Over on Twitter, Toronto police are using the #RIDE hashtag to counter drunk driving this holiday period. Standing for Reduce Impaired Driving Everywhere, #RIDE aims to educate against drunk driving, and offer alternatives from the Toronto police on getting home safely. You’d think it’s a great use of Twitter, and an important topic to be aware of, especially at this time of year. And it would be – except for the shitdiots that have hijacked the #RIDE hashtag and begun…

So today I opened the Google home page to check my Gmail account, and I was greeted with this funky image: As you can see from the left-hand sidebar, the core products from Google are there for you to access immediately, as opposed to links within your account. Which makes me wonder – could this be  the first steps in Google bringing all their solutions under one integrated offering? If so, it’d really push Google+ into the mainstream and grab…

I just wanted to say thank you for reading, commenting and making this blog better. While I may write, you make the magic happen in the comments and social conversations elsewhere – and I’m so grateful for that. Here’s to more of the same in 2012 and beyond – let’s continue to grow together. Personally and professionally, let’s make 2012 the year that we truly come together and make all the real magic happen. In the meantime… this is for…

I was speaking to a friend recently, and we got to chatting about charities and how supporters are almost like investors along the lines of venture capitalists, or stocks and shares guys. Yet these supporters are much more than a standard investor – as  well as donations, they invest time, resources, energy and much more into the charity they believe in. Basically, if you’re a charity, they invest in YOU. But this doesn’t need to be landlocked into charities. There are…

Why do you want to kill your competition (this is a generic you)? Why do you want to put on your size 42 boots, kick them in the sack and then trample them into the dirt? Why do you want them to fail so badly that the only people left they can come to is you? Is your alternative really that much better? Maybe. But if it is, then isn’t it the competition that’s helped make you so much better?…

Last week, Jay Baer wrote a post about how brands are responding on social media. Jay’s premise was that companies that can respond within minutes on the social sphere are sending out a far more positive message than those that dilly-dally. It’s a really interesting read, and the comments after the post sparked a great debate about Jay’s premise, and if we weren’t setting companies up to fail by jumping to action as soon as their name is mentioned. One of…

It’s been a while since I did any book reviews here. Mainly because many of the business books I read in 2011 were okay, but nothing to write home about. Thankfully that changed with the release of Brand Against the Machine, by John Morgan, which you can read about here, and easily one of my favourite business books of the last 18 months or so. Joining John’s book is Humanize, by Maddie Grant and Jamie Notter, one of the best social…

It’s been a while since I did any book reviews here. Not that there weren’t a ton of books that could be reviewed – 2010 and 2011 saw more social media and marketing books released than there are reasons for Klout to exist. Probably. But so many of them said the same thing, or seemed to be just a collection of blog posts reformatted for print, that it seemed pointless to share here, since you could easily find more value…

One of the things we always talk about in this space we share is support. How we can encourage our online communities to rise to challenges and how the players on the field encourage others. Yet what are we doing offline with our “immediate communities”? Are we offering the same support and encouragement to them? Or even thanking them for their support and encouragement to us? Often we take this support for granted – after all, they’re our friends and…

Fact – too many businesses still need to wake up and realize that social media is not “one of these Internet fads” that will disappear. Fact – because of this mindset, too many businesses are potentially missing out on extra business that could mean the difference between staying afloat and going under. So why the problem? One of the main reasons is that businesses – whether it’s the CEO, top-tier management or otherwise – are looking at social media as…