A 90 Second view: The Potential of Collaboration using Social Media

A 90 Second View: "To blog or not to blog, that is the question"

Not convinced that blogging makes sense for your business or your career? Seth Godin and Tom Peters, arguably the top thought leaders in business management and marketing, weigh in on this topic. Here's what they have to say. Next step? If you blog, keep doing it. If you don't .... think about starting!

Free Online Education for Business Professionals

Jack Sandler Bloom is on a mission to provide free online education to the world. Jack has set up a collaborative learning space called "Life" using Ning's social networking service. This is interesting in two ways.

First, in the past if you wanted to learn you relied on an institution to provide you with three things. 1) Curriculum and content, 2) Knowledge and Interaction and 3) A degree. Life and MIT's OpenCourseWare while not considered "formal education" provide life learning students access to quality educational content and the opportunity to interact with thought leaders and learners. To quote Meatloaf: "Two out of three ain't bad".

Second, here's a situation where an educator is trying to build an interactive learning community using social networking services such as Ning. It's an interesting learning experience also!

Below is Lesson Two which is an extensive case study on Google.


Find more videos like this on Life

Getting "Ink" for your customers

In an earlier post entitled The Importance of Strategic References I talked about how I worked with the Michener Institute, while at Unis Lumin, to generate awareness for their digital slide technology. The direct result was a cover story in Technology for Doctors magazine. This print publication reaches over 10,000 primary care physicians and specialists across Canada.

Michener was thrilled with the publicity they received. We provided them with reprints of the article to use to their advantage. They have and continue to leverage this publicity to raise awareness and funding for new initiatives. There are some who won't see the immediate payback for Unis Lumin but my philosophy is that we partnered with Michener to help them showcase a solution that was made possible in part by Unis Lumin. This was one of my favourite experiences during my 7 years at Unis Lumin.

If you'd like to listen to the case study here's a podcast I had produced by Donna Papacosta from Trafalagar Communications.

Best Buy social media case study

Dear Mr. and Ms. Executive,

Please enjoy the video below. It shows how Best Buy is using social media to create connections, knowledge and collaborate. I hope this video encourages you and your company to adopt and embrace social media. It empowers people, it connects people and it includes people. The future of your company rests in the hands of your people. Give them tools like these and let them create.


Best Buy CEO Brad Anderson in conversation with Peter Hirshberg at Google Zeitgeist from peter hirshberg on Vimeo.

Weak Economy? Strengthen your B2B relationships.

This is an interesting video on the importance of building strong relationships in the B2B space. Creating strategic relationships brings mutual benefit to the customer and supplier. In an earlier post I talked about the importance of strategic references. These are strategic relationships you establish with key customers and partners in order to help all parties be successful.

Given the challenges we face with our economy now may be a good time for you to take a look at your customers and suppliers and figure out new ways to work together to weather this economical storm. The video by Traci Entel from Katzenback Partners below may give you some ideas.




Timeshift Track
00:00 to 2:00
* Empathy defined
* Expedia used empathy to think about their relationships with their suppliers
* Empathy is rare in the B2B space with little emphasis on building strategic relationships
* Expedia challenges and what they did to overcome them

2:00 to 4:30
* Expedia decided to become partners with their suppliers
* The importance of philosophy follow through when enacting change
* Involving employees in change discussion helps drive behaviour and institutionalizes change
* Listen and learn

Additional resources:
* Importance of Strategic References, Marketing That Matters
* The "4 R's of Marketing", Marketing That Matters
* Expedia Interactive Case Study, Businessweek

Using Linkedin to find an ad agency and investors

What I love about Linkedin is that they are continually innovating. I love learning and a new feature offered by these guys is "how to use Linkedin"! Imagine a company showing you how to use their product to your advantage. This simple video shows you what is possible. Enjoy the video!

What is LinkedIn? from LinkedIn Marketing on Vimeo.

ProductCampToronto1 Mindmap

I put this online mindmap together as a bit of an experiment. One branch lists the folks who were involved in organizing PCT1 with links to their blogs/sites. Another branch has our sponsors and links to their sites. The remaining branches are the sessions that took place with are linked to the PCT1 wiki page. While the sessions went well, not many notes were taken on the wiki. There were not that many people with laptops so this is understandable.

I'm hopeful that over the next little while PCT1 participants and the session leads will add their thoughts and ideas to these wiki pages so the PCT1 experience can continue.

Pictures from ProductCampToronto