the night while you’re out, give it to them! Nothing does it for youth quite like having ownership over a situation, and you may find yourself surprised at how much they rise to the challenge of a responsibility. Explain what’s expected of them, and leave the rest to trust. Trust CAN be a scary thing, but hey, everyone makes mistakes and if that happens to be the case, rinse and repeat – as long as your teen knows where you stand, what’s expected of them, and have your support to try better next time, that’s a winning combination!