Photo: davidbriody on Flickr

This coming week I’ll be joining a panel of ski industry professionals to discuss social media’s place in resort marketing as part of the ResortXpo Virtual event. The experience of preparing for this has been interesting. On the one hand, I know I’m immersed in the world of social media for work and in my personal life and I’m proud of the things I’ve accomplished for my company and excited about the connections I’ve made; but on the other hand this process has made me well aware of the things I’m not doing that I wish I were or the things I could be doing better.

I’m a little surprised, actually, when I think of how many more ways I could engage:

• Some I’ve never thought about before
• Some I’ve just never taken the time to set up
• Some I just don’t have the time to dedicate

In order to wrap my head around all the things I’d like to do, I thought I’d write out my thoughts on what I’d do in a perfect world – a world without budgets, deadlines or limited resources. Some of this I’m already doing; some of it has yet to be perfected, but I do hope to get there at some point. Perhaps as the use of multi-directional web connections becomes as mainstream as the telephone these things will all become commonplace elements of guest service for every company.

In the meantime, here’s my corporate social media wish list:

Blogging

• I’d blog regularly about what’s happening not only within my company but within my industry
• I’d recruit several of our key employees to blog and share their perspectives
• I’d recruit a few ambassadors from within our community to share their perspectives on our company, product and  industry like we did with our terrain parks blog
• I’d make sure I had a solid employee blogging and social media engagement guidelines document prepared and circulated but then encourage staff to engage with our guests
• I’d also use my Google Alerts to show me where people are discussing my company or product and make a point of commenting on every single one of them, just to let them know how much we care that they are writing

Photo/Video Sharing

• I’d put all my company’s photography on Flickr
• I’d divide up the content into relevant sets based on different activities and set each with appropriate permissions for use – media would be able to access the high resolution downloads from there instead of using an FTP site and messing with FTP clients or browsers to retrieve them
• I’d do regular searches for new images taken at the mountain and comment on them or say a quick hello and thank people for sharing them.
• I’d put all my company video files on YouTube or Vimeo or Viddler depending on where our guests are
• I’d make sure the profile was customized for brand consistency
• I’d ensure videos were put into proper playlists based on their content
• I’d spend time browsing through and favouriting videos that our subscribers/guests may enjoy and I’d rate and comment on every video that showed content from the mountain and, again, thank the contributor for sharing it.

Facebook

• I’d have a Facebook fan page for the company and for other relevant lines of business or niche segments
• I’d post relevant links regularly for those groups depending on their interest in engagement
• I’d encourage fans to subscribe to mobile updates from each Fan Page as they see fit
• I’d have a custom username for those Fan Pages
• I’d add several of our top Guest Services Representatives as admins on it so they could respond to guest inquiries in a very timely manner
• I’d also ensure every event at the mountain had a Facebook Event Page so people could easily share with their friends

Microblogging

• I’d use Twitter to share important information that isn’t necessarily worthy of an email but is interesting nonetheless
• I’d share information about events, promotions, news, and anything else going on
• I’d respond to every @reply and DM
• I’d re-tweet information of value to my followers and say a quick hello to everyone who mentions my company or product in a tweet
• I’d use Twitter Search to see what’s happening in my industry and set some comprehensive searches and throw the feeds in my reader just to keep track of what’s coming up
• I’d attend company events, take some fun photos, upload them to TwitPic and Tweet them out to show how much fun it is to attend mountain events both as a guest and as an employee
• I’d link my Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, YouTube and even my Google Reader to Friendfeed to aggregate everything I share on the web in one place
• I’d check for comments regularly and respond to every one
• I’d go through my Google Reader items at least daily and share relevant links that would be of interest to our community; those would also then show up in my friend feed.

Corporate Website

• I’d ensure our social media touchpoints were clear on our site by adding visible graphic links to our various profiles – our blogs, Twitter, Friendfeed, Facebook, Flickr, YouTube etc.
• I’d ensure every page of our website had a ShareThis widget to make it easy for people to share our content in whatever way they like to
• I’d ensure our media resources section had web-optimized press releases linking to relevant information, written with a little SEO in mind
• On the topic of SEO, I’d make sure every page of our site was reviewed regularly to ensure keywords, meta, title and URL was optimized and relevant
• I’d encourage people to share information about their visit to the mountain on review sites such as Yelp, TripAdvisor etc. or to submit it to us, post it on our blog, tweet about it or otherwise make it known
• I’d have a mobile website that listed only relevant “on the go” information

Digital Marketing

• I’d advertise every relevant product with targeted Facebook social ads
• I’d have an extensive PPC ad plan in place that also covered every product and service we offer
• I’d include recent social media updates in regular email blasts to our double-opt-in subscribers
• I’d utilize mobile alerts for relevant subscriber groups to share timely information as appropriate

The list above is my start. Obviously what I’ve listed is very top line and I could go into more detail about what to say, what not to say, who to friend, who not to friend, corporate branding, messaging etc. I could also go into technologies and tools I’d love to be using extensively within our organization – Skype, IM etc. or mention how all of this is irrelevant unless you’re listening in the first place… and there are even some great tools that automate the listening for you!

I’d love to hear from others in the industry about what they consider to be some “best practices” with regards to social media use by brands and corporate identities.

I’m sure there is much I still have to learn.

Photo: carrotcreative on Flickr

Recently I have noticed more and more people playing the twitter follow game: a rude, strategy-driven ploy to gain thousands of twitter followers in a matter of days.

Here’s the thing: you’re not fooling anyone.

If you have thousands of followers and only a couple hundred tweets, you’re either playing the twitter follow game or you’re REALLY interesting. If you’re that interesting, you can stop reading now. Thanks for coming out; I’m honoured.

If you’re mostly normal, it will take you some time to build up an authentic, conversational twitter community.

Here’s the respectable way to gain twitter followers:

Either a) I see something you said or found something in your bio and think you’re interesting, so I follow you. You then choose to follow me back or not, or b) you see something I said and think I’m interesting and so you follow me; I may then choose to follow you back. The more you tweet, the more likely I am to find something you say interesting; the reverse is also true.

Over time, as we both tweet interesting things, we grow the number of people who follow us and the number of people we follow.

Here’s the obnoxious follow game I’m talking about:

You follow me, usually as part of a batch follow of hundreds or even thousands of people at once with very little regard to relevance. I get an email in my inbox saying you followed so I check out your profile. You are at least slightly interesting if still a little new to Twitter (you’re not fooling anyone – we can tell by the absence of thousands of tweets) so out of politeness I follow back.

Sounds the same as above, right? WRONG! Here’s the rest of it…

I then get ANOTHER email saying you’re following me.

Photo: wiselywoven on Flickr

The thing I didn’t know when I followed you back was that after following ME, YOU then unfollowed, so I would get the email notification but you wouldn’t actually have to count me as one of the (limited) people you follow… then you auto-follow-back only those who followed you back.

It’s EXHAUSTING just thinking about it, and I’m now taking a hard stand against it. If you follow me twice I will deem you totally uninteresting and unfollow whether we have anything in common or not.

Those who want to connect with thousands of irrelevant people just to look important and justify the Social Media Guru titles they are giving themselves are the same people who send auto-responses with craptastic click-my-junk messages that aren’t worth the email they’re sent on. (Thank you Amber Naslund for coining the phrase – very relevant here).

That is not interesting; and it’s not community.

If you really want to build an authentic Twitter community:

• Have a photo on your Twitter Profile.
• Include a bio on your Twitter Profile that actually says something about you – what you do, hobbies, interests.
• If you’re at all inclined with Photoshop or some other such graphic program, build yourself a Twitter background. If you’re not, upload a lifestyle-type photo as a repeating background shot so the rest of Twitter can get a sense of who you are.
• Be yourself; if you try and be someone else it will show. Besides, the coolest thing about Twitter is the fact that the guy who works in insurance, loves dogs and model trains. Passionate about space photography can find other people who share those very same interests or attributes… or at least one or two of them.
• Share things that are interesting to you; if they’re interesting to you, they’ll be interesting to the people who have opted to connect with you (remember you’re being yourself).
• Be choosy about linking to your own stuff. If you must link to each blog entry, please do it without a bot i.e. introduce it to your followers with a note of interest and then for heaven’s sake, don’t tweet it out again. If it is interesting enough, people will RT it for you.
• Reply and Re-Tweet. Please. If I look at your profile and it shows that all you’re doing is musing about life in an endless stream of deep thoughts worthy of SNL circa 1990 without ever responding to anything anyone else says or posts ever, I have zero incentive to follow you back. We all know people who are that self-involved in real life; there’s no need to look for more.
• Grow your network authentically. Watch for good #followfriday listings that share a reason to follow someone – these will usually be from your own network and, therefore, you’ve got a good chance of sharing something in common anyway. Use tools like Twellow or Twitter Grader and find interesting people who share commonalities with you.
• Don’t get hung up on the numbers – friendorfollow.com is evil and doesn’t even deserve a link. There will be people you’ll want to follow who just won’t want to follow you back and that’s okay. Keep following them – don’t let your pride rob you of that information they may be sharing if you want it. Alternatively, some people may want to follow you and you look at their profile and can’t find a single thing to relate to. It’s okay not to follow back. Don’t let your ego be bruised if others feel that way about you – you are most definitely an interesting and unique person and God loves you

I love Twitter. I use it a lot. It’s a very valuable source of information for me and I also use it from a corporate perspective (that’s another post for another day). I want to keep using it and I really do want to connect with other people who share my interests.

I want to connect with corporate marketers (not self-proclaimed social media gurus), moms, adventurous women, snowboarders, runners, Christians, musicians, people living with hemophilia or any combination thereof – the more the better… all these things are in my twitter profile.

If you really have no interest in any of those things, please don’t follow me – that’s what I tweet about.

Lastly, if you are reading this and you haven’t yet joined twitter… try it. Here are some things to consider when selecting a twitter username.

Choose your username wisely.

Your username on Twitter is your @. Mine is @seeking_balance. It’s not bad, but If I’d gotten on the wagon sooner I may have been able to secure @michelleevans or @imseekingbalance or even @seekingbalance (all of which were taken but the time I got there). I might have even thought long and hard and tried to get @isb or just simply @balance.

Here is what I want you to consider:

I think if you’re going to tweet personally, try and get your name; if you’re going to tweet for a company, use the company name. Those are ideals. Now that said, don’t use either of those options if the name is long; the shorter the better. Here’s why: When communicating via Twitter, you only have 140 characters to say what you want to say. When you tweet, your username isn’t part of that count BUT, when someone replies to you, your @username becomes part of the message. Or if you want someone to re-tweet what you tweet, they will include “RT @username” which then can make it really difficult to post your whole tweet, especially if it used up nearly the full 140 characters to begin with.

So choose wisely. Shorter is better. Your name is good. Your company name is good. ‘CandyAss427′ is NOT good. ‘QUuElz’ looks like spam and usually is. This is not the time to go with that handle you’ve been using for the last 15 years just because you use it for everything.

This is your brand online. Proceed with caution.

EDIT (Added April 14, 2009) – I just came across this really good post called Ten Things You Must Know Before Using Twitter. It’s useful… go there next.

For that matter, they’re not on Twitter, or LinkedIn, or MySpace either. They have absolutely no desire to get involved with online social networking whatsoever.

The image to the right – the Conversation Prism, created by Brian Solis and Jesse Thomas – displays the myriad ways people can connect with one another online: Blogs, Social Neworks, Life Streaming, video, music and photo sharing, are just some of the activities that tie us together in cyberspace.

The subjects:

Woman #1 – Karen
Karen is a stay at home mom to two children and a wife to a hard working businessman. In her opinion, online social networking is for creepy people from her past – old high school acquaintances and old flames – to look her up and relive the glory days or outright stalk her. She barely has enough time to keep her kids stimulated, fed and cleaned and her house organized to throw in something so mundane as wall posts or super wall giggles.

Woman #2 – Laura
Laura is an elementary school teacher with a husband an a young son. Her biggest concern about online social networking is exposing her personal life to her students and their parents. School workplace politics are rough enough without one’s student’s parents knowing what events you may be attending or what you might be growing in your Li’l Green Patch.

Woman #3 – Sarah
Sarah is a businesswoman who owns a womens’ gym and is also married with one young son (yes, we all share some commonalities, hence, the hanging out together). She has no real desire to share anything of her personal life with the world via the internet; she’s perfectly happy to rely on interpersonal communication via either email or telephone, but prefers in-person connection.

Here’s where we disagree: While they each consider online social networking to be of very little value, I consider it to be a new and better way of communicating with people around me and a source of rich information and connection. Even the BBC says Social Networks ‘are new e-mail’.

Photo: Jason Nicholls on Flickr

Back in the 1990′s when email was making its way into mainstream business practice, there were still naysayers who suggested they didn’t need it. If they needed something from someone they could phone them up; if they needed a document signed they could fax it or mail the original. And before there was email there was the telephone. When it first became available, while there were a few who jumped on the bandwagon like the tech crowd to twitter, there were many who were reluctant to see its value, preferring instead to walk over to someone’s office to talk or wait for their regular meeting. Failing that, they could send a letter or a telegram. Seems a bit archaic now, no?

Technology changes. Today, we can sit on a plane traveling from Vancouver to London while accessing the internet on our iPhones using WiFi at 37,000′ to update our networks with a twitpic of the guy sitting next to us. Not because he’s interesting, but just because we can. If he’s drooling on your shoulder and you don’t know his first name, all the better.

Photo: Christopher Chan on Flickr

Times they are most certainly changing, and it’s time to embrace the power of the internet for each and every individual. What provides value to one person might not provide value to the next, but if you look in the right place, you will find an enriching experience. Online social networks are extremely valuable in today’s society and can help with everything from job search to business marketing and from connecting with a niche hobby group to finding a local mom’s group.

No matter how obscure your interests or how lofty your goals, you can use online social networking to connect to others who share your passions and can help you achieve your dreams.

Online social network examples:

To Karen:
Online social networking can help you to connect with other mothers who share your passion for a sparkly-clean house. You can find other wives of executives that can relate to the stresses you’re under trying to raise your children while maintaining peace in your home that doubles as an office. You can also save valuable time looking for the best place to get your nails done by asking the question within your network to see what they come back with. After all… the collective response is usually pretty bang on.

To Laura:
Online social networking can help you to connect with other teachers who share your expertise to provide synergies within your class preparations – the Second Grade Teacher’s Club on Ning, for instance. You can find a welcome distraction from grading papers or build a space to deliberately connect with your students’ parents. How enriching an experience for your students if they had their own social network that you used to keep your classroom connected to one another for homework help, carpooling or group assignments?

To Sarah:
Online social networking can help you connect to your gym’s members, to make them feel special, to engage them with you and with one another. It can help you to improve sales in a time and place where everyone is searching for some spare cash. It can help you to find other adoptive moms to connect with and learn from or network with other professionals from your religious community who may not be in the same city.

Photo: Graham Ballantyne on Flickr

You can avoid online social networks for a time, but imagine trying to live life without a telephone? It won’t last forever. You can’t fight the future, but you can make sure you’re getting the most enriching social networking experience possible.

Join Facebook. Connect with your friends. If people send you friend requests and you don’t want to invite them in, don’t. Life is too short to have to justify yourself. I don’t usually connect on Facebook with anyone I don’t know in real life and for the most part, there’s quite a close connection.

If you’re in business (or have ever had a professional job for that matter), join LinkedIn. Connect with your co-workers, former colleagues, former bosses, business contacts… You never know how you might be able to help someone out and you never know when you may need to lean on one of these relationships during a major life change like a move or a job loss.

If you have a hobby or are interested in some really interesting or obscure activity, check out Ning and see if there isn’t already a community for it. Knitting anyone? Model cars? Paddling?

Join Twitter. Just do it. I can’t tell you how much I love the connections I’ve made there. I’ve connected with business leaders in my field and moms from other countries. I’ve connected with other Vancouverites and other Ski Industry marketing professionals. If the conversation on Twitter isn’t any good for you, you’re not following the right people.

If you have friends who are not online, please help them. In the same way you wouldn’t let your best friend sport a mullet in 2009, don’t let them miss out on some of the best relationship building tools because they think it’s all going to be about awkward highschool moments they don’t want to relive.

Photo: UrbanShore on Flickr

If you’re in business, you may have heard lately that you should be doing “Social Media”… “Web Two Point OH”. You should have a YouTube Channel. You should start a viral video. You should write a blog.

Um, why exactly?

I’m sure when you’re already working 14 or 16 hours a day on your day to day business operation, the last thing you want to do is sit down at the computer and add more to your task list. If your business is small or local – you own or manage a coffee shop or have a small fitness studio or an urban retail store – you’re already trying to do a lot with a little. Besides, the web is for big business right?

Wrong. It’s for everyone.

Here’s the thing: There is so much information online already, that you stand to gain a wealth of insight from it. And many of those people putting in their two cents are your customers… they may just not know it yet.

Here are a few super simple tactics that can help you use some of today’s web-based tools to tap into that information, streamline tasks and grow your business. I’ve broken them down into 3 categories: Listening, Building Relationships, and Home Base.

Listening

Google Alerts

Google Alerts allow you to track what’s happening in your industry by allowing you to conduct a search for keywords or phrases of your choosing and then sending you every article written about them in real time. You can search for your company name, your competitors’ names and industry keywords or prases. You can have the results sent to your email or to an RSS feed (more about these later).

Here’s the super simple way you set up a Google Alert:

1. Go to google.com/alerts
2. Enter your first search term (your company  name, likely) in the text field
3. Select “Comprehensive” – this will look for news, websites, blogs, video, and even some forums
4. Select how often you want to receive them (if you’re sending to your email, once a day may suffice)
5. Enter your email address and click “Create Alert”

It’s as simple as that. Google will send you an email with what looks like search results, only everything in the list will include the keywords or prases you requested.

If you want to receive alerts for multiple keywords or phrases, I recommend creating a Google account (you may even have one already if you have a Gmail account, Google Analytics account, Blogger account etc.) and creating a more comprehensive alerts system. But a simple email alert for your company name is a great start.

Twitter Search

You’ve probably heard the word Twitter. Twitter is all abuzz in the tech/marketing world but it has yet to reach the mainstream. Having said that, the people on Twitter are almost exclusively bloggers and influencers by the very nature of their extensive social networking.

Knowing what these influencers are talking about and finding a few in your industry or location is never a bad idea.

If you don’t want to sign up to Twitter, that’s fine. It can be a life suck anyway – if you joined Facebook you know how much time that can take up if you’re not careful. But you should use the Twitter Search function. And just like setting up a Google Alert, it’s super simple.

Go to search.twitter.com and enter a keyword. Now, keep in mind, people using Twitter only have 140 characters to talk to one another. The keywords will pick up exact words they are including in their ‘tweets’. What you’ll get in the results is a list of statements from people using Twitter to communicate. A quick browse will give you an idea of what people are saying about your business or industry.

Building Relationships

You need to make sure you have an ongoing relationship with your customers. It doesn’t matter what business you’re in, encouraging repeat business takes less effort than acquiring new business. Repeat customers are the ones who become your advocates. Repeat customers keep your business open. Sometimes all it takes is a friendly conversation… in person or online.

To build and grow that relationship, find a way to connect with your customers – either via email or mobile messages – and then offer them information that’s relevant to them in the way they want.

Side note: I believe marketing can help people to improve their lives via your product. I don’t believe in selling people something they don’t want. I don’t believe in shoving information down peoples’ throats. What I do believe in, is providing relevant information via relevant media that simply show people how they can benefit from a product or service.

Email Marketing

While email marketing in general seems to be on a decline because of the prevalence of other communication methods, it’s still the most comprehensive way to share information with people who want that information. Blogs with an RSS subscription present another way to share that in-depth type of information with your customers.

You can use a simple tool like Vertical Response to collect and store contact information. You can create different lists based on whatever attributes you like – types of purchases, gender, age category – and then send them updates that are relevant to them: new product lines, special events, sales. Vertical Response has a huge set of pre-made email templates to choose from, they send in both HTML (with pretty pictures and stuff) and text so no matter what type of email your customers receive, your message will be intact. And, you only have to pay for what you use – there’s no monthly fee. You can also use it to conduct surveys or, if you collect full contact information, you can even use it to send direct mail postcards.

The cost starts at just $0.015 per email you send e.g. if you have a list of 1000 addresses, the whole email will cost you only $15. If your list is larger, the cost per message goes down from there. Or, you can pay a monthly fee based on the size of your email list and send as often as you’d like – currently for up to 2,000 addresses in your list it would cost you $28/month.

Tagga Mobile Marketing

Tagga is a really innovative new tool that allows anyone to use SMS or Text Messaging for any reason they like. You could create a tagg (or an SMS message) that people can text in to receive. You change it whenever you’d like and let people know they can text KEYWORD (whatever you choose, provided it’s not already taken) to 82442 (TAGGA) and they receive your message to their mobile phone. Alternatively, you can set up a subscription where people text in the keyword to 82442 to subscribe. You then send out a message to your subscribers.

You can pay for service and use the full 120 character text message for yourself – the cost is about USD$0.20 per message – or you can opt to send your messages using only 80 characters and pay nothing; a sponsored message (using the remaining 60 characters) at the end of the text will cover the cost. Note: it is really hard to squeeze a message into 80 characters, but at only $0.20/message with no month to month cost, it’s a great way for a small company to get in on mobile marketing.

Where mobile is really effective is last second deals to improve upon low yield times/days.

You own a bakery? Blow out the end of day inventory at a discount – send a message at 4pm that says “Get 25% off today’s baked goods at XYZ Bakery before 5pm today” (that’s only 62 characters, incidentally). Empty coffee shop? Send a message saying “Large coffee for the price of a small at Tasty Coffee Company; today only.”

Your Home Base

WordPress.com

I know, I know… I said earlier you don’t need to blog. And you don’t. BUT, if you don’t have a web presence at all, WordPress.com is a quick and easy – and FREE – way to create one. Just sign up for an account at wordpress.com for free. Then, select from a number of visual themes, upgrade to a custom URL (it’s only $15), purchase your preferred URL from a domain name provider (I like Namespro.ca) and redirect your ‘site’ to your custom URL.

You can use wordpress.com as a free web content management system by using the ‘Pages’ functionality to create all the pages your website may need (see above where it says “About Michelle”? That’s a page – if I add more they’ll make a line across the top). You can then go into the settings and redirect your home page to one of the pages you’ve created and you don’t actually need to blog at all… unless you want to.

RSS Feed Reader

The last thing I want to mention is using RSS to keep track of everything. Almost everything is accessible with RSS nowadays. RSS allows you to take the content of blogs, media sites, twitter, google searches, and any RSS enabled website and aggregate that information in one place.

I use Google Reader. When you find an RSS link – like the one at the top of this page that says “Subscribe in a reader” – you can click the link and add it to your Google Reader (or another feed reader of your choosing). You can, incidentally, sign up to have your Google Alerts also go to your Google Reader. You can also sign up to an individual’s twitter stream, a twitter search stream, your favourite news site etc.

The benefit to doing this is you go to only one site to read all the information you want to see. I go to my Google Reader and get something that looks like this:

You can see I have 579 unread items that I can review by topic; I have categorized my subscriptions into Social Media, Tourism, Vancouver, Snowboarding and the ones at the bottom of the list are uncategorized at this point. If I open any one topic I get a number of sources and I can review by source, by topic, or the whole list.

This, incidentally, is my personal reading list; I also have another Google Account for my work and have another reader account with everything I read pertaining to my employment.

I know that may look overwhelming, but I usually access my reader by utilizing the web browsing on my mobile phone and read whenever I’m waiting for something or have a few moments to spare.

Clear as mud?

Hopefully I haven’t overwhelmed you. This is meant to highlight just a few very inexpensive ways you can get involved no matter what your business or your budget.

If you have any super simple solutions you think I’ve missed, please do leave them in the comments. Alternatively, if you are looking for help to develop a plan further, you can contact me at michelle [at] imseekingbalance [dot] com.

Photo: wasaby on Flickr

So this week has been filled with a little craziness. Work has been busy; I’ve been dealing with some injuries; and driving has been rediculous as people went back to work after Snowmageddon. I’ve honestly seen places where I was quite certain someone would die unless something was done about the sidewalks…

Anyway, here are some fun finds of the week to make it all better:

I was commenting on Tuesday about a woman who brought her two sons into a public women’s washroom. The boys were probably 10 and 12 – no joke. I really think she should have saved them the total embarassment they so obviously felt and just went into the mens with them if she was so worried about it.

Anyway, after a quick discussion about it on twitter, the Ask A Urinal site came to my attention, quite by accident. Certainly fitting, though, and definitely funny.

Then one of my bloggers on Grouse Park Sessions posted this hilarious tip on how to deal with fogged up goggles. I can’t explain the many ways this makes me giggle.

My physiotherapy appointments have been funny all on their own, and quite the exercise in humility.

I’ve had a problem with my right hip for some time. It causes pain in my lower back and has been particularly troublesome in the last few weeks. I’m certain it’s from a combination of one-sided activities (8 years of kickboxing plus snowboarding) and running (which is just generally hard on the body) with very little stretching and weight training to speak of. Anyway, the first time I showed up my physiotherapist ended up being a guy I’d gone to high school with… okay, so I’m an adult now and I can deal, right? Not so much. I had to stand in front of him, facing away while he sat with his head at my butt level and his hands on my hips… then what do I have to do? Bend forward and touch my toes. WHAT?! Um… m-kay. It never ceases to surprise me some of the positions we get into that would absolutely NOT be okay if it wasn’t a professional situation. Kind of strange that it’s okay when it’s for the pursuit of a properly functioning body. But things seem to be getting better.

So, uh, would you get a WordPress logo tattooed on you? If you really want to, I’d like to suggest you go with Billy – he’s great, despite the state of his website. Don’t worry, I’m going to fix it soon.

Favourite quote of the week: “click my junk” from Mashable’s FOLLOW FAIL: The top 10 reasons I will not follow you in return on Twitter in reference to auto-DM “thank you for following now click my junk” messages.

Thanks to the very talented Jess Sloss, I came upon this post called Lists That Aren’t Interesting, by Jay Grandin. At first I was wondering why he wrote a list about bowel movements, but it did get funnier from there. And, well, as I’ve said before, my favourite 0ne liner from a movie comes from the monkey in Madagascar, “If you have any poo, fling it now.”

So really, yeah, all my funny stuff I find on Twitter. Twitter got hacked. And phished. And here are 15 Tweets that tell the story from Sarah Jones-Larson.

And last, but certainly not least, the funniest find of the week: Combover for Science!

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k83ECj4mGz0

Oh, but wait, there’s more: Combover Revolution!

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LgdDTc1eh34

Well, that’s it for this week… see you next time!

Photo: saital on Flickr

Well, this crazy Friday saw me out directing lineups of people, answering questions about lessons, rentals, prices, snow conditions, etc., and directing traffic in the parking lot. At least I didn’t have to feel bad about it; I was right next to our Corporate VP, General Manager, Communications Director etc. We all took to the operational side of things to get through what will likely be the busiest day on the mountain this season. All this is to say I am posting this late as I forgot to do it this morning.

So, here are this week’s fun finds. I hope you’re not easily offended. Some are in poor taste.

Try as I might for a different outcome, this post from Kimli about the Duggar family had me laughing. God bless them for continuing to “go forth and multiply” but WOWZA! It’s actually the stream of comments I find funnier than the photo caption, well… until they start really getting into argument. Anyway, that’s my first fun find of the week.

My friend Chaddo set this up on Facebook for me: 11 more drunk photos you don’t want to be in. Some are decidedly not funny, but #4… SO funny. I can’t imagine.

So on Monday, Chris Brogan posted about the use of Twitter auto-DM’s. As of Monday night there were over 200 comments. An awesome Monday night laugh came from comment #106 from the lovely Amber Naslund. I guess if you don’t use twitter you won’t get it. But I just love Amber’s way with words.

Here’s a totally random and yet funny tweet from @benjaminluk about his cat in heat. Not sure why I find it funny, but then that just makes it even funnier.

On Thursday I leave for Las Vegas to attend the BlogWorld & New Media Expo. It is so full of excellent speakers and exhibiters I won’t actually be able to attend every session I’d like to. In fact, in a couple of instances I’m going to leave the decision until I’m actually there, see who I meet, and see if anyone has any opinions on what I should attend.

Friday, September 19th is the Entrepreneur and Executive conference day. It’s sort of an extra day for us non-blogger types who are really trying to figure out how to use blogging and social media for business purposes. Here’s my agenda for the day:

• 8:45am – 9:45am | Opening keynote speaker Dave Taylor
• 10:00am – 11:15am | Corporate blogging myths and reality
• 11:30am – 12:45pm | Micromedia: The next big, small thing
• 12:45pm – 1:45pm | Keynote luncheon (a girl’s gotta eat, right?)
• 2:00pm – 3:15pm | Finding your new media voice
• 3:30pm – 4:45pm | Implementing blogs and social media for business
• 5:00pm – 6:00pm | Closing keynote speaker Gary Vaynerchuck
• 6:00pm – 7:00pm | Get myself ready for a night on the town
• 7:00pm – 8:00pm | BWE Tweetup at the Hilton
• 8:00pm – 11:00pm | TechSet party at Bare at The Mirage

Um, yeah… that’s a full day and will likely require the use of some Full Throttle – 2 or 3 cans ought to do it. I am super excited and fully intend to seek out a few specific people that I’d love to meet, whether at the conference itself or at the TechSet party.

Chris Brogan – social media guru from CrossTech Media
I subscribe to his blog and like to read just about every word he writes. It fits right in with my morning news. Love it! He’s also leading the Bloggers & PR session I want to attend.

Geoff Livingston – CEO of Livingston Communications and writer of the Buzz Bin
Another interesting social media expert I follow on Twitter. He’s also all about his ducati just recently. Seems like an all ’round nice guy too.

Lee Odden – CEO of Top Rank Online Marketing
He’ll be leading a session on SEO, SEM and Social Marketing for the Executive track. His blog is ranked one of the top online marketing blogs by Advertising Age

Darren Rowse – aka Problogger
Darren is all about blogging for a living and teaching others to do the same. That’s all there is to say. He often has profound and interesting things to say on both his blog and on twitter. He also takes a mean photograph. I’m hoping to get to his session on How Not to Use Social Media.

Deborah Micek – aka coachDeb
Deborah just came to my attention recently. She is a new media consultant, author and entrepreneur – co-creator of blogi360.com – living in Hawaii. Rough life.

Rebecca Bollwitt – aka Miss604: Vancouver Blogger
Miss604 is, from what I can tell, the most influential Vancouver lifestyle blogger. She is also very involved in the Vancouver tech scene.

Shannon Yelland – Online Marketing Manager for Sitemasher
Sitemasher is a Vancouver based company offering a CMS on a SAAS basis. I’m interested in their product, even though it seems to be a little difficult for my non-programming mind to grasp.

Brian Solis – Principal of FutureWorks PR and social media agency
I subscribe to Brian’s PR2.0 blog and plan to attend his Bloggers and PR session.

Arieanna Schweber – Entertainment Editor, b5media
Another Vancouver powerhouse, Arieanna is a full time blogger I follow on twitter.

Rohit Bhargava – Blogger, Author and Digital Media expert
He’s just super interesting and has a lot of great things to say. He’s actually the keynote speaker for Sunday morning, so I hope I’ll get out to hear him.

Lisa Bettany – Blogger, MostlyLisa
Another Vancouver blogger who has interesting things to say. I follow her on twitter too.

Mark Davidson – Social Media Manager/Internet Strategist
There is too much to say here. Mark is just an all-round interesting guy I follow on twitter. You have to check him out to see what I’m talking about. He’s like the cool kid in school.

Jason Billinglsley – Co-founder of Vancouver-based Elastic Path Software
Elastic Path is the e-commerce provider for VANOC and the publisher of the #1 E-Commerce Blog: GetElastic. I won’t be attending his session on monetization, but I’d like to meet him just to say Hi. I regularly attend Elastic Path’s webinars.

Linda Bustos – Emerging Media Analyst for Elastic Path Software
Linda, aka @roxyyo, is a brilliant mind and writer for Elastic Path’s blog GetElastic. I love reading her blog. Everything she writes just makes sense in a why-didn’t-I-think-of-that kind of way. I also happen to know her IRL and look forward to getting to know her a little better if time permits.

There are also plenty of other folks I’m excited to meet. Especially those I “know” from twitter. It’s cool to put a real life face to a screen name.

Then Saturday, the actual BlogWorld & New Media Expo begins will look like this:

• 8:45am – 10:00am | Opening Keynote on exhibit floor
• 10:00am – 11:00am | Check out the exhibits
• 11:00am – 12:00pm | Twitter: Connections that drive traffic
• 12:15pm – 1:15pm | Bloggers & PR
• 1:15pm – 2:45pm | More exhibits and lunch somewhere
• 2:45pm – 3:45pm | Search engines and findability
• 3:45pm – 5:00pm | More exhibits
• 5:00pm – 6:00pm | Creating customer loyalty with social media, OR
• 5:00pm – 6:00pm | SEO, SEM and New Media (totally torn as to what to see)
• 6:00pm – 7:30pm | Eat something and get myself ready for another big night
• 7:30pm – 9:30pm | BlogWorld Conference opening night party
• 9:30pm – 11:00pm | Check out a little more of Vegas and lose some money

Yeah, I have to do a little gambling while I’m there. I’m super stoked to have just received a surprise cheque in the mail from my health insurance company. Oh yeah… there’s my mad money. I’ve also been told I have to check out the fountains at the Belagio.

Sunday, the final day of the expo, will be just as jam packed with super speakers, but I’ll probably be ready to drop dead by then. I’m going to do my best to get through these sessions, though I may just not get started until the 11:00am session… that would mean I’ll just miss one keynote.

• 9:00am – 10:00am | Opening keynote on exhibit floor
• 10:00am – 11:00am | Exhibits and networking
• 11:00am – 12:00pm | High performance business blogging, OR
• 11:00am – 12:00pm | Marketing on Facebook, OR
• 11:00am – 12:00pm | Social Media in the Newsroom (no idea which)
• 12:15pm – 1:15pm | Maximize ROI on corporate blogs
• 1:15pm – 3:00pm | Networking reception on exhibit floor
• 3:00pm – 4:00pm | Avoiding disaster: How not to use social media
• 4:00pm – 7:30pm | Late check-out, wait at airport
• 7:30pm – 10:20pm | Flight home

Monday I plan to sleep. A lot.

Photo: wili_hybrid on Flickr

I think it gives me the opportunity to feel like I’m on the leading edge. It puts me among the first to hear about some of the coolest, funniest, most shocking or most interesting news and events in the world and on the web and I’ve NEVER been that person before. I was always the awkward kid trying to get in on the conversation but walking in the road to hear what was going on on the sidewalk.

I logged in last night (well, opened the window – who am I kidding? I never log off) to find out that an earthquake had just taken place in San Francisco… 4 minutes ago! I also followed Twitter Search last weekend for #Gustav and saw minute-by-minute accounts of those people who were actually there on the ground in parts of Louisiana. How cool was that?! I realized then and there that by the time the newspapers are printed, what they’re telling is no longer news.

Twitter is where I heard about the BlogWorld & New Media Expo that I’ll be attending in Las Vegas in a couple of weeks. Twitter is where I’ve heard about BarCamp Vancouver, which I’m waitlisted to attend at the moment. Twitter is where I hear from and even interact with some of the greatest minds in Social Media today such as @chrisbrogan, @mitchjoel, @briansolis and my local favourite @roxyyo, blogger for the #1 e-commerce blog in the world, GetElastic.

I only hope one day I can contribute as much to those who follow me as I’m getting from those I follow. In the meantime, here’s a little vid to get you laughing:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ALbH63Ali9U&hl=en&fs=1]

Thanks everyone!

I think I spend too much time online. So I thought I’d strike a balance in my life by starting a blog. Yeah… that makes sense. I’d better get back to work…