Blogroll
- Social Business Mentor Primary site for Robert Lavigne, Your Social Business Mentor (The Digital Grapevine @TDGv.net)
- My Thoughts Enclosed… Home of The @RLavigne42 Tweet Round-Up and much much more
- The Other Side of Forty-Two A Lifeat42 Companion Focussing on the Social Life of Robert Lavigne
- Innovation at the Speed of Thought The tumblr for all things related to Robert Lavigne
Contact Robert Lavigne
“Seasoned GenX Leader Capable of Leveraging the Technically Savvy GenY Knowledge Worker”
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Currently available for hire to assist you in formulating your Enterprise 2.0 strategy and SMB/Corporate Social Media integration.
eMail Robert Lavigne @ RLavigne42.com via scr.im
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Recent Posts
- Listly Lists versus YouTube Playlists, featuring the 42+1 Live to Air Interview Series with Robert Lavigne
- 42+1 Interview with Robert Lavigne and Dino Dogan on Triberr, Blogs, and Social SEO
- 42+1 Interview with Robert Lavigne and Dan Keldsen on Collaboration
- 42+1 Interview with Robert Lavigne and Greg Lowe on Collaboration
- 42+1 Interview with Robert Lavigne and Mark Fidelman on Socialized!
- 42+1 Interview with Robert Lavigne and Christine Skulevold on Empire Avenue, Instagram, and Social Media Addiction
- 42+1 Interview with Robert Lavigne and Mark Ashford on “The Office is Closed- Work Remote – Work from Home. How, and Why”
- 42+1 Interview with Robert Lavigne and Kevin Green on Empire Avenue, Social Media, and Social Networking
- 42+1 Interview with Robert Lavigne and Doug Wolfgram on Empire Avenue, Interactive Media, Social Selling
- Robert Lavigne 42+1 Interview with Stephen Shapiro, Best Practices Are Stupid, The Art of Leadership
- 42+1 Interview with Robert Lavigne and Kim Reynolds on Empire Avenue and Social Media
- 42+1 Interview with Robert Lavigne and Rob Nielsen on Empire Avenue and Social Media
- 42+1 Interview with Robert Lavigne and Michael Q Todd on Empire Avenue and Social Media
- The Life@42 Manifesto by Robert Lavigne, Your Social Business Mentor (http://SocialBusinessMentor.com)
- What is Inbound Marketing? What is an Invention? What is MESH Conference? What is Towel Day?
- A 42+1 Screencast on Remote Collaboration and Business Success with Robin Dickinson
- Robert Lavigne reviews The Social Media Business Equation by Eve Mayer Orsburn #DouglasAdams60th
- A 42+1 Social Business Screencast on Social Media with Tim Burrows of the Toronto Police
- Have you seen the NEW NEW Twitter? – A Social Business Life@42 Workshop with Robert Lavigne
- New to Google+? What is Google Plus? – A Life@42 Workshop with Robert Lavigne, Your Social Business Mentor
- A Tale of Two Tweets #Dickens2012 aka “#Happy200Chaz Charles Dickens from the Brantford Library”
- How the Brantford Library understands “The Social Media Business Equation” by Eve Mayer Orsburn
- Marshall Sponder’s Social Media Analytics – “Numbers Lie! Engaged Communities Drive Value.” ~Robert Lavigne
- Marshall Sponder’s Social Media Analytics – “Content is Free – Context is Where the Value IS.” ~Robert Lavigne
- Marshall Sponder’s Social Media Analytics – “Deep within Foreign Territory, the need for Human Intel is Critical” ~Robert Lavigne
Monthly Archives: January 2011
Nature Calls: Social Media Explained (LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Foursquare, Quora)
LinkedIn = I pee well.
Twitter = I need to pee.
Facebook = I peed!
Foursquare = I’m peeing here.
Quora = Why am I peeing? Continue reading
Posted in This and That
Tagged FACEBOOK, Foursquare, G4TV, LinkedIn, meme, Nature Calls, Quora, Social Media, Twitter
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YouTube Easter Egg: Built in game of Snake on every YouTube Video
Here are the steps to activate the YouTube Snake Game Easter Egg:
1. pause the video
2. press left and up arrows on your keyboard at the same time
3. enjoy a game of snake use arrow keys to move the snake Continue reading
Posted in This and That
Tagged Easter Egg, Magic Power, Rik Emmett, Snake, Triumph, YouTube
1 Comment
My answer to the client that asks “can you make this video viral?”
How many times has a client approached you with a video on YouTube that has gone “viral” asking you to magically trend their content to the stratosphere. Sadly, the answer is more often than not. The problem is that viral is not a strategy, viral is an outcome.
Videos don’t go viral, promos don’t go viral, stories that touch the human psyche, those go viral. The problem is the human psyche is one complex element that we have spent 1,000s of years trying to comprehend and still don’t. So I shake my head whenever people who can’t even understand the behaviour of their own pets think they can magically make something go viral.
Fundamentally that is the problem with business today. Everyone is looking for the magic bullet for success. The problem is they need to first take a look why things backfire in the first place. Sadly most people have no interest in doing the research and even less interest in doing the work it takes to change to align with the target they seek.
But what do I know 
Rob Continue reading
Today someone also asked me to provide my views on the entire Goldman Sachs Facebook Bubble issue. Here was my response.
Matt just pinged me to add my insight into this. Sadly, it would take forever for me to outlay my thoughts textually. I will however try to summarize it and will probably get sniped from all sides as I am skimming the surface on my insights on the subject.
However, here goes before I head back into the editing suite tonight to work on my latest podcast video.
1) Ad Revenue – there is actually quite a lot of money that changes hands here. However, most of that advertising revenue is one sided. In that Facebook is making money on them, but it truly doesn’t generate much sales to those posting the ads. We simply have gotten to a point where banner ads are being ignored and the click through rates are not indicative of actual hard money being exchanged between the consumers and vendors. So point for FB and Google for generating a cash inflow via the model, but not a real value proposition for a company doing a simply ad placement. What drives engagement and sales is a great story based campaign and the link needs to draw people to take vs. a me, me, me, buy, buy, buy page.
2) Semantic Data – this is an overly complex topic and honestly I am too tired right now to go into details. But simply stated, the Social Graph and the Semantic Data that goes with it is the basis for sooooo much down the road decision making from product development to statistical research to consumer insight to fundamentally all aspects of an economic model. As I told Matt, the easiest way to state this is look at what 6,000 people in Canada provide towards mapping out the viewing and listening patterns for radio and tv in Canada. Simply put, 6,000 people are statiscally expressed to represent 36 million Canadians and this drives the entire Radio and TV Economy that drives a Billion with a capital B industry. In addition, take something as simple as the census and what it drives from a governmental economy. Now FB has a population of 600 million right now. That is larger than 90% of the countries out there. So when you think about all of the economical, research and political implications involved with running a country, companies are heavily interested in that insight to drive similar economical models. This is were the real value of Google and FB lies.
3) Bubble – YES ’nuff said. Not because of the economical and statistical value of the database but because a bubble is driven by the ignorant and greedy…
K gotta get back to work.
On a side note, here are some elements that might be useful to gain a sense of all of this from a blog entry from today. Highly recommend listening to the podcast I was a guest on last week as well as watching the video on Three Gears of Social Media.
Rob / @RLavigne42 Continue reading
Posted in Life@42: A Leadership Social Novel
Tagged @RLavigne42, Bubble, FACEBOOK, Goldman Sachs, Robert Lavigne
1 Comment
Today I got a call from a recruiter looking for a “2.0 guy”. Needless to say my reply shocked and surprised him.
Today I got a call from a recruiter that I know and respect. I was however surprised to hear what company/position he was pitching to me. You see I had previously applied to that company shortly before becoming a “2.0 guy”
When listening to what they were looking for (apart from a “2.0 guy”), I was shocked and saddened to hear that the role was more or less a carbon copy of the role they tried to fill over a year and a half ago.
I know what I have been able to achieve in that same timeframe by embracing the core social business elements of transparency, engagement and collaboration.
I know how much I have progressed in the same timeframe by understanding the real value of being a knowledge worker within a social business.
I know what can be achieved in a short timeframe when you start incorporating communities, crowdsourcing and corporate alignment.
So I struggled to understand how this heavily funded organization could literally still at the starting gate given the parallel timeframe we both shared.
You see not only had I applied for the role way back then, but I also know one of the consultants that used to work for that organization. Between that inside knowledge and the obvious lack of forward momentum on their corporate goals, I issued many challenging questions before even considering sitting down for a potential interview.
There is a strong difference between hiring a “2.0 guy” and becoming a “2.0 organization”. So instead of simply saying no thank you, I attempted to shed some light as to what the organization would actually have to do if they really wanted to not waste another year and a half of their time and someone else’s investment.
When all was said and done, I shared the following e-mail with him that I would like to share with you as well. The e-mail contains artifacts that to me best exemplify the lessons that I have learned about what it means to be a “2.0 organization”. I would hope that you all would take the time to listen and read these before thinking of hiring a “2.0 guy” to attempt to become a social business (and as such not #FAIL in your goals). Continue reading
BucketList checklist for 2011 so far…
1) having a business book dedicated to you – CHECK
2) having a music icon approve your work – CHECK
3) being on a podcast on iTunes – CHECK
4) officially registering your own company – CHECK
5) having your work considered for a major film festival – STAY TUNE!!!
Did I mention all this happened in the first week of 2011 
Happy New Year! Continue reading
