Back in May of this year I had the opportunity to travel to Orlando for BlackBerry’s Live conference. I wrote a number of articles from my trip on itbusiness.ca. You can read them here, over there, and also here.
Recently, BBM, Blackberry’s popular messaging service, became available for Android and iOS devices. Since then, over 10 million new people have downloaded the app.
BBM Channels
I also wrote about BBM and BBM Channels in May. For those curious where Blackberry is going with BBM, Channels and monetization. It is well worth the read (if I do say so myself.) You can read that article over here.
I recently embarked on a new adventure with a really cool company called Catalyst here in Toronto. Catalyst is a successful and award-winning search marketing company. I’m helping to lead their content and social media products. After only 5 weeks, I’ve never been more excited in my professional career. I’m really stoked to see what happens in 2014 and beyond!
I’ve also recently written my first blog post on the topic of Real Time Marketing.
real time marketing
I would love it if you could take a moment to read it and leave your thoughts and comments.
I will admit right now that Malcolm Gladwell is my favourite contemporary author. So this book review may be a little bit biased. Although, I have grown in not taking everything that Gladwell preaches at face value and being a little more critical when I read his work (or listen to his talks).
David and Goliath – Malcolm Gladwell
Gladwell’s latest battle is now of biblical proportions. Many people believe that David’s win over Goliath was one where the underdog beat the favourite. However, citing numerous studies, Gladwell, puts this “urban myth” to sleep. Thus starts the latest book by Gladwell.
The rest of the book sees Gladwell attack our notions of:
how to choose the best college,
the history of civil unrest in Northern Ireland,
how the success of the civil rights movement led by Dr. Martin Luther King was influenced,
how traumatic childhoods can actually be a good thing, and much more.
Later this week, I’m heading over to the University of Toronto to listen to Malcolm Gladwell talk about his latest book. And hopefully so much more!
Too few Canadian students are focusing on an education in science, technology, engineering and math. That’s bad for the kids, and for our economy. #STEM
Yesterday I attended a session that was part of this year’s Social Media Week – Toronto. I was a little underwhelmed at the presentation. It was 60% promotional and 40% thought leadership and knowledge.
One of the points I heavily disagreed with was the speaker’s claim (and by extension the agency he works for) that there are only 5 “secrets” to successful content marketing:
engaging
rich media
mobile
shareable
call to action
One could argue (and I would be in that camp) that these 5 are incorrect. And they are not even secrets. However, one things is missing: DATA. How can a professional or company claim to create successful content when they are not including the metrics and data to create content?
One of the most important things when creating content is to understand the brand and the consumer. And one of the ways we do this is understanding how people talk about a brand online (social and web) and how they behave on that brand’s website.
Without this knowledge, content that is created is only based on assumptions. We have access to barrels of data. We must use it for ourselves and for our clients if we really want to create engaging content that delivers any sort of measurable ROI.
As a resident living in Toronto (Ford Nation) these talks are all very relevant and important. Hope our civic leaders, including the Mayor, watch these.
Conversations with Musicians, Comedians, Creators & Curious Minds
