Content marketing is a fancy term for promoting yourself online by offering useful material. It's successful because it works on the power of attraction instead of distraction. In the same way we skip commercials, it's easy to tune out cheesy stuff online. Instead, we want to put out appealing, relevant content. Simple! Or is it? Do you have a hard time seeing your business through the eyes of an outsider? What may be an everyday, mundane thing to you (ho hum, here I am meeting with the wine rep again) might be wonderfully exotic to a new client (the handsome Italian wine rep - are you kidding me?!). With the goal of harvesting cool content for your social media marketing, here are 15 social media ideas that come out of the everyday things you probably already do. 

April Newsletter: The Power of Communicating with Images | Facebook Security Tips | $10 off Storewide

As an interactive designer I'm fascinated by how much we communicate nonverbally. From websites to social media to the humble business card, we transmit a lot of information visually. But sometimes the effectiveness of a piece has nothing to do with design, it's simply the emotional power of an image. Take for example the high resolution Earthrise image by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter showing our planet from the surface of the Moon. To me, April is a celebration of Earth and a reminder that caring for our cosmic home is nothing less than our sacred duty. Like the more famous "Blue Marble" photo from 1968, this shot instantly communicates - without words - that we are one family living together on a tiny planet. Whether you're a small business striving to use your website to boost sales or a nonprofit using social media to attract donors, powerful images reach people at an emotional level and can carry your message far and wide. If you think that's far fetched, consider the ways in which iconic imagery has shaped our cultural landscape and altered the course of history. 

In the aftermath of Facebook's mind boggling privacy breach revelations I've had a few concerned calls about using social media. While it is scary that companies like Cambridge Analytica were able to purchase data and quite possibly influence political elections in several countries, those bad actors should not be allowed to overshadow the positive aspects of social media. Like me, many of my friends use Facebook to keep up with friends and family. Many of my clients use Facebook to help new clients find them, to share valuable resources and connect to colleagues and industry associations. Many nonprofits and popular movements use Facebook - and social media in general - to fundraise and organize. But like all media, it is important to consume it with a critical mind. Who benefits from this or that story? What agenda is being served? So, assuming that we as users can think critically about our usage and that the good outweighs the bad, here are some simple ways to make your use of Facebook more useful and secure. 

The face of technology, both past and present, is persistently male from Jobs to Gates to Zuckerberg but behind those leaders are millions of people who contribute critical research advances, put the ideas into production and market, sell and support tech companies and products. To celebrate International Women's Day, I did a bit of research and found a huge list of amazing women from a range of countries and cultures whose work laid the foundation for modern computing, websites and the internet itself. Here's a look at just 10 of my favorite pioneering women in technology.   

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