Telesummits: You’re Doing Them Wrong – Video

Originally I was going to call this post The Bus Ride, Best Guy and the Bald Spot, since I hopped on a 6 hour round trip bus ride while I’m in NYC, to get to PA to see the best guy I know and he shows you his bald spot, but dang nabbit, that takes too long to explain.

This get-together has been over 5 years in the making (we had never met in person), so Michael Port and I decided to film us chatting about one of our biggest online pet peeves: being asked to speak on telesummits. Have a look:

Why I Changed My Coffee Religion

The following is an excerpt from my new book “UnMarketing: Stop Marketing. Start Engaging” due to hit the shelves September 7th!

Scott BC (before coffee)

I have a morning ritual that I know many of you share. Coffee around here is a bit like a religion. You choose your brand, you pick your favorite, and then you stick with it. In the Toronto area, Tim Horton’s is the church of coffee. It is a part of the culture up here, part of the vocabulary. When you say you’re going for coffee you go to ‘‘Tim’s’’ or you’re going to go to ‘‘Horton’s’’

50,000 Tweets and All I Got Was Everything

Recently I surpassed the 50,000 tweet mark.

Holy monkeynuts.

That’s roughly 5,000,000 characters of typing, assuming an average of 100 characters a tweet.

And it’s been worth every one of them.

So the question is why? I’ve practically written enough on Twitter for five books, am a member of the 50/50 club (50k tweets, 50k followers) (I totally just made up that club right now. You’re welcome. I’m like the Jose Canseco of Twitter when he joined the 40/40 club in baseball, except I doubt I’ll be making an appearance on celebrity boxing anytime soon)

It’s not the fact that I’ve spouted off on Twitter 50,000 times, it’s the content of those tweets. The majority of them have been conversations. If you take a look at my stats you can see that almost 75% of my tweets have been replies. Over 37,000 of my tweets have been points of conversation. That’s why Twitter works for some and not for others. Twitter is a conversation.

Social Media Success for Non-Profits – Video

Ever since I graduated college and started my very short career of working for someone else at Goodwill Toronto, I’ve always had a soft spot for non-profit and charity.

Yesterday I spoke at Digital Leap, a “Digital Conference for Non-Profit Marketers and Fundraisers” where I talked about Social Media Success for Non-Profit. The entire session is below. I’ve also created an iPod/iPhone version for those that would like to watch it on the go. Just right click here and save it and then pull it into iTunes! (Big file: 160 megs)

Feel free to embed or share/save the below session, I would only ask that you link back to this post. That would be awesome of you.

How to lose friends and tick off people on FaceBook

An open letter to all my friends in the social media consultant/guru game,

Please stop.

You’re steering people the wrong way.

You sell yourself as social media consultants, the ones that can show you the way and then fark it up.

I beg of you to stop.

Go back to teaching Internet marketing from the old days, I could at least ignore you then. I talk to you at conferences, share the stage but I can’t listen to you up there any longer spewing “tips” that hurt people and their relationships.

Aiming Your Company at the Bottom of the Barrel

I remember 25 years ago I loved leafing through three big books: Encyclopedia Britannica, The Big Book of Amazing Facts and the Yellow Pages. Maybe it was my lack of friends in grade 3, avoidance of people commenting on my bulbous head, or just a general interest in things that made me want to go through them, but I would sit there for hours.

Long hair can help hide a huge cranial circumference

Saran Wrap Series – My Transparency on Twitter

Welcome to a new mini-blog series that revolve around transparency in your market/sales called “Saran Wrap Series”. Understand that Saran Wrap has nothing to do with this post, or me, I just saw it in the kitchen while writing and realized it’s transparent and it sounded catchy (see what I did there, I was transparent about the blog series title. I’m cool like dat)

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Swiss Chalet Rudolph, You Creep Me Out

I don’t write this post as a marketer (or UnMarketer).

I don’t own an ad agency and have no idea about the process, the struggle and constraints there are in putting together a national ad campaign.

But I am a customer and have been dining at Swiss Chalet for 30ish years. (For those that don’t know Swiss Chalet it’s a Canadian chain of yummy chicken places, where you typically take old folks for their birthday, holidays etc.. and by old folks, I now include me.)

I recently saw the “Rudolph Swiss Chalet” commercial that turned me off so much from the place that I’ve dined at countless times it actually turns me off the brand entirely (even though I’m hooked on their quarter-chicken dinner, fries and chalet sauce)

The 7 Deadly Twitter Sins

Sitting here at the airport in Vegas, getting ready for the flight of shame home (not to mention it being a connecting red-eye.. oye!)  I got to thinking about this topic of sins considering I committed all seven real life ones over the past 6 days here (ok, so maybe not “Wrath” but I almost went to the machine gun range, just to be 7-for-7).

PLEASE NOTE: I am refraining from naming each sin with a “TW” like “Tweed” or the “Twust” because legally you should be able to pour motor oil over someones Cheerios if they do that.

An Idiot Calling The Kettle Black

I get called a lot of names. I get it. It comes with the territory of someone who tweets non-stop with a strong opinion with an air of arrogance confidence.

However, when I get called something like “a complete idiot” from a spamming PR company, it gets my man-panties in a knot.

I hold PR companies to a higher standard since one of their functions is making others look good.