Third Tuesday Toronto: Bob Pearson
Jul 12, 2009 New
Last week I attended Third Tuesday Toronto, a Social Media PR Meet-up organized by Joe Thornley of Pro PR. Working as a Community Manager I was excited to hear the speaker Bob Pearson (formerly of Dell, currently President of Social Media Council) speak about observations and trends in social media. I was not disappointed! Instead of my telling you all the important points – here are some tweets from the event.
The next Third Tuesday Toronto will be Shel Israel as part of his book Twitterville (August). I am looking forward to attending!
Popularity: 66% [?]
Tags: bob pearson, dell, joe thornley, social media, social media council, third tuesday
Sleep: A Nightmare or Dream
Jul 6, 2009 New
Sleep is a sensitive subject among parents with kids of any age. Are they sleeping? Do they have nightmares? Do they sleep in their own bed or the family bed? Do they go to bed at 8 or 10? Do you allow them to have a snack before bed time? If you want to get into a scrap with a parent simply suggest that they are doing something wrong with setting sleep rules for their kids.
What is equally true is that sleep and kids also has its funny or sweet moments among the stress that you are doing something wrong. We only need to look as far as the statement “Sleep like a baby” to see the humour in sleep 
We worried for some time that my youngest would take after the oldest and not sleep through the night until he was 10 months old. Fortunately, the monkey began sleeping through the night and napping much earlier and continues (knock on wood) to be great sleeper. He is an incredibly sound sleeper – even is own drastic movements don’t wake him. We can guarantee that whatever position Z is put down in – he will be in the opposite direction before long. In fact, the only thing that seems to bother him at sleep time is when he can’t locate his favourite bear. This causes tears in the middle of the night, but only requires someone putting the bear back in his arms – and all is still once again. Coming in to Z’s room in the middle of the night and finding him curled up in a ball with his teddy bear is one of the sweet moments.
Our oldest is now a great sleeper, after 1 1/2 years of torture of course. Sometimes he pulls the “I don’t want to sleep” stunts which include:
- I need water
- One more book!
- It is dark in my room
- Where is X, Y, or Z toy
But, generally he does not fuss before bed.
He does occasionally wake in the middle of the night. And, these are the moments that are painful at the time they happen, and funny when we look at them. O insists on sleeping with toys, not squishy cuddly stuffed toys – but the flavour of the week car or truck. Recently that toy has been a Buzz Lightyear that he got for his birthday. Buzz is hard plastic, with buttons that cause the toy to make space ship noises, and it to say “To infinity and beyond!”. So one night O comes into the room and when asked why he is awake at 2 a.m he answers “Buzz Lightyear is making too much noise”. The following night he made Buzz sleep downstairs. Another recent mid-night reply was “There is a shadow in my room, and it is shaped like a shark. He has his mouth open”. In the morning O will come into the room and stand there until you wake up and get a shock from seeing him standing there, or he will run in excitedly telling you it is “wakie” time. If you decline getting out of bed he will open the curtains and show you that it is in fact “wakie” time because the sun is out. This morning he did the stand there routine, and when I didn’t immediately feel his presence in the room he touched my face. I jumped out of my skin, and before I could get mad at him for almost causing me to have a heart attack he looked at me sweetly, touched my face again, tilted his head to the side and said “I love you mommy”.
So while, I am sure I have made mistakes with setting the stage for sleep in my house, and complained often about the patterns that the kids have had…sleep has caused us just as much laughter as anguish.
Popularity: 65% [?]
Race Day
May 24, 2009 New
My baby just turned four. My first baby that is.
Somehow he went from this:
O - Day 1
To this car obsessed, scooter-driving, ABC reciting, candle blowing kid:
birthday boy
In September he starts school. And, it seems like I will close my eyes and he will be going off to college. He will move away from home, and if he is anything like my husband he will never call his parents. I digress…
Yesterday, we held his fourth birthday celebration. Every year we host a party for him at our house. It is becoming more difficult to do at home as the kids need more direction, more entertainment, and more friends attending. But, we decided one last time until we are forced to spend a small fortune renting swimming pools, indoor playgrounds or space at a local farm equipped with pony rides. When we asked Bear what he would like to do for his birthday he said he wanted his friends to come over to play, to eat cake and to get presents (of course). Reasonable requests. Not once did he ask to play video games at Chucky Cheese or go go-carting or ice skating with a birthday hat on.
Still, his list of friends was long (and we couldn’t invite 8 of 10 boys in his class – we had to invite them all, which is why we limited the invites to boys and only invited one girl from next door) and these boys need games and entertainment or they become unruly and chaotic. So, we couldn’t just have a party at the house and throw the kids and some toys into the backyard. Last year the birthday theme was Construction as at the time Bear was into Bob the Builder. We had a few games planned but the kids were more interested in the cardboard boxes we had put out as giant building blocks. What works at age 3, doesn’t work for age 4.
This year we hosted a Race Day.
Here is what we did:
- Every kid arrived and received a lanyard with their Pit Pass.
- We took their picture as a racecar driver using our Mac and video camera and then e-mailed the photo to their parents. Here is our son in this picture:
- All the kids received a little wooden race car to decorate with stickers, crayons and markers.
- While some kids finished decorating their cars, other kids played with the die-cast cars and ride-ons we had out in the yard.
- Games: Red Light, Green Light and a Parachute with a plastic ball
- When all the kids were finished their race cars we held a race using a ramp (seen above) that my husband built- complete with launcher.
- Food: Typical BBQ – hotdogs, hamburgers, potato salad, fruit salad popcorn and potato chips
- Decorations: Race flags, black and white balloons, red and white checkered table cloths, orange pylons.
We think it was a hit.
Before I know it…it will be time to plan his 13th birthday.
Popularity: 88% [?]
Community Manager: or the reason I have been MIA
May 9, 2009 New
I have been away from this blog for a little while now (as you may have noticed). Apparently, I don’t adjust well to change!
Two months ago I started a new job as a Community Manager, ending my maternity leave early by nearly five months. I started initially part-time, but went to full-time this week. In reality, Community Management is NOT a part-time gig, but the opportunity for this position was a perfect fit and going back to work early was not in the plans, this was the compromise!
So, what is a “Community Manager”? It is a tough job to give you an elevator definition. But I will give it a whirl:
My job as Community Manager is to engage, build and listen to the community. It is kind of like being a hostess for a party I have to make sure everyone is getting what they want, that they aren’t ruining the party for anyone else, and that if there is a question about where the coats should go – there is someone to answer it.
Of course that is a bit silly. But, the essentials are there.
Engage the Community
Motivate members of the community to get involved, connect with other members and actively participate in activities whether that is a discussion on a Forum, an offline event, comments on a blog, or a twitter chat.
Build the Community
Extend the community beyond the existing members, market and maximize communication to community, potential members at large and internal employees.
Listen to the Community
Monitor conversations within community and other online conversations to make sure needs are being met, identify trends and new ways to activitate two-way conversations.
Tactically, I do the following:
- Write blog posts
- Listen and post on our community forum
- Monitor the web for brand and community mentions
- Find new ways to promote, engage and build the community (adding features to the community, spreading WOM, finding ways to increase SEO or link build)
- Evangelize social media
- Work with internal teams to promote community, get support or resources as well as providing trends and metrics from community to other groups who can use that information.
Connie Benson has a fantastic post on the Roles and Responsibilities of a Community Manager which I highly recommend reading.
You can visit my community here (make sure you check out the community blog as well since this is where I have been doing the blogging for the past two months!)
Popularity: 93% [?]
Monitoring the Web for Your Blog or Brand
Mar 22, 2009 New
So, you are obsessed with your blog Analytics after reading my Google Analytics for Bloggers Part 1, Part 2, Part 3 and Part 4 - and now you want to see what others are saying about your brand or blog when they aren’t visiting your blog or directly communicating with your company. Monitoring can give you access to more feedback, and immediate and real-world conversations. Not to mention that today your customers and community expect you to be listening and participating in social media!
If you don’t think you need to track brand mentions online, or you believe that what your customers are saying on social networks isn’t important – read this post by Brian Solis about how social media is upping the ante on CRM. He says, “While Twitter is the shiny catalyst for corporate introspection, the social web is one big stream that requires listening, empathy, and also engagement and response.” Solis has also shared a great visualization of the social web in the form of a Conversation Prism:
“The conversation map is a living, breathing representation of Social Media and will evolve as services and conversation channels emerge, fuse, and dissipate.”
From Brian Solis (Creative Commons)
Without further ado here are some great (and free) ways to monitor the online space:
Google Alerts: Set-up words such as your name, your blog name, your brand name (and any variations), your competitors, or product/industry terms. You can choose to include News pages, Blogs, or comprehensive search. I have found in the past if you set up the alert for brand or product names using comprehensive search it will fill your inbox with product mentions on e-commerce sites and sales promotions. Instead I set up two alerts for each word- one for blogs and one for news. Google Alerts allows you to have the alerts set up to be delivered to your Inbox or your Feed Reader.
Delicious: Once you have set up your Del.ic.ious account you can create “Subscriptions” to “tags”. When users bookmark sites they use ‘tags’ to identify the sites (please refer to Social Bookmarking 101) and a subscription will pull all sites with the term you have subscribed to as a tag. For example if you are interested in websites about “Audi” – subscribe to this term, click on the subscription to view related sites, or click the RSS icon (beside URL) to subscribe in your Feed Reader.
Technorati: If you have blog Alerts set-up through Google this may be a duplication. Technorati does give you additional information with the “authority” ranking for each site. Authority is based on “trackbacks” to the blog, or reactions to the authors work. You can set up “Watchlists” or simply search using the “Search the Blogosphere” field, and find the RSS icon (above the results) and subscribe using your Feed Reader.
BackType: BackType is a great site to find, follow and share comments in the blogosphere. Visit the Backtype Alerts page to set up your search terms and Backtype will locate where the terms are mentioned in blog comments. Type in the term you want to search, and once again you can subscribe using your browsers RSS icon.
backtweets: Want to see if anyone is “tweeting” your blog or website? Type in the URL and Backtweets will find the tweets – even if the individual used a URL shortening tool. And, of course you can subscribe via RSS.
BackType Connect: Connect allows you to follow the online conversations for a particular post or article. It connects the “conversational graph,” including: tweets, comments, links on FriendFeed, Digg, Reddit and other social media. You can’t subscribe to this one as it shows you the conversation around the post at that particular moment, however there is a a toolbar add-on which is great if you want to check engagement for an article or post on the fly.
StumbleUpon: This is another great bookmarking site. It is a great place to see what sites people are sharing, and tagging using your search terms. You can use the search bar to find sites manually, or subscribe to your chosen “tags”. On the bottom right hand side of your page choose view all tags, then pick the tag you would like to subscribe to via RSS – click on tag link and it will take you to a page showing all your pages that have been tagged with that term. Above the images of the URLS you will see the message: “Meet stumblers who like YOUR_TERM and the pages they recommend” – follow the link and hit subscribe. This is just one way to accomplish this, anytime you see a tag you like you can click and subscribe.
Twitter Search: Type in your search word into the search box, and then subscribe (right hand side you will see the RSS icon). Simple. For real-time search I use TweetDeck.
YouTube: Once again this one is simple and easy- type the search terms in the search box, click and subscribe using the RSS icon in your browser. If you like any of the videos you can always favorite them for later.
Finally, set some time every week to review your feeds. If you forget this final step you will find yourself pressing the “Mark All as Read” button on a regular basis!
(Think this is too much work? Mitch Joel just posted a great post on optimizing how you monitor your digital footprint.)
Monitoring your blog or brand online gives you access to more feedback from your community members or customers as well as the opportunity to steer conversations and manage your online brand reputation. By listening and engaging you can strengthen relationships and build loyalty to your brand (or blog!).
Do you have any other tools you like to use to monitor the web?
[Note: If you have some money to spend on your monitoring efforts there are a few paid services that give you great tools to make the job easy, allow you to create quick graphs, sort results quickly and manipulate the informatin with ease. I have tested Radian6 and would highly recommend it. ]
Popularity: 87% [?]
| 3.2 |
Three Words for 2009
Jan 3, 2009 New
Chris Brogan suggests an interesting perspective on resolutions. He says “I always felt that resolutions were a little too push and not enough pull, and I wanted something a bit more compelling to pull me towards the future” – so instead of specific resolutions he comes up with three words that reflect his objectives for the year. These words are broader, and therefore can give you meaning even when you have achieved the goals you have set out. He says that these words instead help “frame your challenges and opportunities for 2009″. I looked at this task as though I was creating my “Vision” for the next year – three words that can drive my actions, and I will recall and focus on when I make decisions this year.
After reviewing my resolutions I came up with these three words that will define 2009 for me:
UNAFRAID
BUILD
SPARK
Be unafraid.
Be the best me there is. Set my ideas free – they are good. Be unafraid of what others might think, be courageous and even welcome risks. Answer questions, raise my hand and volunteer, look for challenges. Meet new people and face fears head on.
Build on my successes in 2008.
Continue to build my online presence, personal brand and my blog community. Take further steps in learning, experiencing, and using my digital marketing skills. Always be learning. Always be doing. Execution- not just planning. Enhance my my social network, by building on existing relationships and engaging with new members of my communities. Build on past accomplishments, and build towards the future by creating new opportunities.
Cause a spark.
Through my words, actions and my passion and focus I will help to draw out excitement in others. Ignite interest, be an evangelist for digital marketing, and social media. Help others to find their niche, discover an idea or a product. Love the “a-ha” moment. Find the sparkle: the passion and enthusiasm in others. Collaborate, share, and engage with passionate, kickass people. Inspire and be inspired.
Popularity: 9% [?]
| 3.2 |
Monday Mini: Conversations
Dec 22, 2008 Customer Service, New, PR, Short and Sweet
I haven’t written a Monday Mini in quite some time. Monday Mini’s are dedicated to interesting and thought provoking quotes I have read on blogs or in books.
Here is one from Valeria Maltoni at Conversation Agent
“What I think has not hit home, yet, is that if you are in the (fill in the blank) marketing, public relations, social media communications business, you are in the changing the conversation business. And changing the conversation is game changing.”
From post Change the Conversation, Change the Game
Does your company realize that it isn’t business as usual anymore? Are they prepared to connect with their customers in a new, more personal way? Is your company going to participate in the conversation?
Popularity: 18% [?]
| 3.2 |
Tags: business, conversation, marketing & communication, PR, trends
Christmas Cookies
Dec 20, 2008 Cooking Together, Family and Friends, New, Parenting and More
We were planning on enjoying the fresh snow today. But the -13 degree weather turned us off from that plan. Instead we made some Double Chocolate Chip Cookies.
Popularity: 12% [?]
| 3.2 |
Up and Running Again (finally!)
Dec 9, 2008 Blogs, Family and Friends, New
If you are a subscriber via RSS or e-mail you may not have realized that my site was down for three days! Yes, three days! I don’t know how I lived for 72 hours with no blog. My analytics at Zero visitors for Saturday and Sunday was depressing to look at.
It was especially sad since I just wrote my first guest post on another blog and was hoping some of her subscribers might just find me worthy of subscribing to as well! Now fortunately for me – her site is served by the same host and therefore was down as well. Which means no one new was finding the post and trying to link to my dead blog. However, any of her subscribers would have linked from their reader….to a wonderful error message. Boohoo.
Please check out my guest post on one of my favourite blogs - Mom on the Run. Janice writes about life with her two girls and reminds me how special being a mom is! Even when the kids are at their most frustrating they do something absolutely adorable or funny to make you smile. Oh, and she is a huge NKOTB fan…which is very important. We differ in our favourite member – she prefers Jon – while my favourite was always Jordan (Jon’s brother!).
Popularity: 11% [?]
Tags: Blogs, guest post, momontherun, nkotb
