Blogs | Social Signal

When my mother died in early 2004, Friendster was the domain of the young'uns, MySpace was barely out the door and Facebook was still a month from launching.

But for someone who never saw used the word "friend" as a verb in her life, JoAnne Cottingham taught me an awful lot about social networking.

Hi, Elections Canada. We go back a long way, you and me. I'm the kid who had your colour-coded riding map masking-taped to my bedroom wall.

So let me offer some friendly advice. You want to stop people from tweeting election results from Eastern Canada before folks in Western Canada have had a chance to cast their ballots?

Then don't use section 329 of the Canada Elections Act. The full weight of the law is way too blunt an instrument.

This is the story of how one elephant drove us to make a change... and another elephant, courtesy of Switch authors Chip and Dan Heath, showed us the way.

Let's be honest: election debates are usually pretty awful for voters.

Part of a series. Original version at AlexandraSamuel.com.

In my recent blog post about how to sustain your social media presence in just 3 hours a week, I advise drafting 3 blog posts in under one hour. That may sound unimaginable if (like me) you've fallen into the habit of turning each blog post you write into a mini-manual or philosophical essay.

Part of a series. Original version at AlexandraSamuel.com.

When it rains on a weekend, I don't bemoan my decision to live in the Pacific Northwest: I just know it's time to queue up my blog posts and tweets for the week. That's what I try to do in about two hours every weekend, and since folks often ask me how they can keep their social media presence alive in an efficient and sustainable way, I figure I'm long overdue to blog my system.

Part of a series. Original version at AlexandraSamuel.com.

Part of a series. Original version at AlexandraSamuel.com.

I often talk to people who wonder how they can get started in social media. The typical requirements are:

If part of your job with a non-profit organization is to chase grants, then you may have found the proposal-writing process... well, a little dull at times.

That's especially true if you're applying for support from the kind of buttoned-down funding source that favors turgid, lifeless prose over imagination or creativity.