Social media marketing lessons I learned from my Dad

Social media marketing lessons I learned from my Dad

Many of you know my parents had a fabric and drapery business, and it was often the topic of conversation around the dinner table. I remember my dad saying, more than once, “the customer is always right.” As a young teenager, I took that literally and would often get...
Where does your content live?

Where does your content live?

I was listening to BuzzFeed Canada’s social media editor Elamin Abdelmahmoud give a talk at Social Media Week Toronto. He said about 75% of the content they produce isn’t published on Buzzfeed.com. That surprised me. Here you have a successful digital media outlet...
Why it’s tough to be creative at work

Why it’s tough to be creative at work

Have you ever been called into a brainstorm and thought I’ve got so much on my plate today, I just can’t face being creative. Or when you do come up with an idea, do you feel it’s nitpicked so badly it becomes unrecognizable from what you first...
Livestream video – a new take on cable access TV

Livestream video – a new take on cable access TV

Let’s rewind to the end of the last century. Back then, you’d find user-generated content in home videos or on community access TV. And the quality was…um…why don’t we say it was local-in-the-extreme. Sometimes you might discover a...
Twitter turns 10 and the tweets just keep on comin’

Twitter turns 10 and the tweets just keep on comin’

I remember when I first set up my twitter account in March 2007 just after the company turned one and was all the rage at SXSW. I don’t mind saying how nervous I felt. At the time, Twitter seemed like the great big unknown to me. And while I was fascinated, I...
Serendipity and the creative power of small data

Serendipity and the creative power of small data

Big data is all around us. You can sense it – or rather, it senses you. We may even be heading toward a data singularity, a time in the not so distant future when sensors all around us will send vast amounts of information to a centralized source to learn and adapt in...
What’s on the new AV cart?

What’s on the new AV cart?

Whenever someone mentions multimedia, I automatically think of those nondescript grey metal A/V carts of my high school and university days. (I know I’m dating myself here.) They’d always hold a messy assortment of what was then hi-tech: 16MM film...
Five things I learned in 2015

Five things I learned in 2015

I’ve always been a major consumer of content. Like most PR pros, I’m a media junkie, that is, passionate about news. I used to start my days poring over five papers, listening to radio and watching TV. In recent years, that’s been turned into more of...
PR by the micro-moment – moment 2

PR by the micro-moment – moment 2

Not too long ago, I had the pleasure of attending a Google-sponsored breakfast on micro-moments – those ‘I want to know/go/do/buy’ impulses we all experience when we have a question and impulsively reach for our smartphones to find what we’re looking for. For many of...
PR by the micro-moment – moment 1

PR by the micro-moment – moment 1

Does this sound familiar? You’re reading, working, talking to a colleague or friend, sitting in a restaurant, waiting for a bus. All of a sudden you’re seized by an overwhelming impulse to find something out. NOW! You’re having a micro-moment. Maybe...