Last night I was at a holiday party, and my colleague asked me “what are you going to blog on tomorrow?”  So I told him I didn’t know but as the night went on, and he asked me questions, he received a lot of value from a few simple learnings so I thought I’d share with you and hope I deliver value to you as well!

1.   #IWillRideWithYou    The tragedy that occurred in Sydney Australia broke my heart.  But one thing that came out was a powerful and positive use of social media.   After the tragedy, there were some women from certain faiths that were fearful about the repercussions to them.  So a group started the hashtag that assured that “I will ride with you!” to support them.  This use of social was a reinforcement that social is a positive force!

2.  Social Selling.   I was struck this week by 2 phrases that I heard from major Fortune 100 companies and start-ups.   The first was that ABC is now not Always Be Selling but now it is Always be connecting.   The second was your Networth is your Network.  Powerful Tidbits!

3.  Images are currency.  Images have surpassed text as the currency of choice in social conversations.   This week alone in numerous conversations I heard about how companies are using emojis, emoticons, and stickers as integral parts of their social media conversations.  Have you heard of the Unicode Consortium ?   I just learned about them and found over 200 new symbols.  And from my techy meetings, I learned that  emojis are “code”, not images, so metrics can be driven through textual tools.

What were your AHAs this week?  Please share!