I was delighted to have presented at the Colorado Learning and Teaching with Technology conference at the University of Colorado yesterday. This was my second year at this conference, and it was incredibly well attended. As usual, some of the best moments came in the smaller discussions and conversations had over the lunch break. In Australia, the curriculum in K-12 includes aspects of Media Literacy.... 

News flash: I’m not your average mom blogger. I do research in social media and post that along with my posts about my family, my work, my life and beliefs. Like most women I wear many hats, and I blog a little about them all. Sometimes it’s academic (like this one could be if I hadn’t just had 3 hours sleep), other times it’s more focused on how many things people throw... 

Boycotting a company is like being committed to something in a big way. It’s like getting married. Like marriage, you are making a declaration that’s public. A formal representation of something you’re standing for. It’s no longer just a private aggravation. Deciding to actively, publicly boycott a company is a big deal. When you take that stand, and have a public presence... 

I’ve been asked why mom bloggers seem to have a fascination with laundry? (What is the most polite way I can say this?) Because it’s a pain in the arse. (There ya go. Actually, that was easier than I thought it would be.) Just because we tweet/blog or otherwise about different detergents doesn’t mean we love laundry. (Exceptions are the psycho pretenders who say they love laundry... 

The ongoing antics of Nestle as it continually trips itself up in all forms of social media (Facebook, viral Greenpeace videos) have led me to ask if some companies should just stay out altogether. Even Satan or Lex Luthor would have a better time on social media than Nestle. There are legions of people wanting to embrace evil. Nestle Killer-Asesino Facebook page, one of many opened in response to... 

Mass media (and some mom bloggers) would like to lump all mom bloggers into the same shoebox. As a result, it’s hard for marketers to navigate these waters without recognizing the differences between bloggers in the space. Just as there are different types of magazines and newspapers, so there are different types of mom blogs. I’ve been researching the sphere of mom blogs for more than... 

The hot thing at SXSW is location-based anything. (I’m so cool, I don’t even need to be there to know this.) But I’ll bet every single geek pushing a location-based app at SXSW is missing the point. You should sign up for location-based social media. So cool people can avoid you. Here’s the deal – there are some people I’d rather not see. (Oh come on, don’t... 

Dear SXSW attendees: I know you’re all excited. You’re going to spend a whole heap of time being all geeky and fun, and drinking and stuff. Talking about startups, design, innovation, music… ooh I’ll bet you’re all tingly. My husband is one of you. He’s kid-at-Christmas excited. He loves Texas and had a ball there last year. As a startup geek guy, he can’t... 

An American woman named Angie Jackson has decided it was a good idea to share her experience of aborting her pregnancy with the world, via YouTube and Twitter. A mother of a four-year-old who goes to the trouble of outlining the reasons why she decided on an abortion with RU486, Angie says her social media posts are her attempt to “demistify” the process, and let everyone know that for... 

Company A says, “Let’s create an event, sponsor some bloggers, and they’ll create a hashtag around it and we’ll give out some prizes. It will be great, Twitter will be buzzing with our company’s name.” Or a group of bloggers might come up with: “Every week we’ll be ‘meeting’ on twitter, using this hashtag.” Sound like good ideas? Sure.... 

Word of Mouth has always been a double-edged sword for small business. I remember the saying  a local fish and chip shop had on their wall. “If you like our food, tell your friends. If you don’t like it, tell us!” Once upon a time, the worst that could happen would be a letter to the editor of the local paper. With a 24 hour news cycle, the bad news would pass and your business... 

While many people align technology adoption and use with age, the facts show it’s not all that easy to stereotype the creators of content in the online media. Today’s Pew Report on Teens and Social Media amplifies a very real issue in the US. Our teens and young adults are engaging in “new” media, but on a very limited level. The majority of them are not creating new content. In... 

Usually, I don’t consciously pay for content. I say ‘consciously’ because if I click on a link and there’s a paywall, I won’t do it. I also don’t subscribe to any newspapers or magazines (online or in ‘dead tree’ format). Basically, the quality of the content I’m seeing doesn’t make me want to pay for more of it. Mr Murdoch does have the... 

This week I was happily invited to join some other Colorado-based bloggers for a few adult snacks, refreshments and the opportunity to build a basket of goodies to take home. It was a great evening, put on by Glade’s parent company, S. C. Johnson’s wonderful PR team from Edelman in Chicago, to promote their Sense & Spray product. This event demonstrated Edelman actively identifies... 

I have a great amount of data from the recent NestleFamily twitterstorm. Luckily, I was able to see the storm coming. As a few of the attendees began tweeting about meeting up a few days prior to the start of #NestleFamily, I could see that there was going to be some fallout. My interest had been piqued a few months earlier with the Nestle “What’s for Dinner” junket that received... 

To be influential in social media takes effort. It doesn’t just happen. You can’t buy it. It’s not advertising. So if that’s what it’s not, how can organizations and people get to be really influential? Here are the steps to influence. When you and your brand get it right, that’s when you get to influence others. Find Relevance Your first mission is to produce content... 

PT Barnum is recognised as being one of the heavyweight players in the history of advertising. He was also the father of personal branding. While you may not agree with his tactics, he has inspired masses of advertising practice and his stamp remains. Any time you see something promoted as “jumbo” size, that word comes from Barnum. The term “white elephant” is also his. The... 

After the Creative Revolution in the 1960s, advertisers began to try to find communications that gave people a reason to buy their product. That developed into the Unique Selling Proposition or USP – the ‘thing’ that makes people choose your product. It still applies. Every successful product has a USP. Over time this went from features to benefits. You’ve probably heard ’sell... 

A goal is a dream until you make a plan. And the plan needs to be strategic otherwise it won’t work. A strategy is a direction – a way of heading. This is not something that already has the tactics in place. Think of a chess strategy, or war strategy – these don’t have any step-by-step procedures in place that if a single thing goes wrong the whole strategy falls apart. That... 

By now even your grandma knows about the race to a million. Ashton Kutcher, old-media celebrity turned digital insider with various multimedia projects and Twitter groover challenged CNN to a race to a million followers on Twitter. And after a nice little campaign, last night he won. It was really fun to see the video of him crossing the victory line. He was really, truly excited. That’s impressive. What’s... 

There are some very interesting psychological theories used in Marketing and Business which explain why people behave the way they do. Put simply, people buy different brands and products to fulfill external and internal needs. These needs reflect their sense of self. And people can generally be placed in one of three categories: 1. Affiliation needs – people who primarily want to ‘belong’.... 

Twitter is a curious beast. It has morphed as it grows, due to the community of people who use it. And in researching the online social sphere for my graduate thesis, there are some key aspects of how people use Twitter that are indicators to how this is going to go. Twitter is a tool used by a community. The tool of Twitter is no different to any other tool. The tool of Twitter exists as an infrastructure,... 

Creating a brand LoveMark in the 21st century has never been easier. Yet, the concept seems to be alien to so many companies. Many brands think they’ve got a loyal following. But what they really have is passive brand loyalty. People who buy the product all the time, but don’t really have a loving, committed relationship. It’s a marriage of convenience. Your brand is not a LoveMark.... 

This is just one instance of an American company trying to cash in on the good name Australia and its people have within the US. And it sucks. As an Australian, I’m really disgusted by Procter & Gamble’s obvious attempt to mislead consumers by producing and promoting a range of haircare products as Australian. What do you call an Aussie brand that's not Australian? The brand is...