Hey there! So I really wanted to add the Something Borrowed option too, but couldn’t think of anything, so the three in the title will have to do. So…

It’s been a little quiet here last week, since Kevin Green’s great guest post about LinkedIn (and if you haven’t read it yet, you’re missing a great ongoing discussion in the comments). But there’s a good reason for that, which is where the Something New and Something Old part comes in. And yes, I’m the something old part in the image at the start of this post…

Last Thursday, February 2nd at 11.52am, my wife Jacki gave birth to our second child, this time a daughter to join her brother Ewan, who showed his excitement at the news by offering back-up vocals to his favourite Thomas the Tank song.

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Salem McKellan Brown weighed in at 6lbs and 15oz, and both mama and daughter are well (they came home on Saturday morning). She’s a cute little tyke, and very wriggly – fun when it comes to diaper time!

So, obviously, my energies have been elsewhere. Normal service will be resumed shortly. In the meantime, you can hop over to Sarah Robinson’s blog where I guest as part of her 28 Days… series. This month, she’s looking at how you can encourage fierce loyalty from your community.

My post is titled If You Want Fierce Loyalty, You Need to Be Fiercely Loyal First. I kind of cuss a few times and talk about dog poo. Hence the Something Blue reference. Check it out if you have time, and make sure to check the rest of the series out too, there are some wicked smart people in it.

Cheers, have a great week and see you soon!

Something Old, Something New, Something Blue originally appeared on Danny Brown | Social Media Marketing Blog - The Human Side of Media and the Social Side of Marketing under a Creative Commons license.

Sure, brands and products are important – but if you don’t touch that inner emotion that takes a potential customer from intent to the buying trigger, then you won’t get the sale, simple as.

Israeli creative agency smoyz clearly understand this, as their recent Facebook campaign for Kleenex shows.

The goal was simple – to create buzz around the Kleenex product in Israel using social media. The delivery by smoyz was simple too, when you think about it – Kleenex makes tissues, so let’s find people that need tissues and help them out.

Using Facebook and social search keywords, smoyz soon began to find the target audience on Facebook, and with the help of friends of those targeted, made their winter blues a little bit easier to overcome.

Watch the video below to see how it all happened, and the results that smoyz achieved for their client – they’re pretty impressive (as are the turnaround times for delivery of the Kleenex Feel Good care packages).

Just goes to show, if you create a great story and deliver that to your audience, you’ll get the success you’re looking for.

Simple when you think about it, eh?

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How smoyz Helped Kleenex Deliver the Feel Good Factor Online and Offline originally appeared on Danny Brown | Social Media Marketing Blog - The Human Side of Media and the Social Side of Marketing under a Creative Commons license.

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 you, and see you on the other side of Christmas!

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A Christmas Video Message originally appeared on Danny Brown | Social Media Marketing Blog - The Human Side of Media and the Social Side of Marketing under a Creative Commons license.

There’s nothing special about it. It’s a simple piece of video, made with Windows Movie Maker then put up on Youtube for the creator’s friends to see. And yet…

Its simplicity is also its strength. The mood and pace of the video complement the song perfectly, and doesn’t take away from the song itself. There are no garish images, no fast edits, no multiple screen tricks – just a simple video for a simple song.

Creative agencies often try to come up with elaborate advertising, PR or marketing messages. The feeling is the more elaborate the message is, the more mystique (and therefore interest) around the brand. And it can work, if done properly.

But you know what? Sometimes it’s the simplest things that are the most elaborate of all.

The comments below this video on Youtube show that many people thought it was the official Dashboard Confessional video for the song.

That has to tell us something about simplicity, no?

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The Powerful Act of Simplicity originally appeared on Danny Brown | Social Media Marketing Blog - The Human Side of Media and the Social Side of Marketing under a Creative Commons license.

This is a guest post by Bruce Aristeo.

It was late, and after a long day I stretched out my arms, took a deep breath, and let out a huge sigh. My hands reached out and I began clicking, swiping, and typing as my shoulders curled inward around my chest as if humped over in pain.

My eyes were focusing and scanning the screen, my receptors acting as the light on a copy machine, pin-pointing each pixel and assigning the meaning to each symbol creating structure to what I was seeing.

My TweetDeck was doing its usual fly-by, email accounts were reaching out to their respective servers, Facebook Page was at a standstill while deals were secretly being made in the chat area, and my brain was on stimulus overload from subconsciously keeping track of it all.

No television or iTunes music to breakup the live feed chatter streaming into my mind, only this continued dull hum that my defense mechanism creates to keep me sane.

Breaking The Silence of Social Media

Damn, I forgot to check my Google+ account, I was interested in huddling with a new friend and forgot the time.

Exhausted, my graphic designs began to look as if tie-dye was making a comeback from the sixties, loud and no sharp edges, so it was time to take a short break anyway. I opened my Google+ account and clicked through the various areas looking for something to break the deafening silence of watching social media.

A post… Danny Brown? Wow, I forgot he was in one of my circles. Even visiting Danny’s blog on occasion didn’t break the armor piercing rounds of my focus.

You’d think that reading a great story would stop the world, if only for a moment, but each story only enforced the realization of how much time was passing; the visits became fewer as the weeks slid by. My visit to Danny’s articles were long over due, so I stopped to read this post, a chance to smell the roses –so to speak.

A Musical Rose Garden

Huh! Nothing to read, only this posting of a video and a small blip, “Loving this version of ‘Livin’ on a Prayer” from Desmond Child, the guy that co-wrote it with Bon Jovi. Very soulful.”

Okay, I know the song; I grew up in Philly and live in New Jersey. Keep in mind that Social Media was still racing, running, streaming and posting with one eye on the accounts and the other on Danny’s post. I know, …not exactly the full attention I should be giving another human, let alone the artistic expression embedded with a “play” button.

I clicked the play button and the music began, …slowly, …a familiarity to the original yet different. My mind stopped to synchronize my recollection of the original version to this new version. Matching beat, tempo, breaks in the lyrics, but I’m analyzing and still not really free to enjoy the music.

The Shift in Reality

Visually, I broke from the video 30 seconds in, scanning other posts.

Something changed, a shift …not what I was looking at, but how I was looking. I was reading and not scanning posts, each one in fact. The music slowed down all my inputs.

Vision, hearing, movement, and thought were as if warped by Star Trek’s “Q” and the Space Time Continuum. I guess I just dated myself…

I began thinking about the speed at which social media moves, and I correlated it with my studies in child psychology.

It’s interesting that my mind and reactions slowed to the tempo of the music.

Reading the posts became something that happened without intention. It was as if walking through a garden, not intending to smell the roses, but they were there and I happen to think of smelling them.

Stimulation: 10 Second Countdown

Studying child psychology was enjoyable because there were answers to that which gave reason to rhyme.

One such study described how television shows, such as Sesame Street and The Electric Company were delivering a 10 second lesson, meaning the child watching would learn something new every 10 seconds. That philosophy gave rise to the theory that children are being conditioned with over stimulation, thus causing attention spans to decrease.

Being a teacher (K-12), I can attest to how much teachers have to add into lesson plans to maintain student attention.

Listen + Communicate = Intimacy

Now, back to us adults. What are we doing to ourselves by over stimulating our senses with the speed of social media? Are we destroying our ability to sit and listen to another Being by conditioning ourselves with communication void of intimacy?

Our children find text messaging each other while in the same room, sometimes next to each other, is more appropriate than speaking.

Intimacy, the bedrock of communication and the factor dividing us from other animals, is not something transmitted through text, email, Tweets, or Huddles. Intimacy is offered from within each of us, as a means to authentically connect and touch one another with the intention of personal growth.

Some might say that intimacy was part of my social media experience. This is true, but was it Danny’s intention to deliver his personal experience in the link? Only he could answer what his intention was, but my experience came from within. I was only reminded of that place of slowing down, …my personal rose garden.

Giving Thanks and Slowing Down

My engagement with Danny, I couldn’t thank him enough for being in the right place at the right time. Although my message of thanks to Danny was brief, I could not verbalize the shift that occurred within me. Danny’s post reminded me of slowing down, taking a breath, and truly seeing and being in the moment.

Of course you hear “Stop and smell the roses” everyday, but do you ever feel it? I did…

As I part from this experience in social media, and I walk away from the roses, I will always keep that particular garden in mind.

The one I walked through when I was exhausted, and the feeling I experienced when stopping to smell the roses…

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About the author: Bruce Aristeo is an artist, entrepreneur, and a lecturer/teacher of mathematics and psychology. In the spirit of North American Indians, he is a Magician and co-creates the world around him. You can read more from Bruce at AB2BC.Net, or connect with him on Google+ and Facebook.

image: Adventures in Librarianship

A Lesson In Smelling Roses At The Speed Of Social Media originally appeared on Danny Brown | Social Media Marketing Blog - The Human Side of Media and the Social Side of Marketing under a Creative Commons license.

Personally, I’m in the second camp. Probably because I don’t feel you can measure influence purely by what you do online, and most definitely because there are so many variations that make up a single decision that – to me – it’s impossible to say what influenced that decision the most.

But whether you think Klout has value or not, it’s now a lot of fun – because you can game the system and show its flaws, and this is all done by one of Klout’s own tools, the new +K option.

The +K option allows you to vote for people’s expertise on a certain topic. The idea is, the more votes someone gets on a topic, the more recognized they are by Klout as an expert in that field. Which, as the video below shows, can lead to completely ridiculous results .

So, yeah – well done, Klout, for showing your flaws better than any critic could. Now that deserves a +K!

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Note: Big props to Dino Dogan for the idea of this mock interview to highlight how to game Klout.

Make Yourself An Influencer By Playing The Klout +K Game originally appeared on Danny Brown | Social Media Marketing Blog - The Human Side of Media and the Social Side of Marketing under a Creative Commons license.

Sadly, this is commonplace among stalking victims. Many victims begin being stalked when they are young. In Canada, for example, 11% of women aged 15 and older have been stalked. In the U.S., 14 in every 1,000 women of 18 and above are victims of stalking.

Jodi’s Voice aims to change the law on stalking. In this video, I share why 12for12k is trying to help Jodi’s Voice change the law on stalking and why the current laws are so outdated.

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Why The Law on Stalking Needs to Change originally appeared on Danny Brown | Social Media Marketing Blog - The Human Side of Media and the Social Side of Marketing under a Creative Commons license.

In the video (seen below), a blind beggar is struggling to get people to put money in his tin. They see him, but most walk by. Then a girl walks by, sees the man, looks at his sign and has a brainwave (I won’t spoil it in case you haven’t seen the video yet).

It’s this action, and the message behind it, that’s resulted in all the buzz about the video. Not surprising – it’s a powerful message.

But it’s not the original message.

Three years ago, Alonso Alvarez Barreda of Wama Films made a longer video. It was about a blind beggar who was struggling to get people to put money into his tin. A kindly passer-by sees this and… well, you get the picture.

Purplefeather’s video is great, and they mention on their YouTube channel that their video is a homage to Alonso’s video, and it’s always nice to see credit where credit’s due.

But part of me can’t help but wonder if a direct remake was needed over the original, or if a similar point could have been made with a different video. Or are we really out of original ideas, now? I’m also curious if Purplefeather paid the original director, since (to me) it’s more than just a homage (of course, that’s just my cynical business head coming through).

The videos are below (the new version is the first one). What’s your take – imitation or inspiration?

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Update: Thanks to Dukeo for the heads-up that the “original” video seems to be a copy itself. And the dearth of originality goes on…

Immitation or Inspiration? originally appeared on Danny Brown | Social Media Marketing Blog - The Human Side of Media and the Social Side of Marketing under a Creative Commons license.

Led by owner Neil Shepherd, TSG aims to be different from your usual run-of-the-mill insurance company.

Traditionally a very stuffy and old boys school industry, Neil wants TSG to lead insurance into a more modern approach.

This takes in buying insurance online (still a relative novelty in Canada) to how the insurance industry uses social media and online marketing, to connecting with the community and much more.

It’s a gradual process and one that we’re starting to see take shape now.

As part of the approach, we’ve introduced “Bryan” to The Shepherd Group – a gangly new employee with a heart of gold, but who often gets himself caught up in awkward moments.

This short video introduces Bryan to you. I’ll be sharing more videos, as well as a more in-depth look at how TSG is embracing “being different”, in future posts (either here or on the Bonsai blog).

In the meantime, hope you enjoy this introduction. Cheers!

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Introducing Bryan and The Shepherd Group originally appeared on Danny Brown | Social Media Marketing Blog - The Human Side of Media and the Social Side of Marketing under a Creative Commons license.

To anyone that says that, this video is for them. My sincere thanks to everyone who’s stepped forward and shown that the human race is still an amazing one.

Thank you.

If you can help Kira, please connect with her on Twitter at @ksiddall.

The True Value of the Social Web originally appeared on Danny Brown | Social Media Marketing Blog - The Human Side of Media and the Social Side of Marketing under a Creative Commons license.