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Social Media
Reach Out to Your Facebook Friends
Its been a great practical experiment to implement and run the Facebook page for the college I work for. We started the page in April of this year and with aggressive Facebook marketing and word of mouth, it has grown to 1200+ fans (I know they are not called fans anymore, but saying likers doesn’t [...]
The Death of the Tag Cloud
It seems that tag clouds are hard to find these days. Almost like a good movie from Hollywood lately. Not that long ago, tag clouds seemed to be on a lot of web sites, including mine. They basically took all the categories a web site used to group content and presented them as hyperlinks in [...]
Weekly Video: Measuring Social Media
This is a great video from Digital Royalty that clearly explains concepts for measuring social media efforts. They suggest establishing at least 2 Key Performance Indicators (KPI) in 3 categories: Volume Engagement Conversions It seems that measuring social media is a hot topic that many people have difficulty grasping, especially since much of what can [...]
A Social Media/Marketing Event in Alberta You Can’t Afford to Miss!
When I think of social media, online marketing or web conferences in Alberta, not very many conference events come to mind. Last year I was able to go to the Web Strategy Summit in Calgary, which was a great experience. Unfortunately, there are not too many events like this. That is why it is important [...]
Weekly Video: Social Media Revolution 2 (refresh)
If you liked the first social media revolution video, then you’ll love this one. It contains up-to-date social media and mobile statistics. If you’re still trying to convince or promote the value of social media to your boss, this video is a must see.
Weekly Video: Technology Empowers Human Connections
We’ve seen many videos talking about social media. You know the video, with an upbeat backtrack and countless statistics screaming across the video. These are thought provoking videos, but one thing is missing in all the statistics; human connections. Rogers Communications produced a great video that talks about technology and does provide thought provoking statistics, [...]
The Ugly Truth About Facebook Pages
There’s countless examples of companies using Facebook pages successfully to engage they customers, create buzz, grow customer base, and more. But the ugly truth is that Facebook pages can have a down side. If you’ve followed social media news for a little while, you may have heard of the Nestle vs. Greenpeace story where activists ‘hi-jacked’ [...]
Facebook Ads Can Work… Sometimes.
I wrote a post last year where I talked about my experience with the ineffectiveness of using Facebook Ads to promote our college website. Over the past few months we’ve run two Facebook Ad campaigns that were highly successful. The first one was an alumni campaign, the second a Facebook Fan Page campaign. Alumni Facebook [...]
Social Media ROI
First of let me preface this post with a disclaimer. This is not your typical post on social media ROI – in fact it’s quite the opposite. It’s a bit more of a personal rant, if anything, but one worth reading. I am constantly reading tweets and blog posts about social media ROI and justifying [...]
Internet Marketing Conference Review
Last week I had the opportunity to attend the Internet Marketing Conference (IMC) in Calgary. Some of my favorite presenters include Patrick Schwerdtfeger, Doug Lacombe, Shauna Causey, Chris Goward, Ryan Merket, and Ernest Barbaric. I want to share some of my personal key takeaways from the conference were. Internet Marketing, What’s the Big Deal? Here are some statistics shared by Patrick [...]
Weekly Video: Publishing is Dead… Or is It?
I came across this great video which is a must see if you are involved in publishing, marketing, social media or any communication industry. There are is a lot of discussion of how social media is killing various industries. People are saying that social media is killing the newspaper industry; that it is eroding language [...]
Social Media… Keep It Fresh!
In 2008, I wrote a post entitled, ‘Blogs Aren’t Wine & Cheese.’ In the post I suggest that blogs are best served fresh and become less effective the more stale they are, whereas some of the best cheese and wine are very old. I would like to extend that thought to more than blogs. We [...]
Weekly Video: Think Before You Post
One of my previous bosses use to say ‘the Web is like a fish bowl , everybody can see in’. That is even more true today. I can’t count the number of people that have their photos available to me on Facebook just because I’m a friend of friend. Do they know me? Can they [...]
You Need to Unplug
It’s kind of ironic that I’m writing a blog post about unplugging from technology, but this has been on my mind lately, so I thought I would share it. This has been a year of transformation and growth for our web department and for myself. We are tapping into new technologies and methods that we [...]
Weekly Video: Social Media ROI: Socialnomics
I gave up putting weekly videos as posts and resorted to having the weekly videos I found interesting posted in my sidebar. I will continue to do this, but I think there is value in having the videos embedded in a post to comment on. So on to the video and comment. We all hear [...]
Listen To Me Already!
Last week I was approached by a vendor of a virtual tour solution. I decided to entertain their call because I believe virtual tours are an important part of any web site. Within minutes I wanted to stick pencils in my ears. I quickly felt removed from the conversation. The vendor was all about what [...]
Twitter Contest Observations
I mentioned that I would share the outcomes and some observations from our Twitter contest we ran at the college I work at, so here is my report. Contest Background We ran the contest in conjunction with the launch of our new campaign microsite. The contest had three objectives: Increase followers of the main college [...]
I Just Don’t Get Twitter!
Well, actually I do. But this is what I hear from family, friends, and co-workers when I mention that I use Twitter. Twitter has gotten a rough ride by media and blog posts as being a waste of time or a joke.
Weekly Video: Did You Know 4.0
I typically only do one weekly video in a week, hence the name weekly video, but this video just came through my e-mail from our College President and I want to share it now instead of waiting until next week. I’ve showcased similar videos in the past, but this was is updated and current with [...]
Weekly Video: The Marketing Office (Twitter Spoof of “The Office”)
Another hilarious parody from the team at Hubspot. Hopefully this isn’t how social media training happens at your organization. Effective use of social media does require understanding of the techniques, best practices, etc. But approaching social media training as portrayed in this parody is crazy.