A Picture Is Worth a K.I.S.S.

My grandfather was an Army man, and very fond of the saying “KISS – Keep It Simple, Stupid”. I don’t actually recall him using the acronym, but we were urged a lot to keep things simple.

Pinterest has indeed, done that. For folks wondering just why it’s attained such saturation, grown so fast and been embraced so easily – well, it’s simple. Good article by Nir Eyal in Automatic You, a blog about behavioral engineering which is being added to my bookmarks.

Pinterest’s Obvious Secret

Two thoughts that really struck me – Pinterest’s obvious secret is its ability to serve our innate desire to capture and collect, while making consuming, creating and sharing easier than ever before.

Well, to be precise, that thought struck me, but this one truly made me think – The volume and richness of user data collected through pinning is unparalleled. While I might “Like” Babies’R’Us on Facebook or follow their Twitter stream, hoping to get a coupon, only Pinterest knows I’ve been keeping an eye out for a mid-priced stroller appropriate for an 18-month-old boy.

In other news, I’ve figured out just where you 2000+ people are finding me (mostly search engines. followed by Facebook, I thought it would be the other way around); you’re searching for me and this website, which is cool; you’re looking mostly for info on goings-on around town, social media and marketing advice; you’re mostly sharing posts on events. And I thought I knew more of you that I do – I don’t, and that’s really  cool.

Some of you wondered where the politics went. Well, I don’t do Federal, I don’t do Provincial and honestly, I think our Mayor is covered on  “reports of him and his brother making fools of themselves”, so I stopped. It will pick up again when there’s something good to write about.

What does this mean? That things will probably keep on keeping on with minor subject tweaks you might or might not notice.  I might be trying new forms of posts, or topics and see how those work out.

One thing is for sure – I like writing this blog. I like that folks are reading it. Thank you for your likes, questions, comments and follows. All for now.

Sunday Roundup – May 6

Lots of things to write about last week – let’s get to it.

Rules of Engagement  Audience development and nobody’s coming and when they do they aren’t behaving in a “traditional” manner.

Corporate Sponsorship interesting discussion and article via LinkedIn about whether or not dislike for corporate sponsorship turns off the corporate tap.

Visual Resumes – a program that turns your resume info almost into a timeline of your career path. Still on the fence, but some seem to like it. I might take it in addition to a traditional resume, but not instead.

Social Media for Artists at Gallery 1313 – a great workshop where we proved that you don’t always need internet for the social part of social media.

Glamourpuss Fridays – paperwork day.

It’s lovely outside, all spring-like. Go and enjoy it!

 

Visual Resumes

Found this a while back on the interweb and did it to show you and forgot about it.

Use Your LinkedIn Data to Create a Stunning Visual Resume. It’s an article from Lifehack, and is about a program called Re.vu. In brief:

A plethora of online tools exist, though there’s one which, much like the job-hunters who use it, really stands out for its simplicity and effectiveness. Greeting users with the tag line ‘Don’t send a resume, send a story,’ Re.vu is an easy-to-use platform with plenty of tools to create a visual resume that not only looks great, but puts the focus on the items you feel are most important.

To make the most out of the site you’ll need an e-mail address and an up-to-date Linkedin profile.

So I went to the site, created a profile, uploaded a bio, uploaded a photo and asked it to grab my LinkedIn info. The things I do for y’all so I can tell you about it (and then forget to tell you about it).

And it did.

Results below in screen grabs – I don’t know. I don’t know that it’s stunning, but it is indeed visual.

I know I am a certain point font on white paper 2 page max resume type of girl. Am not a fan of bells and whistles when it comes to resumes. And I don’t know that I’d click here to see the info below, but then again I don’t work in a design type field where I’m looking regularly enough at design resumes.

You can’t change the font. I want my own font. And my logo somewhere big.
You can change the background picture, they’ve got a selection or you can upload your own.
When you hover over a job position the blurb about that company comes up – again, this is most effective if you have a seriously up-to-date LinkedIn profile. But it`s about the compan I worked for, not me, the person you`re looking to hire.
It also said I could add links to my website and social media accounts (which kind of made me think, “then why am I using this?”)
It seems in my books, to be a lot of work to put a potential employer through, with a dash of web-style sequins and coloured paper.  But then that’s the employers I’m thinking of, and I could be wrong. What do you think?

In Which I Feign Interest in Pinterest

I am not a fan of Pinterest. I will add “yet” as a disclaimer. Yes, I have an account – I got it last July, I think, and pinned exactly two things and then thought, “now what?” Because my thought was that I spend a great deal of time on my blog and Facebook and Twitter and LinkedIn and email and in person and now I’m suppoosed to look for pictures and pin them somewhere else? No.

I know Pinterest has become an obsession for many. It’s a hot topic right now and everyone seems to be pinning like crazy, kind of like we all poked each other constantly when we got into Facebook, or forwarded jokes and Robitussin recall warnings when we first got email accounts. So I’ve been reading things on it.

Pinterest: A Beginner’s Guide to the Hot New Social Network – mashable

Pinterest: A vast city of beautiful mutes – Globe and Mail

What Pinterest needs to fix – and fast – Yahoo News

and finally – What Pinterest means for the arts.  Which was very interesting.

Tell me what you’re using it for, what you’re pinning, and more importantly, why it’s your platform of choice. I’d like to know, as am trying to wrap my head around it a bit better.

Sorry, I Can’t Quite Hear You

Excellent article over at MoreInMedia which I found as a RT from  my colleague Angela Crocker.

Social Media Voices – Can you Hear Them?

What exactly is your social media voice? The article explains that ” The voice [I’m] referring to is your Social Media Voice.  It is your voice, amplified on all social media platforms and outlets.  It’s your voice, branded for business.  It’s your voice, calling clients, customers and business partners together.  It’s your voice; a clear authority.”

There are a few good links to take a look at within the article as well.

Take a peek at your social media initiatives  – not your personal ones, but the ones that bring home the (soy) bacon. The company.

What’s the company’s voice? Is it the voice of the CEO? Or is it Stacey the intern who is in charge of social media?

Think about the point of you having a LinkedIn profile/Facebook page/Twitter feed. Don’t have something because someone said you should and then realize it’s not the right medium for your company voice.

I’m off to think about it. You should too.

 

Oh and from the Globe – check out the Maximum City course – “I thought if I had a better understanding of how things work, I’d be better positioned to try and make a difference in the future,” said Isabella Chiu, 15, a Grade 11 student who was one of the successful applicants out of more than 50 who applied for the pilot program.

The future feels okay today.

Numbers and Experiences and You

I’ve been rattling on a lot lately about numbers not lying. And experiences being what change minds.

If the numbers are right, I’ll take experience over them any time.

I hit go on this website on May 9, 2011 – seventy days ago.

In that time there have been fifty-six posts (live feeding to Twitter, Facebook and Linked In), and forty-seven comments  (actually on the blog, not including “I love your blog! comments IRL and on FB) and eight pages worth of tweets. Facebook friends have jumped by five percent, Twitter followers by twenty-one percent, and Linked In has nearly doubled.

Shares are happening, folks are subscribing, retweets are happening and web stats are fairly solidly, always above a certain number of visits, and some predictable unique visits. The tag cloud is changing in size.

So?

So now what? This is the moment where folks sometimes get lazy. Or forget about it – the site is up, it’s running no problem, there are some awesome days with hundreds of visits and days with twelve and it’s fun and all to analyze why there were hundreds (link on a BlogTO post) and why there were only a dozen (no blog post on a holiday Monday) but to what end? This analysis is fine and you can write it down and congratulate yourself for analyzing. But what do you do with those numbers? Do you keep doing what you’re doing or do you take a minute and go a step further?

On July 8th I posted a poll asking whether or not folks would want to complete a survey about why they come to this site and read the blog. 83% of respondents said yes they would! 17% said probably, but it couldn’t be too long or complicated. I believe the 83% want to, I believe the 17% just a little bit more. So in the next couple of days I will whip up a survey that is neither long nor complicated and post it. I’ll put the link in blog posts for five days and we will see the results. Data geeks everywhere are celebrating worldwide, and lots of my friends are rolling their eyes. Survey coming!