Category Archives: Social Media

I’m Speaking at the 2013 Digital Media Summit

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Digital Media Summit logoI’m excited to be participating at this year’s Digital Media Summit. The two day social media and interactive marketing conference, features everything from cross platform monetization to social media ROI and content branding.

Cindy Gallop, an advertising and brand consultant I saw speak at Mashable Connect 2012 will be speaking. I thoroughly enjoyed watching her present. She was easily one of the most entertaining and engaging speakers at Mashable Connect and I know she will bring her spark back to DMS.

I’ll be participating on the panel Going Social Live: Real-Time Marketing and Engagement Through Social Media from 11:40AM – 12:30PM on March 20. If you’re attending the conference, come say hello!

Digital Media Summit Panel Description

Downtown Marriot

Book Review: Renegades Write The Rules

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Amy Jo Martin, Renegades Write the Rules

Renegades Write the Rules by Amy Jo Martin

I’ve read many books on marketing, business and social media in the last few years but rarely do I stumble upon a gem. I find there are a lot of books out there that repeat the same rhetoric without offering concrete examples to draw upon.

Author Amy Jo Martin is an entrepreneur who established herself as a social media expert early in the game, literally because she worked as the Director of Digital Media and Research at the Phoenix Suns before starting out on her own with her company Digital Royalty.

I enjoy how candid she was about pushing the boundaries at her position with the Phoenix Suns, so she could advance the team’s online presence. Even after getting her hand slapped on a few occassions for stepping out the lines, she didn’t apologize for trying new things like inviting the fans to a TweetUp before the game, which was somewhat new at the time or setting up Shaq’s Twitter account which was against company policy.

In her experience working with Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, she talks about having a content ‘Value Balance’ on Twitter. She describes telling him to categorize his tweets into different types of content like: Education, Entertainment, Inspiration, Exclusive, Information, and Reciprocation. This is something I’ve actually adopted through my work for TIFF in describing how we can offer different types of content for different audiences.

Although this book refers to a lot of examples using social media, anyone who wants great examples on how to lead instead of follow would enjoy this book.

Mashable Connect Take Two

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Next weekend I will make my way to Walt Disney World once again to attend my second Mashable Connect conference.

The intimate conference that brings the Mashable community together with the brightest minds in social and digital media is back for the 2012 edition with this year’s theme: Future of Digital.

What I love about this conference are the number of opportunities that allow attendees to connect with each other. From the opening night networking event to the activities inside the Disney parks and seated meals, Mashable Connect lives up to its name of bringing the community together to share, inspire and connect with one another offline.

Some of the speakers include: Burt Herman, Co-founder, Storify; Joe Fernandez, Founder & CEO, Klout; Lawrence Lessig, Roy L. Furman Professor of Law at Harvard Law School, Director of the Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics; Hilary Mason, Chief Scientist, Bit.ly and June Cohen, Executive Producer, TED Media.

Here’s my favourite session from last year that features Craig Engler of Syfy Digital speaking on community engagement.

I’m going to Disney World!

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Digital media and Walt Disney World. My two favourite things have actually collided to produce the perfect conference. In a few short weeks I will be off to sunny Florida to attend Mashable Connect to exchange information with leading social media experts from around the world!

If you are wondering why an iconic tourist draw like Disney World was chosen for an important social media conference, it is most likely because it has completely embraced social media as part of how it does business. Most recently Disney partnered with Gowalla to customize a stamp or pin for every park-sanctioned hotel, attraction, restaurant and ride to help visitors explore the parks and attractions – the largest Gowalla partnership with a brand to date. I am sure Josh Williams, the CEO of Gowalla who is a Mashable Connect speaker will speak to this when he presents on Day One of the conference. I am hopeful the organizers will have an activity planned that will allow us to experience this partnership first-hand via our mobile devices and Gowalla app.

The weekend is packed with an incredible line up of speakers. To name just a few….

  • Rohit Bhargava, SVP, Global Strategy & Marketing, Ogilvy
  • Sabrina Caluori, Director of Social Media & Marketing, HBO
  • Cameron Death, Senior Vice President and General Manager, NBCUniversal Digital Studio
  • Scott Heiferman, Co-Founder & CEO, Meetup
  • David Karp, Founder, Tumblr
  • Steve Rubel, SVP/Director of Insights, Edelman Digital
  • Raymie Stata, SVP, Chief Technology Officer, Yahoo
  • Josh Williams, CEO, Gowalla

I will be blogging while at the conference so look out for a few videos, posts, photos and tweets!

Watching Something Go Viral In Real Time

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Has this ever happened to you? Have you ever truly witnessed something go viral? Here is a good example. Take Cookie Monster, a beloved Sesame Street muppet and a classic live television program, put the two together and you have the ability to make the combined idea something for people to talk about.

Simply broken down: Sesame Street + Saturday Night Live = internet trending topic!

 

The clever marketers behind the Sesame Street franchise realized an opportunity to take two cultural icons, Cookie Monster and SNL and put them together, to do something that had never been done before.

The Facebook fan campaign for Betty White to become a host on SNL was a hit and like Betty White who had never hosted SNL before, neither has Cookie Monster.

When I saw the first tweet….

RT @sesamestreet: Cookie Monster needs your help – he wants to host SNL! Watch the video and hit LIKE here: http://bit.ly/CookieSNL

….I knew this idea was going to catch on. In a matter of minutes, the number of people who ‘liked’ this idea on Facebook jumped from about 300 to 600 people. That’s when I knew I better start documenting how fast the trend was going to spread.

 

12:38 pm…

 

12:39 pm…

12:40 pm…

12:45 pm…

12:47 pm…

12:58 pm…

3:06 pm…

3:10 pm…

3:27 pm…

 

…and so on…and so on… If you would like to ‘LIKE’ Cookie Monster on Saturday Night Live to, go to: http://bit.ly/CookieSNL

FABulous $10 iPad Giveaway from FabFind

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Kudos to the fine people at FabFind. You created mass hysteria on the web when you announced the daily deal today would be a $10 iPad. Hard to believe? Absolutely! In fact, when learning of the deal this morning I had to turn to my Twitter tweeps to double check the deal was legit. When I signed into Twitter, I found out I was late to the party. The discussion was in full gear and as I found out, half of Toronto already knew about it before I did.

Word spread like wildfire, which caused their website to go down. At around 1:00 p.m. the CEO of the company sent out an e-mail to all subscribers with the subject, “Re: $10 iPads…whoa, people!”

 

FabFind CEO Response

 

http://www.youtube.com/v/8ZVMXtgBghE?fs=1&hl=en_US

The deal was most definitely legit and if you don’t believe me, just watch proof of the delivery of an iPad to a reluctant believer in this video.

Since the possibility of getting your hands on an iPad were like winning the lottery, FabFind decided to give away the last iPad to the winner of a Facebook contest. The rules are: you submit a reason for why you need/want an iPad in 140 characters, submit and vote on the best answer. The answer with the most responses, wins! Before you can submit your answer, or even view others’ responses you have to “like” their fan page on Facebook first…very smart marketing! Not only are people going to “like” this service, they are going to spread the message far and wide so people will vote for their answer.

I submitted an answer but not before realizing there was only one iPad to be given away, not the first 100 as my friend informed me.

As of right now their website is still down and I’m sure the owners are basking in a 1000% increase in traffic to their FabFind.com.

Jimmy Fallon’s Hashtag Segment

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The other day my sister and I were watching Late Night with Jimmy Fallon when his hashtag segment came on.

On Twitter Jimmy asked his viewing audience to use the hashtag #worstjobieverhad so he could compile the best tweets to read on his show. I can honestly say, I haven’t laughed out loud that much in a long time.

Late Night with Jimmy Fallon – Hashtags (9/29/10) – Video – NBC.com.

Run for the Cure’s Social Media Connection

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CIBC’s Run for the Cure is one of the Canadian Breast Cancer Foundation’s biggest fundraising initiatives. To compliment their advertising and marketing efforts, the organization has also created a site called areyourunning.ca which focuses on the ways you can get involved online and off.

Included on the website:

  • Facebook app called Wig Out, that allows you to upload your own photos from Facebook and plant a digital pink wig on your head, so you can share with your online friends
  • Twitter backgrounds, that show you are supporting the cause
  • 10% off digital music downloads
  • WigTube, with links to CBCF’s YouTube videos
  • The World’s Largest Handholding Chain, where you can search for family and friends to hold onto or join as an individual

If you are running, I will see you there on October 3, 2o1o!

Cupcake Camp Toronto 2010

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Seriously, what makes you happier than a cupcake? Okay, a few things but the cupcake I’m sure ranks high on most people’s lists of stuff they like.

Enter Cupcake Camp. A meet-up for cupcake fanatics, makers and bakers and shakers in the cupcake-making industry. Based on the BarCamp/DemoCamp style of conference, Cupcake Camp allows cupcake entrepreneurs and hobbyists the chance to showcase their sweet creations to the eager samplers of Toronto.

Traditional cupcakes like the vanilla, chocolate, red velvet and mint chocolate variety were available for sampling but interestingly enough people went to the extreme with some flavours. Elvis cupcakes in particular were all the rage. There were at least three different cupcakes that featured the banana-peanut butter combo that the King made so famous and one even had bacon on it! Speaking of bacon, there were three kinds of cupcakes that included bacon. I can’t say that I’m a big fan of meat with my sweets but it was worth trying out.

There were edible gold cupcakes, pear and green tea, strawberry daiquiri, orange creamsicle, black forest flavoured ones among the 50 or more varieties they had to try.

The most creative had to be the cupcakes in the flower pots, with crumbs on top to look like dirt, a flower sticking out and gummy worms for added realism. My favourite of the day though, was the cheeseburger cupcake that looked so much like an actual hamburger you would think there was meat in it.

If you ever want to sample more cupcakes than you can imagine, then find a way to get yourself to Cupcake Camp Toronto 2011!