Social media has given companies access to unprecedented amounts of information on client behavior and preferences - so-called Big Data. But making sense of it all and turning it into actionable policy has been elusive.
Every day I'd come home after school, pop the hood of my mom's car, put alligator clips on the battery, and wire into the house and go play on my computer. If I used it for too long, I'd wear down the car battery, and my mom would be all mad at me the next day.
Ultimately, I'd love to see a legacy company that has alumni that come out of it and go on to create other big things. A maple-syrup mafia, a HootSuite mafia.
By monitoring the activity taking place on social networks, retailers can amplify successful marketing and sales strategies and avoid weak tactics which can later be tied back to organizational objectives.
As an entrepreneur, one of the biggest challenges you will face will be building your brand. The ultimate goal is to set your company and your brand apart from the crowd. If you form a strategy without doing the research, your brand will barely float - and at the speed industries move at today, brands sink fast.
Certification programs for social media are blossoming as a response to the demand for more social media training. Both industry professionals and recent graduates are tapping into tactical training programs to help them stay up to date as the industry grows.
I think that Vancouver as well as Canada needs a boot camp for young entrepreneurs. We have already seen tens if not hundreds of people put their names forward to be involved in the program, and we just think this is an amazing way to accelerate what they're doing.
Sales teams use social media to generate leads and track clients as they move through the sales funnel. Operations and distribution teams forecast supply chains, while research and development squads brainstorm product ideas.
Although the tech industry is very open to change, many people still have a closed-off mentality where, in the interest of protecting their ideas, they keep them hidden in dark caves.
As technology has improved, our digital lives have only grown more tangled and cluttered.
Payfirma has revolutionized the payment process, consolidating mobile, e-commerce and in-store payments under a single solution, much like HootSuite did for social media.
It may be coincidence that the decline of newspapers has corresponded with the rise of social media. Or maybe not.
The basic idea of email has remained essentially unchanged since the first networked message was sent in 1971. And while email is great for one-on-one, formal correspondence, there are far better tools for collaboration.
Social media teams tend to be decentralized - a motley mix of in-house experts, off-site consultants and international partners. The result: Confusion, rogue tweets, and off-message posts are almost inevitable. The worst gaffes live on in social media infamy.
Silicon Valley isn't the only game in town. Tech is increasingly decentralized. Around the world, new tech centers with younger companies are able to embrace a different approach to talent: recruit locally, identify homegrown prospects and, in a phrase, bring them along for the ride.
Hammer down product fundamentals first. Make sure you've got something that works before doubling down on promotion and marketing. Create a groundswell of organic support, and only then leverage PR and advertising to spread the word.
Workflow and usability are not afterthoughts; they impact the core of any project and dictate how it should be engineered.
Social media, for all of its limitations, is rarely irrelevant. The stream of updates on your Facebook page, for instance, is algorithmically engineered to be darn-near irresistible.
When you think of technology that gets people excited - long lines at stores, enthusiastic reviews in the blogosphere, passionate evangelists - the first thing to come to mind probably isn't thermostats. Then, along came Nest.
As social is where consumers' eyeballs are, businesses must take ownership of their online company profiles. By providing their customers with a place to share content, social media managers can monitor and track content which directly relates to their brand.
