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2011
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Social Media is About Conversations
I’ve written posts about how Jimmy Fallon and Ashton Kutcher have demonstrated the breakdown of social media. At it’s core, social media is about conversations – even if you’re a social media rock star. For a long time I’ve believed that people could not maintain relationships when their follower count reached a certain number. I [...]
What I Learned From Jim Hillyer: Social Media is an Amplifier
I’ve written a couple of posts in the past on this topic, but people obviously still need educating. Social media tools like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube are amplifiers. They can take the good and the bad and amplify the effects. The message no longer falls on the ears of 10, 50, or 500 people, but [...]
Social Media Candor
Lately I’ve been thinking about the degree of transparency and candor an individual or organization should adopt on social media. I’ve had discussions with people who believe in complete and open dialog – a pull no punches approach. Social media has proven to be very successful for open discussion, but it also can come at [...]
The Double Edged Sword of Social Media
On Sunday, there were high winds (gusting at 117 km/hr) in the Lethbridge area. By the early afternoon, a fire had started west of the city (you can see footage of how severe the fire was). I first heard about the fire from my daughter, who heard about it from her friend on Facebook. I [...]
Higher Education and Social Media ROI
If you work in marketing, communications or admissions in higher education, you’ve probably been using social media tools (at least I hope you have been). You’ve also probably had questions about the value and Return on Investment of your social media activities. As institutions continue to face tighter and tighter budgets, it becomes even more [...]
ShortStack: An Amazing Tool for Facebook Pages
In September, I wrote a post about Facebook Contests. In that post I promised a tutorial / review of a tool that can help you create promotions and other amazing pages on Facebook. I’ve used ShortStack for over a year and I would never want to manage a Facebook page without it. The team at [...]
Social Media: You can lead a horse to water, but…
We’ve all heard the saying, “you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink.” This saying can be applied to any concept – including social media. I’ve come to this realization in my role as a Web & Social Media Strategist. In this role, I’m responsible for identifying opportunities to leverage [...]
Don’t Cast Your Google Adwords Net Too Wide
Google Adwords is a great cost-effective way to market your business locally, nationally and around the world. One of the aspects of Google Adwords is selecting what search keywords to target that will trigger your ad to appear. Some consultants may suggest to cast your keywords net wide to ensure maximum exposure and get the [...]
The Uselessness of a Facebook Like
More and more I’m seeing companies asking people to help get their Facebook page get to a certain fan count. This is an utter waste of time! While I believe the the number of fans a Facebook page has affects the possibility of messages being seen, it is not the ultimate measurement of success. If [...]
LinkedIn: The New Resumé
I haven’t written much about LinkedIn. But I have been doing some presentations lately on the influences of social media on the job search process. LinkedIn is being called by some, the new resumé. So you’ve created a LinkedIn account a while ago, but haven’t touched it since. Well here are some tips you can [...]
Steve Jobs – One Man’s Mark on the World
I was very sad to hear of Steve Jobs’ passing today. His role at Apple and the visionary work he did in bringing us devices like the iPad and iPhone have permanently influenced the world. President Obama captured the scope of Jobs’ influence when he said this: The world has lost a visionary, and there [...]
The Secret to Blogging & Presentation Success
I’ve been blogging for over three years and have been sharing presentations on a variety of social media topics for the past year. My most recent presentation was about social media and job searching. It went extremely well and the audience was really pleased. So much so that they are pursuing further customized training. A [...]
Selling Facebook Fans… A Social Media Low!
I had thought about this topic over a year ago, but never fully developed it. This week I received an e-mail that made me decide the topic is important. It seems that a metric that many people attribute to success is the number of followers or fans you have. While I believe it is important [...]
TD Canada: Great Twitter Customer Service
Businesses around the world are trying to figure out how to leverage Twitter in their business. One way that has proven extremely successful is in customer service. Comcast paved the way in this area in 2008 by reaching out to customers on Twitter. Since 2008, companies have been successfully using Twitter to offer another channel [...]
Establishing a Social Media Program
Whether your organization has 50 or 5000 employees, a social media program is critical to your organization’s success in the social space. As organizational use of social media evolves and becomes more prevalent, establishing a program to carry the organization forward in this space is critical. There are four areas to focus on when formalizing social [...]
Facebook Contests
If you have a Facebook page for your business? Then you’ve probably run or are thinking about running a Facebook contest. This is a really good idea as 57% of consumers “like” brand Facebook pages for promotions. I’ve seen countless “contests” on Facebook pages that had you like the page, upload a photo to the [...]
The 3 C’s of Blogging
So you’re thinking of blogging or you’ve just started a new blog. That’s awesome! A blog is an effective tool in communicating your message, demonstrating thought leadership and interacting with your customers. The challenge is that there are over 168 million blogs. How does your blog break through the noise? In order for your blog [...]
Social Media Readiness: You Better Be Ready to Be Seen in Curlers
At a recent leadership conference, I was talking with a colleague. We were talking about social media and I had indicated the growth that we’ve seen in the last year and she asked what I would attribute to the success. That got me thinking. I shared with her that the most important factor is organizational [...]
Put Yourself in Your Customer’s Shoes
I just got back from vacation (hence the sparse postings in the last few weeks) and I wanted to share an experience I had. I was filling up at the Shell gas station in Drumheller, Alberta and bought $90 gas. When I went inside to pay, I was upset to find out that the Interac [...]
Why should I care about Google+?
I want to start off by apologizing for being inconsistent with my posting over the past few weeks. I’ve been wrapping up a university course that has been taking a lot of my attention. So by now, unless you live under a rock, you’ve heard of the new social network Google+. Right now Google+ is in a [...]