Fellow independent Joanna Turlej pointed me to Trendwatching, an interesting site about – what else – trends. As you can imagine, the spotters at Trendwatching come up with new words all the time to describe the trends they see. They credit Faith Popcorn, probably most famous for coming up with the term cocooning, for the [...]
Monthly Archives: October 2007
Melcrum & Ragan doing it right
I’ll be the first to admit I don’t use social networking sites to their full advantage. Perhaps that’s why I so appreciate something both Melcrum’s Communicators’ Network and MyRagan are doing: sending weekly e-mails with highlights of what’s going on, pointers to topical discussions and free downloads. Actually, until Bell Canada was in doing repair [...]
Great web site advice
I was catching up on my Bloglines feeds and came across some great advice from Seth Godin on building great web sites. I particularly liked this one, which mirrors how I feel about sites that use fancy Flash bits for no apparent reason other than they can do it and then hide the “skip intro” [...]
Communications ain’t necessarily PR
A mailing sent this month by the Toronto chapter of IABC that would normally include the monthly newsletter, Communicator, instead contained a sheet of paper that said, “A new and improved Communicator is coming this fall.” The notice included this line: “We believe the Communicator should contain information and strategies that help you achieve PR [...]
Fresh inspiration to write
Thursday and Friday were spent in downtown Toronto at IABC‘s two-day writing conference, which featured a number of well-known presenters who have wowed audiences at IABC’s international conferences. Here are some of the things I learned/was reminded of/realized/found notable: John Sturtevant said that the most important goal in writing is to be clear. Readers are [...]
Fun with Bell
So I’m on the line with Bell Canada as we speak. We’ve had months of issues dating back a year, when Bell was supposed to dig up the phone line to get rid of noise on the line. In the meantime, Bell strung a “temporary” line to our neighbours phone. (Note to Bell: It would [...]
Social media etiquette
I’m struggling a bit with what to do when contacted by someone I don’t know — say on LinkedIn or Melcrum’s Communicators’ Network — asking to add me as a contact. On LinkedIn, you can edit the note sent to include some context (such as “we have this contact in common” or “this contact suggested [...]
Earn your wiggly marks
I’ve ranted before about the bad things that happen to good quotes at the hands of executives, so I was pleased to see my sentiments echoed in an article (sorry, I tried to link to it but it may be one of those limited-time-access things) by the impassioned Steve Crescenzo in the latest Ragan’s Grapevine [...]
