On September 13th 2009 Owen Matthew (a.k.a The Lil’ Dictator) was born and life as I knew it changed forever. You see I had become a father for the first time in my life and this momentous occasion spurred a huge change and maturation in me personally, forcing me to reprioritize my life, focus on my career and reduce the hours spent at the local brew pubs.

I’ve only been a Dad now for a little over 9 months, but through this crash course called parenthood I’ve managed to pick up some solid life lessons that are applicable not only to fatherhood, but also to my day job as a social media marketer (and addict). With Father’s Day right around the corner, I thought I’d share the 4 things that Fatherhood has taught me about being successful in Social Media.

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The Red & Black Café is a worker owned, collectively managed, anarchist friendly, vegan coffee shop and restaurant located here in Portland, Oregon. A curiosity in some parts of the country, but here in the Northwest just another place to get a vegan meal and a cup of coffee… unless that is; you’re a Portland Police officer.

Recently the Red & Black café made national news when they asked a uniformed Officer to leave the premises because his presence reportedly made some of the other patrons uncomfortable. See, the Red & Black has a Safer Space policy, and according to reports, one of the “owners” asked the officer to leave (after they sold him his cup of coffee) because a good number of their patrons don’t feel safe around the police.

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There has been a lot of discussion as of late regarding Facebook and their new “Your Information is not as private as you might have thought it was” privacy policy. While I really don’t have anything new to add directly to this conversation that hasn’t already been said, it does lead to a discussion about the importance of filtering your social media presence for both your personal and professional personas.

By keeping the following simple guidelines in mind you can hopefully avoid those awkward “I can’t believe my Mom now knows I party like that” moments.

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This is the third and final part of my interview with Luther Lowe, Business Outreach Manager at Yelp.

In the first part we discussed what it means to be Yelp’s Business Outreach Manger, the recent class action lawsuit brought against their company and how Yelp is a transactional social media website. While part two covered why Yelp frowns on review solicitation, how they protect businesses from fraudulent reviews and the do’s and don’ts on interacting with customers who have posted negative reviews about your business.

Today we will discuss the free and paid tools that are available to businesses, the possibility of opting out of Yelp reviews and a new webinar series designed exclusively for small businesses.

Following is the final piece of my three part interview with Luther:

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Facebook was making a little news on Monday, as they launched a new search interface that allows members to view all posted results from the entire network of registered Facebook users, or just results from current Facebook friends. This new “Everyone” filter is very similar to Twitter’s search feature, as it allows you to monitor the entire Facebook network for information and updates on real time news and events. This feature was tremendously popular during the recent Iranian elections, as it allowed users to stay up to date when information from other, more traditional media outlets was scarce.

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In an effort to get a leg up on Google when it comes to real time search, Bing has started integrating real time Twitter messages into their search results. According to their official blog, Bing will now provide results from a handful of the more “prominent and prolific Twitterers” coming from a wide range of spheres.

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While Bing might be promoting itself as the decision engine, Twitter could make a play for being known as the “Freedom Engine”. According to an article in the Washington Times, the State Department last weekend asked Twitter to delay it scheduled maintenance this week, which would have cut daytime service to Iran on Tuesday, just as protests against the recent elections continue to gain momentum. (more…)

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