Business Line Articles

Tapping into people power Many hands make light work. It turns out that old adage applies to more than just barn raising and yard clean up. In the digital world it can apply to financing, lending, production and who knows what else? Barnraising, the original crowdsourcing (Credit: Wikipedia) Last week I helped a client re-do their visual identity. They had gone through the usual process of finding an agency, doing all the brand audits and focus groups and brand pyramid stuff, only to be disappointed with the outcome. Strangely, the agency wouldn’t bend on their creative vision. As you might imagine, clients do not tolerate stand-offs well, so that ended as one might expect -with the client moving on to their next potential solution for rebranding. I suggested we crowdsource their visual identity. Over to Crowdspring.com We signed them up to a service I have used successfully before called Crowdspring.com. In the...

  If a picture is worth a thousand words, what’s the worth of a video? From a business perspective, priceless. In today’s world, where life online is fast-paced and hyper-interactive, businesses have the ability to connect with their customers in a way that’s genuine and long lasting. While we’re staying connected via keyboards and touch screens, there’s no denying the impact of a human face – and a professionally produced web video has the power to create an emotional reaction that can convert a Google search into a loyal and enthusiastic customer. Credit: socialmediapowerguys.com For today’s installment of the digital literacy series, I spoke to Neil Scott (@StrategicVideo), President and General Manager of The Edge Communications Inc., a Calgary-based full-service video production company. Scott filled me in on the benefits of a well-made web video to businesses and offered valuable insight into how businesses can incorporate video into their digital media strategies....

Welcome once again to Screencast Saturdays! communicatto team member Mary shows you how easy it is to start a Facebook business page in under 3 minutes. By the way, if you do decide to build a Facebook business page, Facebook itself has a pretty detailed help section on this topic. Next week we’ll show you how you dress up your Facebook business page taking advantage of the new Timeline layout. Enjoy! Note for RSS subscribers: if you can’t see the video in your reader, it is located on the web here. ...

  Success in social media is, in large part, about attitude. To grossly oversimplify, if you have a negative attitude about social media and/or you are wildly introverted, there’s a good chance you’ll suck at social media. Which means your organization will either suck at social media under your guidance, or, at a minimum, will not benefit from the positive interactions social media can engender. This is because, as Bradley and McDonald wrote in the October 2011 Harvard Business Review: Social media is about people, not technology. Its business value does not come from social software or a snazzy website, even one with 800 million users. Its value stems from how business leaders, from senior executives to managers, use it to foster new collaborative behaviors that materially improve business performance.” Get rid of the bad attitude Credit: TheXatPerson on photobucket Occasionally I run into executives with bad attitudes about social media. Thankfully...

  In this week’s edition of the digital literacy series we examine the power of social relationships – what makes them possible, why they’re powerful and important and why they matter to businesses. To get insight into this interesting topic, I turned to Harley Rivet (@HarleyRivet), President and CEO of Deep Dish Digital, an online and social media marketing company based in Saskatoon. Credit: www.schneiderb.com What makes social relationships possible? According to Rivet, today’s digital climate is allowing conversations to take place on a global scale and in all shapes and forms – between individuals and between thousands of people all at once. What’s making this possible? He points to the widespread availability of Internet access and a new wave of simple communication tools. Tools like Facebook and Twitter have torn down barriers, allowing people of all ages and demographics to form online relationships and to have meaningful conversations about a wide...

According to a study done by the Pew Internet & American Life Project in 2010, even the older generations are online and growing in their usage of the Internet. "...While the youngest and oldest cohorts may differ, certain key internet activities are becoming more uniformly popular across all age groups. These include: Email Search engine use Seeking health information Getting news Buying products Making travel reservations or purchases Doing online banking Looking for religious information Rating products, services, or people Making online charitable donations Downloading podcasts" *read the full study here. What does this mean for your home improvement or construction business? If you aren't online, you may be overlooked by the majority of the population, not just the college kids, but your specific target market, the home owners. And as you can see from the graphic to the right from Trulia, the home owner is or will be looking for...

This is a guest post by Kelly Ferrier, owner of Calgary copywriting company Kay Phair Advising. You can find her on Twitter at @kayphair. This week we continue our digital literacy series with an interview with Kate Trgovac (@mynameiskate), a digital marketer with almost two decades of online marketing experience. Kate is President of Vancouver-based LintBucket Media, a boutique marketing agency specializing in social media marketing and digital content creation. Her clients include large corporations like Suncor Energy and Maple Leaf Foods as well as startups like Kinzin and Osmosus. Credit: mynameiskate.ca It’s fair to say that Kate is a social media trailblazer, especially in the sometimes reluctant oil and gas sector. Way back in 2006 (when social media was really in its infancy) Kate led a major player in the oil and gas industry on their first foray into social media. She’s one of the minds behind Petro-Canada’s successful PumpTalk blog....

Are you thinking of replacing that broken appliance or having it repaired?  Before replacing an appliance, it's worth a service call to find out exactly what's wrong. Many times people will buy a new washer, dryer, or dishwasher, without even checking out what it would take to fix the one they have. They assume it's going to cost too much when sometimes it's a quick, minor, inexpensive repair. Unfortunately, there are many companies out there that only care about how much money they can get you to spend, no matter how small your repair might be. So how do you find a trustworthy appliance repair service? Here's some guidelines to follow that will help you find an honest company. Try to get a referral from a reliable source The very best way to find a good company is by "Referral". When someone you know recommends an appliance repair service they were completely...

  The world’s biggest focus group for brands   When you want to do a gut check on consumer opinion, there’s nothing like a quick focus group to tell you what you don’t know. Credit: BACD.ca Researchers will tell you, quite rightly, that focus groups are not statistically valid. They are a form of qualitative not quantitative research and thus can’t be extrapolated to any larger population. Pollsters and marketers will also tell you how useful they can be to unearth hidden sentiment or to shape more formal research. Data mining Twitter Social media is becoming a bit like the world’s largest focus group. In some cases it goes beyond that to a sample size that is sufficiently large and thus random to accurately predict outcomes. Occasionally it predicts as well or better than traditional polling. Take for example the UK political/media tool Tweetminster that was used to analyze tweets and predict...

his is a guest post by Kelly Ferrier, owner of Calgary copywriting company Kay Phair Advising. You can find her on Twitter at @kayphair. If you’re working in the PR and marketing field, there’s no doubt that you’ve heard of David Meerman Scott. And you’ve probably read his bestselling book “The New Rules of Marketing and PR”. This book was a game changer – kick-starting social media awareness and introducing the industry to the power of these tools to spread brand awareness. Well, with his latest book “Newsjacking”, David takes the complicated relationship between journalists and PR people and spins it on its head.  David describes newsjacking as a way for PR people to inject their brands into breaking news stories in a way that’s relevant, interesting and guaranteed to get the attention of journalists. Essentially, this book is a guide on how to hijack the news and level the playing...

Maybe what’s needed is an Internet Whisperer Sometimes it feels like my job is to make old white guys comfortable with the Internet. Apparently I am the Internet whisperer. Or maybe the baby boomer whisperer, I’m not sure. As a boomer myself. it probably makes sense. It’s a statistical reality that corporate Canada is largely run by white male baby boomers. Ann Golden, President and CEO of the Conference Board of Canada, noted in a 2011 Canadian Board Diversity Council report… Diverse groups continue to be significantly under-represented on Canadian boards of directors. Non-profit boards are making better progress in adding women compared to corporate boards, but both could do much more to include more individuals who are visible minorities, Aboriginal peoples or have disabilities.” Boomers run Canada's oilsands (photo credit Dean Bicknell, Calgary Herald)   Time to pay attention I’m an anomaly for my generation. Old white guys are generally...

This is a guest post by Kelly Ferrier, owner of Calgary copywriting company Kay Phair Advising. You can find her on Twitter at @kayphair. This week’s digital literacy post focuses on the ways that digital media has changed politics, how this impacts Canada’s economy and why businesses need to be paying attention. Credit: Vancouver Sun To get an in-depth look at this topic, I turned to Troy Wason (@imparo), President of WMS Communications Inc. Wason has over 25 years experience in the political sphere, with a particular focus on digital media, including acting as the social media manager for an Alberta political party during the 2008 provincial election and as communications officer (social media) for a legislative caucus. According to Wason, digital media has influenced and altered politics in a number of important ways. In particular, political entities, including non-governmental organizations, have profited from the ability to connect with the public...

  This is a guest post by Kelly Ferrier, owner of Calgary copywriting company Kay Phair Advising. You can find her on Twitter at @kayphair. This week we continue our series on the impact of digital literacy on Canada’s economy. Today’s post focuses specifically on digital literacy’s link to productivity – a topic that experts say is imperative to Canada’s economic future in the face of a declining workforce. While there is no doubt that digital technology is playing a key role in shaping Canada’s economy now and in the future, the topic has not been front of mind for our country’s researchers. Michael Hennessy and Ted Woodhead of TELUS, authors of a 2009 white paper on the topic of wireless broadband and a national digital strategy, found in their research that there was little in the way of relevant Canadian research and data on the topic. A new initiative launched by...

One way or another it has to be about the bottom line Carpenters have a saying “measure twice, cut once” designed to prevent wasted materials. The same principle applies to social media marketing – get the right measure before “cutting” a campaign and you’ll be a lot more productive. Credit: taste-of-torah.blogspot.com Most companies start by measuring the obvious: fans, followers, views, tweets and retweets. The problem is, you’re likely not in the business of collecting fans or followers, and volume of tweets or retweets only vaguely approximates influence. It’s a bit like measuring success by how many business cards you collected versus appointments or sales. You’re paying attention to the wrong things. Focus on outcomes, not fans After all, you could be tweeting your brains out with robots aplenty retweeting you and nary a person paying attention – not exactly what you were hoping for. As Jeremiah Owyang says on web-strategist.com: Companies...

This is a guest post by Kelly Ferrier, owner of Calgary copywriting company Kay Phair Advising. You can find her on Twitter at @kayphair. In continuation of our series focusing on the growing relevance of digital literacy to Canada’s economy, today’s post focuses on the importance of strategically understanding market research. Our modern world offers an unprecedented volume of data, but it’s important to go beyond the numbers to realize the power they have to build brand loyalty and increase the bottom line. For more on this exceedingly relevant topic, I spoke to Brian Singh (@bfsingh), a market researcher and economist with over 20 years experience, and founder and managing director of ZINC Research. According to Singh, the current reality for businesses boils down to this: Marketing and communications is research and research is marketing and communications. You can’t have one without the other. Everything that a business is doing must be measured...