Victoria Shanta Retelny, RD, LDN, reported from the ADA convention, “As nutrition professionals gathered in Denver, Colorado at the annual American Dietetic Association’s Food and Nutrition Conference & Expo (FNCE) in late October, there was a big focus on how RDs can capture potential customers and clients, skyrocket their brand and reinvent their careers through social media.Online venues like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, and personal Web and Blog sites offer a wide-open virtual marketing world. To put it into perspective, Facebook has over 200 million users and is growing fast with 5 million new users a week. Twitter, the microblogging service, has 30 million users and LinkedIn, the professional networking site, has 40 million users.”While we were at the corporate alliance meeting with the folks from USDA for MyPlate, an emphasis was made on using social media for nutrition promotion to help put the messages in front of consumers more often.You can view the MyPlate messages and tips here: http://twitter.com/MyPlate And how can you use twitter.com to aid your nutrition messages? The search is an excellent place to go for icebreaker ideas for your next presentation. Suppose you are working on a presentation for healthier eating? Why not type in “fad diet” or “nutrition” or “carbohydrate” or “myplate” to see what consumers are saying? It can give you insight or a new idea for writing.Recipe and shopping videos are free for members to use:Visit our site at www.foodandhealth.com and you can view our newest recipe videos. Members are allowed to embed to their site for free - just email us or call 800-462-2352 for details!