Tag Archives: Google

digital media, social media

5 questions with Aidan Nulman

Aidan Nulman loves the internet. After being denied a marriage license twice, he’s been starting web companies left, right, and centre: Busy Bee (with three amazing partners), Cronyizm, and YouPhonics.

Hopefully, you’ll hear of one of them someday when you’re not reading his bio.

What motivates you to do what you do on a daily basis?

People. A lot of folks like to think about who they’re impacting, how they’re making a difference, whose lives they’re improving… I like to think about who I’m making smile.

If you had 30 seconds to impart your wisdom on a classroom of soon-to-be graduates, what would you say?

If they have their skin in the game, you need to agree. If they don’t, be ready to say yes, but confident to say no.

In your opinion, what has been one of the most important technological developments over the past 12 months?

You probably get this a lot, but location. Since the late ’90s, I’ve considered Google as a perennial cheat sheet. With mobile browsing, that became even more truthful – I didn’t need to be at a computer to access it anymore. And now we’re only just cracking the surface on location; when our apps know where we are, they’ll be able to filter the wheat from the chaff based on the most powerful contextual indicator: our location.

If you had a crystal ball, what would you say will be the most important technological development over the next 12 months?

Karim Kanji. I’m expecting Skynet to finally incorporate, and figure out how to scale your awesomeness so everyone can experience it. Then maybe a few K-1000s will go sour and try to Kariminate the human population. Which is why I’m glad Arnold had to leave office: he’s the only one who can save us. (KK – I swear Aidan wrote this.)

Who is one of Canada’s tech stars and why?

I’m working alongside 39 of them this summer: Krista Caldwell, Mindy Lau, Yilun Zhang (my partners at Busy Bee), and all of the others in The Next 36. I’m inspired and pushed by them every day. And I’m certain that, come August, each and every one will impress the crap out of you.

blog, digital media, social media, twitter

creating community: part 2

Money Mart
Image by Thomas Hawk via Flickr

Just over a month ago I blogged about creating community: part 1.  The beginning of this story was a refresher on my experience with GREENtuity and my first lessons in creating communities online.

The next step of my journey brings us to a company I used to work for called RealCash.

RealCash was a finance company in the residential real estate space.  They factored a portion of an agent’s earned commissions.  In short, RealCash was the Money Mart equivalent for real estate agents.

My role with the company was in marketing.  I put together email campaigns, trade show strategies and even set-up strategic partnerships with major real estate companies across Canada.  After a while, due to market conditions, I was forced to slash our budget and look for creative ways to market for free.

Enter social media.  Here are some lessons I learned:

Blogging:

Almost everyday I blogged.  And the results were phenomenal!  Searching for “commission advance in Canada” on Google resulted in RealCash moving from the 5th page to the 1st page.  Not bad I’d say.  Remember, we had a zero budget for marketing at this stage.

Active Rain:

Active Rain is the social network for professionals involved in the real estate space in North America.  After leaving RealCash more than six months ago I STILL receive calls from people finding the RealCash profile online through searching online.

Facebook:

Would you ever tell your professional friends, family and close friends that you use “Money Mart”?  Neither would I.   Facebook didn’t result in any community traction at all.

Twitter:

A great tool that RealCash used to promote itself as a thought leader in the real estate social space.

Overall, RealCash had success at creating an online community online.  So much so that potential clients called alot.  How much?  Too much. RealCash advanced more financial resources than they had access to.  Now they’re out of business.  Yikes!

What’s the overall lesson:  Don’t make promises (on social media or otherwise) that the company’s bank account can’t cash.

To be continued…

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