I often get asked about how you control your brand on the web…..for me the answer is take control by realising
“control is not something that you can take….in a social media world it is about degrees of control.”
You can never control what people think, feel or say about you. You can only control your response.You can place your trust in your community to spread the right word.
It reminds me of Jerry Garcia of the Grateful Dead who said to his fans “Tape all you want! Make all the bootlegs you want, trade them, swap them, sell them to each other”
You …read more

Did April Fool’s Day come early and I just wasn’t told? How can this possibly be real? (emphasis mine)
We don’t have a description written for this yet, but the job is to be a “high touch” point of contact at Twitter for the burgeoning number of celebrities on the service. We want to make sure they’re happy, using the product effectively, etc. This person is probably pretty junior (it won’t pay a lot) but hopefully familiar with working with “Hollywood types.” They should be tech savvy enough to answer questions and solve basic problems (though they can fall back on …read more

You’ve heard every single social media/web 2.0 expert/pundit/blabbermouth/evangelist repeat it ad naseum:
Companies in this new world must be honest and transparent with their publics or face the wrath of their consumers. 
In this case though, the “wrath” might just be mere annoyance. 
Apple said that the reason they were pulling out of MacWorld is because they were scaling back on conferences. The direct quote from their initial release is: “Apple has been steadily scaling back on trade shows in recent years, including NAB, Macworld New York, Macworld Tokyo and Apple Expo in Paris.” 
Speculation about the ‘real reason’ Apple had pulled out was …read more

I spent the weekend working on a Christmas gift for our families. Photos were edited, accounts created and by Sunday afternoon, I was ready to start doing the layout for my Blurb book.
It didn’t really take me too long before I got frustrated, mainly with myself and the software and our interaction. I tweeted my annoyance and then promptly went out to run a few errands. An hour or so later, around 430 or 5 pm, my phone trilled with a message
“@colleencoplick what are you trying to do? i’m blurb’s marketing director – maybe i can help.”
On a Sunday afternoon. …read more

Hi again! I’m back from my whirlwind trip to the south, (or the upper south as some referred to it as), and I’m getting back into the swing of things!
I was on the flight home last night and going through my usual pre- and post-trip blogging workflow practice, and came across and article on CNet about Evan William’s presentation at Web 2.0 recently. While Williams didn’t give a straight answer to The Valley’s biggest question (though, did you really expect he would? He never gives a straight answer, always holding his cards close to his chest): ‘How will you make …read more

You’d think that the crushing defeat that Obama delivered McCain recently, partially using the power of social networking, would have been taken as an example to other politicians on how to run a successful campaign using social media.
Apparently, local politicians in Vancouver’s civic election didn’t get the memo.
Vancouver is electing a new mayor and city council on November 15th, and the Vision Vancouver candidate, Gregor Robertson’s camp began to “spoof”his opponent, Peter Ladner on Twitter.
A quote from Robertson’s spokesman claimed Vision Vancouver wasn’t trying to pass off the account as Peter Ladner.
“Clearly, it is a spoof,” Ian Baillie said. “I …read more

Ok, I know it was more than just social media, but he certainly had the best, well organized and strategic social media campaigns I’ve ever seen. It was truly brilliant.

I found an article about the guys behind MyBO, which details their strategy and how it motivated voters. it’s quite a good read! I’ve got a call into Blue State Digital’s PR team and am requesting an interview so we can find out what happens now with Barrack’s social media strategy.(image credit: Mr.Wright, on Flickr, under creative commons.)

This evening was Vancouver’s monthly Third Tuesday, where Mhairi Petrovic, the founder of Out Smarts, explained how to sell social marketing to the traditional marketing decision makers. Raul (aka Hummingbird 604) live-blogged the event.
The information was fantastic, and I thought it needed a wider audience. The full post from Raul is here, but the salient points are below.

Some of the primary objections to social media that traditional marketers have to social media include: 
1) “We already use social media” Complete misconception –  having a website or a facebook page is not participating in social media.  
2) Perceived as a tool for only the younger set. This is a …read more

Jack Dorsey and Evan Williams are doing a bit of a dosado. @Ev is taking @Jack’s spot and moving into the CEO role, while @Jack becomes Chairman of the Board.
“We’re entering a new phase now and there are new kinds of challenges ahead. Healthy companies acknowledge the need for change even during the best of times,” Williams wrote. “As Twitter grows both internally and externally, we took a good look at our path forward and saw the need for a focused approach from a single leader.” [source]
Hrm. Translation? Time to actually start playing the game for real. Step up to …read more

This is a follow-up post for the presentation Lisa Thomas-Tench gave this evening at Net Tuesday. Lisa has worked with community and capacity building organizations around the world and traveled to Africa last year to build schools and work in the communities.
The main thing that Lisa wanted to make sure came across during her presentation was that online supportive international projects are subject to the same challenges as standard, off-line charitable donations. Many people don’t realize this, and tend to assume that because it’s online, it’s going to be easier.
There is an absolute explosion of social networking for social causes …read more