My friend and business partner Troy wrote a great piece yesterday about whether or not technology has improved or hindered our communication skills. It’s a timely topic with some awesome comments, and well worth the read.
It reminded me of something that happened a couple of years ago, that was a perfect example of the point Troy makes.
My wife had taken me to Niagara Falls for my 40th birthday, and it was truly amazing, awe-inspiring, majestic – all these words [...]

People ask where marketing fits in with social media, and if it still has a place as consumers and “normal people” enjoy a bigger say in how successful a product is.
To help with this, here’s a short and simplified presentation that offers a new take on an old method (the Four P’s of Marketing) and an overview of what this means for you.
It’s not meant to be an exhaustive look; more an easily digestible social media and marketing biscuit. Hope [...]

Welcome to a new episode of Sunday Brunch, where we talk about your questions on social media, marketing, business tips, entrepreneurship and more.
Today’s question is from Claire of Selection Criteria, an Australian-based recruitment firm for government (and my apologies for getting it the wrong way round in the video!). Claire asks:
“What would your advice be for small business with limited time and budget in terms of setting up a social media strategy? There are lots of avenues to pursue, so where [...]

This is a guest post from Ingrid Abboud.
You’re at a dinner and someone compliments the outfit that took you 20 minutes to pick out. What do you say?
You’ve written an article which took you 15 minutes to research and another 30 minutes to write. Your friend likes it and shares it with some of his friends. What do you say?
Besides the Ghost Busters tune that’s now ringing in your head, err…at least in mine, do you get where I’m going [...]

You may be aware that there is a big debate going on in the social media blogosphere about “influence” (and you can see links to several blog posts at the end of this one for examples of these discussions).
How we need to leverage influencers in our communities in order to get the word out about our causes, brands or services, etc. And that makes total sense from a generating-word-of-mouth point of view.
But hold on.
If you’re trying [...]

As social media continues its assault onto the mainstream audience, one of the side-effects has been the emergence of the view that marketing isn’t allowed in the space.

Conversations on blogs, Twitter, LinkedIn and elsewhere are vocal in the opinion that marketing is dead; we choose who we buy from and whose reputation we ruin; what gets our eyeballs and what doesn’t.
Simply put, old school is dead; long live the King (of new media school). And, to a degree, it’s correct [...]

There’s a lot of news about disclosure online at the minute.
I’ve written about it a ton of times (and spoke about it over at Joe Hackman’s radio show), and smart bloggers like Lorelle are giving some great tips on how bloggers (and other online network users) should go about disclosing their affiliate or professional relationships (thanks to Christina Kingston for the heads-up on Lorelle’s post).
It’s becoming even more important as the U.K. joins the U.S. in cracking down on non-disclosed [...]

You’ve become lazy. You’re no longer smart. You’re a shadow of the clever person you really could be. Don’t feel bad – I am too. We all are. We used to be questioning; now we just ask questions.
Blame social media. Actually, don’t – blame social media and crowdsourcing. Penned by Jeff Howe in a 2006 Wired Magazine article, crowdsourcing does exactly what it says on the tin – allows us to source a crowd for an answer.
Want to know [...]

Ancient philosophers believed life could be broken down into six different directions:

Above, or Heaven – this reflects your dreams and hopes.
Below, or Earth – this is your grounding and where you are now.
Forward – where you want to be in your life.
Backward – what you’ve overcome and left behind.
Left – those who give you inspiration.
Right – the people you trust most (both right and left are interchangeable – they’re basically your “armies”).

Whether you’re religious, philosophical or not, they’re pretty [...]

Over at Bonsai Interactive Marketing, we’re currently putting together our next ebook to join the likes of From Stats to Strats and others. And we’d like you to star in it.
We’ve all seen the great success stories in social media that are Dell, Zappos, JetBlue, etc. And that’s great, as success stories always are.
But they’re also the ones most used, and there needs to be new shining lights, from businesses of all sizes. So here’s the deal.
We’re using examples of [...]