These days, it’s almost obligatory for every small business to maintain a social media network. For small businesses, social media opens the door to long-term relationships with customers. If you use social media for marketing campaigns and relationship building, you should measure your activities to determine what’s successful, and how you can improve.

Social media metrics shouldn’t be kept just for the sake of records. Metrics are great tools to track activity over time and are necessary to understand the general attitude towards a brand or company. Metrics can also be used for short-term measurements and for single campaigns. 

These are early days in digital marketing and analysis, so there is no set standard for measuring social media success. As you navigate the uncharted waters of social media marketing, follow the tips below to ensure you learn as much as possible from your business’s social activities. 

Set Goals

Analytics improperly measured can be messy and overwhelming. Before you start measuring each tweet, Instagram photo share, and Facebook comment, think about your goals for your business’s social media network. As you build communication channels with customers, consider the following questions: what are you trying to achieve, and which channels are most relevant to your goals? 

Summer is all about taking it slow and enjoying life, which is much easier to do if you have some fun gadgets to play with. Here is a list of some cool items that might make it on your must-have list.

Oregon Scientific EB612 UV Monitor

This handy little device is great for a day at the beach. You can monitor your tan when you’re at the beach or playing outdoors. It measures the strength of the sunlight and lets you know how much exposure time you can handle based on your skin tone. You’ll find this cool gadget on Amazon.com.

Solar Power

How frustrating is it to spend the day at the beach and have your iPhone go dead? With the FreeLoader Solar Charger from Amazon, you can hook up your iPhone, iPod, or other devices, and allow the sun to charge the battery.

Reports have been showing that the housing market is improving, which is good news to both buyers and sellers.  There are several indicators that show we may be transitioning to a seller's market. 

Inventory

The length of time that it takes for inventory to turn over has dropped to around three months, which is good news for sellers.  This means that if there were no new homes listed for sale, it would take three months for all of the homes to be sold.

More Jobs

When new businesses open or current businesses add new workers, more people will be buying homes.  People may move into the area and others feel more confident to buy a house when they have a stable income.

House Prices Increase

This indicator is usually one of the later to be seen.  However, you will begin to see less negotiation between buyers and sellers; buyers are more willing to pay the sales price.  Sellers are less likely to offer deals or reduce their price because they know someone else will be interested in the house at the selling price.

For aspiring filmmakers and enlightened film buffs, film festivals are the greatest showcase of undiscovered talent. Whether you’re looking to be the next Quentin Tarantino or a New York Times film critic, participating in film festivals can present many opportunities, like being recognized for your talents and jump-starting your career. If you’re looking for exposure, opportunity, and networking, here are the top ten festivals to attend where you can meet Hollywood producers, professionals, celebrities and industry bigwigs. 

1. Cannes Film Festival 

Every summer in Côte d'Azur, the film festival at Cannes caters to the very best of the international cinema scene. Amid celebrity glamour, there is a feverish atmosphere as the festival showcases upscale international films, auterist Hollywood films and re-releases of classics.

2. Sundance Film Festival

Perhaps the most popular festival, Sundance is the largest independent film festival in the U.S. and takes place in Park City, Utah. Promising young talent submit features, documentaries, animated and short films to be showcased at the event where top film executives shop around for the next “it” project. 

In some families, there are some subjects that you just don’t bring up at the dinner table. If you’ve been afraid to mention your budding libertarian sentiments to your socially-minded family or friends, arm yourself with the following tips and you’ll soon be engaged in a rational, lively political discussion.

Know what you know and what you don’t. 

Being a political junkie is a full-time job, and you’re not likely to be thoroughly versed on certain topics unless you’ve spent hours researching. Fortunately, unless you’re on a competitive debate team, there’s no rule that mandates all parties in a conversation must know every nuance and facet of a subject. This means you should be open-minded about possible interpretations of a political situation or candidate; it also means you should recognize where your own knowledge falls short.

Know the opposition.

Just as you should know yourself, you should know the opposition’s views. It’s too easy to consume news with a confirmation bias because those pundits tell you what you want to hear.