A few years ago I was fortunate enough to work with Harmony Airways and Kelowna International Airport as they operated a seasonal non-stop service from Kelowna to Honolulu. As part of my role I developed radio promotions involving giveaways of holiday packages.
The principal of such a promotion is simple – the radio station offers a certain value of promotional media in exchange for the prizing and this promotional media raises top-of-mind awareness of the client and it’s services/products.
In evaluating which radio station to partner with on such promotions a number of factors are taken in to account:

• Brand alignment. Or in other words “The medium is the message”.
• Audience figures, demographics and socio-graphics.
• Geographic reach.
• On-air promotional value i.e. The retail value of the air time offered up for the promotion
• Off-air promotional value e.g. The retail value of newspaper advertising taken out by the radio station to promote the competition.

Recently I’ve had the opportunity to plan promotions for another airline and this time round another variable is coming in to the mix of decision factors – social media influence.
To this end I’ve conducted a study of local radio stations here in Kelowna, BC to see who’s social media activity would add the most value to a promotion.
The methodology was simple. Of the various social media platforms only Facebook and Twitter are being used by any of the stations. For Facebook the only statistic available is follower count. For Twitter, with it’s open API, a lot more analysis is possible. I chose to use Edelman’s Tweet Level tool.  With this tool we can break down a Twitter account’s impact in terms of:

• Influence – what you say is interesting and many people listen to it. This is the primary ranking metric.
• Popularity – how many people follow you
• Engagement – you actively participate within your community
• Trust – people believe what you say

It should be noted that even the most influential of Twitter accounts only scores 80 for Influence, so on this statistic a “40” is really a 50%. For other statistics top accounts get 97+ so this is really a true percentage of how an account is performing against the best out there.
The following contain the results station by station:

AM 1150 (www.am1150.ca)

Facebook: no official presence. Two presenters/producers have accounts which are seemingly personal accounts.

Twitter: 1 station account (@am1150), 1 presenter account (@jackedinjessica) as below.

The low score for engagement seen above is typical of an account that is an unmanned “feed” – i.e.  A tweet is automatically sent whenever a website, facebook account or some other web presence is updated, but there is really no person behind the account. It’s not the best way to use Twitter.

For this account, the significantly higher engagement figure brings the overall value of the account to almost the same level as a “feed” account with three times as many followers.
Other useful statistics are on commonality between accounts.:
Following @am1150 and @jackedinjessica = 109

B103 (www.b103.ca)

Facebook: 1 account with 367 followers.

Twitter: 1 account (@b103)

Overall this represents a relatively modest social media presence. My supposition would be that the station is doing the minimum it deems necessary on social media platforms with little resource allocated to social media and little buy-in across the station. There may be one social media evangelist within the station that has little support from management.

THE JUICE (www.1039thejuice.com)

Facebook:  Station account has 587 followers. Presenters/producers have individual accounts but these seem to be strictly personal. A second “campaign” account exists for “90 day transformation” with 19 followers.

Twitter: Four accounts are active: @1039thejuice, @90daytransform, @juicy_nesta, @kenallanjoonyer
The @90daytransform account is new and had only 4 followers at the time of original analysis (and only 10 a week later). A full analysis is therefore not included. This strategy of having a separate Facebook and Twitter profile for a 90 day campaign is highly questionable and not something I would generally advise.

Following @1039thejuice AND @juicy_nesta = 85
Following @1039thejuice AND @kenallanjoonyer = 98
Following @juicy_nesta AND @kenallanjoonyer = 76

K 96.3 (www.k963.fm)

Facebook: 1 account with 530 followers.
Twitter: 1 account – @k963classicrock.

So a respectable effort on Facebook but K96.3 are a surprisingly late adopter of Twitter (account set up only this month) – and have effectively no presence as yet.

POWER (www.power104.fm)

Facebook: 1 account with 309 followers
Twitter: 1 account as below

As with sister station B103, overall this represents a relatively modest social media presence but this time with a very low figure for engagement.

SILK FM (www.silk.net)

Facebook: The station fan page has 476 followers. 2 presenter accounts (Andy & TJ and Breanne Cancade) seem to be used as part-personal, part-professional accounts with 460 and 194 followers respectively.
Twitter: One account – @1015silkfm

Again, this seems to be a feed, so has a very low score on engagement. Coupled with a low follower count this gives this account a rather low overall value. The station is obviously making efforts on Facebook but are let down with their Twitter presence.

SUN 99.9 (www.thesun.net)

Facebook: Sun FM and its presenters/producers have several Facebook accounts as follows:

• Station Facebook Page: 2684 Friends
• Sonia Sidhu: 1299 Friends
• Susan Knight: 2059 Friends
• Dan Freeman:  3499 Friends
• Ara Andonian: 1791 Friends

Twitter: Again the station and its presenters have several accounts: @999sunfm; @soniasidhusunfm; @susanknight @danandsusan. Statistics on these are as follows:

Following @999sunfm and @soniasidhusunfm: 190
Following @999sunfm and @susanknight : 147
Following @999sunfm and @danandsusan : 177
Following @soniasidhusunfm and @susanknight : 135
Following @soniasidhusunfm and @danandsusan : 149
Following @susanknight and @danandsusan : 224

Sun FM Kelowna’s sister stations in Penticton and Vernon also have social media presence. A further Twitter account, @thearashow, exists in Kelowna but has not been assessed (it is protected and so far, a week after requesting to follow the account, that request has not been approved).

Kelowna Assessment Summary

Sun FM lead the way. By miles. Juice and B103 are obviously making efforts across both Twitter and Facebook. Other stations are just too inconsistent to say they have any effective cross-platform social media presence. Silk do OK on Facebook but are nowhere on Twitter. The same can be said for K963. With AM1150 it’s the reverse. Other stations are making efforts but have an even longer way to go to get in the game.

The Kelowna Social Media League Table

Some individual mentions. Seeing as though it’s Olympics time:

Gold goes Susan Knight as Kelowna’s most social-media-influential member of the media with Breakfast Show partner Dan Freeman taking Silver.

Bronze is close between Nesta at Juice, Jessica at AM1150 and Sonia at Sun FM. But Sonia at SunFM edges it making it a Gold-Silver-Bronze for Sun FM.

In my next article for Culturactive, I’ll take a look at the social media presence of 102.1 The Edge.
As can be seen at http://www.edge.ca/Connect/ the station has 9 Facebook accounts, 2 Flickr accounts, an iPhone application stream (as part of the Corus Networks iPhone app), 2 Pocast channels on iTunes, 4 MySpace pages,  20 Twitter streams, a feed in to Viigo and four YouTube channels! They can be considered a “Diamond Standard” among Canadian radio stations with regard to social media presence.

*Statistics for Kelowna stations were collected 17th January, 2010 for The Edge on 24th January 2010.

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Monopoly is a board game published by Parker Brothers, a subsidiary of Hasbro. The game is named after the economic concept of monopoly, the domination of a market by a single entity.
Monopoly is the most commercially-successful board game in United States history, with 485 million players worldwide
According to Hasbro, since Charles Darrow patented the game in 1935, approximately 750 million people have played the game, making it “the most played (commercial) board game in the world

Do not pass ‘Go,’ do not collect $200, and do not ignore the chance to get Kelowna onto a new edition of the board game Monopoly. This is the advice the City and Kelowna Tourism should be shouting out to everyone in Kelowna — to fill the squares on an updated Canadian version

And it’s seems that we are not alone on this matter

London Ontario:
Vancouver:
Thunder Bay:
Medicine hat:
Kamloops: (should be some rivalry here
Chatham-Kent: (I do not know where this place is ?)

The 20 winning communities will be those with the most votes cast at http://www.monopolyvote.ca
The No. 1 community will occupy the high-end real estate of the Boardwalk space on the traditional game.
Others will be named to lesser-value spaces also based on votes. Consumers have until Feb. 7 to register and cast votes for their favourite three communities. One vote is allowed each day for three communities.
Two “wild card” squares on the board will be filled by two other communities nominated and voted on between Feb. 8 through Feb. 21.
The Canadian version of the classic game, which has sold more than 250 million copies, will be launched this summer.

This recent article in Kelowna.com http://www.kelowna.com/2010/01/16/could-kelowna-be-the-next-boardwalk-you-can-help-decide/ had a few local officals make comments

As Robert Fine of the Economic Development Commission put it, this city deserves its moment in the sun, or as the case may be, on the Hasbro assembly line.
“Kelowna is known across Canada for its lake views, wineries, and talented people — it’s about recognition and we are recognized as a place of significance,” he said.

Catherine Frechette of Tourism Kelowna had a similar take, pointing out a business case for board game supremacy.
“Securing a spot for Kelowna on the Canadian Monopoly game board would positively contribute to Kelowna’s intrigue as a quintessential Canadian tourism destination.
Building intrigue and credibility as a travel hot spot happens through so many avenues, and being on the Monopoly game board would sure be one of them,” Frechette said.

Vote for Kelowna

But are we taking real action?
(a Few Social suggestions and challenges)

I would like to ask all the media to step up and get involved.
A true community social show of support.

Online: Kelowna.com and Castanet.net to take down a few of its rotating $$ ad’s and add a vote Kelowna banner

Newspapers: Daily Courier, Capital News banner Ad on the bottom of the front page

Radio Stations: Announce daily morning and evening drive times to remember to vote when you get to work or get home.

TV: Announce at the end of each evening News broadcast did you vote for Kelowna today

Twitters: Get on the band wagon

Facebook Fans: Become a fan of voteforkelowna and spread the word.

Why just have Kelowna added to the board game. Lets make it #1

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We played a whole bunch of board games over the holidays and something struck me – we just can’t read rules. Is this a sign of the end of humanity?

I’ve always been sensitive to “rules” as a board game publisher – I hate the idea of having to defend my own rules and fortunately have rarely had to do so. Nobody ever says your rules are good, but if they are bad they get mentioned loads. The Science of rule writing is the subject of it’s own blog post.

Here is one that we found: Game Rules as Art

We all know people play Monopoly wrong (house rules!). I always thought that was because we learn Monpoly by osmosis, it’s almost part of our DNA. Can you ever remember reading the rules (don’t try they are long and horrid). Fortunately most games aren’t too sensitive to the odd irregularity so in most cases everyone still has fun.

We played three games that I can highly recommend; PowerGrid, Alhambra and Pandemic. There were severals groups playing and each had played these games independently. What we discovered was that we’d all been playing them incorrectly in one way or another. In the end with PowerGrid we typed up our own summary so we don’t fall back into bad habits, and I think I’ve now played as intended.

The details of what we played wrong doesn’t matter here, but Pandemic was the funniest. We didn’t win once and that seemed wrong as I’d won it when I’d played it before at game club. On rereading the rules we’d completely misread how to cause an outbreak, so our diseases were spreading faster than intended – hence our losses.

I think the biggest tip is don’t let anyone read rules in front of other people – the social pressure is to much and our brain and reading skills breakdown. With rules, once we get it wrong, we keep going and we establish our own version of the game. It’s well worth re-reading rules and even writing summaries or annotating your rules sets with mental triggers.

Beyond gaming I wonder if we actually read anything correctly anymore. We’re so tuned to skimming emails, articles, even blog posts just like this one. If we can’t read and consume well written text society faces some serious problems. If reading is failing, what is next?

Is video the answer? You may be unaware, but there is a huge trend on the Internet. Every statistic you read points to the dramatic uptake in the consumption of video as the preferred communication. With the dramatic rise of video, I wonder if this is either the solution or the cause. It’s a good question for which I’m not quite sure of the answer. I’m sure thinking about that question may lead to a few more posts.

How about you? Do you think we’ve lost the ability to consume information? Is the board game dead? Is a simple card game the limit of our comprehension and attention span? Is this post too long? Would you rather watch a video? Does the answer vary by generation? Lots of questions!

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I consider myself very lucky to live close to a world-class ski mountain. This allowed me to go and spend time this past weekend watching the North American (Nor-Am) Cross Country Ski Trials to secure the last few places available for the USA and Canadian teams at the 2010 Olympics in Vancouver.

My daughter races in the Juvenile category, and has been cross country ski racing since she was eight, so I know first hand the dedication that it takes to be a world class skier. (My job is being the parental taxi service to and from training sessions and races across Western Canada as well as a ski waxer.)

Cross-country skiers train all year round. They spend anywhere from 4-6 hours a day working on core strength exercises as well as endurance training. During the summer months, dry-land training takes place via such activities as swimming, running, biking and roller-skiing. They work with a coach and often have sports psychology coaching too. Healthy diets are a must as well as dinking plenty of water. Everything is logged and detailed in training diaries for reference at any point in the future. They are serious about finding resources and spending the time necessary to get to their goal. In addition, most amateur athletes have jobs…

The hardest thing to do as a business owner is to dedicate time to your business strategies, to take that time out from dealing with the day to day #$%^%  (feel free to insert your own word here) and actually concern ourselves with training for our own business.

Do you set aside everyday a couple of hours to concentrate on where your business is for core strength? Do you know what is the foundation of your business that keeps it strong? Do you have a Mission and Vision Statement that you can refer to over and over again to see if you are still on track or if you need refinement?

Do you train for business when it’s not snowing? I.e. when the ‘conditions’ are not suited for your business. Have you found a way to diversify your clientele or business practices to help the company when times are a little slower or dry of leads?

Have you brought in a business coach lately, someone to come in and look at your business from a different angle to help you help your business? Never be afraid to ask for help. Perhaps even ask friends for a brainstorming session about ideas that you may have.

Are you feeding your business the right food? Do you take the time to research for the latest and greatest ‘supplements’ of information online regarding what is happening in your industry? Do you know who provides some of the best source of materials regarding financing or marketing for your company?

Are you keeping track of it all? Are you able to look back at a log and see what you did correct and what went wrong?

It’s easy for me to sit here and write the above list of questions to ask you. I coach sports and I coach businesses. They are often very similar and sometimes as businesses owners we should consider the strategies to be the same.

The above list is also nothing amazing, and nothing that you have not heard before.  But are you dedicated to doing the daily grind of business training? Are you dedicated to finishing the race and becoming number one?

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The opening lines voiced by Hugh Grant who plays the British Prime Minister in the 2003 movie (love Actually) says:

“Whenever I get gloomy with the state of the world, I think about the arrivals gate at Heathrow Airport. General opinions starting to make out that we live in a world of hatred and greed, but I don’t see that. It seems to me that love is everywhere. Often, it’s not particularly dignified or newsworthy, but it’s always there – fathers and sons, mothers and daughters, husbands and wives, boyfriends, girlfriends, old friends. When the planes hit the Twin Towers, as far as I know, none of the phone calls from the people on board were messages of hate or revenge – they were all messages of love. If you look for it, I’ve got a sneaking suspicion… love actually is all around.”

Love, affirmation and caring for one another is probably the largest foundations of whom we are as humans and how it affects our culture. Yes hopefully more than hate or revenge.

Is affirmation not one of the underlying factors of what makes Facebook and Twitter so successful? Please see the post: Am I in your Tribe? Doesn’t #FollowFriday on Twitter and ReTweet’s confirm that we all appreciate a little attention when we can get it?

But nothing quiet says I love you to a business, more than a positive customer review. The time when someone takes those few moments to contact you or even better the world about how great the service was, or the food, or in general the whole experience. Reviews and word of mouth referrals, the thing that every business needs to market themselves more than any other form of promotion. Sadly it seems that often we have to even ask for testimonials to add to our website or proposals.

In a later scene of the movie the Prime Minister reads the following words on a Christmas card (it’s even ‘Canadianized’ with the eh on the end): ‘if you can’t say it at Christmas, when can you, eh? -. ‘I’m actually yours. With love, your Natalie.’

I wanted to write this short post to encourage people to take a few moments and post here, or tweet out, or write on a Facebook fanpage what great experience they have had at a business this year. #bizluv

Or even share their love for another person in their life and how much they mean to them.

Because:

‘if you can’t say it at Christmas, when can you, eh?

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When I was at school going metric meant switching from inches to centimeters, but today “metrics” is whole new mindset. If you want to track your performance, if you want to set goals you need metric to see just how well of badly you did.

So how many metrics do you need? How many is too many? I wish I knew the answer to that question. Any takers?

With the explosion of Web 2.0 tools like YouTube, Flickr, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn metrics jump to a new league.

In fact it’s the Web where it can really go to your head.

Did we ever used to count our friends – no! Well now you can count friends, connection and even followers? How many followers are good – you decide! Sites like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn allow you to build huge social networks – your ‘social graph’ to use the cool term, but then perhaps the definition of “friends” has changed too.

My background is in Business Intelligence so I have an excuse for how I became metrically obsessed. There’s scarcely a company on the planet that isn’t run by numbers, forecasts, and variances. Those daily and weekly reports keep us in check. It’s become a science and a sport. You can collect metrics like trophies.

Who doesn’t keep an eye on their inbox count, the points on your Club Penguin account or your neighbors on Farmville! We live in a transparent world run by metrics. Everyone can see just about all the metric for me and for anyone. You can run, but you cannot hide. Your numbers are there for all to see – whether personally or professionally.

Take any website – what’s it’s Alexa Ranking or Compete Ranking? These metrics simply track how popular your site is compared to other sites. Google Page Rank? These are all just measure of web traffic and search importance, but when used intelligently they tell you what is important and what’s not.

We need metrics to filter out the junk in our lives, ironic when you get to many metrics. Who looked at the top Books on Amazon or checked to see what a book’s average review score. I never buy a book without checking its Amazon reviews and ratings – it’s like an insurance policy.

Personally we all get credit scored, risk assessed – yet more metrics. Try to pass the border and yet more metrics kick in to determine if we get stopped of checked.

My biggest source of metric overload comes from my board game, GiftTRAP with dozens of metrics to check daily.

Some examples;

BoardgameGeek.com – Number of games registered, number of ratings, average rating, overall ranking, ranking in party games, total page views

Facebook.com – Number of fans on Facebook (1,000+), number of user interactions

Twitter.com – number of followers, number of retweets

Funagain.com – sales ranking, ranking in the party game category, overall sales ranking (over time)

GiftTRAP.com – number of page hits, average visit duration, top referring sources., Alexa Ranking, Compete Ranking, Google Page Rank (and endless others besides).

YouTube.com – How many video views

The list goes on.

Now I manage to calm my obsessions for most of the year, but on the run up to Christmas my obsession explodes simply because the numbers change so much faster in the all-important fourth quarter.

Right now GiftTRAP is the top selling party game at Funagain.com. We’re in the top 10 best selling party games of all time.

We’ve got 800+ ratings with over 1000+ registered users at BoardGameGeek.com. We’ve received of 40k+ page views on their site. We’re in the 20 party games of all time.

GiftTRAP has an Alexa rank of 320k, a Compete Rank of 195k and a Google Page Rank of 4. The average visitor spends 2 minutes. We get 40-50,000 visitors per month.

We have over 1000 fans on Facebook

All very impressive stuff, but wow does that ever feel like too many numbers.

Too many numbers or not, it is without question these metrics that have allowed us to create a global brand and learn as we went.

So my advice would be go find your metrics and learn to use them to drive your business performance, and personally it can be a lot of fun too! Embrace the geek within.

What metrics do you track?

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On most evenings @ScottATaylor tweets “Be Good to Each other, there is usually a human behind that avatar…”
which provided my contemplation to start this weeks blog post

I am currently working on a proposal for helping out a small automotive company who when asked about their differentiator as a business replied “ We are honest, we tell the client what they need to know, which is not always what they want to hear.”

I pondered on that for a while, as I like to do. The statement itself is not much of a unique proposition statement for a marketing strategy for business. But I did appreciate the humility and integrity with which it was delivered. However, if that were a tweet would it come across as just another lame sales pitch?

I have often been asked how should I or should I be segmenting my twitter streams business vs personal accounts? I want to be me, yet I want to promote my business. I also want to maintain a rapport with my business clients who may not appreciate my 200 tweets on my favourite personal subject of Face Gurning.

For example giving credit to @vernongirl for posting this in her recent blog article: Greater Vernon Chamber Manager Touts Twitter: “Val says, “One of the most valuable things I learned from Scott Davis, is that you have to be human on Twitter.” That is one of the reasons why Val did not set up an automated message on Twitter, why she does her own tweets and why she often retweets her members and, even, non-members. She also realized how Twitter could be an opportunity for some of her staff, including herself, to connect personally with members and potential members and for businesses to connect with each other.”

So how as a business do we approach the world of Social Marketing?

I coach for a few companies with their social media activities, and have tried several methods of twitter techniques.

1. I am a person who just happens to work for a brand
2. I am tweeting as a brand
3. I am tweeting as a person working for a brand

Jeremiah Owang also has some insight into this on his post: The Evolution of Brands on Twitter:

I believe that is all depends on how we paraphrase the content of our Tweets. For example, do we tweet by saying I/My was doing this or thinking this, compared with are we doing or are we considering.

Let me compare two Tweets:

1. Woohoo! My New 15″ macbook Pro has arrived! Have to wait an hour before I get home (via @mayhemstudios)

2. We’re cleaning the house! Rock Bottom pricing on select bikes, at invoice, don’t hesitate, Opus bikes, Commencal and Norco, (via @kelownacycle)

Tweet #1 is a very personal account of what this person is planning on doing. Tweet #2 is a business tweet promoting they have items for sale.

1. I am a person who just happens to work for a brand

If you consider that 90% of your updates and contents are going to have or are about ‘YOU’, such as in example Tweet #1 (as a person who just happens to work at or own a company), you will definitely find the greatest value in personal social interaction. There are many articles that you can read regarding how just being ‘YOU’ is a great way of using Social Media to it’s fullest.

8 Useful Tips To Become Successful With Twitter (via @smashingmag) Number 1. Above All, Keep It Personal from this article

Do You Separate Your Personal and Professional Twitter Lives? (via @performancing.com)

2. I am tweeting as a brand

If you consider that 90% of your updates are going to be about the collective ‘WE’, such as in my example Tweet #2 and the company wants to publish Sales, Reviews, Blog Post updates, consider tweeting under a brand logo. People will know what to expect, a news channel directly related to that brand. Consequently, have your company set up a company Fanpage on Facebook.

3. I am tweeting as a person working for a brand

The last option for consideration is if you are a staff member, and you are acting as marketing representative to your company through social media. Perhaps consider a twitter name such as “name_company”(for example scott_culturactive). Beforehand, make sure you know what the company policies and procedures are. And also consider asking if your company provides media and PR training.

Some other great Blog posts regarding how to set up social media for a business or as a person:

50 Ideas on Using Twitter for Business: (from @ChrisBrogan)
Top Ten Mistakes Businesses Make On Twitter (from @SharonHayes)
Mashable’s Social Media Guide for Small Businesses (from @Mashable)

So remembering the words of Scott Taylor. Be Good to Each other, there is usually a human behind that avatar…..

As for me personally, I am very much myself under the avatar of @scottpdavis and you will find me tweeting like a maniac some days and not at all when I am trying to get work out or spending time with my family and friends. I try to share as much as I can about things that I find of personal interest and try to distribute items that people have been kind enough to share with me.

How do you use social media?  And what do you find has been working well for that business or organization you work at?

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The Miracle album by Rock band legend Freddy Mercury and queen was originally released June 6, 1989 featuring the hit song “I want it all”

With one of those choruses that gets stuck in the head

I want it all, I want it all
I want it all…..and I want it now!

You can watch the clip here (if you do want to get it stuck in your noggin for a while)

Just to take you back 20 years, here are a few historical highlights from around that time Courtesy of Wikipedia:

March 4 – Time, Inc. and Warner Communications announce plans for a merger, forming Time Warner.
April 25 – Motorola introduces the Motorola MicroTAC Personal Cellular Telephone, then the world’s smallest mobile phone (just look at this Monster .
June 4 – The Tiananmen Square massacre takes place in Beijing on the army’s approach to the square, and the final stand-off in the square is covered live on television.
July 5 – The television show Seinfeld premieres.
August 14 – The Sega Genesis is released in North America.
December 17 – The first full-length episode of The Simpsons, “Simpsons Roasting on an Open Fire“, premieres on Fox.

I think Freddy Mercury may have been on to something WAAAyyyyy back then. But was he talking about consumerism?
Was he talking about a new Motorola cell phone or the next episode of the Simpson. I doubt it, but we do know from the rest of the lyrics he was talking about the youth generation at that time.

Almost Twenty year later comedian Louis C.K. riffed on youth, consumerism and general impatience in this now popular YouTube clip

everything’s amazing and nobody’s happy show on Late Night with Conon o’brian oct 2008

I must admit I still laugh when I watch this video, because it is so true. But how unfunny do you think this video will seem in twenty years from now? (if we can still find the right archived media player to play it)

News is traveling faster than it has ever done before and much of this is fueled by the increase in Social Media platforms. By the time we have got to work we are already pretty savvy to the world after eating our instant cereal and checking our tweets and Facebook wall. Are we are seeing the decline in the newspaper, because we can’t wait for it to be printed?  I saw a reporter out on the street from one of our local online news sources Kelowna.com using his iPhone to take photos for immediate upload and instant coverage of today’s power outage.

While doing round table discussions at a business seminar the other week, somebody asked me if twitter was geared toward men. This stopped me in my tracks for a little while, and asked how they came to this conclusion. “Well it must be catering to the male short attention span with only 140 characters”, I had to chuckle at that one.

But really is this true, not so much the male thing (however please feel free to comment on that ). Is Social Media setting false expectation on everything else in life? Will our youth appreciate the finer things in life that we consider worth waiting for.

An quick example ( was in not fun to build a snow fort ?) This Instant Igloo inflates in two minutes and fits four children. It makes a perfect shelter for a snowball fight retreat or hangout for the neighborhood kiddies. Made from durable, crack-resistant PVC vinyl, it includes two clear surveillance windows, two inflatable snow shields, and two detachable flags, as well as a hidden emergency escape hatch for stealthy exits. Pick it up for $119.95. Earlier this year we would wait in line for a Starbucks coffee and pay through the nose for it, now they have instant, what is that all about? As Canadian’s it seems we will still wait in line at Tim Hortons for over half an hour to get a double double in the morning. But get mad we have to wait for an H1N1 Shot.

When it comes to business how is this going to affect us?

I was taught “under promise and over deliver”, but are we getting to the point of; if I can’t have it now I don’t want it at all? Is your company providing a service or product that can meet the demands of an overly anxiousness consumer? Are you thinking about this as a problem? Are you changing it up to better suit the young crowd?

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So there you have it the local election here in Kelowna, BC, for a new city council member is over. For the culturacive web site it has been as much of a ride as for the nominee candidates themselves. With some very appreciated comments and media coverage.

So congratulations goes out to 19 year old Kevin Craig this time, however I am sure we will hear more from the other candidates who were in the running when the next full Municipal election comes around.

Reading a few facebook comments there now comes the question, can a 19-year-old “kid” handle the job?

Facebook comment: I’m a little shocked at the by election results…but congratulations to Kevin. I thought there were only really 3 serious contenders and any one of them would have done a crack up job. Now we will find out if youth can make a difference.
Facebook Reply 1: Guess that’s what happens when you can rally the campus. Good luck to the guy, but personally I’d prefer to see someone with a little more “life experience” in the position.
Facebook Reply 2: Craig missed by 39 votes last time so he deserves this from hard work.
Facebook Reply 3: I am not surprised that he got in, he’s been working hard, and has been a regular at council meetings for a long time. What he lacks in life experience, he compensates for with perseverance and focus. Will be interesting to see how he does. He rallied his age demographic to support him, but it also speaks to a cynicism towards the status quo in politics, before him, Neis was elected Mayor in West Kelowna on the strength that she was not like the others. People want something different.

So this blog post is a little follow up from my first article City Council Candidates Not So Social . As I stated in that post Kevin Craig was probably one of the most active to use social media as a tool to add to his campaign. And was eager to share these thoughts:

“I’d say that some candidates have certainly made an effort to use social media to support their campaigns, but it has played more of a supporting role than sitting at the centre of a campaign strategy. I’m reasonably happy with my efforts on Facebook and Twitter, but I know that I’ve done a pretty mediocre job at posting media articles mentioning my campaign to Facebook, and directing followers on Twitter to new blog posts on my website. It’s a work in progress for just about all the candidates but I firmly believe social media will continue to play an ever-increasing role in elections and governance.”

Another  place that may shed a few openers is the movie ‘The Youngest Candidate’ is a feature length documentary film directed by Jason Pollock. It is produced by David Letterman’s company, Worldwide Pants, in partnership with Oscar winner Lawrence Bender (producer of ‘Pulp Fiction’ and ‘An Inconvenient Truth’, etc..) and Balance Vector Productions.

It follows the story of 4 teens that ran for public office in America. Funny, inspiring, poignant, and ultimately uplifting, ‘The Youngest Candidate’ is not just a film about running for office. It is the coming of age story of four idealistic young adults who dared to confront the corrupt political systems in America. Through their journey these young candidates learn about fair play, leadership development, racism in politics, the importance of family, and many other lessons that they will carry with them throughout their lives. In the face of great adversity, these four young adults braved all the odds to make it to Election Day to show that regardless of the outcome, it didn’t matter… It’s all about how you play the game.

But I want to highlight and make comment on the Facebook Reply 2 and 3 and also a quote from this article from Kelowna.com. “But Craig is not spending the whole campaign just sitting in front of his computer. He is also one of the more active candidates when it comes to putting up signs and going out door knocking.”

People ask me do I think social media works… often I reply, “no I don’t”; and I get various strange looks, or I reply “yes as long as your work your ass off at it”.

What I am trying to say is that just like anything in life nothing seems to come easy (well not for me anyway,  you may have found some kind of magical wand). Also there is usually not just one answer especially when it comes to marketing and business. I am a strong advocate of what social media can do for a business, service or organization of any size. But I am much more of an advocate of telling you that it can only help as long as you have a good strategy, and a comprehensive mix with lots of other effort. Marketing fusion is what I consider the only way to go about making a noticeable difference into a very diverse cultural world.

Just like our new member to city council, you have to knock on a lot of doors and have to try opening a few that you may not have tried before (ie Twitter, Facebook, linkedin) along the way. But if people are looking for something different from you or you business you are simply going to have to give it a lot of hard work…. Sorry for the bad news

Actually I know this is not news to any of us and know it does not take a newbie 19 year old or the wise learning of a 90 year old to figure it out. But  you can earn a lot of respect and gain a lot ground in this world whether it’s on a personal level or a business level by working hard, working smart, working in lots of different areas, and sharing your experiences along the way.

So a couple of points that I would love to hear comment on:

1: Do you think hard work alone can take you to where you want to go in life or do you have another idea?

2: Can hard work compensate for such things that we may find people hold against us such as youth or ‘life experience’?

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I am much hourned to simply call her a friend.
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This post is is a much more Insightful blog (part II) than the original post on positive versus negative communications delivery, and here comes the dreaded …BUT:

From my perspective, I see 2 separate areas of discussions eventhough both viewpoints are related within the context of this fine blog: (1) Title of the blog : “It was great ..But!” and (2) Online persona vs real life persona

(1)   Title of the blog: “It was great ..But!”

I agree with you that although the communication was initiated by a positive statement, this is bluntly a negative statement. I would equate it to a delivery of fine roses actually laced with arsenic. Okay may not be so poisonous but I hope the readers get my point. A negative statement disguised as a positive statement.

I do not adhere to the opinion that this type of comment is caused by a possible indecisiveness. I believe it goes deeper than that. In my humble opinion and only qualifying from my observations and experiences, I sincerely think it relates to human conditioning based on our personal background and conditioning – nature and nurture – with the main operative word to focus on the word “conditioning”.

Based on studies made (by Jack Canfield, self-esteem expert) that it takes 5 positive statements to counter 1 negative statement. An average child hears 432 negative statements per day but only 32 positive statements per day. Research shows further that 80% of people are hurt by words and only about 20% of children and adults are able to handle put-downs without emotional pain or psychological damage (data from California Task Force for Personal and Social Responsibility).

As a result, in my humble opinion, we are “conditioned” since childhood to communicate as much as possible with some polite “semblance” of “positive” delivery when communicating.

Ironically, even with our years of conditioning, our inbuilt human alarms allow us to pick up this negative comment through body language and non verbal cues. And contrary to what societal conditioning originally intended, one automatically reacts, consciously or subconsciously, by immediately raising our guard and being on the defensive, waiting for the predictable BUT followed by the critical negative statements afterwards.

So how do we counter measure this negative statement and find a mutually beneficial way for positive communication flow? From my experience, I suggest to paraphrase a persons or client’s statement back to him/her via a positive reply through the exchange of words of “BUT”, “HOWEVER” or “YET” with the words “AND” & “WITH”.

For example, the following statement is a negative comment if this was said by a client, “I think your presentation was great, BUT I don’t like the look of this logo.”

Replacing the word “but” with “and” changes the whole tone of the sentence.  Then paraphrase the sentence back to a client in this manner “To reconfirm for my own understanding, the presentation design is great so far “AND” you’d like me to review the logo further to your requirements?”

Hopefully it will have a domino effect and people will, subconsciously or consciously, reciprocate in a positive manner too. If not, at the very least, with practice and time, you will have reconditioned your own communication delivery and reciprocations to negative statements which in itself represents a major competitive advantage for you in the art of successful communication over your professional peers.

(2)   Online persona vs real life persona

This is very easy and short for me to answer. In trying hard not to judge other people for whatever reasons they come online and how they choose to behave online, I think the answer to your question varies very much on an individual case by case basis, by the person giving the opinion and the person being observed on his/her online persona.

As for my own stance, I say and behave online very similarly to how I express myself and act offline. I have no issue to speak out on my opinions offline or online, however potentially controversial it may be. I’ve been lucky to learn over a period of time through my own personal and professional growth how to convey feedback in a more positive light using very little or no negative statements.

In that vain, it is only natural that I will gravitate and find people online who I intuitively observe and eventually hope to be similar offline in their behaviours, mannerisms, ability to voice their opinions and receive feedback.

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