Loneliness is the most terrible poverty – Mother Teresa  An article was written earlier this week in the Globe and it really hit me. The article focuses on children and teenagers – and the marginalization of disabled people in society. Are they really integrated? This is the BEST illustration of news reporting on TV. Beautifully [...]

Message in a bottle – Harold Hackett from PEI has a great hobby: See video here Harold has sent out over 4,000 messages in a bottle over the years and has received over 3,000 responses. Old school social networking at its best. Star Wars crowd-sourced video by fans… wow. This video is amazing and is a group [...]

Weekly links roundup is back at lizoke.com after almost a 1-year sojourn. We are back – watch out for the weekly roundup and some random firings of multiple neurons in between. With all this talk about SOPA, good ol’ Rupert Murdoch censoring the internet, some hackers are trying to launch their own sattelite into space [...]

>> Oven Lovin’ – need I say more?
>> An inside look at North Korea a la VICE magazine style
>> Hello Toronto – help save CKLN!
>> The social media backlash – small but steady movement
>> Bus drivers who text – another PR disaster for Toronto’s public transit

Here are the latest, some greatest, some not so greatest but interesting links from the past week – read more!

I met a very smart and experienced marketing professional yesterday. He has worked with a lot of big brands and has seen a lot o action. He was very open and generous with his advice. He is definitely someone I can learn from.

The biggest piece of advice that he gave me was that marketing is all about common sense. That really hit home with me. He is right. It is about listening to your audience, including your colleagues imput, and using this valuable information into a solid marketing plan.

I wanted to share this advice as I think it is valuable to anyone in business out there. Trust your instincts – be a good listener and use common sense to find solutions.

I recently converted my website into a custom WordPress template. Thanks to Tim Whitacre and Argyll Studios – they basically took my existing design (and functionality I wanted to keep) and converted it into WordPress. I have the blogging end here and I also have two pages that are static that I can change easily and at any time on my own. I can add more pages if i feel the need, and it is easy and seamless to do this.

Read more about my top plugins (aka Kryptonite) for WordPress….

This weeks picks are out!

Here is a list of five tips to get started on building your social media empire from the ground up:.

1. Write guidelines that cover both social media use on behalf of the company…. and also for staff who want to talk on social media sites about what they are up to workwise on their personal account

2. Have a staff member that is interested in social media? Send them to a course in web marketing. If in the Toronto area, there is an excellent course at the University of Toronto. (It is also offered online)

3. Subscribe to some social media experts to stay in the loop: Mashable, Webiquity (B2B-specific), Marketing Sherpa, eMarketer to name a few…

4. Put together a strategy with conservative objectives (ex. start 3-4 conversations per month) Remember, it takes time for your social media engagement to grow – opening a twitter account and tweeting once a week is not going to cut it.

5. Getting negative attention on social media? DO NOT delete the comment or be rude to the negative commenter (remember Nestle’s Facebook page in April 2010?) – Instead respond to the comment in a timely and professional manner. Offer solutions and empathy.

Here is a weekly roundup of some interesting links floating out there