Celebrating Earth Day Online

Today is #EarthDay and brands across the web are using social media as a tool to get their audiences involved in helping out Mother Earth. Patagonia, Starbucks, RadioShack and Lowes have all launched fantastic Earth Day Campaigns across various social media networks, demonstrating their desire to make greener and more eco-friendly choices for our planet.

With a digital download on iTunes, sponsored by Patagonia, users will see 60% of their music purchases going to environmental organizations such as the Rainforest Action Network and Earthjustice.  If you BYOM (bring your own mug) to Starbucks, you can enjoy a free cup of coffee since you’re cutting back on environmental waste. Lowes has a sponsored tweet offering a free tree giveaway when you stop by the store, and RadioShack is advertising major discounts when you bring in old electronic devices that they recycle for you!

Companies are helping their consumers make smarter, greener choices for our planet by integrating Earth Day campaigns into their online strategies. So for those of us that aren’t able to get out and celebrate our beautiful planet by planting a tree, these online initiatives make great alternatives!

Here are some more ways you can celebrate online.

16 Quotes to Live By

1. Every time you smile at someone, it is an action of love, a gift to that person, a beautiful thing.-Mother Teresa

2. Would I rather be feared or loved? Um... Easy, both. I want people to be afraid of how much they love me. -Michael Scott 

3. Life is either a daring adventure or nothing. - Helen Keller

4. Don't ask me who influenced me. A lion is made of all the lambs he's digested, and I've been reading all my life. - Giorgos Seferis 

5. Do things everyday that scare the living shit out of you. -me

6. Take the risk, forget the fall, if it's what you want, it's worth it all. 

7. Whatever you do, don't be bored! 

8. The best way to cheer yourself up is by cheering up others. 

9. Whether you think you can, or you cannot, you are right.

10. Quit the wrong stuff. Stick with the right stuff. Have the guts to do one or the other.- Seth Godin

11. Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover. -Mark Twain

12. Give everyday the chance to be the most beautiful day of your life.
-Mark Twain   

13. You'll be on your way up!
You'll be seeing great sights!
You'll join the high fliers
who soar to high heights. -Dr. Seuss  

14. All you need is Love- The Beatles 

15. Fuoco nelle vene - The Italians (Live Life with Passion!) 

16. la vita e bella - The French (Life is Beautiful)

Building "Social" Into the Fabric Your Business

In today’s new age of communication, incorporating “being social” into the fabric of how you listen and interact with your customers is absolutely necessary. Everyday online there are tens of millions of people expressing what they want, need, how they feel, what they intend to do and how they are going to do it. The way people are communicating is changing and companies that are receptive to that, are embracing those conversations, turning them into valuable opportunities of positive brand interactions.

It all begins with the concept of listening. By utilizing the right tools, companies have the ability to take a set of unstructured data and extract dozens of things like people, places, geography and events, to find out where conversation is taking place, who is participating, the words being used, and what it all means.  It’s figuring out what you know about your customers to identify what they need and what’s important to them. Taking those insights and implementing meaningful, actionable strategies to respond to those people in real time, makes it worth the effort. It goes beyond listening to understanding and from understanding to insight.

If companies can change the way they listen, understand, and respond, they can change the way they build advocacy around their brand.  

Nearly 60% of impressions about brands are developed before ever making a purchase. - Karen Quintos, Dell CMO 

Identifying where conversations are taking place and getting involved to create positive connections will spread positive brand awareness and advocacy across the social web.  It’s no longer a one way monologue, but rather a dialogue that allows you to give the empowered social consumer what they want, when they need it.

Facebook Questions, the Golden Ticket for Big Brands?

While Twitter is busy tracking every moment of your day and Foursquare is busy tracking your location, the recent launch of Facebook Questions is now tracking your thoughts and opinions about everything under the sun.

The recent launch of Facebook Questions now provides a smarter solution to the Q&A sector of social media, tapping into the thoughts and opinions of over 600 million users, a population far greater then Quora and Yahoo! Answers could ever dream of. Not only is the application social and in real-time, but it also offers security and trust. You can go anywhere on the internet to ask a question, but the top trusted source of recommendations always come from friends and family.

This new application has huge implications on a brand’s ability to gain instant feedback from users. Given that brands are asking the right questions, they can now conduct market research in a much more fluid way. Here are examples of ways companies across different industries can use Facebook Questions to make better informed business decisions based on the crowd-sourced Q&A platform:

• A radio station wants to find out about the hottest concerts this summer

• A merchandiser wants to find out what your shopping plans are for the upcoming holiday

• A gym wants to know the best time to offer a new kickboxing class

• An ice cream shop wants to know which flavor to feature next week

This platform will allow companies the chance to act based on the voiced needs and wants of their consumers, and will also enable them to create trusted interactions by doing so. Facebook may have just given advertisers and market researchers the golden ticket they’ve been searching for!

Winner Winner Chicken Dinner

I'm usually not one to keep up with the latest Hollywood drama but BOY has Mr. Sheen demonstrated the sheer power of social media over the past few weeks. A cool one million followers in his first 25 hours on Twitter and an even cooler three million after after only a week? Plus live webinars? Now that's what I call social media #winning! Despite the fact that he's one sloppy bucket of madness, I couldn't be more proud.

With a population thriving on Hollywood drama and social media (just admit it!!) it's pretty easy to see who's driving the crazy train at full throttle these days. Inspired by all this "March Madness" going on, I decided to do a little bracket of my own.

Here's who's made the cut into the Final Four of my Celebrity March Madness Bracket.

1st place Charlie Sheen (278,000,000)
2nd place Lindsay Lohan (40,100,000)
3rd place Mel Gibson (20,100,000)
4th place Nic Cage (1,130,000)

Can Nic Cage pull ahead? Will Lindsay continue to battle her way for worst place? Stay tuned to find out!

*Picks were chosen carefully based on the number of returned Google search results.

In Business, It Pays to Listen

When it comes to devising compelling social media strategies, the number one skill businesses need to focus on is the art of listening.

While many get caught up in accumulating thousands of Facebook "Likes" or followers on Twitter, others are finding success in taking the time to understand conversation across the social web. Everyday, there are millions of pieces of conversation exchanged. There are over 50,000 new blogs started, approximately 140 million new Tweets and even more comments across Yelp, Facebook, News Forums, YouTube and the like.

All of this conversation can be traced back to basic human desires, everyone wants their opinion to matter and wants to feel connected. Companies need to recognize these desires, the concerns, the  joys, needs and questions, and use them to act accordingly.

So companies, like a good date, remember it's better to let them do the talking. Always listen twice as much as you speak. After all, no one likes to hear someone go on and on about themselves, don't be that person! Take the time to listen to conversation and build a strategy around what is being said.


Do this and you'll be able to finally tune into the unmet needs and behaviors of your consumers. The better you get at listening, the better you'll get at building memorable exchanges and long lasting relationships around your brand.

The Death of the Phone Call

Riiiiing. Riiinnggg. Riinnggg. This is a sound soon to be non-existent, the sound of a ringing telephone.

As the pace of the world races ahead, so does our ability to communicate in more efficient and effective ways. Looking back at the past few decades, it’s easy to note that most means of once popular communication have now ceased to exist.

Next up on the chopping block? The Phone Call.

The traditional phone call as we know it, compared to its more sophisticated counterparts, is entirely intrusive. You call someone but you have no idea if you’re interrupting their dinner, a nap or even a meeting. They have no idea why you’re calling, yet they feel obligated to answer. It sucks.

Tweeting, texting, BBM’ing, Facebook messaging, blogging, sharing videos (shall I go on?) have now enabled us to communicate in a much more non-intrusive manner. Our messages are sent and replied to when its convenient for both the sender and the receiver. The when is no longer an issue. Messages are happily sent on their way, not interrupting anyone’s time.

This shift represents a huge turning point in human communications. We as a society, are in a very exciting transition into a social media eco-sphere. The phone call is becoming a dying legacy as we become more adapt to using social media to send and share our messages.  The seemingly limitless options technology now provides, gives us the ability to instantly share tons of information conveniently with our intended audience.

We are now “talking” more and calling less. Bye-bye intrusive telephone calls, hello rise of social media!