Danny Brown's Blog, page 29

Give And Ye Shall Receive: Mentoring, Creativity and Innovation

This is a guest post byhealth and wellness strategist and digital health pioneer Liz Scherer.

When you hear the word ‘mentor,’ what is the first image that comes to mind? Is it a middle-aged man in a suit, briefcase on a table in front of him and a Mont Blanc pen in hand?

Pretty passé, eh?

Venture capitalist and Paypal co-founder Peter Thiel would agree. In an interview conducted late last year, he says that mentors no longer offer much in the way of value, at least not in the tech start up w...

The Power of Oblivious

Every morning, I jump on the train to commute to work, and this includes using the subway when I hit downtown Toronto.

Every morning, without fail, I look around and see faces buried in phones. What the owners of the phones are doing, who knows?

It may be important – a sales presentation in need of fine-tuning before a make-or-break meeting. Or an email response to a social media crisis. Or, perhaps, simply texting a friend or loved one.

More often than not, it’s playing one of the many addic...

Remembering Leon Noone

A lot of people will tell you that the internet isn’t a real place, and you can’t forge friendships and relationships that are purely virtual in nature.

Leon Noone made a mockery of that belief.

A business management consultant from Australia, Leon was one of these people you just instantly took to.

A typical Australian bloke, Leon was as blunt as he was funny. Every interaction with him, whether it was a comment on a blog post, or a personal email exchange, was guaranteed to leave you smilin...

Introducing Hybrid Commenting (Or Why You Need to Keep Experimenting On Your Blog)

For the last four and a half years, I’ve primarily used the Livefyre Comments system for conversations after each post.

It’s no surprise my usage of Livefyre lasted so long – after all, I’ve written numerous times about how their service is second-to-none, and how their social integration is bringing content creators one step closer to closing the loop on the fragmentation of social conversations.

However, as much as I love Livefyre, I’ve decided to change the way we interact with each other...

Understanding Your Blog Audience and What You Want From Them

When people think of growing an engaged audience, it’s usually in reference to blog readers; or an email list; or visitors to a sales page on your website; or listeners to your podcast; a social network community, or similar.

But what are we really building an audience for?

Is it simply to participate (click through on an offer or download a product)? Or is it to interact, via comments on a blog, tweets, Google+ conversations and more?

If it’s the former, then do we even care about engagement...

How We Deal with Disillusionment Defines How We Move Forward

People get easily distracted. We see something that gives us the Oooh ripple of excitement, and we buy into the premise.

For a while, everything is good. We see only positives, and ignore the (in hindsight) questionable.

But then the cracks appear.

Faults that had always been present start to become clearer. Actions and non-actions reveal a side that we had previously ignored, but now can’t be ignored any longer.

We start to ask the questions that should have been asked from the start.The rea...

The Cautionary Tale of Balderdash and Hogwash

Back in the day, two friends named Balderdash and Hogwash decided they wanted to be seen as really smart.

So they decided to share their thinking and position it as Fairly Important Correctionable Tales In Other News (FICTION).

Seeing that there was a market for people looking for information, Balderdash and Hogwash decided that their brand of FICTION was just what the world needed. So off they set, taking their words of wisdom with them.

For many years, Balderdash and Hogwash were hugely suc...

Smart Is Not Last Year’s Model

How smart are you? How do you rack up compared to your peers; your competitors; your parallel people?

There are all sorts of smart, but only one that counts. It’s not high school diploma. It’s not college degree. It’s not university PhD.

It’s experiential smart.

Your experience. Your knowledge. Your ability to act. Your ability to react. Your ability to pro-act. It’s your fluidity. Your flexibility. Your awareness that smart is not not being dumb; it’snot being the dumbest.

Smart marketers se...

Customer Service is Not the Same as Being Customer-Centric

Last year, for an ongoing period of three months, I tried to to resolve a payment issue with a nationalwater heater service provider here in Canada.

When my wife and I moved home the previous summer, we switched from our current provider to Reliance, and took advantage of a special introductory offer that would see us receive nine months free rental.

Unfortunately, the sales guy completed the form incorrectly, and we only received eight months. Additionally, the payment amounts on the paperwo...

Balancing Your Autobiography

In everything we do, and with everyone we know, we’re always battling some kind of balancing act, in life and in business.

Finances versus wants/needs, further education versus joining the workforce, overtime at work versus time with our families.

Sometimes we make the right decisions, sometimes we don’t.

This is just as true with our online personas, and how we portray ourselves in our interaction with others.

Whether it’s on Twitter, via our blog, on Facebook or otherwise, what we do and sa...