Ten ideas for a destination wedding in Aruba

Our #prattwedding in Aruba is almost here! After a 22-month engagement we can't believe how quickly it came! It's seems like it was just yesterday Ally came home to Ryan and this. 

Now with only 11 days until the ceremony and 6 days until many of us arrive on the island, we finally have all of our plans finalized and we're truly ready to leave. There was a lot of preperation and planning -- though admittedly easier than a local wedding -- but it's definitely necessary to make sure everyone is on the same page before they leave the country.

Besides the obvious things -- like flights, accommodations, luggage, and passports -- here are ten things we sent to all of our guests as reminders 1 week prior to our destination wedding on the beaches of Aruba:

1. Great overview article worth taking 5-mins to read: Aruba Travel Guide
2. iOS and Android app to download to text for free while traveling abroad: WhatsApp Messenger
3. A hashtag to use when we you or your guests tweet or post pictures on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Vine, etc: i.e. #prattwedding
   
4. Tentative agenda of ideas of fun things to do for the week in Aruba i.e.: WeddingWire.com/PrattWedding Agenda
   
5. Contact list of people coming to Aruba and where they're staying on the island and sitting at the reception.
   
6. Google Map of hotels, beach houses, etc. i.e.: Map of the Pratt Wedding in Aruba
   
7. Printable map of island and attractions: I Heart Aruba Map
   
8. Address and times of ceremony & reception: i.e. 5:45pm on Vela Beach at Aruba Marriott & Stellaris Casino @ L.G. Smith Blvd 101, Aruba
   
9. Address of the Bride & Groom: i.e. TheArubaHouse.com @ L.G. Smith Blvd 470, Aruba
   
10. Info about the rehearsal dinner or scheduled parties and excursions: i.e. Jolly Pirates Sunset Cruise 

If you're planning a destination wedding in Aruba and have any questions, don't hesitate to ask them in the comments below:

Facebook, Twitter and Google+ cover photo sizes

You may have noticed my new cover photo (see above).

Well Twitter just announced its new profile page redesign, including a new "Cover Photo" feature that's their attempt to catch up with what their two main competitors -- Facebook and Google+ -- have already done.

Originally posted on September 18, 2012. Updated on April 25, 2014: Twitter redesigned their profiles again with new, larger cover photo images = 1,500 pixels by 500 pixels.

It's a way for people to express themselves beyond their profile picture and bio. But its also one of my favorite new universal features amongst social networks. Why? Because it allows users to upload a profile picture of just their face (which, by definition, is what a profile picture should be) and now use the cover photo for pictures of their dog, baby, significant other, favorite athlete, actor, team, etc.

But unfortunately, it's not that simple. While most profile pictures today are a standard square:

• Facebook: 128px by 128px
• Twitter: 400px by 400px
• Google+: 252px by 252px

...each of these social networks have different size constraints for their cover photos:

• Facebook: 851 pixels wide by 315 pixels tall (or 3404px by 1260px)
• Twitter: 1,500 pixels wide by 500 pixels tall (or 3756px by 1878px)
• Google+: 480 pixels wide by 270 pixels tall (or 3840px by 2160px)

So please, change your profile picture to an image of yourself, by yourself, and then take advantage of this new social network feature. But if you want to create a cover photo that meets each site's recommendations, you'll have to have 3 different images or at least 3 different crops of your image for each.

An image is worth 1000 retweets

An image is worth a thousand retweets.

The old adage "a picture is worth a thousand words" was long attributed to Confucius as a Chinese proverb, but the expression was actually first used in a 1911 newspaper article discussing journalism and publicity.

The exact phrase first appears in an 1918 newspaper advertisement for the San Antonio Light which says:

One of the Nation's Greatest Editors Says:
One Picture is Worth a Thousand Words
The San Antonio Light's Pictorial Magazine of the War
Exemplifies the truth of the above statement—judging from the warm
reception it has received at the hands of the Sunday Light readers

Today, the phrase is a full blown cliche, forbad by journalists and newspapers around the world. But with the popularity of social media and its ever-growing reach, the context of the phrase now takes new meaning.

Today, with the constant stream of posts, blogs, and tweets, it can be difficult to differentiate and emerge from the masses. But one simple way to draw the eye to your posts, and to your account, is with images.

If the objective of every social media account is to gain followers, and the intention of every post is to promote engagement, then the best (and easiest) way to attain your goals is by adding a photo, picture, or image to everything you do. But don't just add a profile picture and cover photo (which you should definitely be doing), you should also add an image to every tweet, every blog post, and every Facebook update. You'll see your likes, favorites and retweets increase almost immediately. And before you know it, every image will be worth a thousand retweets. 

Top 10 movies of 2013

Top 10 movies of 2013

Every other month in 2013, I found myself walking out of a movie theater saying, "best film of the year... hands down!" First it was Warm Bodies in February. Then Before Midnight in May. Then Pacific Rim in July and Prisoners in September. Then it was Gravity and Captain Philips in October. And finally, Wolf of Wall Street in December.

It was a record-breaking year at the box office, but also a fantastic year of award-worthy filmmaking (two scales that rarely correlate). There were brilliant screenplays, moving stories, and outstanding individual performances. In my opinion, Tom Hanks deserves an Oscar just for the final ten minutes of Captain Phillips and the rest of the major acting awards should go to the cast of American Hustle.

But there's more to a "best picture" list than a handful of Oscar-worthy performances, and now that I've had some time to reflect, I think I've finally finalized my lists. Here are my...

... top 10 best films of 2013:

1. Gravity
2. Captain Phillips
3. Wolf of Wall Street
4. Pacific Rim
5. Lone Survivor
6. Blackfish
7. American Hustle
8. Her
9. Frozen
10. Chasing Ice

...and top 10 favorite movies of 2013:

1. Pacific Rim
2. Wolf of Wall Street
3. Lone Survivor
4. Blackfish
5. Prisoners
6. Gravity
7. This is the End
8. Man of Steel
9. Warm Bodies
10. Croods

Disagree? I'm sure you do. Let me have it in the comments:

25 holi-days of better Christmas movies

Sick of the movies that ABC Family shows every year during its "25 Days of Christmas" holiday special? There are literally dozens of ways to watch movies these days, change the channel, visit your local Redbox, fire up Netflix, check the discount DVD bin, or search on-demand, and go watch these films instead!

These are the 25 best Christmas movies of all-time, in reverse order, saving the very best for Christmas Day:

• On December 1st, watch: Rise of the Guardians
• 2nd: A Very Harold & Kumar 3D Christmas
• 3rd: It's a Wonderful Life
• 4th: Die Hard
• 5th: Black Christmas
• 6th: Miracle on 34th Street (1994)
• 7th: Four Christmases
• 8th: A Charlie Brown Christmas
• 9th: Jingle All the Way
• 10th: Love Actually
• 11th: Iron Man 3
• 12th: Miracle on 34th Street (1947)
• 13th: The Muppet Christmas Carol
• 14th: Arthur Christmas
• 15th: Scrooged
• 16th: Fred Claus
• 17th: Elf
• 18th: How the Grinch Stole Christmas (Animated)
• 19th: Home Alone
• 20th: Die Hard 2
• 21st: Dr. Seuss' How the Grinch Stole Christmas (Live Action)
• 22nd: The Santa Clause
• 23rd: The Santa Clause 2
• 24th: Home Alone 2
• 25th: National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation

Did I miss any of your favorites? Add them in the comments below:

6 simple tips for social media

At a high level, social media seems very simple. Post this, follow her, retweet that, connect with him. But after you dive in, it can be a struggle to stay afloat. You quickly realize that it can be much more complicated than those simple one-click actions. It doesn't have to be.

Here are six simple tips to help you gain more followers and get more likes:

Adopt early: One of the easiest ways to gain popularity on any social media platform is to be an early adopter. Those who join early not only learn the ropes faster, but can also take advantage of the domino effect of all the other people who join from that day forward. Each person that joins a new network immediately follows every one of their friends who are already on that network. If you're not on that list, they may never look for you again.

Follow friends: You should not only follow all of your friends from day one, but also occasionally check to see if any new friends have joined. Some platforms are great about this (Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest), sending you notifications any time your friend from Facebook joins. But others take a little more effort. Check your settings or search tools until you find a "Search My Contacts" button or similar link. Most of your friends will follow back, they likely just didn't realize your account existed.

Follow back: The number one rule you'll hear the most when attending networking seminars, reading social media books, or watching a live webinar about social networks is "Follow Back!" It's something I'm not crazy about (for other reasons), but it truly is the quickest and easiest way to gain the most followers and increase interactions with your posts.

Post once per day: Unless you already have over 2,000 followers, friends, and/or connections I'd advise against posting any more than once per day. Spamming people's timelines and feeds with your opinions and stories is the fastest way to get unfollowed, unfriended, deleted, and blocked. If you have more than one post in mind, save it as draft or schedule it go live the following day.

Update profile: When someone finally does find you on any social network, the first thing they will do is read your profile. Keep it short, simple, and creative. But also make it descriptive. No matter how eccentric you are in real-life, your profile should be direct and to the point.

Add profile picture: I lied, the first thing they will do is look at your profile picture. Many times, they won't even make it to your profile because they didn't even realize it was you. If you want people to follow you, replace that Twitter egg with a headshot. Don't have a professional photo? Fine. Just upload anything for now. You can worry about putting your best face forward later.


I know a lot of my readers are also social media gurus and social networking ninjas, so please feel free to post your other tips in the comments section as well:

Ten reasons to not follow back

Every social media ninja and social networking jedi says the same thing, "Follow Back!" I disagree. Here are ten reasons why:

1. First, just because everyone else is doing it doesn't mean you should. If Johnny jumped... well, you get the point.
2. Second, it is okay to follow back, just do not do so blindly. Read their profile and last 3 tweets to see if you have anything in common.
3. Just because someone is following you doesn't mean you have the same interests. 
4. There are people out there who follow-unfollow just to gain followers -- so you could end up following people who actually aren't following you back.
5. You can't legitimately interact with your audience if your timelines and feeds are flooded with thousands of new posts every minute.
6. Social network influence algorithms like Klout's take your ratio of follows to followers into account when calculating your score -- having more followers than people you follow will improve your score.
7. Most social media gurus follow a lot less people than they have followers -- so they're not even following their own advice.
8. The only way to know if someone is worth following is by seeing the number of followers they have (the most interesting people have the most followers), so if we all followed back how would we know who to follow to begin with?
9. If everyone everywhere followed everyone back what would be the point? The greatest thing about social media is being able to create niche social networks with those of similar interests.
10. And lastly, by not following back, you're doing your part to put an end to this endless cycle. We have to start somewhere.

Can you think of any other good reasons not to follow back (I struggled with the last 2 if you couldn't tell)? If so, add them to the comments below:

An argument for generic LinkedIn invites

You've probably seen a blog post, heard a podcast, or attended a webinar that called for an end to generic LinkedIn invitations. Everyone is talking about it. And everyone seems to be in agreement. For example, here are 10 opinions from some industry experts:

• 40x50.com - (I Am Tired Of) Generic LinkedIn Invitations
• SocialMediaToday.com - LinkedIn Invitations: Everything You Need to Know
• Jim Muldoon - Improve Your Introduction Connect Request Ratios
• MarketingThink.com - 5 Ways to Use LinkedIn Invitations Help Your Social Selling
• Forbes.com - Your LinkedIn Intervention: 5 Changes You Must Make
• Kyle Lacy - Stop With Your Stupid & Generic LinkedIn Invitations
• TimsStrategy.com - 11 Ways to Personalize a LinkedIn Invite
• JobSearch.About.com - How to Send LinkedIn Invitations & Messages
• FastCompany.com - The 3 LinkedIn Etiquette Rules You Should Never Break
• CareerRocketeer.com - 5 Guidelines for Accepting LinkedIn Invitations

But I couldn't disagree more! I am here to argue exactly the opposite:

You don't need to customize your LinkedIn invitations to connect.

You don't customize each phone call greeting do you? No, you simply say "Hello". And when you handwrite a letter you simply start with "Dear". So why do we have to customize our LinkedIn greetings? In an effort to combat the 10 (thousand) posts that are telling you why you should, here are 10 reasons why you shouldn't:

1. It's easier to send generic invitations! Why are we making technology (that is supposed to make the world simpler and more convenient) more complicated by forcing people to customize each individual LinkedIn invitation?
2. The people who send these generic invites aren't lazy, they're busy! Time is money, so the fact that you didn't take the time to customize your message likely means you're a busy, successful businessperson who understands this concept, and therefore someone others should want to connect with on LinkedIn.
3. The LinkedIn mobile app does not allow you to customize your message, so the request likely came from someone innovative and technologically savvy who, again, you should want to connect with on LinkedIn.
4. The LinkedIn social connector add-on for Outlook also does not allow you to customize invitations, but it is the quickest and most effective way to connect with someone you just exchanged emails with while at the office.
5. Nobody reads, so until LinkedIn allows you to embed a 30-second elevator pitch video recording in each invitation you might as well not waste the time writing it.
6. Everyone should accept every LinkedIn invite to connect (you can always block them later), but the whole point of a social network is to connect with people, so why does it matter what their invitation said? The real power is what they bring to your network after you connect. If you accept someone's invitation and they are constantly spamming you, block them (but, unless you're a celebrity, this will rarely happen).
7. If people don't accept every invite, they can still check out your LinkedIn profile (and Google you) to find out more about you than you could possibly explain in the invitation's 300 character limit.
8. LinkedIn itself even says the ability to "add a personal note" is OPTIONAL! If it was required it would just be a blank text input box without a generic template.
9. You don't have to customize your "friendship" requests on Facebook or requests to follow on Twitter and Instagram (the so-called "personal" social networks), so why do you need to personalize your invitations to connect on LinkedIn (the so-called "professional" social network)?
10. And lastly, again, no one should expect you to customize your LinkedIn invites until everyone starts answering the phone, "Hello this is Ryan an innovative and creative marketer who would like to talk to you on the phone right now and here's why you shouldn't hang up yet..."

Are you on team generic LinkedIn invitations? If so, add your reasons below! Or if not, feel free to tell me why I'm wrong:

Marketing = Creativity + Data

I've always been creative (every child is). But I've also always loved math (yes, math). In 6th grade I actually tallied up the stat lines for our fantasy basketball league myself, using a newspaper (pre-internet) and a TI-85 calculator (pre-iPhone). Then in college, I even chose my first major based off my creative skills and love for math. But after two years at the Knowlton School of Architecture at The Ohio State University, I realized that it was actually too design based and lacking the engineering I had expected. I wanted more math. I wanted more data. That's when I found the perfect career -- Marketing.

Marketing and advertising have always been stereo-typically creative fields (i.e. Mad Men's Creative Director, Don Draper). But today, great marketers are more than just creatives, they're analytical as well. Today, marketers have to thoroughly enjoy digging into the data and tracking KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) on a weekly basis. In order to be a successful marketer in the digital age, you need to track campaign effectiveness from the top of the funnel through the sale.

And now, there's a new marketing buzzword sweeping the nation: Big Data. According to smartdatacollective.com, "big data refers to our ability to collect and analyze the vast amounts of data we are now generating in the world." Now, with big data, marketers can start analyzing and utilizing information earlier in the sales process, before suspects even enter the funnel.

For example, have you read the story about how Target figured out a teen girl was pregnant before her father did? Or how President Obama's 2012 campaign used big data to rally individual voters? Both are examples of how "marketers" analyzed the vast amounts of data available to them to target specific audiences and then persuade them to act in accordance to their organization's goal. And both are examples of how, today, marketing isn't just about being creative. Today:

Marketing = Creativity + Data

The new 80/20 rule

If you've read my blog, seen my presentations, or talked to me about social media, you've probably heard me preach my version of the 80/20 rule (which by the way is in no way related to Joseph M. Juran's Pareto principle) in regards to what you post on social networks:

80% of the things you post online should be professional and in-line with your public profile while the other 20% can and SHOULD be personal or off-topic.

But lately, I've found the 80/20 rule to be useful guideline for many other things in my life. Generally, if you can split a decision into two 2 black-and-white choices, there is a grey area in the middle in which 80% of your decisions should be made near the good, reasonable, acceptable, unusual, and wise choices end of the spectrum and the other 20% near the high-risk, poor, and easy choices end. Here are some examples:

• Eat 80% healthy foods and 20% junk foods
• Read 80% enlightening books/articles and 20% gossip
• Watch 80% enlightening TV/movies and 20% gossip
• Shop at 80% local stores and 20% national conglomerates
• Focus 80% on helping others and 20% on helping yourself
• Invest 80% of your money on safe bonds/plans/accounts and 20% on aggressive stocks

Can you think of any others? Add them in the comments below: