Sociocultural awareness – Is your behavior helping or hindering the cause?

**SIDE NOTE: This post is a little unusual and contains a less professional approach then the rest of my blog**

“To be conscious that you are ignorant is a great step to knowledge” – Benjamin Disraeli

How many times have you found yourself in a situation like the following?

You’re in a public place relaxing, serving a customer or just walking down the street and a situation arises where you find yourself face to face with a very confused individual that has little to almost no ability in communicating with you in English? Rather, this person seeks obvious help using broken basic words or points around like he/she is trying to catch an imaginary butterfly?

I’ve found myself in many situations like this when I worked the restaurant industry in high school, tended bar in college and moved to Orlando, Florida for a few months for my job (extremely transient city!). Most of the time I found myself instantly frustrated, hastily apologizing for not being able to help and scurrying away like this person had a disease of some sort. Subconsciously, I found myself thinking, “Ugh, your in America, speak English!!!”

So, here I am four years later living and traveling around Europe over the past three. During the first two years, I slowly uncovered and discovered my personal level of ignorance in regards to language through my own experiences in other cultures. BUT, it wasn’t until this year that I have been able to fully understand the general ignorance of most Americans (when it comes to language barriers) through the experiences of those who have come to visit.

Almost every person who has made his or her way to beautiful Vienna, Austria has made a statement like this at least one time during his or her stay (whether I witnessed it myself or was told about it in frustration later). “I had a great day, but this one individual at [insert random place here] was so rude and looked at me like I had 5 heads… all I wanted to do was [order or buy] something and they had no idea what I was talking about, isn’t this a big tourist destination? Shouldn’t these people know English?!?”

This is where my newfound realization triggered an urge to ask myself this: “As an American living overseas, what I can do to help my friends back home and those currently around me?”

I usually respond to these rants aka comments with the following statements. “How many times have you been frustrated with someone else not speaking English in America, well…because they are in America? Your in “someone else’s” country, don’t you think they are saying the same exact thing about you? What makes you, as a native English speaker, so special that people should know English, regardless of your geographical location? How can you complain about another’s inability to speak and comprehend your language (chances are they can fluently speak several other languages) when most Americans only know ONE language.”

Most of the time, I get an empty blank stare for a few minutes while the person processes what just happened…. Then I see it click. Their body language shows signs of shame, their head isn’t poised so high anymore and the look in their eye is that of realization and disappointment in their previous actions.

My goal is not to “preach to” or demean the individuals who come to visit me, I solely want to instill the same understanding that I have incurred over the years into those whom I love and care about.

I’ve come to understand that there’s a huge gap in an individual’s mindful intelligence and their ability to truly assimilate the knowledge within them. Break down your barriers with compassion, patience and understanding so that when you find yourself in this very situation, you have the courage and respect to do what you can to help.

I know that when I get home, I will charades and hand gesture the shit out of any language barrier “conversation” that comes my way…even if it helps just a little bit!

The power of understanding can lend itself to a lot of greatness, but the biggest greatness it has bestowed upon me, is the ability to be just a little less ignorant. Travelling has given me more insight, wisdom, perception and richness that any professional or accredited institution ever has - and for that I am forever grateful.

Truly Amazing!! Watch How One Company Connected the Entire World using Twitter!!

Extremely Inspiring and uniquely innovative!!! 

Facebook Officially Snags A Passport from The Land of Search Engines

Have you ever found yourself in a situation where you wish you could instantly pull something up that you saw entirely way too long ago on your Facebook feed? or maybe your planning a trip somewhere and want to reconnect with some old friends that might still be in that area?

In situations like these, I usually find myself saying to someone else “I saw the cutest picture of someone’s dog on Facebook a few days ago, you have to see it!” or “Do you know anyone who still lives in the Miami area?” and for some odd reason I cant recall who exactly posted the picture I wanted to share or what friends of mine (ours) still live in Miami. I tend to be a little on the stubborn side, so when I want to find something, I’m determined to search until I find it. This is when I find myself scowling my timeline for hours just in hopes that something will spark my memory to give me the information I need in order to visit whoever’s page I was searching for in the first place. Most of the time I give up based on the “seasick/overwhelming” feeling that takes over my body as a result of the constant scrolling and scanning I’ve put my senses through.

I’ve heard some buzz around the social media industry that Facebook is building a helpful solution to this very problem, its very own search engine. Facebook is essentially allowing its users to search within the network they created for more specific results based on particular wants or needs. Right now, it’s only in the beta stage and will only focus search results on people, photos, places and interests. This is where Facebook’s handy new feature claims it will save you A LOT of time and searching effort.

Apparently the feature will allow users to ask questions in simple sentences just as you would when using Google’s search engine. So, how would I benefit from this new internal “search engine”?

In this case, I would be able to simply plug the following sentence into the search field; “which of my friends live in Miami?” Facebook actually filters your results and ranks them based on interactivity and connections within your network. Facebook would provide you with a generated list of friends who currently live in the specified area. The great thing about this calculated search approach is that you’re closest and most trusted or recent friends appear at the top of your list, leaving your acquaintances at the bottom.

By no means is this new feature going to give Google a run for its money, but for now, it will provide Facebook users with a cool feature that lots of people could find extremely useful!

Keep at this one Facebook! I think this search engine might have a lot of potential to bring in revenue through commercial, business, products/services results in the future! 

European Social Media Stats

Since living in Austria, (for about 2 1/2 months now) I was extremely interested to see how Europeans interact with Social Media. I know that technology advances and utilization vary greatly across the globe, but I found myself wondering "How different can social media use REALLY be in such a "westernized" part of the world" (this of course coming from my experiences in Vienna, Austria...I often sometimes forgot I'm even in Europe!) 

I recently offered a friend here my assistance in helping her to market/advertise a Chalet in Austria via social media platforms (Facebook and Twitter) from the ground up: creating accounts, engaging/targeting an audience and coming up with marketing solutions and strategies. I thought, "Why not?! I've got this social media marketing thing down in the states, i'll just use my current knowledge and we'll nail this project on the head!"....then common sense kicked in and I did a little research, since I was initially interested anyway.

I came across this Infographic HERE and thought it was pretty interesting. I'm intrigued with a few of the numbers, especially with Austria having the lowest percentage of users, 39% who utilize social media for reading and writing blogs. If you notice Portugal, 76% of their social media users engage in reading and writing blogs. Geographically, the two countries are just as far away from each other as Manhattan, NY and Miami, FL. So, how can it be that there is such a significant difference in how many people within these two countries utilize social media for the same purpose. (I just need to state that I understand that they are two totally different countries and therefore hold two different cultures, but the geographical stats still spark my interest). Plus, I just got done explaining the importance of blogging to build a brand and attract and engage an audience to this friend i'm helping out...guess I should recant those statements!! 

Its no secret that in the United States blogs are one of the most important trends and growing platforms in the industry. I'm now on a personal mission to try and rationalize/figure out what the differences are in each of these individual cultures that could directly cause such conflicting numbers. Wish me luck!!!

Four Ways To Attract Your Online Audience

The best multimedia sites stay on top of changes in technology and how users communicate and interact with the internet (videos, pictures, games, podcasts, social media, interaction, customization, graphics etc.)

Successful sites achieve results in many ways. The first way is with writing. Good journalism skills are universal especially when it comes to the online world. With widgets, videos, photos and simple headlines it’s getting easier and easier for readers to skip over the journalistic part of a story and jump straight to the video or skim over the headlines that stand out to them in order to gain information about a story they are interested in. The writer needs to have the skill to gather and present information that they know is eye-catching and relevant to its audience regardless of how the reader consumes the content. Writing needs to start strong, stay strong, simplified and remain active.

The second way that successful sites achieve results is through the proper use of visuals. With technology growing steadily and many multimedia platforms available at their fingertips journalists have numerous ways to help tell stories using tools other than just text. Journalists are now able to take advantage of powerful, strong, influential and captivating videos and imagery to go along with each and every story they publish.  With this type of addition to a story online journalists have the potential to reach many people with more of an impact. Though uses of video journalists are able to give the readers an inside feel of the emotions, actions and reactions happening around the story. Though these readers are able to convey emotion and create a connection to the story, writer or website.  Don’t get me wrong, the journalistic part of the story is still very important, but there’s no substitute for great visuals combined with strong writing. This winning combination is what’s needed in order to stay on top of the industry and one up other sites. Readers aren’t going to continue reading a story or visit a site again if they are not impacted in some way by the content they interact with.

The third way that successful sites achieve results is through navigation. The site needs to get to the point fast, if the readers have to spend any more than a few seconds skimming the page to find what they were looking for they will leave that page just as quickly as it loaded up. It’s also important to front load the content within the site. Put the most important content in the supper left area of the screen along with other important pieces of information across the top of the screen. Make sure to emphasize the most important content with bold text, colors, visuals…anything to attract the readers’ eyes to exciting material.

The fourth and final way that a site can achieve success is through proper use of Social Sharing. Journalists are now able to invite the audience/readers to interact with the information. Online readers are now able to explore information they are interested in on their own, take part in online discussions, post comments, add perspectives, take part in polls and questionnaires and take part in reviews.