Journal

Want To Help The Sick Children Hospital Canada?

I don’t often ask for your help via this blog. I feel it’s kind of intrusive, and almost like I’m being a pimp. While the snazzy clothes of a pimp might offer me a funky new look, I’m not sure what it would do for my (perceived) street cred. So, no pimping.

However, there’s something I’d really like to ask of you. A small favour that would mean a lot.

I’m in the running to win a contest to choose the tagline for a new publication. The Printed Blog is a pretty cool idea that takes blog posts and transfers them to print. People can then pick up issues and read them like a normal newspaper. It’s a nice way to bring traditional and newer media together.

Anyhoo… The prize for the winner of the contest is a Nintendo Wii. What I’ve decided is that if I win, I’ll donate the Wii to my local Sick Children hospital in Toronto. It’s one of the largest and most respected hospitals worldwide for the care, treatment and research towards kids illnesses. It helps kids locally, nationally and internationally. Basically, it’s an amazing place.

I’d love to help make the lives of these kids a little more fun-filled, and this is where you can help. If you could visit The Printed Blog’s competition page and vote for my entry, that would be cool. It’s the one that says, “Your Voice. Our Voice. One Voice.”

Voting ends on Thursday February 26 at 11.59pm Eastern. Thanks to some great support via Twitter, Facebook and email so far, I’ve jumped into the lead. Now the task is to try and stay there until voting ends.

If you have a spare 5-10 seconds and you don’t mind helping, would you mind visiting and casting your vote? No registration needed – a simple button click and you’re done.

I’d love to be able to go to the Sick Kids hospital in Toronto and hand over a brand new shiny Wii. I’d love your help to make that happen. Thanks for reading, and fingers crossed!

Updated Friday February 27 – Thanks to the immense support and votes of the Twitter community, as well as Facebook and email, I’m delighted to announce my tagline won! Thanks to everyone who voted and I look forward to handing over the Wii to the hospital when it arrives.

photo credit: delayed gratification

Reverse Mentoring

When you were a kid growing up, who was the wisest person to you? Who you’d go to with your secrets and questions? I’m guessing it was probably your granpa.

Why is this? Why did we feel that our granpa was the person we could go to? Was it because we felt they offered a safer sanctuary from stuff that we didn’t want to share with our parents? Or was it because they were older than anyone we knew, so they must be wise?

Whatever the reason, one thing that can’t be denied is that older people have a wealth of experience behind them for many things. So why aren’t we using it?

I read a report the other day that said CMO’s are disappointed at the calibre of business students coming through their doors. They wanted someone who could hit the ground running, and this just wasn’t happening.

Of course it’s not going to happen. Students are only as good as the teaching, and this is suffering because of cuts in public funding to schools and universities (even dedicated business ones). So it’s a Catch 22 situation: no funding = less teaching = less knowledge.

At the same time, there are a host of older business people who are being cast aside from an age point of view. Many businesses are taking the approach that younger employees are the future as technology and business practices change, thanks to social media.

While this might be true to a certain degree, it’s not as clear-cut as these businesses think. Older people are getting more involved with social media, as anyone who attends the AgeOp chats on Twitter can attest to. And they still have an immense amount of experience built up over years of being in business.

So here’s an idea.

Reverse Mentoring = Simple Economics

Younger people know social media but don’t have business experience. Older people have that business experience but don’t necessarily have the social media knowledge. Isn’t there a simple correlation here?

Businesses can sponsor retired or semi-retired professionals to talk to business students and offer their years of knowledge and experience. This gives the students access to untold amounts of knowledge and skill-sets that they’d otherwise miss out on. It should also help appease the CMO’s who’re complaining about student knowledge.

On the flip side, the younger students coming through can help the older business professionals understand and adapt to social media quicker. This can either help them in their current jobs, or use it to combine with their retired or semi-retired status. Everyone wins.

It can’t be as simple as that. Can it?

photo credit: Alexandra Groza

The Twitter Rulebook

There’s a lot of talk on Twitter as to how it should be used – Twitter rules and etiquette, if you like. Some of the talk stems from suggestions of how individuals use their accounts and how it might benefit you.

Other talk comes from people who say, “You should do this and you shouldn’t do that.”

But you know what? Unless anything you do falls within Twitter’s own Terms of Service, then there are no rules on using Twitter. So, here’s the thing:

If you want to promote your application to get more followers, do it. Just don’t be upset if people don’t agree with it (many will).
If you want to use it for nothing more than broadcasting blog posts, sales offers, etc, do it.
If you want to use it as a networking tool to meet potential new business partners, do it.
If you want to use it as a place for your cat to talk to the world, do it.

In fact, whatever you want to do with Twitter, do it. After all, it’s your account and no-one else’s. The way you use Twitter, people will either like it or they won’t – it’s an even 50/50 split to start with, so go for it.

If I don’t follow you, it’s for a reason – don’t get upset. I’m not that important and I probably wouldn’t have been a good match for you anyway, so you’re not missing out. If you don’t follow me, I understand. Hey, we’re all different people – it’d be boring if we were all the same.

So use Twitter the way you want to use it. There are millions of people that will either get you or not. Enjoy it. And maybe I’ll see you on there sometime.

Cheers.

photo credit: vissago

Who’s Your Audience?

If you’re a blogger, who do you write for? Is it for you or your audience? Or a little bit of both?

In a recent post I mentioned one of the blogging analytics tools I use is Quantcast. I like it because it gives me a really good insight into the type of readers I attract, both regular and casual. It has a breakdown of demographics, gender, ethnicity and more.

To give you an example, here are some figures about this blog:

The above chart shows that I have more visitors from the US than anywhere else – which isn’t too surprising considering my location. Combine that with Alexa figures, and I see that my global audience is led by Canada, the UK, India, Australia and Sweden. Quite the mix.

With the information above, I can see how that traffic breaks down (100 index is Internet average). Now I can see that my main audience is made up of middle-aged males of mixed ethnicity, grad-school educated and in both the lower and higher income bracket. So, a little bit of me in there with my readers.

This final chart shows that the majority of visitors to my blog are new, with 16% being regulars. Which, when you break down the traffic over either a weekly or monthly period, pretty much ties in to the subscriber numbers at the top of the blog.

So what does this information offer other than some pretty pictures and figures and why should you care? Simple.

If you’re writing a niche blog you can see if you’re reaching the right audience.

If you’re in business and have a corporate blog, you can see where your customer base is coming from (or where it could be coming from).

If you’re running a PR or marketing campaign for a client, you can gain valuable information about what type of person is attracted to that brand’s blog. This will help you to either strengthen or adapt that campaign.

Far from being just a simple look at who’s reading your blog, you’re suddenly seeing how the world in general is looking at you.

Isn’t that information worth having?

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