Social Snapshot: Instagram & Pinterest

Strategy: Instagram is a social site built for mobile photo and video sharing allowing you to connect with companions or companies, in order to stay up to date with what’s happening where and with whom. Hashtags, captions and geo-tags are attached to photos in order to reach a wider audience.   Instagram can be used to:…

10 Reasons Why Your Business Needs to be Active on Social Media

Social Media has transformed the way we communicate in regards to how we create, share and exchange information and ideas. According to PEW Research Center, As of January 2014, 74% of online adults use social networking sites. This presents a huge opportunity for businesses, who can now communicate directly with prospective customers and engage…

Mad Recap on Social Intranets

Due to numerous requests, we decided to compile a summary of Mad Tips for our Social Intranet Series to offer some insight to each of the six intranets explored. We give kudos to Drupal Commons for all their open source glory and we think they should be listed as a serious contender of the mix, for specific deployments or business…

Part 6: Social Enterprises Get Googled

Google Apps for Business is now also in the social and collaboration software mix. Although not what one would classify as a full social intranet platform, is quickly evolving in true Google innovation style into the social and collaboration platform space. In particular with the evolution of Google Drive, their online document management and…

Part 5: Drupal Commons

The Gartner 2012 Magic Quadrant report on social software has missed a serious open source contender in Drupal Commons social media platform, but has recognized its sister Drupal CMS in the content management system space. In the 2013 reports, Drupal Commons landed on the map.   Many people are not aware Commons refers to the cultural and…

Part 4: Salesforce Goes Social

One of the first companies to embrace and fly up to the clouds, Marc Benioff, a former Oracle executive launched Salesforce in March 1999. The longtime leader in Salesforce automation (SFA), Salesforce is one of the few solutions, which successfully crosses over multiple areas of functions providing mass mailing, campaign management, lead…

Part 3: What’s the Point of SharePoint?

Where does SharePoint make its point and its mark?  Answer: Document and data management.   A heavier, enterprise, legacy based software, the interface of SharePoint is reminiscent of the older software designs and ‘file folder’ structures.   Eloqua, an enterprise level, legacy marketing automation platform, and Salesforce,…

Part 2: Jive Gets in the Social Groove

As an enterprise platform inherently designed to be social, Jive both competes with Igloo Software highlighted in Part 1 of our series, and also interestingly both differs from SharePoint (which will be highlighted in part 3 of our series.   Interestingly, Jive competes with SharePoint, and also  integrates with SharePoint.  …

Part 1: Igloo Goes Global Out of the Gate

Igloo Software’s roots reign from international initiatives needing collaboration across the globe. Igloo is in our backyard, and a friendly software neighbour here in Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada, so we have to put it at the top of the list and give kudos to this local success story.  The company’s origins trace to 2004, when Mr. Jim…

The Benefits of Going Social With Your Intranet Series: Introduction

We have identified six intranets that will be profiled over the next week. Igloo, Jive, SharePoint, Salesforce, Drupal Commons and Google Apps are the leading intranets in their respective areas. Take a look below to see the key reasons why your business should consider a social intranet.The Benefits of Going Social with Your Intranet …

5 Ways to Encourage Women in STEM

Follow Your Degree & Your Dream Many STEM related positions are available but there are not enough qualified people to fill the positions. Incredibly, women who graduate with a STEM degree, are more likely to pursue health or educational careers, leaving males to fill computer science or engineering roles.     Early Education…

Celebrate STEM-Science, Technology, Engineering & Math

STEM consists of fields involving the science, technology, engineering and math. STEM occupations are necessary in leading and assisting societies with resources and innovation. According to Million Women Mentors, women have been, and currently are, underrepresented in fields of STEM. There are a variety of suggestions that could possibly explain…

Life Lessons from A WWII Veteran ~ George Witzell

1) Be Humble  Every year, I would make sure to take my Grandma Agnes, and my Grandfather George Witzell out for dinner when I visited Niagara Falls.  One weekend, I choose a nice Italian restaurant and I let them know they could have anything they wanted on the menu.  They were from the depression era, so they immediately had…

Varsity Athletics is a Powerful Brand Builder

It is very refreshing to finally have a Canadian Institution value and promote their varsity athletics with the same zest and zeal as our American counterparts. The Guelph Gryphons have significantly invested in athletics and it is paying off in a big way with branding and buzz building happening on campus, off campus and across the country.…

Social Summit Presentations

Did you miss a few points or couldn't write down your notes fast enough?  All of the Social Summit presentations are posted here for you.   Social Media Crisis   Julia Rosien, Brand Engineer & Global Social-ite, Restonic & GoGirlfriend     Social Media Crisis from MadHatterTech   Change in the…

What is Big Data?

Lately there has been a lot of buzz around the words ‘Big Data’. It was all about just ‘data’ in the past and then all of a sudden there is a lot of talk about ‘Big data’. So what has changed? In my opinion – nothing.   Data is data - be it small or big. It’s the process of how this data is converted into valuable information that has…

Our Commitment to You

We are always looking for ways to improve our customer service.   With more and more emails arriving and cluttering up inboxes, it’s easy for things to get lost in the mix or not prioritized properly.  We believed your customer support could be done differently - more importantly - better. So, we set out on a mission to find the best…

Dare to Think Different

Ideas can often be stalled or not let outside the box by the risk averse. Sometimes, but certainly not always, these are left-brained individuals.However, if left and right-brained thinking works together, either in the capacity of one individual or leader, or within a team; or if a left brained leader has a skew of right brain risk and creativity…

Untangling the Web wrap-up

The first event in our Marketing Technology Series, Untangling the Web, discussed the evolution of the digital brandscape and how it compliments businesses. So what is digital brandscape? It is the collection of digital imprints of your company, from social media platforms to websites to blogs to mobile and tablet apps.In the past, the ‘industry…

Start Your Search Engines: Mad Hatter Tech Goes Under the SEO Hood

The job of a search engine is to connect people with the things they are looking for online. A great business knows that an effective online presence starts by providing people with the information they need about its products and/or services across all of its digital real estate. The process is a little more complex than providing great…