Social networking is an exciting way to stay informed, grow relationships and have fun. An often forgotten point is that with social networks come preferred practices, things you should know about your privacy and how your digital footprint can be affected.

Whether it's your first day on Facebook or you've been on forever and have 300 friends, a lot of teens probably don't know about their digital footprint. That's okay, as long as you learn about it here, before you turn around and get bitten by your posts.

Your digital footprint is the data trail you leave with everything you do online...

My sister remembers when the “fancy” mall opened in our hometown. She and my mom would dress up to go. By the time I was ready to hang out at the mall, I trudged from one store to the next in jeans or even (oh goodness) sweat pants. After the novelty wore off, customers came as they were – on their own terms. No amount of well-polished marble could compensate for the need to rush into the mall to grab something on the way home from a babysitting gig. My “customer buying behavior” was far from fancy, even though the mall wanted me to believe otherwise.

These last few decades have been...

Note: Read more articles from my blog - Business of Recruitment

Businesses of all sizes need to have dogged focus on revenue generation and business growth. They also need to perform certain non-revenue generating activities, like recruitment. If non-revenue generating activities are not performed well, business growth can be hampered in the long run. Hence, resources available to businesses have to be judicially divided between revenue generating and non-revenue generating activities. It is a thin line. SME’s in particular struggle to manage both, because, they do not have the luxury of a plethora of resources available at their disposal. So, in their dogged quest of revenue generation and...

Join us this Thursday, May 23 for #SMLiveECI Webcast #6. This week we will be interviewing Gary Frankie, Communications Specialist of Busey Bank. Tune in and ask him questions via twitter - Tweet to #SMLiveECI!

Tim Montague and Carl Catedral will also review social media marketing news, share tips and topics relevant to small business owners, and announce upcoming social media events and happenings in East Central Illinois. 

We broadcast via Google+ Hangout on Air each week. Join us live Thursday morning at 10am CST. Check out our new web page to watch...

University professors hear a lot of commencement speeches. But one I heard this weekend was unlike any other I've ever experienced. 

By combining the power of digital media, passion for philanthropy, and mobile technology, graduating students at Queens University of Charlotte helped the John S. & James L. Knight Foundation give away $100,000 on the spot during their commencement speech. The experiment was the brainchild of graduation speaker Eric Newton, senior adviser to the president of Knight Foundation. 

During Newton's address, the audience watched three...