January 2012
1 post
My Two-Books-a-Month Resolution
It’s January, which means it’s resolution time. I usually only make three resolutions, zero of which involve getting fit (I like poutine too much), but at least one of which usually involves a hobby. One of my biggest hobbies is reading, and in early 2011 I was inspired by a post from my friend Dave Fleet outlining his reading challenge. I’ve always loved reading, but I find when...
December 2011
1 post
How to reward your company during the holiday...
Black Friday and Cyber Monday came and went, and the holidays are fast approaching. That means a few things are guaranteed – busy malls, festive parties, and holiday cheer in the office. The holidays provide a great opportunity to reward your team for a year of hard work. Here’s how to thank your team during the holiday season – hopefully it keeps them focused on the tasks at hand right up to...
November 2011
4 posts
Heart and Stroke Foundation Launches Calendar...
Whether you’re ready or not, Christmas is coming. It’s is my absolutely most favourite holiday in the world, and I think I have more Christmas cheer than Elf and the Grinch (after his heart explodes) times ten. I love the music, holiday parties, and the atmosphere in the malls (not the lineups). But more than that I love buying gifts for people. So last week Kevin and I were sitting...
Superfan, Meet Specialty Coffee
There are certain brands you just grow up with. Barbies and Disney come to mind, but usually coffee companies do not. But for me, one of my fondest childhood memories was taking my dog Shadow for a walk with my dad, a Tim Hortons coffee in hand. No, it wasn’t my coffee (kids can’t have coffee silly) but rather my dad’s candy-like concoction with four creams, three sugars. Back...
1 tag
Online Tools That Help Keep Your Business...
In the past few years it’s become a necessity for small businesses to use online tools for their business, regardless of whether it’s a web-based company or not. Social media tools like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and blogging have become the new pillars of a company’s marketing plan, supplementing or even replacing traditional marketing channels like direct mail.Today, your company is judged more...
From Deadpool to Acquisition: Lessons From... →
Thanks to Dharmesh Shah for letting me write a guest post for OnStartups about our recent experience with Sprouter. I’ve been a loyal reader of OnStartups for years, so it’s humbling to see my post published there. Read for lessons from our “deadpool to acquisition” journey…and a little Canadian humour.
October 2011
2 posts
1 tag
Innovative Companies to Help You Manage Costs
Whether you’re bootstrapping or not, keeping costs down is essential to building and growing your company. Some costs are unavoidable – office space if you don’t want to work from home; new hires to grow the company; and administrative costs like business setup costs and computers for your staff. But in the past ten years, the barrier to entry to starting a small business has drastically lowered....
Sprouter Acquired by Postmedia Network Inc.
In late July I wrote a difficult post announcing that Sprouter was shutting down. It outlined my journey at the startup over the past three years, my startup lessons, and my plans for moving on. The post was a long goodbye to the company and the team I had worked tirelessly with since joining in 2008.
The day we announced the shutdown was really difficult for our team. We loved the company, and it...
September 2011
2 posts
Community Management 101
There are some obvious first hires an entrepreneur needs when starting a business. A developer and a salesperson come to mind, often followed by a head of marketing and a CFO. But increasingly the list of early hires includes the role of Community Manager (CM), a title that encompasses a vast variety of responsibilities within the company. I started as Community Manager at Sprouter in December...
Getting the Most Out of Twitter for your SMB
When I started working at a web startup in late 2008, having a Twitter account for your company was news in itself. Our company was featured in prominent media outlets solely for the fact that we HAD a Twitter account. We used it to interact with our community, and share news about our events and launches. We didn’t sign up because it was the latest trend; we did it because it was an inexpensive...
August 2011
1 post
3 tags
Why Relaxing is a Challenge for Me
One thing I love about the startup community in Toronto is that many of the entrepreneurs I’ve met have become close friends outside of our day jobs (if you can call a startup a day job). We go for drinks, hang out at birthday parties, and even go on pirate boat cruises. And yes, that’s exactly as fun as it sounds.
So it didn’t surprise me when my friend and entrepreneur Andrea Lown asked me to...
July 2011
6 posts
1 tag
Sad News - Sprouter is Shutting Down
Four years ago I was fresh out of university with a fancy journalism degree and a job paying peanuts in a golf course pro shop (one of my favourite summers ever, for the record). Three years ago I was working in the tech practice of a PR agency, learning the ropes and navigating the bottom rung of the corporate ladder. While at that agency I met my boss Sarah Prevette through a mutual friend, and...
2 tags
Toronto's hottest young entrepreneurs
The Globe and Mail has published its list of Toronto’s hottest young entrepreneurs, and I see a bunch of familiar faces on the list. The list includes 15 founders building companies in a variety of industries - from bedding to web startups to design agencies. Congrats to friends who made the list:
Julian Brass, Notable.ca
Justin Hein, Spenz
Alyssa Richard, RateHub
Lauren Friese,...
My Hotmail Blog Series: A Recap
Last December the Windows Live Hotmail team approached me to write a sponsored blog series about the new-and-improved Hotmail. As I said in my post introducing the series, I have been a Hotmail addict since Grade 7. In fact, embarrassing as it may be to admit, my very first Hotmail address was erin_the_fool@hotmail.com. Hey, it was grade 6 and my best friend had the same one (except replace Erin...
Taking a trip in your own backyard with social...
Recently I was featured in Canadian Business magazine in an article titled The Social Network. The article talks about social capital - how you build it, leverage it and lose it - online, and uses me as an example (along with several other people including my friend Casie Stewart). I don’t bring it up again to brag (although I am really proud of it), rather to set the stage for this post.
...
3 tags
Celebrating Canadian Startup Success Stories
Today I was happy to see two announcements about Canadian companies. First, Vancouver startup (is it still a startup?) Hootsuite reached 2 million members, and created a fun Infographic to show some stats about its usage.
Second, the news that Twitter has acquired Toronto startup Backtype. Founders Chris Golda and Mike Montano were in a past YCombinator class, then were based in Toronto for a...
1 tag
Using Windows Live Hotmail Mobile
The last post in my sponsored series on the new-and-improved Hotmail discussed using the new Hotmail Calendar to help you schedule your life, both at work and in your free time. I’ve covered a lot of topics in my series, everything from including Bing results in your emails to easily adding images to your emails. One thing I haven’t talked about is mobile access.
Being able to do things on the go...
June 2011
5 posts
1 tag
Using the new Hotmail Calendar
The last post in my sponsored series about the new and improved Hotmail showed you how you can insert Bing search results into your emails. Hopefully it helped you send directions to friends, or funny cat videos to your mom. This post will talk about something everyone can relate to: keeping your calendar organized.
I honestly don’t think I would be able to function without my calendar. It’s where...
On Being Overrated
There will always be haters. Whether it’s someone criticizing your startup, commenting negatively on your writing, or simply not liking you for whatever reason, there will always be haters. In the last few years I’ve put both myself and our company out there in the community and online, and inevitably not everyone will love us both.
I’m fine with that. In fact one of my...
1 tag
How I'm Rent frock Repeat-ing my way to great...
It annoys me to no end when I read American fashion magazines and either can’t find the items they feature, or I can’t enter their contests because they’re open to American residents only. So imagine my frustration when I discovered that two of my favourite recent startup finds, Birchbox and Rent the Runway, don’t deliver to Canada. Luckily I’ve found two perfect...
1 tag
Meeting global entrepreneurs at DWEN
When my boss Sarah was approached earlier this year to speak at the Dell Women’s Entrepreneur Network conference in Rio de Janeiro, I had two thoughts: one, that sounds like an amazing networking opportunity. And two: I have got to find a way to stow away in her suitcase. Well due to my enthusiastic conversation with a lovely Dell representative at a networking event earlier this year, I...
Today is Work From Home Day
For any entrepreneur or startup employee who likes working in their pyjamas, today was made for you. June 1st is unofficial Work From Home Day in Canada, so put on your trackers, get settled on your couch with your laptop, and maybe even sit on your patio to enjoy the sunshine while working.
While there is no official day advocating working from home, 88% of Canadian works said in a study...
May 2011
8 posts
1 tag
Experiencing the Startup Pendulum
My good friend Renee Warren recently became an entrepreneur. She’s worked in startups for many years, and last year branched out on her own as a consultant. But this year she moved to San Francisco and became a full-fledged entrepreneur with a new company, Spark Boutik.
Last week she wrote a blog post titled Experiencing the Entrepreneur Pendulum. It really struck me because while I...
3 tags
The importance of raising the bar
I’m not a religious person, but I am superstitious. My mom told me things come in threes (both good and bad), and it’s a mantra I’ve repeated my entire life. But lately I feel like good things have come in sixes. I almost don’t want to say it out loud in case I jinx it, but I can’t help it - I’m too excited. First it was my guest articles in Mashable and The...
2 tags
Startup obsession of the week: Lockitron
It’s not often that I see a startup idea and think “whoa! It’s the future.” In fact only two come to mind: Interaxon, a Toronto-based thought-controlled computing company (imagine controlling the lights on the CN Tower with your thoughts); and Word Lens, a mobile app that instantly translates text using your iPhone’s video camera.
But this week I found another...
3 tags
Still think Twitter is stupid? How I got my iPad
A lot of my friends still don’t use Twitter. A lot of them still don’t understand what it’s used for, and still think it’s about talking about what you ate for lunch (okay fine, I do that all the time…but hopefully in between nuggets of pure wisdom). Heck, even I thought Twitter was stupid before I started at Sprouter, because I didn’t have a use case for it....
1 tag
Adding Bing search results to Hotmail messages
The last post in my sponsored series about the new-and-improved Hotmail service was about spring cleaning your inbox (something I’m still trying to do weekly to keep it up). I’m assuming you read that post and that your inbox is now spic-and-span, along with your kitchen and bathroom…maybe wishful thinking.
This post outlines another feature Hotmail has added to improve user experience – the...
1 tag
Putting my journalism degree to good use
On the first day of journalism school the prof asked the group of about 200 students which ones wanted to be a journalist when they graduated. Almost everyone raised their hand…except me. Both of my parents have journalism degrees, and while my dad pursued a career as a reporter at a local newspaper, my mom used her degree to build a successful career in corporate communications and...
2 tags
Getting Users For Your New Startup
Love this post from Philip Kaplan about getting users for your new startup. He says “The most frequently asked question I get from new entrepreneurs is, ‘How do I get users?”” and outlines most of what he’s learned, including how to get celebrity endorsements and how to run affiliate programs.
But my favourite part is about how to get press for your startup - it...
2 tags
Are Your Social Media Efforts Stalled?
I was asked by the Your Business editor at The Globe and Mail (Canada’s largest national newspaper, for any international readers - and yes I’m tooting my own horn) to write a column about social media. My first thought was “what hasn’t already been written about getting started with social media?” But he wasn’t interested in advice on signing up for Twitter or...
April 2011
5 posts
2 tags
What's With Startups and Private Beta Landing...
I’ve been recognizing a pattern lately. Hear about cool startup from someone on Twitter or a tech blog. Visit said startup’s website. Encounter Launchrock or a similar private beta signup form. Sign up for the startup, and never think about it again. It’s happened again and again lately - Manilla, Punchd, Bread…the list goes on.
I get that startups want to have a...
2 tags
9 Lessons for Brands on Holding Online Contests
Earlier this year I wrote a case study about the Sauza Tequila contest I helped my boyfriend Kevin win last year. He walked away with a cool $10,000, and I walked away with a lot of marketing lessons about how to enter and win a vote-driven contest. But I also walked away with a lot of takeaways for companies who are looking to hold online contests to increase online conversation and buzz about...
2 tags
Noteleaf Helps Give you Context Around Meetings
It’s the nature of my job that I meet with a lot of people. Sometimes it’s students who want to find out more about Community Management, often it’s entrepreneurs, and many times it’s someone I’ve never met in person before. So when I stumbled upon Y Combinator startup Noteleaf in an article I was excited by the idea. The startup promises to help you always know who...
3 tags
How to Put Together an Effective Startup Press Kit
Last week my friend Alyssa Richard stopped by the Sprouter office to drop off a press kit for her new startup, RateHub.ca, a mortgage rate comparison website. I knew a lot about RateHub already since she had presented the company at a Sprout Up event and we’d gone for coffee several times before, but my knowledge barely scratched the surface of what the press kit detailed. It reminded me...
1 tag
The best tech April Fool's Day pranks
I’m extremely gullible. In fact once someone told me that the word ‘gullible’ wasn’t in the dictionary and I believed them without question. So all week I’ve been steeling myself for April Fool’s Day, reminding myself that everyone will be trying to pull a fast one on me and that I need to be prepared. But clearly this morning I was in a rush to get to work and...
March 2011
11 posts
Spring cleaning your inbox with Hotmail
It’s spring in Canada – at least that’s what they tell me. The snowstorms and freezing temperatures say otherwise, but at least I know the warmer days are coming. Spring brings a lot of lovely things: more sun, longer days, and patios. But it also brings a desire to spring clean different areas of your life – your home, your finances, and your desk at work. One thing I’ve decided to spring clean...
2 tags
Coworking: big business amenities, startup...
This article originally appeared as a column in Women’s Post. You can find the original article here.
If you’re a freelancer or an entrepreneur it can be a lonely lifestyle. It often includes working alone in a home office, without access to the amenities and social events found at a large corporate office. And if you’re looking for office space it can be costly, especially when you add in...
Book Review: making businesses social with The Now...
When you start in a new position, one of the first things you do is research people in your industry who are doing it well so you can learn from them, and hopefully apply some of their lessons to your own path. One of those people for me was Amber Naslund, then the Director of Community at Radian6, and now the VP of Social Strategy. Amber has the idea of building community down to a science – she...
Hotmail & the dreaded spam
This is the 7th post in my sponsored blog series about the new and improved Hotmail, and I’ve already covered quite a few of the new features – how to sweep away unwanted e-mails, how to share photos and attachments in the new Hotmail, and last week I showed you how to view your inbox with Conversation View.
This week I’m going to talk about something everyone with an e-mail address can...
2 tags
Startup swag: effective marketing or waste of...
One of my favourite lines in The Office is when Michael, Jim and Dwight attend a conference together, and Michael picks up a bag of swag. “SWAG! Stuff. We. All. Get. I basically decorated my condo for free with all of my SWAG!” he boasts, hoisting his treasures up to show the camera. Anyone who attends conferences regularly knows that swag is a big part of the experience (along with...
1 tag
Lessons from this year's SXSW Interactive...
Last weekend I made my third trip down to Austin for the SXSW Interactive conference. Like many other Community Managers and startup founders, I had a plan for the conference. I had a list of journalists I wanted to meet; a list of entrepreneurs I wanted to interview; a bunch of party RSVPs in my calendar; and some startup-focused sessions that I wanted to attend. And, like many other SXSW...
1 tag
Viewing your Hotmail inbox with Conversation View
My last post in this blog series about the new Hotmail showed you how to work on Microsoft Office documents right in your e-mail inbox, instead of playing the attach-download-edit-save-upload-attach game with your co-workers and friends.
This week I’m showing off another one of the new features, Conversation View. And it comes at a perfect time for me. You see, I’m still best friends with all my...
3 tags
My advice for the next wave of young professionals
I’m in Ottawa today preparing for a presentation on why you should join or build a startup after graduation. Carleton University is my alma mater (I graduated with a journalism degree in 2007) and I’m presenting to current Carleton students, so it feels like I’ve come full-circle.
While working on the presentation I thought a lot about why startups are a great place to work...
1 tag
How to collaborate on Microsoft Office apps in...
My last post in my Hotmail series was about how to watch videos inside your e-mails. Today I’m going to talk about something every communications professional can relate to: Microsoft Office applications. When I started working at Sprouter, I was mystified to find out that our developer didn’t have Microsoft PowerPoint or Word installed on his computer. He explained that he codes all day – why...
2 tags
The 8 Startups I Can't Live Without
When you’re in a bubble it’s hard to remember that there are people outside of it. I forget sometimes that some people don’t spend their days researching new startups, reading startup blogs, and talking to new entrepreneurs. So I’m trying to share my startup discoveries with more people so they can solve a pain point in their lives, and simultaneously help a startup win...
2 tags
What happens if you get Retweeted by Oprah
I know a lot of people who think Twitter is stupid. Some are family members, some are friends I’ve known since I was in elementary school, and some are entrepreneurs who say they don’t have time for Twitter and to talk about what they ate for lunch. Well I now have the perfect response to the question “What the heck is Twitter, and why should I use it?” Answer:...
February 2011
7 posts
1 tag
The Startup Pivot in Action - Changes at Sprouter
We always joke about tech startup buzzwords around the Sprouter office. Buzzwords like “dashboard” and “game mechanics” are always met with a laugh, similar to big business terms like “synergy.” So it’s funny that today we’re using another one of those buzzwords to describe changes to Sprouter: the startup pivot.
Since I started at Sprouter in...
1 tag
Want to watch videos inside your e-mails? Hotmail...
Last week I wrote about how to share photo attachments with Hotmail, something I needed to do this week after I got back from beautiful Vancouver. This week I’m outlining another new Hotmail feature, Active View. The feature concentrates popular online activities into your inbox, instead of requiring you to navigate all around the web from your e-mails.
Hotmail has partnered with some of the...
1 tag
A definitive Community Manager job description
When I met with Sarah Prevette about the Community Management job at Sprouter I had never heard the term before, and I really had no clue what the role meant within a company. This was late 2008 and it was still a really new position, without definitive job descriptions or templates. She described the job as a mix of writing, PR, communications, and social media, and I thought “I can do...
2 tags
It's Social Media Week. So why don't I care?
I don’t know if it’s because I’m going south in a week and all I can think of is sun and sand. Or if it’s the fact that I’m crazy busy at work right now and don’t have a lot of free time. Or maybe it’s just because one of my favourite Toronto events, Podcamp Toronto, is in a couple weeks. But whatever the reason, I just wasn’t excited about Social...