We should be in social media – just not right now. We should start a company blog – just not right now. We should be making our website more user-friendly – just not right now. We should be doing a lot of things – just not right now. Not right now – it’s the phrase that companies and executives/decision makers use when they know they’re behind in the game but they’re not sure how to get into it. It’s the…

Update October 21 2010: This post was originally written from certain conversations. Events after this post put the following content into question and whether the full story was told here. Hence the strikethoughs. I’m sure the real story will come out sometime… From its inception, BlogCatalog has been a resource for bloggers to both submit their own blogs and find new ones. In their own words, BlogCatalog is “the largest user submitted blog directory the world has ever seen.” It’s…

Don’t wait to read case studies in your industry – be the case study instead.  

Companies put a lot of effort into team building. They spend thousands on booking events and locations to foster team spirit. Weekends away, surviving in the wilderness, setting tasks to pass to create a better understanding of teamwork. Thing is, it’s very often a false economy. Team building exercises like this can work, but often feel like role-playing exercises – they’re not real-life examples. Instead of sending people away to build a team, why not build it from the inside…

When I first started this blog just under two years ago, I had one clear goal – fostering thought connections. Sure, I’d be using it to offer my views on the still-emerging (at the time) social media platform, as well as ideas and solutions on how you could get the most out of the new networks and tools that seemed to be popping up all over the place. But the overriding factor would be to have my blog as a…

Whenever I used to meet with a potential new client that was interested in a social media program, I always used to take a piece of paper with a little drawing on it. The surprise on their faces was always entertaining when they’d ask for my ideas for them, and instead of presenting a huge multi-slide PowerPoint, I’d show them this piece of paper and the four words on it. The reason for keeping it simple was simplicity itself –…

One of the reasons I set up a Facebook page was to offer an outlet where folks that were more comfortable on Facebook could connect and interact. Yes, my blog is my home space, and then there’s also Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube and other social profiles where we can connect. But not everyone likes reading blogs; not everyone’s on Twitter; some folks don’t like to get too involved with LinkedIn, and so on. So, making an outpost available where you’re most…

photo credit: trovster

Last night on Twitter, I was part of the #sbt10 chat, part of the Start Blogging Today project (disclosure – I’m a partner in the project). As usual, there were a ton of great topics discussed on how to make your blog work better for you. One of the conversations that arose was how to reward loyalty – i.e., how to make sure that your blog community knows you appreciate them. Michael Schechter asked how you’d go about that, and I…