Certified General Accountants of Alberta

This Friday is going to be a really fun day, as I’ve been asked to provide a keynote address to the Certified General Accountants of Alberta.  I’ll be presenting on the topic of social media for business and all of this will be taking place in one of the most beautiful places and tourist destinations in Alberta, Canada and frankly the world. – Jasper.

The Social Accountant

This association of accountants, many of which I’m sure will be from major centres such as, Edmonton, Red Deer and Calgary but also I suspect from locations all across Alberta.  The Certified General Accountants of Alberta is one of many chapters from across Canada as of the national association.  I’ve been performing some research as I typically do prior to a speaking engagement and I have found some very interesting uses of social media by accountants and accounting firms.  There’s also a large opportunity to mature this usage in many areas which I look to cover in Jasper.  Over all, social media is still a relatively new concept for the majority of this industry of professionals and I’m excited to be presenting some of what I would consider the social media basics, as well as, some advanced concepts that will help those Alberta accountants in the room interested in generating new revenue to get started with social right away.  For example, the opportunity to become a “social accountant,” a term I will define further during my presentation and what that would mean in terms of general awareness for the accounting firm that takes this advice to heart.

Another benefit to this opportunity is that I get to travel out of the Edmonton area and that is welcomed, especially as it falls on a weekend, so I will be taking the opportunity to breath some fresh mountain air and return to Sherwood Park at some point on the weekend.

Also, here’s an article I wrote on “understanding social media” that was published in CGA Magazine in December of 2009.

Social media vs traditional advertising

When was the last time the number of “impressions” your ad campaign generated also told you how many conversations about your brand were happening in real-time?

When was the last time “frequency” explained how many times a customer mentioned your brand, product or service to others and the sentiment of that comment?

When was the last time the above information actually told you “why” people were buying your stuff?  Or why they didn’t buy?

The truth is, most organizations despite the decline are still spending large dollars in the traditional advertising space and are justifying these expenditures on metrics that are estimates in many cases.  Then those same executives look at social media investments with risk in their eyes, a lack of understanding and claiming there’s no way to measure.

Top executives claim there’s no budget for social media.

What they’re really saying is “we don’t understand.”  Then they provide a media buyer with $250,000.00 or more to go fire away at the big three, print, television, radio for a 90 day campaign.  Why?  Not because it’s necessarily the right answer but because it’s what they understand and the safe move.  Now in this recovering economy there are shifts in these patterns to be sure.  Much of the traditional ad industry is feeling the effects.

Every once and a while, I come across an executive who has thought the above questions through and has realized that the ability to hold conversations, build rapport, inspire action directly on a mass scale or one on one and track all of those activities is definitely appealing. “Welcome to the social web.”

Social media metrics do exist, they’re just different.

Social media is word-of-mouth advertising ON FIRE!  You have to change how you look at measuring things.  Measuring conversations is a hands on job.  You can’t just tally up the traffic numbers and say we won.  You have to dig deeper than that and it is possible to do so.

A strong online campaign will demonstrate “engagement” levels that will include a number of things.

My definition of social media “impressions” would constitute the number of times elements of your campaign get mentioned across blogs, articles, comments, video, images, mass-media, micro-sharing platforms, social networks.  This information would also include, “sentiment and influence within micro-tribes.”

Beyond just eyes seeing the message, many other things can be identified.  Did your message move or inspire further actions or discussion publicly online?  If it did, this can almost certainly be tracked.

What was the sentiment of action taken?  Are citizens blogging about your message, brand, product or service positively or negatively?  If they explain their position and why they feel the way they do that can be identified.  Did they spoof your television ad on Youtube?  Did they create a twitter hashtag and engage others on Twitter?

The interaction and what can learned within the social dynamics identified can help your organization understand your customer and their relationships or “social networks” better.  That understanding can lead to emotional engagements, emotional engagements can lead to influence and influence leads to action.  The social web is where you need to commit your resources long-term and you need to do it, yesterday.

Where’s the value?

The value is in the human connections and relationships generated between your brand and your customer.  Those connections properly nurtured will build loyalty and loyalty means repeat business and influencing new business.  The social web is the perfect environment for this.  That’s where the value is.  This doesn’t happen overnight and it isn’t easy.  However, the ability to amplify a message is immense and shouldn’t be ignored.  The problem isn’t with the social web, the problem is with current organizational mind-sets and it’s time for a change.  If you truly understood the social web, you’d never call it a fad.

• The Social Web Isn’t Just for the Young Anymore (gigaom.com)
• Forrester: Social networking grows up (infoworld.com)

Edmonton 2009 Neighbourhood Census Data – Extended!

Today, the city released their 2009 Municipal Census data which can be accessed from the City of Edmonton website here.

There was some online discussion about the city’s choice to release the information in .pdf form instead of the more accessible .csv format.  While .pdf is probably more than sufficient enough for most people, check out links to the .csv versions below.

The one thing that the .pdf versions lacked were any pretty graphs.  As an accountant, a pretty graph is about the only way I can express my deep-rooted love for spreadsheets, and as such, have included some for you to enjoy below. Read more