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Friday April 3 was the culmination of a big project for fusedlogic: MacEwan BlogCamp. It was Edmonton’s and, as far as we know, Alberta’s first blog contest. It was a unique opportunity to combine business, social media and education in one cool package.

We’d like to congratulate the top three MacEwan bloggers:

1.  Carla Putnam
2. Patrick Finegan
3. Peter Jaffray

The prize for first place was an Apple MacBook. In addition to the contest winners, we’d like to congratulate everyone who participated. Blogging for nine hours is not easy under the best of circumstances and blogging for nine hours in a busy cafeteria would be even tougher.

But, our bloggers persevered and we had a lot of interesting posts. We gave them a variety of topics to blog about and we were impressed with the results.

Judging

The winners of the blogging contest were chosen based on a number of factors. We had a voting system in place that ranked posts based on the cumulative net difference between a thumbs up and a thumbs down rating given by blog post viewers. In addition, we also judged the blog posts based on originality and quality of content.

Sponsors

Our sponsors came through for MacEwan BlogCamp in a big way. We can’t say enough about how happy we are that they sponsored our contest and made a huge contribution to the success of BlogCamp.

The team

We would also like to thank Jana Clarke, Sarah Parker, Laura England, Joseph DiFabio and the rest of the Grant MacEwan College team for giving us the opportunity to help put on this event. It was a lot of work but it was a blast! Grant MacEwan College really put on a good show for everyone involved.

And to the fusedlogic team, thank you as well: Walter did a great job hosting BlogCamp and all the other tasks he had; without Evan and Paul we wouldn’t have had the website or the video running virtually glitch-free; Genoa did a great job keeping everyone organized; Doug kept everyone on track with his project management skills; Krysta did a great job with her video as well.

Ultimately I think we succeeded in our goal of helping to raise the profile of the MacEwan School of Business and we’re confident that will result in more inquiries about the School of Business. MacEwan School of Business really is a good choice for a business degree in Edmonton, Alberta and beyond. We’re looking forward to the next BlogCamp!

MacEwan BlogCamp photos

If you’re interested in having a look at some great photos of MacEwan BlogCamp, have a look at Bruce Clarke’s Flickr photos. He has 166 photos there to look at. Bruce made my job tough to decide on the best photos to post here because they were all good.

Alain Saffel

When I speak to a client and use the word “bravery” in part I’m referring to this trend as a barrier of entry into the consumer’s psyche. Emotional engagement can only happen if both parties are willing and accepting participants, some feel that to get there a spectacle is required and there is definitely truth to that.

Social contract or social investment?

Some refer to this engagement between brand and consumer as the beginning of a “social contract,” I’d like to make the case for the use of the word “investment.” I recently expressed my opinion on well-known Forrester researcher Jeremiah Owyang’s blog and referred to a portion of our recent work with MacEwan School of Business as the example.

Owyang’s post was a higher level discussion about how consumers information was given out via various social network platforms and the ability of an agency such as ours to scrape that data, turning it into meaningful intelligence as the basis for the “contract.”

My point of view is that reaching an emotional level of discussion with prospective clients, consumers or partners is a key event in the relationship and can only happen with certain conditions present. Many efforts within the social web and across many industries do not accomplish this at all, at any level. Others do reach that level but unfortunately the emotion is anger on behalf of the consumer.

So which brands are more likely to embrace the concept of emotional centric “social investment?” I believe those who’s cultures are built on a foundation of mutual respect, giving and caring. More specifically, I think brands with women involved in key leadership positions are more likely to take these sensitivity and psychological issues into consideration when building out their marketing campaigns. This habit should serve them well when engaging the rest of us within the social web.

My personal social media journey started in 2004 and I’ve been studying these types of aspects ever since as well as participating. Certainly, I’ve made mistakes in the past; sometimes I can be a bit forward and offer an opinion when silence should have been my course of action. Having said that, I think that my grasp of the social web, and more importantly people, is stronger for these interactions, good and bad. This I feel, translates into a stronger customer experience here at fusedlogic.

Out of curiosity, a quick tally of all projects past has the number of ones with women as the key stakeholder in the lead. Further, fusedlogic’s best client experience ever (from our perspective at least and I hope theirs too) on all accounts is MacEwan and it was led by Jana Clarke, Marketing Manager for the School of Business.

We’ve been fortunate to have many great clients and this project was a ton of fun, very productive and went off with little to no issues. The organization was phenomenal to work with, as was her team, the majority of them women. Please don’t read anything into this discussion that isn’t there, I’m simply stating statistics. fusedlogic doesn’t specifically target women entrepreneurs or executives; it just seems to have progressed that way. For example, we have recently been asked to supply 3 proposals and 2 of the three are to organizations led by women.

Am I being stereotypical throughout this discussion? Probably. The more important question should be whether I’m off base with what I’m saying. Is my assumption that men are more likely to gravitate towards the term “social contract” vs. “social investment” in terms of general approach correct?

What about the flip side and my belief that in the above context women are more likely to approach business as an emotional “investment,” which I believe then provides them with an advantage over men regarding their social media marketing efforts? Do you think men are more likely to laugh at this E-Trade commercial and even go around calling their friends “shank-a-potumus” afterwards? I know I have, I think it’s hilarious, if you have research to the contrary I’d love to see it.

Ultimately, my experience has shown that the social web is an “investment.” If I forget that fact I’m promptly given my hat and shown the door. What about you?

Written by Walter Schwabe, have a wonderful Easter long-weekend everyone.

No doubt this recession will cause a shakeout of so-called social media experts and we’ll be left with a core group of people who are skilled in the field and committed to it for the long term. That’s always the problem when you have a field with low barriers to entry: a computer, internet connection and a business card.

Some people have said to “fake it ‘til you make it” but we’re not fond of that advice. If we are going to give someone advice on social media strategy, it’s because we know it’s the right advice for them at that time. Our team works hard to stay on top of social media trends and we do extensive research, for our clients and for our company. This runs counter to the “fake it” crowd.

What to look for in a social media strategist

In one year there will likely be many fewer social media experts if the recession has anything to do with it, so how do you sort out the wheat from the chaff, or to put it another way, those who are making it from those who are faking it?

Track record – how much experience do they have with social media? Are they actually using social media effectively? Are they walking the walk?

Who are their clients – and how long have those clients been with them? It’s probably a good sign if they’ve got several longer term clients, but they may do a lot of project work too.

What have their successes been – it’s not always possible to boil successes down into hard numbers. It’s nice when you can, but sometimes success is nebulous. Successfully getting a company into the social media space and using it regularly might be a spectacular success though there are no numbers associated with it. It’s even better when you can show hard numbers. Ultimately it’s about successfully engaging their audience or community.

Social media campaigns, like regular marketing campaigns, do fail. But why do they fail? A good part of it is because many companies don’t understand web 2.0 and social media. They want to use old-style push marketing in social media and it just doesn’t resonate with the web community.

Companies fail to see that they really are part of a community and the most important aspect of the community is conversation and listening. They just see the web as another marketing vehicle with more customers.

It requires a cultural and attitudinal shift to really succeed in web 2.0. That doesn’t mean that you can’t succeed at all without it, but if you want to be the best, you have to change cultures and attitudes.

As the recession shakes out the makers from the fakers, one thing is clear, fusedlogic will still be making it in social media one year from now and for years to come.

First of all, we would like to thank all fusedlogic’s clients for a great year. We appreciate your support and are looking forward to continuing our work with you in 2009.

2008 was a growth year for fusedlogic and we have a number of initiatives on the go for 2009. It might be doom and gloom out there in the economy, but we don’t seem to feel it in the social media strategy field.

I think that part of the reason for that is because people know this economic downturn, despite the non-stop negativity in the media, is just a blip on the radar. Smart companies know that they have to continue to keep on top of business trends and ground-shifts. Social media is not simply a trend and many organizations realize that they’re ill-equipped to deal with this new paradigm.

Some of the highlights of 2008 include launching the fusedlogic Food Bank Challenge. In support of Edmonton’s Food Bank we’re attempting to get one million photos of one million food bank donations in one year. Our deadline is the end of 2009 and we’re already off to a good start with many people adding photos to our Facebook food bank group and our Flickr food bank group.

If you haven’t added your photo yet, please get out there and make your donation. Food banks are in need of food year round, so let’s keep the spirit of giving throughout the year.

It was also a big year for Twitter in 2008, one of our favourite social media tools. It went from complete obscurity to prominence on networks like CNN. A quick search of Google News for “Twitter” reveals just how much it’s being talked about.

2009: an exciting year ahead

There are a number of new faces at fusedlogic and we will be adding more in 2009. Many of the team members at fusedlogic will be working out of our new office that we’re moving into in February. Stay tuned for a grand opening celebration soon to follow. Our office will be located in Sherwood Park, on the outskirts of Edmonton, Alberta.

In 2009 the fusedlogic team will continue to grow its social media intelligence capabilities. We’ve been working on a number of interesting projects that have helped expand our clients’ social media intelligence and knowledge, but have also helped our team’s knowledge base grow too.

FusedlogicTV will also make its appearance this year. At fusedlogic we’ve always had an affinity for video and we’re not slowing down. Expect to see more interviews, testimonials and fusedlogic social media presentations in the new year.

We’re positive about the new year and we hope that you are too. We’ll finish this post with a little wisdom that we hope will help guide you through the coming year.

“Human beings, by changing the inner attitudes of their minds, can change the outer aspects of their lives.”

William James

You have to wonder if governments are paying attention to what’s happening in social media these days, and if they are, how seriously do they take it? Today, participating in social media is like sitting in the proverbial coffee shop. This is grassroots politics at its best.

“If you’re within the federal government or any provincial government without a social media plan and, despite that, are actively engaged in social media at the moment, you’re playing with fire in a room full of gun powder,” said Walter Schwabe, fusedlogic’s chief evolution officer.

That’s usually the way it is when you don’t have a plan. It’s one thing to be listening to the conversation, but it’s another thing to know how to engage with people in social media, especially if you’re in government.

It’s a good way to listen to what people are saying. Governments of all stripes have been accused of not listening to the public and they’ve got a great opportunity to do just that in social media.

What’s happening in the blogosphere?

It’s been interesting to hear all the differing perspectives on what’s happening with the Canadian political situation. NowPublic, the Vancouver-based citizen journalism site, had an interesting article with comment on the “black swan effect.” Hadn’t heard about that before

At the right leaning Small Dead Animals blog there’s been plenty of vitriol on both sides of the issue. If you’re interested in getting in a political debate/argument, then this is probably a good place to do it. There are a huge number of comments on the Stephane Dion video.

This popular Liberal blog, from Calgary as it happens, also has a great deal of debate about what’s been happening. Calgary’s not normally thought of as a location of any Liberals, or Alberta for that matter.

Canadian Parliament prorogued

The conversation has been pretty busy on Twitter too. If you do a search on Twitter for phrases like Dion, Harper, coalition or prorogue, you’ll find a lot of Tweets. It’s like political Nirvana right now. The fall has been great: Canadian election, U.S. election and now the Canadian crisis. What’s next?

The banter about Canadian politics is likely to slow down by the time the budget is read in Parliament in late January, but it ought to pick right up again. I’ll be curious to watch how the conversations change up to that time.

And who says Canadian politics is boring?

]]> http://www.fusedlogic.com/social-media-debating-canadian-politics-663/feed/ 0 http://www.fusedlogic.com/marketing-strategy-during-the-economic-downturn-660/ http://www.fusedlogic.com/marketing-strategy-during-the-economic-downturn-660/#comments Wed, 26 Nov 2008 23:15:53 +0000 ASaffel http://www.fusedlogic.com/?p=660

Offline marketing cut during recession while online marketing increases

According to a survey done by Marketing Sherpa, it would seem that online marketing is going to jump during the economic downturn. Offline media such as print, direct mail, radio, television and events are going to be taking a big hit the study indicates.

Not surprisingly, online marketing such as social media marketing, email marketing are going to be seeing increases. For paid search on Google and Yahoo, the results are mixed, with some marketers cutting back and almost an equal percentage increasing that marketing tactic.

Online marketing vs. offline

But why would there be an increase in online marketing rather than offline forms of marketing? Well, one of the big advantages to online marketing is that through web analytics, it’s far easier to measure the results of your online efforts. It’s much tougher to measure the return on investment of a television, radio or other type of ad.

Online marketing is generally less expensive, although you could spend just as much if you really wanted to. One banner ad in an Edmonton daily newspaper could cost you thousands of dollars per day. Ouch! Take that same budget online, and you can do a lot with it.

That’s not to say that offline marketing methods don’t work. They do, but more and more, people are going online because it’s easy to measure the effectiveness of a marketing campaign, get comparable (if not better) results and in the end, spend less. It does depend on your market though.

Social media strategy

It’s one thing to increase your social marketing efforts, but doing so without a social media strategy in place might not be the most effective thing to do. Like any marketing effort it really pays to set the groundwork and have a good plan.

As much as social media marketing is about conversations and engaging with your market, you need to know information about them. Do you know who your audiences are? Do you know what messages you’d like them to come away with? Do you know what forms of social media your market is most likely to use and what forms might be most effective for you?

This is the groundwork for your social media strategy. Once you’ve got this, then you can start looking at the most effective ways to engage with your market. Which would work for you? Twitter? Facebook? Blogging? A combination of these or maybe other social media?

The conversation

Knowing your audience and the messages you’d like them to take away doesn’t mean you can’t have a natural conversation. You just have those messages in the back of your mind about what you feel is important for your audience to know.

Even more important than that is to make sure you listen to your audience. The whole purpose of social media marketing is to engage with your audience. They have a lot of valuable things to tell you, so make sure you’re receptive to them.

Just using social media marketing with old-style push marketing won’t work. Push marketing is part of the reason traditional marketing is on the wane and online marketing is becoming more popular.

Your audience will begin to tune out if you’re only pushing out messages without listening. There’s still room for a certain amount of push marketing, but if that’s all you’re doing, you might be a good candidate to develop an effective social media strategy.

Marketing in a bad economy

Marketing is often the first expense to be cut when the economy turns sour. It is certainly an easy target, but that’s a risky strategy. Why not consider keeping your marketing budget at approximately the same level, but look for more effective marketing methods?

If your competitors are cutting their marketing budgets while you keep yours the same, it’s almost like water draining out of a lake. As the level decreases, islands become visible. Your company can be like that island: more visible.

Right now might be the perfect time for your company to take a serious look at its marketing plan and make sure those marketing dollars are being allocated to marketing methods that are most effective. There are many good ways to market online, and social media is one of them.

Is your company planning to change its marketing because of the economic downturn? If so, what kinds of changes are you making?

Alain Saffel

Can you really afford to chill when it comes to your online marketing & social media strategy?

I read yesterday that online shopping by Canadians hit $12.8 billion last year. That’s pretty impressive, but you have to look at the numbers that form part of the story to find the really interesting data.

One third of Canadians 16 and older made purchases online and even more interesting, Alberta led the country with 51 per cent of people making purchases online. Why that is, I’m not sure. Just over half the people from 25 to 34 in Canada made purchases online as well.

According to StatsCan more retailers are offering online shopping, which makes sense. What retailers should also know is that 43 per cent of Canadians have used the Internet to research their purchases, with 64 per cent saying they’ve gone to a “bricks and mortar” store to make their purchase.

How businesses can respond

What it means is that if you’re a business that doesn’t have a solid web presence, you may be missing out. The Internet is an incredible research tool, so make sure your company has the information people are looking for.

For retailers it’s important to have the basics down: solid website, good design, good search engine optimization and pay-per-click ads, but what else? That’s not going to guarantee online marketing success, whatever business you’re in.

A good social media strategy can help tie all your marketing together. Engaging with your market in other ways such as blogs, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and many other social media can help your business in many ways.

By listening to your clients and potential clients, no matter what type of business you’re in, you can gain valuable information to help serve them better. A good social media strategy will help you do that, and is a win-win for you and your client: you’re doing more business and your client is getting what they need and want.

A good social media strategy is important for online retailers, but also to those companies that are being researched online and contacted off line.

Alberta social media strategy

It’s remarkable that Albertans are leading Canada in terms of shopping online. It should be a wakeup call for those Alberta companies who are ignoring their online marketing.

I would really like to know more about why Alberta leads the country in online shopping. Could it be the booming economy here? Not sure. According to what I’ve been reading though, Alberta’s economy is still strong, possibly the strongest in North America. It’s still a good place to do business.

Online marketing will continue to be a growth industry. It might be a good idea to examine your online marketing efforts and social media strategy to make sure you’re part of the growing online research and shopping trend.

I read an article on CNN about the Dos and Don’ts of Social Networking. I thought I might critique the article and throw in a few more suggestions.

22 per cent of employers check social media sites

If you’re in job search mode, the article suggests that you don’t advertise that fact if you are already employed. That’s pretty much common sense, isn’t it? There must be a few people out there who didn’t think word would get back to their boss.

You can limit profile access to only those on your friends list in Facebook. Make sure you do that to keep prying eyes out, particularly if your friends like to post pictures of your weekend antics and tag you in them.

Another thing to consider is that some of your friends might not be such good friends. You know the old adage about keeping your friends close and your enemies closer? If you think your updates on Twitter, Facebook or other social media are protected, well, they just might be. What’s to stop those select “friends” to look at your Tweets or status updates as an opportunity to send you to the unemployment line?

It’s not all negative. Apparently a quarter of those potential employers liked what they found and that information has convinced them to hire based on what they’ve found.

Update your profile regularly

Provided you have your profiles open for public view, this is good advice. Really, it’s good advice for anyone. If it’s out of date, people wonder how much you care about your presence online. You are your best public relations person, so treat it that way.

An important part of your personal social media strategy should involve keeping things up to date and keeping on top of social media trends.

Make sure your information is accurate, and don’t go badmouthing anyone. No, not even if they deserve it. I suppose there might be good reasons to do it, but think about how future employers might view that. You think a potential employer might not want to hire you because they think you might do the same to them?

Don’t be like many companies that establish a token presence and then forget about it. Pick a few social media sites you’ll do well.

If you are in job hunt mode, LinkedIn is like an online resume. It can also help to advertise your current employer, so it’s good for everyone.

Keep your friends list private

I thought this was one of the most interesting points of the article. And, it’s so obvious!
“Connecting to five people at Company XYZ after a day of vacation is a sure sign you are interviewing.”

I’ve opted to keep my friends lists open. Social media is an important part of my business and my personal social media strategy.

In the interests of openness, why not keep your list open but don’t add a pile of people from companies who may be interviewing you?

Cleaning up the dirt

If you’ve got a closed profile and protected updates, it might not be such a worry. On Google it might be tougher. I would advise against running your updates through any type of RSS feed like Friend Feed if you’re really worried. You could have a closed profile but effectively open it up that way.

If you have negative Google results, there’s probably not much you can do to eliminate them. What might work is to get your name out there as much as possible to drive negative results down as far as possible. Rely on employers to not be thorough and go 10 pages in when searching your name. Blog commenting works well for this.

Sometimes there’s nothing you can do to eliminate past mistakes. The best public relations strategy is to deal with negative news preemptively and directly. If you volunteer a negative item that someone might just run across on their own, they might appreciate the honesty.

Thinking about it another way, do you really want to work for someone who would hold a minor indiscretion against you?

It’s always easier to have a successful personal social media strategy when you’ve minimized any problems or simply avoided them in the first place.

Social networking as a job search tool

If you’re already out of work, social networking sites can be powerful allies. I know from experience that sites like Twitter and Facebook can bring you job opportunities and support. It really depends on how big your network is.

Don’t just look at your social network as a job bank though. It is the kind of thing you only want to use when you have to. Don’t pester your network so much they begin avoiding you like an insurance salesman.

What message are you sending?

While this article and my suggestions are general advice on how to approach your personal social media strategy, it’s really an individual thing.

When I talk to companies about their public relations and Internet marketing, I have to tailor it to their unique attributes. That’s how you should treat your personal social media strategy.

You should ask yourself, what message are you sending? Ask those around you to have a look at your online presence. Put yourself in the shoes of someone who doesn’t know you and analyze everything.

Is it consistent with the message you’d like to send? Are your Google results acceptable? If not, take the time to start cleaning everything up.

Do I really need a personal social media strategy?

It seems rather mercenary to view your social networking in this way, but potential employers are, so you ought to as well. Just be prepared for the consequences if you’re posting pictures of your weekend escapades or Tweeting that you’re in job search mode.

Developing a basic personal social media strategy might be the best way to land that next job, business opportunity or simply to elevate your profile in your industry. You are always a good investment.

Alain Saffel