Some of our key takeaways from this interview are:

• Make yourself visible in your organization. Shawn has had many people approach him about how to use social media because they know it is his role at the company.
• Find innovative ways to generate content. Not all content has to be promotional or educational (or purposefully inane to go viral). Shawn said Nationwide has been leveraging their sponsorships to gain access to exclusive content they can share through social media.
• Don’t limit yourself to just your role. Because social media offers so much potential for listening, you will often find people talking about your company about an area that is outside your job functions. While you may not be able to answer them directly, you can help facilitate the right connections.

Listen to the interview and add your thoughts in the comments.

The rest of Shawn’s interview will be posted soon.

My wife patiently explained to her that slicing onions creates a vapor that makes your eyes water and that it happens to everyone. My daughter then exclaimed, “Well, I am going to invent special goggles, like swim goggles, but for cutting onions so I don’t cry!”

I forgot all about it until I met Chris Hawker of Trident Design. Chris is a professional inventor out of Columbus, Ohio who has numerous inventions to his credit. We met at CES and he handed me his brochure and I was shocked to see – Onion Goggles! He already created my daughter’s idea!

And that is the point. How many times have all of us thought of something to make life better, more interesting, easier and not followed through? All of us have the ability to think of these ideas – but the real innovators are focused on trying, creating and doing!

We hope to sit down with Chris Hawker on our trip and talk to him further.

/colin