Global Influence

Another celebration weekend is upon us! Labor Day – the unofficial end of summer. Many will be heading to the beach, others attending or hosting picnics and cookouts. Some of these people will also be enjoying a few alcoholic beverages as they bid adieu to another summer season.

Did you know that in 2008, just over the Labor Day holiday weekend, 194 people were killed in crashes involving an impaired driver? Don’t let yourself, your friends or your family become a statistic.

If you’re hosting an event this weekend, be sure to have plenty of non-alcoholic beverage options for your guests who must drive. The Buzzed Driving is Drunk Driving Facebook page has compiled a list of fun non-alcoholic drink recipes to make your party enjoyable for everyone.

You can also check out resources in your state that will provide drivers who had had a bit too much to drink with a safe ride home, as well.

Have you assigned a Designated Driver for your weekend festivities? Thank them with a fun badge like the one below.

Be sure to take a moment to visit the Buzzed Driving is Drunk Driving website and take the pledge to never drive buzzed.

Guest Post:

By Regina Lewis, AOL Consumer Advisor

These days, your teens’ “friends” aren’t just the kids hanging out in your kitchen and family room, they’re hundreds of contacts on their “friend” and “buddy” lists. More than 50 million teens (ages 13 to 17) are online worldwide and the average number of “friends” is 130. For many teens, these numbers are even higher. It’s not unusual to have more than 500 “friends” and more than 1,000 profile photos.

So, how can you realistically keep up with your child’s vast circle of “friends” and ongoing status and photo updates?

1. Become a “Friend”

For starters, you can become your child’s online. They’ll need to accept your friend request. This can be easier said than done. In some cases, you may get push back. It’s your call how strongly you press.

There are more private alternatives. A new product called SafeSocial lets you privately see everything you would as a “friend” and even more. Many kids prefer this route. Remember, you’re not “spying” on them; you’re simply doing your job as an informed and involved parent.

2. Curb the Comments

If your child is reluctant to accept you publicly as a “friend,” be sure not to push your luck by excessively commenting on their page once you are granted access. Grandparents can be over-commenting culprits, too. Often teens find this “embarrassing” and it may even lead to having them “un-friend” you. It happens all the time.

3. Get a Report Card

The new parenting tool SafeSocial offers a time-efficient and thorough way to keep tabs on your children’s social networking without being too intrusive. It delivers an easy-to-read report card providing a 360 degree view of their overall social networking— what they’re saying and doing and who their friends are.

This answers one of the biggest issues facing parents all over the country—feeling like you need to spend hours each week monitoring your child’s online activity and still not really being sure if you’re seeing everything (they can filter your view) or what you might be missing (what’s happening on their friends’ pages).

4. Watch the Friends

All friends are not created equal. Some your children may know well, some they may barely know at all. You can get a good feel for their entire list via SafeSocial’s Friend Engine, which takes an extensive look at your kids’ friends and checks them against more than 50 databases to see if they may not be who they say they are. You’ll be alerted when an adult becomes a friend of your child, when someone looks suspicious or has no or few other mutual friends with your child.

5. Loaded Language and Photos

Specific words that may come up in strings of conversation— sex, drugs, alcohol, suicide and so on and suggestive or violent language will be flagged, so you can hone in on the suspect dialog versus reading every post. This helps prevent missing something inadvertently.

You can even opt to be immediately notified via an email alert. This piece could prove priceless in protecting your children’s safety and managing their reputations.

While every conversation and image is archived, you can adjust the settings to simply view those that are called out. This lets you give kids more privacy as they mature. You will also see all photos, including those other people post of your child. Young people tend to push the envelope with photos and videos, so checking out this section of the report card is critical.

Overall, social networking is an integral part of many teenage lives and an opportunity for your kids to learn to express themselves in a creative and responsible fashion. It’s too big a trend to ignore. You can embrace it with these new tools on your side. For more information, visit www.safesocial.com,  www.safety.aol.com and www.reginalewis.com.

AOL Consumer Advisor Regina Lewis (www.reginalewis.com) is a national TV and radio contributor and Internet trend expert. She knows the tips, tricks, secrets and shortcuts for making technology work for you.

Major corporations around the world have begun to realize the influential power of Social Media.  Public relations firms, ad agencies, and traditional media marketers are now scrambling to infiltrate the new media world via the power of bloggers. But while they understand the power of the blogosphere, they still remain blinded by numbers – page rank, subscribers, page views.  Global Influence is a media marketing network designed to harness the collective Global Influence of a group of bloggers.  At Global Influence we are not interested in your statistics – we are interested in you.

Your Community

Unlike similar groups, Global Influence believes in building a community.  As a member of Global Influence, you will have the opportunity to join a social network of men and women where you will be given the tools to support one another’s sites. There will be no need to wait until you see the same widget or giveaway appear on a friend’s site for you to know who belongs to Global Influence. We believe in transparency and honesty – the only way to build a strong community.

Your Control

As a member of Global Influence, you will never be obligated to participate in an online campaign that does not fit your needs or the needs of your readers. You will have the control to choose the giveaways, reviews, and content that are right for you.

Your Benefits

By joining Global Influence you will have the opportunity to deliver exciting news and opportunities to your readers before the rest of the web. You will also have the opportunity to win prizes and receive free product for you and your readers.  More importantly, you’ll have the opportunity to use your Global Influence to change the world with our campaigns for change, shining a light on important issues that affect us all.  As Global Influence grows, we hope that you will grow along with us.

To join, please fill out this secure form: Join Global Influence

What is Global Influence?

A network of over 725 bloggers and rapidly growing, these men and women are active in social media and have experience using their voices to influence the decision making and purchasing power of other members of their community.

How can Global Influence work for you?

Our Social Media campaigns offer a cost-effective solution to blogger outreach through one concentrated effort that reaches a large number of consumers. We develop, implement, and manage end-to-end campaigns through our network of blogs, Twitter, and Facebook with results that are sure to impress.  Our blog contests and public service campaigns go beyond blogger outreach with content guaranteed to appear on over 200 sites through our embedded widgets.  Our connection to Resourceful Mommy Media provides something no other network can offer – direct access to Sitewarming Parties by Resourceful Mommy, the original Twitter party to introduce brands and products to the Twitter Audience.

What can you do for Global Influence?

We are always interested in content ideas, particularly those aimed at the mom community.  We welcome ideas for fun blog contest prizes for our network of bloggers, products to review, and be sure to ask about our media buy-in opportunities.

Are you ready to harness the power of Global Influence?

To contact Global Influence, a Resourceful Mommy Media Network, please email:amy@resourcefulmommymedia.com