At lunchtime on Tuesday, Brisbane went from a sunny 29°C day to a stormy, flash flooding mess. It was some crazy weather which caused some major disruption throughout the city. So, how did you find out about the damage caused by this little storm?

Was it through a mainstream news outlet?

After going on Christmas holidays and having as little online interaction as possible, it has been really hard to get back into. And I’m not alone. I have spoken to a number of people coming back to the real world who have vowed to spend less time living their lives online and living their lives… well, normally. This is where my resolutions begin.

Well, it has finally happened. You guru’s have overexposed yourself and look what has happened…

I went all out last week and made a prediction on the ‘next big thing’. No, it wasn’t Tony Abbott. I was talking about Foursquare. I won’t go into what Foursquare is here but Mark Pollard has a nice overview of the functionality and his experience with it here.

I just want to rattle off a few dot points on why I think Foursquare will change the marketing game for business. Here’s how…

“I’m in the area, I’ll call into your place in five minutes.”

These simple words can cause mass hysteria and panic. Whether spoken by the in-laws, a close friend or the creepy IT guy, they are cause for concern. All of a sudden we are in a mad rush to wash the dishes at the kitchen sink, change the channel from Dr Phil to Discovery Channel and scramble to put some pants on. We can’t let any visitors in the house looking like this!

It’s natural to hide how we really live and who we really are. This can be done by portraying a perfect domestic life, borrowing more money than we should or suppressing an online personality. It’s not that we’re doing anything wrong. We just have an ideal image we like to portray.

Instead of going straight for the ‘why’, uncover the ‘who’, ‘what’, ‘when’, ‘where’ and ‘how’. The answers to these questions will likely lead to the ‘why’.

I don’t know about you but I’ve been getting a little protective of my email lately. I’ve always been ruthless in removing junk which is filling up my inbox. However, my definition of ‘junk’ is changing. For me, junk has moved beyond unsolicitored mail and now includes duplicated or mass content.

Over the last couple of months, I’ve been on a white paper reading spree. I want to share with you five of my favourites.

Apparently so according to Google Trends…

It’s not easy being liked by the people that matter.

As a social media strategist this is a primary objective for my clients. While every brief that lands on the desk is different, there are some theories which give you a pretty good idea how to generate some fans.