Happy Hallowe’en folks – have a great evening and make sure to take a healthy mix of candy and beer! (Except for the kids – maybe just candy for these little guys…) Pin it

As you may know, I’m part of the 12for12k social media-led charity initiative that supports a different charity each month throughout 2009. October’s chosen charity is Musicians on Call, an amazing group of folks that take the healing power of music to bed-ridden hospital patients. They currently operate in four cities across the U.S. and amazingly a whole program can be operated for one year with just $10,000. Tonight sees a live concert take place to help raise funds and…

Pop quiz. How many of these phrases do you recognize? – It’s all about the dialogue. – You have to fish where the fish are. – You have to engage. – You can’t measure the ROI of social media. – Look at Zappos / Dell / Best Buy / Jetblue / Comcast as examples of how to do it right. – Etc, etc, etc… (okay, this last one isn’t really part of the phrases!) Now, second part of the pop…

One of the key takeaways that you’ll hear most in social media is that you have to listen. You have to listen to what your audience is saying; you have to listen to what your customers are saying; you have to listen to what your competitors are saying; and you have to listen to what your community is saying. That’s a lot of listening. And with your time already taken up with so many other things, it can look pretty…

A couple of weeks back I ran a “mini contest”, if you like, to celebrate this blog’s first full year. The gist was as follows – up for grabs was the Headway premium WordPress theme (used on this very blog) as well as a copy of Trust Agents and Six Pixels of Separation. All you needed to do to “win” was tell me why you wanted Headway. Well, the votes are in – as in, I’ve made my mind up…

So there are a few new changes/tweaks/additions (delete where applicable) coming to this blog soon, and I’d love your help to decide on how it pans out. After all, you guys are the real stars around here – I just offer somewhere to hang. The first change I’m thinking about is the design. I’m tempted to go for either a fairly minimalistic look – think something akin to Posterous – or a more magazine feel like this one. I’ll still…

Instant coffee is fast. Instant coffee offers the quick solution you need at that time. Instant coffee keeps you satisfied until you can get to the gourmet roast or Colombian dark coffee from your favourite bean. As customers, we love full bean flavour but we don’t always need that – sometimes all we need to keep us happy is some instant coffee. How’s your business at serving coffee? Pin it

Creatives are often looking for the biggest bang for the buck. Marketing; PR; advertising; a lot of the time these disciplines share the same questions – what cool way can we get our product in front of someone? How much budget can we allocate to this product launch? What celebrity can we get to promote us? What lifestyle magazine can we get to write about us? All valid points, all part of the process. And there have been many examples…

There’s a question mark over “who owns social media” when it comes to business. Some say PR should own social media, since they’ve been dealing with the public faces of companies since time began. Some say marketing, as social media is the new email marketing is the new direct marketing is the new cold call marketing (but all wrapped up in a fuzzy warm cloak). Some say customer service; some say legal; some say sales. And so on, etc, delete…

(From the TEDx Ottawa website): TED is an annual event where some of the world’s leading thinkers and doers are invited to share what they are most passionate about. “TED” stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design — three broad subject areas that are, collectively, shaping our future. Past speakers include Bill Clinton, Bill Gates, Jane Goodall, Frank Gehry, Paul Simon, Sir Richard Branson, Philippe Starck and Bono. TED was first held in Monterey, California, in 1984. In 2001, Chris Anderson’s Sapling…