High school was the certifiable nerve center for gossip and rumor. Hallways were constantly abuzz with mutterings of ‘who’s seeing who,’ ‘who did what last weekend,’ and where your reputation felt like the crux of your campus presence. In retrospect, those juvenile murmurs were inconsequential; you’re a successful business owner, you’ve carved a lucrative niche in your local community. The locker-fodder of your past contemporaries is a triviality of your teenage years.

There’s a new loudmouth lurking the corridors of your corporate reality, however: your followers online. Unlike your adolescent notoriety that usually fades when graduation caps are sent airborne, your social media reputation will follow you around like a laser-sighted black cloud until your business collapses or you make the changes to mitigate it.

While the social-media-stubborn may attribute little value to the opinion of some anonymous keyboard-critic, the fact of the matter is, with the advent of Yelp and other aggregate review websites, managing your online standing is of monumental importance.

Many paths can be taken to safeguard your social media rep, each with varying degrees of efficiency and effectiveness. By far, the most productive way to employ your social media platforms in a reputation-management manner is to bolster your customer service capability.

Addressing your customer’s concerns in an expedited fashion through wall-posts, direct-messages or comments will fortify the online community’s impression of your business as an involved, client-focused organization. Dominos will begin to fall in your favor as word of your customer-service prominence circulates the Web, creating new and lifelong supporters alike.

As with most situations in life, when problems arise, cooler heads typically prevail. The same is true online. If you’re forced into crisis-management mode, be it the result of a scathing review blasted on your Facebook wall or an ill-advised status update, the key is to avoid confrontation and address the matters in a calm, dignified way. Any negative-reaction on your part will rapidly trump the initial issue, and potentially amplify the story: affecting your business in the long-run. Try to direct any possibly damaging subjects to a phone or email conversation, where they can be rectified in private.

The word about you in cafeterias and classrooms represents a brief period of your life, but the word circulating the net is the online-embodiment of your business prowess. Take every avenue available to assure that your social media cohorts have nothing but positive things to say.

-Carter Breazeale

Propaganda and rhetoric are an intrinsic aspect of warfare. Controlling information – images, news reports and multimedia – is a psy-ops tactic designed as an opiate for the masses and a crucial component in historical revisionism; and some may argue just as dangerous to the general population as depleted uranium and mortar rounds.

The Syrian Civil War has been raging throughout the Middle East since March of 2011, and with recent assertions by the Russian and United States’ governments to begin arming opposite sides of the conflict, it shows no signs of letting up. There have been numerous allegations of war-crimes committed by the Syrian government – mainly the use of chemical nerve gas on civilians – that has added an extra sinister facet to the situation, and has presented Syria with a unique problem: bad wartime PR.

In an attempt to provide their own version of the events taking place from Damascus to Aleppo, the Syrian regime is taking their war on information to the world of social media. In a report by The Independent this morning, President Bashar al-Assad has activated an Instagram account, and has utilized it to provide photographic fodder such as visiting the injured and infirm in hospitals and wiping the tears from children. I’m not making this up.

Propaganda is nothing new. Manipulating the truth has long since been a characteristic of conflict, as it allows for shielding society from actual events and preventing worldwide scrutiny. In the past, propaganda campaigns consisted of ominous radio broadcasts and foreboding artwork displayed publically, but as information is now instantaneous, it has become necessary to reach the intended audience in another medium: the Internet.

With their foray into Instagram, the Syrian government is attempting a 21^st century twist on reality distortion. The fact of the matter is their civil war has been a two-year exercise in brutality – from both sides – and the rosy images that al-Assad is propagating only serve to dilute perceptions and harm the public. It’s a devious tactic, to be sure, but controlling online-information is now a crucial cog in the war machine.

-Carter Breazeale

If there’s anything more innately terrifying than a massive F-5 tornado careening through a major city like a runaway band-saw, it’s a massive F-5 tornado careening through a major city like a runaway band-saw FILLED WITH SHARKS. In an ode to sheer American brilliance and ingenuity, this horrifying prospect was brought to life in the made-for-TV production Sharknado, and turned the social media stratosphere into a veritable bloodthirsty feeding frenzy.

#Sharknado absolutely dominated the Twitter conversation last Thursday, with over 440,000 mentions in 24 hours, and peaking at 5,000 tweets-per-minute during its broadcast. While viewer ratings did not reflect the online uproar, the Syfy network has a bona fide cult-classic on their hands, and word on the street is that a sequel is already in the works.

Sharknado 2?! Can Los Angeles at least get a moment to breathe without the threat of airborne man-eating beasts ravaging Sunset Boulevard?

The success of this absurd film cannot be measured in ratings, but in the social media chatter it generated. By causing such a commotion from celebrities such as Mia Farrow and Patton Oswalt, Sharknado all but secured itself a spot amongst other B-horror flick stalwarts in pop-culture lore (Snakes on a Plane, anyone?). In my estimation, Syfy will make boatloads on the backend with DVD sales and merchandising.

Some of the highlights of the Twitter explosion include Lost showrunner Damon Lindelof’s assertion that he would pen the sequel to Sharknado before the movie was complete, and the Red Cross in Oklahoma offering support to any residents affected by tornadic fish.

Films like Sharknado epitomize everything that’s great about Hollywood. Deep pockets and bizarre ideas? Produce a movie. Regardless of how seemingly miniscule your anticipated audience may be, with a ridiculous-yet-original premise, your viewership and visibility may exceed any expectations – and in the case of Sharknado, fans took it hook, line and sinker.

-Carter Breazeale