Category Archives: Business

5 questions with Jay Menard

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5 questions with Jay Menard (from Marketing in a Social Age)

This may be one of the most “heart” 5 Questions I have done.  By heart, I mean that Jay tells it like it is and that he’s not afraid to let everyone know what’s really important.  I hope you enjoy this one.
“By day, Jay’s the writer/editor for the Canadian arm of an international corporation. By night, he’s a corporate communications/social media consultant, hockey writer, and columnist. Superseding all, however, is the fact that he’s a husband and father of two…”

A Feather in Canada’s (Internet) Cap for the Future

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By Jason Menard

On-line public pressure may not only serve to pull the plug on a move to cap Internet usage in the Great White North; it may, in addition to serving as a cyber-feather in our collective caps for democracy, show how we can get people involved in the political process in the future.

Lazy, apathetic, disinterested voters have been both the bane and the boon of politicians for years – a bane to those interested in making change; a boon to those who are content with pushing their agendas through parliament before the masses catch on – but a recent kerfuffle in Canada has shown that there’s something that can be the great equalizer.

The Internet. Continue reading →

Some Businesses Need a Kick in the Assets

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By Jason Menard

To paraphrase John Hurt in the film The Elephant Man, “I am not a stakeholder, I am not an asset or a resource. I’m a human being. I… am… a… man.”

I’m Jay. Nice to meet you. However, if you go by the way businesses speak about its employees, one would think that people are no more important than the computer they’re working on, or the phone with which they’re calling you. Continue reading →

Great Communication is Learned One Day at a Time, Not in One Day

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By Jason Menard,

One day can help start you along the right path, but when it comes to learning how to effectively communicate, one day’s just enough time for you to learn how to firmly lodge your foot in your mouth.

Earlier today, I received an e-mail at work promoting a course that promised to teach you “How to be an Outstanding Communicator” in one day. And while normally I pay just enough attention to these e-mails – you know the ones you receive after attending one conference, and then you’re stuck in an e-mail list purgatory for years – to figure out what the course/conference topic is, and then file it under “G.”

However, this one struck me as particularly audacious. Or perhaps it’s just simple vanity – to suggest that a craft I’ve been trying to hone for two decades is something that can be mastered in a day bruised the ol’ ego. Continue reading →

If Your Audience is All A-Twitter is that a Good Thing?

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By Jason Menard,

It’s somewhat ironic that social media is perpetrating a behaviour that is inherently anti-social. But while that behaviour would come across as disrespectful to previous generations, it is in fact the greatest show of respect one can display.

After all, seeing a room full of people ‘ignoring’ a speaker and typing furiously away wouldn’t seem to be a positive thing – but it could be the greatest display of approval one can show. Continue reading →