Quotes from Ryan Holmes

Without grounding, it's easy to embrace the 'baller' lifestyle: dropping out of tech, throwing money at cars, boats and real estate, and slipping into a cycle of spending and indulgence.

Email is familiar. It's comfortable. It's easy to use. But it might just be the biggest killer of time and productivity in the office today.

Not using social media in the workplace, in fact, is starting to make about as much sense as not using the phone or email.

A critical question to ask when bringing in a new CEO to take the reins of a company you started is: Do you want someone who will maintain company culture or reinvent it?

I often talk about the PayPal mafia out of San Francisco, people that were in PayPal and got out of PayPal and continue to reinvest in other start-ups and create a huge pay-it-forward type of network there.

An exit is only a success if you set an exit as your primary goal. My primary goal was to build a globally influential tool, to build something from the ground up that could literally change how we communicated in business and individually.

For everybody in their busy lives, you need to invest in sharpening your tools, and you need to invest in longevity.

Importantly, companies are using social media to do things that go way beyond just chatting up existing customers on Facebook. Sales departments use social to nurture leads and close sales. HR posts job openings and vets applicants. Community and support squads mine networks, blogs and forums with deep listening tools.

Sales departments use social to nurture leads and close sales. HR posts job openings and vets applicants. Community and support squads mine networks, blogs and forums with deep listening tools.

We've all been inundated with so many ingenious, must-have, time-saving apps and tools that we really don't have a second left to spare.

At the most basic level, prioritizing design also represents a practical consideration. It's far easier to design first and engineer later.

Workflow and usability are not afterthoughts; they impact the core of any project and dictate how it should be engineered.

Sales teams use social media to generate leads and track clients as they move through the sales funnel. Operations and distribution teams forecast supply chains, while research and development squads brainstorm product ideas.

Social media listening tools make it easy to track brand references and mentions, and these functions can still be handled ably by a small, dedicated team.

As social is where consumers' eyeballs are, businesses must take ownership of their online company profiles. By providing their customers with a place to share content, social media managers can monitor and track content which directly relates to their brand.

I grew up off the grid in Vernon, and I saw my parents work hard every day, as teachers but also while farming and building a log home. So from a young age I knew the value of hard work.

During the early days of HootSuite, when social media was still seen as a fad, I made the decision to treat our funding as if it were my personal bank account. That's not to say I blew it on fast cars and fancy dinners. Exactly the opposite.

Although social media is a relatively new form of communication, it has become the primary way retailers and customers are interfacing.

Companies and managers that find a way to harness social media stand to gain.

For an older generation of employees, social media often remains misunderstood and underutilized.

From its humble origins in college dorm rooms, social media has quietly crept into the boardroom.

It may be coincidence that the decline of newspapers has corresponded with the rise of social media. Or maybe not.

The growing role of enterprise social media, plus the growing budgets and authority of CMOs entrusted with choosing the best platforms, translates into an exciting future for apps that harness social potential for large companies.

While social media skills were once a 'nice-to-have,' accreditation in the space is becoming a requirement for many of these job titles. Hiring managers and job seekers are realizing that printing stacks of resumes is turning passe, and social media is rising as the new way of generating real-time networking opportunities.