Mortgage Rules Miss the Mark by a Mile

The new mortgage rules are meant to reduce Canadian household debt*, but I think there are lots of other things that Flaherty could do that would actually be helpful in achieving this.

Mortgages changes effective March 18

• Shorten maximum amortization period to 30 years from 35 years
  
• Lower the maximum amount homeowners can borrow against the value of their homes t0 85% from 90%
  
• Withdraw insurance on home-equity lines of credit (effective April 18)

In many cases the purchase of a home could be the largest financial transaction a person makes in their lifetime. Although I believe that owning your own home shouldn't be considered an investment, there are financial benefits to building equity in a home.

Benefits to Equity in Your Home
The equity can be used to refinance and pay off credit cards and other debt that carries a much larger interest rate. That equity can also be used to provide capital for investing, such as purchasing investment properties,  or starting a business.

These new mortgage changes, in addition to last year's changes, make it even harder for people to buy a home. With the deadline looking for these changes it could actually encourage some people to recklessly rush into buying a home before the March deadline; perhaps a home that they can't afford or that isn't suited to their family and lifestyle.

Yellow Signs on Every Corner
I think there are many other things that the Canadian government should be focusing on. There has been changes to credit card regulations, but the glaring problem that isn't addressed is those yellow signs that are becoming like Tim Hortons or Starbucks with one on every corner. I'm talking about the payday loan stores.

Most people are living pay cheque to pay cheque. If an unforeseen event occurs requiring them to get an advance on their pay, these loan stores can (legally) charge up to 60% interest!

How is someone already living pay cheque to pay cheque going to survive on 60% less pay? They will be forced to go back to the loan centre before their next pay and it will start a vicious downward-spiraling cycle that they will never get out of.

What is the government doing to address this?

*Household debt was at 148 percent of disposable income in the third quarter last year according to Statistics Canada data.

The Superbowl for Hollywood

The Oscars are Sunday night and everyone is trying to take advantage of the captive audience at this live event.

"Marketers are paying $1.75 million for each 30-second slot on ABC's Sunday night telecast."

With big names like Jennifer Lopez, Justin Bieber and Cindy Crawford, marketers are betting on the audience using Twitter, Facebook and other social media to get even more bang for their commercial dollars.

Procter & Gamble has already seen it's Facebook membership increase 25% since announcing Jennifer Lopez as the star of an Oscar spot.

And Best Buy actually made the Superbowl connection with an online vote to pick an alternate ending to it's Justin Bieber Super Bowl ad. The new ending will air Sunday night during the Oscars.

And I'm sure many of these big-name commercials will end up on YouTube very soon after if they aren't there already for more exposure and sharing.

How a Topic Trends on Twitter

Interesting article linked from this Gizmodo post.

I'll admit that the format it was posted in is not very readable and the whole academic aspect of it turned me off. So, I didn't read the whole article, but the Gizmodo post is a good enough synopsis to explain it.

Basically if a tweet originated from a news agency then it is more likely to be picked up and retweeted. Also the resonance the topic has with people helps.

The report also reaffirms how fleeting it can all be and that even though something is picked up and retweeted a lot it isn't going to stick around for long.

I'm sure the six degrees of separation is fairly evident on Twitter so it wouldn't take long for something to make the rounds.

Lose the Hero Shot

This is a great article by Gerry McGovern explaining how you will gain more trust and your visitors will put more faith in your website and your content if you remove any hero shots of smiling people.

Also avoid large buttons that look like banners or else fall prey to banner poisoning.

Your copy competes with the large images
Lots of times you see a large image across the top of the webpage and this just causes more work for your customers having to scroll down each time they visit a page to get at the actual content.

So, lose the hero shot and you have an effective and meaningful website that helps your clients get answers and take action.

Contact me for a comprehensive review of your website that includes Information Architecture, Online Content, Website Navigation, and Usability.

Fear of Commitment

It's a common theme in movies today. The hero or heroine has gone through life single and enjoying many short-term relationships. Then along comes "the one" and the person does everything they can to sabotage the relationship.

It usually falls to the best friend in the movie to point out the good points of the new love interest and help the hero/heroine see that this person is the one.

Businesses can be like the hero only going half way or doing something to sabotage the relationship with their customers, like starting a blog but turning off comments. The blog then becomes like every other newspaper or TV ad with the message pushed to an audience and no way to get feedback.

Social media specialists need to be like the best friend to the businesses that we work with. We need to talk up the benefits of social media and the benefits of the two-way communication with customers.

Social media is great, it's like running a focus group where you're getting feedback from your entire customer base not just some small (hopefully) representative sample base. Like when GAP put out a new logo. They listened to their customers and quickly scrapped the new logo when customer feedback was negative toward it.

Too often companies are stuck in the traditional, familiar mind-set when it comes to marketing and dictate to the customer what the business thinks the customer needs.

Like any relationship, there needs to be a two-way communication with your customers and social media can help facilitate this.

What do you think? What are some benefits that we can highlight to companies to show them the benefits of social media and the two-way communication?

Social Media Needs to be a Part of Your Communication Strategy

"Social media is part of our communications strategy so, ... we didn't have a big powwow about it saying, 'oh, we need to get out the message via social media'. It is already assumed that is one of the channels we want to use," says WestJet emerging media advisor Greg Hounslow.

This quote totally sums it up.

Marketing special report: Social media by Mary Kirby is a great article discussing how airlines are using Facebook, Twitter and other social media sites to get their messages out.

"Social media isn't the way of the future - it's now," says Jessica Green of Greenwin property management.

Mobile phones (and even cars now) give your customers easy access to social media and the online discussions are immediate.

You don't have time to debate about a response, so a social media policy needs to be in place and the people monitoring them need to have the authority to respond immediately.

Why do companies prevent staff from being effective!?!

I could go on and on about the benefits of letting employees have access to the Internet and social media, but this is a really good post and the commenters also have some great feedback.

So rather than me ranting and raving, just check out this post by LaDonna Coy.

Life Events

There are few events in life that can really affect you.

There's the good: new job, marriage, birth of a child.

And then there's the bad: loss of job, divorce, death of a loved one.

It's easy to prepare for the expected events such as marriage or birth of a child, but often times the unexpected, bad events can really throw you for a loop.

I've learned that having an open relationship and communication along with financial planning can help you get through those unexpected events. (I would think thought that having an open relationship and communication could actually prevent one of those tragedies.)

7 social media lessons from Nestle's Facebook missteps

Just wanted to share this post from Ragan.com's top 5 stories on social media.

In this case study Nestle doesn't get that they no longer own or control their brand.
Your brand now is the top 10 results in Google when your customer searches your company name or your product name.

The issue and online conversation was around Nestle using palm oil in its products and palm oil being linked to environmental harm. Nestle's response was to tell people not to post their logos.

One commenter sums it up: "It’s not OK for people to use altered versions of your logos but it’s OK for you to alter the face of Indonesian rainforests? Wow!"

In the post, Ragan.com provides 7 really good lessons that any professional communicator needs to know and ensure their executives or clients know.

To sum them up:

• You need to listen and understand both the issue and the tools before jumping in.
• It's a conversation and sharing of ideas with your clients, it's not one-way (push) like traditional advertising.
• You need to give up control of the message and take the good with the bad. You're not going to please everyone and there will be bad feedback.
• It will require time commitment and dedicated resources (people) to follow, listen and participate in the conversations.

By the Numbers: Internet 2010

Here's a great article with some stats on Internet use and growth in 2010.

Notably, here are some social media stats.

Twitter doubled the number of accounts and Facebook grew by almost a third.

(Although as a side note, I noticed my nephew adding Facebook accounts with reckless abandon on the weekend just so he could create more towns for some game! That's just wrong. He also pumped up the number of email users by creating random Hotmail accounts for the Facebook accounts.)

Social media

• 152 million – The number of blogs on the Internet (as tracked by BlogPulse).
• 25 billion – Number of sent tweets on Twitter in 2010
• 100 million – New accounts added on Twitter in 2010
• 175 million – People on Twitter as of September 2010
• 7.7 million – People following @ladygaga (Lady Gaga, Twitter’s most followed user).
• 600 million – People on Facebook at the end of 2010.
• 250 million – New people on Facebook in 2010.
• 30 billion – Pieces of content (links, notes, photos, etc.) shared on Facebook per month.
• 70% – Share of Facebook’s user base located outside the United States.
• 20 million – The number of Facebook apps installed each day.

Always Learn and Share

I'm sharing a post from copyblogger about the new age of teaching.

He has some good points when it comes to online marketing. You can't always be shilling your wares online. People will be quick to "unfriend" you if that's all your messages are.

"Your authority and credibility no longer depend on credentials — it depends on mastering skills by practicing them in the real world. You must be sensitive to what your prospective students want to learn, instead of forcing them to learn whatever you decide to teach them. And there’s no such thing as tenure. You stay relevant and useful or you lose all your students."
Specifically Josh Kaufman is talking about his online teaching business, but the same goes for your clients. You need to know what they're interested in and provide solutions that meet their needs and desires, not push your latest product or service.

You always need to be sharing something new that people want to learn or that will benefit them. Then, as I'm doing with the copyblogger post, your followers will share and spread your message.

Immortality through our online connections

I started this blog a few years ago with the greatest of intentions to write every day, but as my archive of posts shows I haven't been successful at that.

My blog title, "ego scriptor proinde ego sum," along the lines of I think therefore I am, means "I write therefore I am". In a way social media and all the self-published content is a way for everyone to achieve a bit of immortality.

Today this really hit home for me. A coworker has been battling cancer for the past year. To keep everyone up to date and I'm sure as a way to help her, she started a blog to keep track of her journey. (Thankfully she's just received the official diagnosis that her cancer is in remission.)

However, through her blog she came into contact with someone else fighting cancer and who is also blogging about her life and battle with the disease.

Today, my coworker's post was that this person who had touched her life, and yet had never met, passed away this weekend.

Until today I had never heard of Daria Maluta, and yet through these online connections I was made aware of her life and how she touched other's lives. A note of caution, when I followed the link I was left with a lump in my throat after reading the last few posts of her life.

Getting started in social media

To follow up to my commitment to social media and writing in this blog, I plan on working my way through these four stages.

Four stages to marketing and promotion.

1. Sign up, observe, and educate yourself (sometimes called lurking). Many people stay at this stage for a long time, simply soaking up good information.

2. Participate. Start to make yourself known. This could be as simple as making status updates, posting photos or sample writing, or creating a profile.

3. Share something and grow relationships. Focus on what you give people or what you can share that's of value. As you participate and share with others in the community, and do things for each other, relationships grow and develop.

4. Ask for help. This is when you might actually put your connections to work as a means of soft or hard marketing. Maybe you want to tell people to pre-order your book on Amazon on a specific day. Or you're hoping that your network will spread the word about an upcoming event you're hosting. So you ask.

People who know you and trust you will be more likely to help you. That's why it's important to establish relationships far before you market and promote a product/service. The relationships have to be meaningful before they have value in a marketing/promotion effort.

Note: The above is from my own notes from a workshop or seminar but unfortunately I didn't note the source when I wrote the notes. So, I don't profess to the above being entirely my own thoughts. It's probably came from Groundswell.

A New Year, A New Commitment

We're already half way into January of 2011. My last post was early January 2010! :(

I've signed up for two social media courses through Algonquin Colleges distance education and renewing my commitment to take on this social media storm front on.

I'm on Twitter (@jason_clements and @moviesinlondon) and I'm on Facebook and LinkedIn but I've never fully committed to any of these and have never regularly logged in or posted to any of them.

So, there you go, I'm putting myself out there and the social media courses will be my inspiration and will make me accountable to post here regularly and hopefully dive into the other sites.

Cruisin' through new year's eve

Saw the new year in on a Carnival cruise last week.

Food was good, weather was good, but there was still a bit to be desired.

I guess the Carnival Inspiration is one of the smaller ocean going cruise ships. It was bigger than the Cristal that we sailed in last year in the Greek isles, but it was no less rocky.

The rocking ship and the hard bed made for not much sleeping.

The food however was the pièce de résistance, especially the warm chocolate melting cake. It was a favorite selection for dessert by all at our table.

Entree selections were delectable as well.

One evening the dinner menu included lobster tail and prime rib. Thinking we were limited to one selection each, I ordered the prime rib and EM ordered the lobster tail. A few of the more experienced cruisers at out table ordered two lobster tails each or surf 'n turf (lobster tail AND prime rib).

Our stop overs included Grand Cayman and Cozumel, both big tourist shopping areas.

Went for a swim with the dolphins in Cozumel. That was amazing. It's hard to believe all the amazing things they can do, and all from hand signals.

Not sure I'll go cruisin' again for awhile, but I think we'll try for a really big one next time. They say you don't feel the ocean on the really big ones.

Avatar 3-D - Awesome Movie

Rivals all the epics. Cameron didn't disappoint and lives up to his reputation after Titanic.

3-D takes a bit of getting used to, but the 30 minutes of previews (some of them in 3-D) helped to get used to them before the movie started.

Awesome effects and CGI. Love the six-legged animals. An extra set of arms would definitely come in handy.

I think the uplink to nature should have been in their tail though, not their pony tails. The hair is braided, so how does that uplink look if the hair wasn't braided.

Bumblebee vacationing in Mexico

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The Green Lantern

Check out the trailer for this cool new movie.



Nathan Fillion of Firefly and Serenity fame and more recently the new TV show Castle takes the title role.

It definitely looks like it's more for the fanboy than a mainstream audience.

I'm all a twitter

You can follow me @moviesinlondon for movie and entertainment info, including latest movies and box office rankings.

And follow me @jason_clements for tweets on technology, social media and whatever else gets my goat.