Business Line Articles

  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...

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...

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...

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...

This is a guest post by Kelly Ferrier, owner of Calgary copywriting company Kay Phair Advising. You can find her on Twitter at @kayphair. Today we continue our series examining the importance of digital literacy to Canada’s economy. This post is focused on the impact of digital media on the non-profit sector. For insight into this topic, I turned to Bob McInnis, current executive director of Brown Bagging for Calgary’s Kids (@brownbaggingit), a registered charity that delivers daily lunches to students in need at Calgary schools. With his 25 years of leadership experience in the non-profit sector, McInnis is in a unique position to reflect on the ways that digital media has changed how charities spread their message and to offer advice to other non-profits on why they must include digital media as part of their messaging strategy. Brown Bagging for Calgary’s Kids (BB4CK) currently includes blogs, forums, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube...

This is a guest post by Kelly Ferrier, owner of Calgary copywriting company Kay Phair Advising. You can find her on Twitter at @kayphair. Today’s post is the first in a series that will be examining the importance of digital literacy to Canada’s economy. Over the next few weeks, I’ll be interviewing key people to get their views on why digital literacy is important for businesses, non-profit organizations and even politics. My first interview was with Justin Kozuch, lead researcher for Pixel to Product, a research project designed to obtain accurate and reliable data concerning the qualitative, quantitative and behavioural aspects of the Canadian digital media economy. Launched in May 2010, project researchers spent a year polling and surveying Canadian digital agency owners and the digital workforce to understand the size and scope of the industry. Pixel to Product released their final report on May 25, 2011 and the results showed that Canada’s digital...

Twitter. Facebook. LinkedIn. YouTube. Social media. These buzz words are getting a lot of attention. From teenagers and grandparents posting profile pics on Facebook, to celebrities sharing their “genuine” love for cheeseburgers and purses on Twitter and HR professionals recruiting potential employees on LinkedIn, there’s no segment of society that hasn’t been impacted by social media. And that includes business. There’s no doubt that social media can be profoundly beneficial to businesses – that is, if it’s done right. With his book “The REAL Truth About Social Media”, Eric Harr sets out to help businesses of all sizes master social media. Harr is the founder and CEO of Resonate Social Media and when I @mentioned him on Twitter, he told me that his goal with this book was to introduce newcomers to social media and inspire and empower them. And this is most definitely the book’s target audience. Social media strategists...

20 per cent of the pea pods contain 80 per cent of the peas The Pareto principle, aka the 80-20 rule, seems to magically apply to many areas of life, including social media marketing. Anyone who has ever managed a sales team is familiar with the axiom 80 per cent of your sales come from 20 per cent of your customers, but where else does it apply? Remember pea pods Credit: thesportsphysiotherapist.com According to Wikipedia, early 20th century business consultantJoseph M. Juran figured it applied to land ownership and pea pods. He concluded this after studying the work of Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto “who observed in 1906 that 80 per cent of the land in Italy was owned by 20 per cent of the population; (and) he developed the principle by observing that 20 per cent of the pea pods in his garden contained 80 per cent of the peas.” In business the...

Doug Lacombe talks about the checklist he uses with corporate clients to get them off to a good start in social media marketing. Lacombe, president of social media agency communicatto discusses protecting the brand, educating executives, buying a monitoring solution and the need for social media policy. ...

A recent study by RSW, an agency that helps agencies, found “social media comes up short for agency prospecting”, eMarketer.com reported: When it comes to identifying prospects online, RSW … found the vast majority (95 per cent) of U.S. ad agencies used social media to identify potential clients. But the results of those efforts were modest at best. Most agencies attributed 10 per cent or less of their new business revenue to social media outreach. Credit: http://kazexchange.wordpress.com/ Don’t be tacky Well, duh. Selling intangibles on social media is a bit like selling insurance at a cocktail party. It’s tacky and overbearing. “Pssst. Hey. You. Wanna buy an ad campaign?” According to Jeff Nelson, President ofAnduro Marketing, a prominent Internet marketing firm, these findings were to be expected. “The point is, social media doesn’t drive new prospects,” said Nelson in a Twitter exchange. Nelson’s right, at least insofar as it concerns intangibles like agency services....