Archive for February, 2008
Written by Mhairi Petrovic, February 29th, 2008
The reasons to be cheerful have been bountiful this month as we traveled the virtual world. Links include everything from on line CRM to complete and utter whimsy and we have more reasons than usual for February:
Myplick – never battle with uploading a Powerpoint again.
Buzzshout – want to find out about the latest web technologies? Buzzshout is the place to go.
Highrise – simple on-line CRM to allow you to easily manage your contacts. Great if you’re just starting out but not so easy if your contacts aren’t in Outlook and your forced to manually upload.
Got vmail – this service helps you manage your calls, provides toll free numbers and an answering service.
NCIX – this one is bricks and mortar and online and its great to have an alternative to the cowboys at FutureShop and Best Buy.
meez – while away your Friday afternoon creating an avator for your social networking profiles. Mine is “so meez”.
Strutta – Vancouver is a buzz with the yet to be launched Strutta. Is it a bird, is it a plane? Who knows (our launch invite got lost in the mail) but rumor has it its something to do with online video and gaming.
Written by Mhairi Petrovic, February 28th, 2008
An article in the Vancouver Sun’s business section today blazes the headline “Adults spend more time in cyberspace than teens”.
According to an Ipsos Reid poll conducted here in Canada, adults spend an average of 5 hours more online than teenagers doing everything from banking, shopping and booking holidays to socializing and playing games. So much for the Internet being the domain of the young. Even more interesting is that off those polled 70% of adults had participated in online social activities.
That should be reason enough to integrate social media marketing into your strategic plan and to spread awareness of your offering in this medium.
Written by Mhairi Petrovic, February 27th, 2008
The last few years has brought great changes to the way we approach business and marketing is no exception: there’s a new way to approach understanding and reaching out to customers over the Internet. The problem with marketing right now is that there is a divide between two camps: the traditional marketers and the new marketers. I see this all the time with both marketing organizations and companies alike. They are either all for tried and tested marketing techniques or all for Internet approaches with very little in between. This is forging a divide in the marketing community. I notice that the new marketers are very derisive of the old way and traditional marketers frequently ignore (or perhaps are oblivious or afraid of new ways to market).
I find all this very amusing. Here at Out-Smarts we recognize that, to be effective in reaching your audience you should use all appropriate tools available. Old and new marketing approaches are simply tools that can be used to market effectively and they should always be used in conjunction with each other if you want to have maximum impact.
Using the Internet to market is a logical way to reach more people, after all over 70% of North Americans use it, but in order to do so you must understand the vital principles of traditional marketing (4Ps or 6Cs of the marketing mix). Understand who your audience is (age, location, gender and so on), what need or pain your offering fulfills and what its worth to them. Know where your audience hangs out on the Internet and what technologies they use, understand how they want to be communicated to and which messages/mediums will be effective (and which will totally put them off – most important in the new way).
To be effective in marketing these days its no use simply adopting traditional techniques, (perhaps because you don’t understand new technologies or you mistakenly think your audience isn’t online – I’ve heard that one more than once!) if you do you are ignoring a massive chunk of your potential market. If you don’t understand these new technologies and approaches then find someone who does and add them to your team. Nor is it good enough to simply market in the virtual world and ignore older methods. What works best is a mix of the two. How you mix them will depend (off course) on your customer. Understanding your customer should always come first in any marketing endeavor but you have to embrace all methodologies and do it now before the competition gains traction and beats you to it.
Written by Mhairi Petrovic, February 26th, 2008
Here’s podcast number 2 – Northern Voice. We loved it so much we wanted to tell you all about it! northern-voice.m4a
Written by Mhairi Petrovic, February 23rd, 2008
Marc Canter former rock and opera singer now focuses on social technologies. He says he’s visionary and has an uncanny ability to correctly predict the future – time will tell. His main point is that all software needs to become social. We need to be taking advantage of the social and open nature of technology now to extend beyond traditional realms of software.
He works with Bell Canada to create a site that takes advantage of social sharing to promote Bell’s music and movies. He predicts Bell Canada will be an openID broker.There’s no real compelling reason to do this right now but it will be way of future.
I haven’t captured half of what Marc said so you should check out his aforementioned blog and his PeopleAggregator company.
Nice job Marc!
Written by Mhairi Petrovic, February 22nd, 2008
Presentation by Jeffrey Keefer and Robin Yap.
Why blog – to express yourself – put your voice out there for people to read. Why live blog – you don’t over analyse – its raw and more real.
Reasons:
1. In the moment.
2. To share with those not there.
3. Gets it done.
4.Captures the emotion – you don’t lose it or edit it out.
5. Gives you smoething to do when your bored.
Tools to use when wifi access isn’t possible:
- microsoft live writer
- scribefire
- cover it live
- ecto
- Twitter – microblogging
These tools are starting to work together. Live Writer links to Twitter links to Facebook and reaches more people.
Concerns with live blogging include you could misquote, get something out of context and if you are live blogging a conference why should people who don’t pay to go get all the content.
Written by Mhairi Petrovic, February 22nd, 2008
Here goes with the live blogging. Gulp..
Stewart Mader, wiki guru on wikis – what they are and how they can be used.
A wiki is a website that people can access and make changes to. There are many types like pwiki, wikispaces (you create an account online and access your wiki there). Others are software you put on your server. Check out wikimatrix for comparisons.
Stewart’s tips for company wikis:
1. Run a pilot – start small as its easier to manage and knowledge spreads better.
2. Get the users together and get them using it together at the start. Gets collaborative input from all and wiki adoption is more likely to succeed. Set actions at that session for follow ups and people will keep using the wiki. Read more
Written by Mhairi Petrovic, February 22nd, 2008
Seems like 10 is the number of the week here at Out-Smarts. We’re off to Northern Voice today and we’re so excited we’re practically rippling. Here are our ten (tongue in cheek) reasons to attend.
1. For the free lunch – didn’t you see that photo (drool).
2. To snag a T shirt – hopefully with a big Moose on the front. How Canadian eh?
3. We would do anything to get a day out of the office.
4. To get much needed and aforementioned podcasting advice.
5. Its much cheaper than the social media telesummit(although much shorter) that is also taking place this week. Granted that could be the Scottish in me coming out there.
6. To meet some rockstar bloggers. I met the Engadget guy earlier this year. I’m on a roll….
7. To find out if blogging really is dead or if its just that the early adopters have moved on to the next new thang.
8. To check out the beautiful UBC campus. Terror alert or no terror alert, we will be there.
9. To live blog on my XO. It is charging its little green and white battery as I type.
10. To make some new friends to add to my Facebook profile.
Written by Mhairi Petrovic, February 21st, 2008
By this I mean Google juice and not pictures of hunky models. Here are 10 great ways you can easily improve your search engine positioning without putting your hands in your pocket and without having to be a SEO technodweeb.
1. Update your site regularly – this may seem obvious but many corporate sites rarely change.
2. Post a video – it can be short and sweet but has the added benefit of enhancing your image.
3. Add a podcast – we did it this week and you can too. Our traffic has gone up by about 50% since. Coincidence? I think not.
4. Label your images – most sites don’t bother but this is viable real estate on your site, use it. Image titles should relate back to your keywords and offering for maximum impact.
5. Use Google’s webmaster tools – make sure your site is crawled regularly, submit your sitemap (okay I concede you might need a technodweeb for that) and identify any problems so that you (or your technodweeb) can fix them.
6. Get bookmarks – book marks are like links the more you have the better. Hit on employees, partners and colleagues to bookmark your site.
7. Comment regularly on relevant blogs and always remember to insert your url correctly.
8. Spend some time developing a keyword map for your products and services so as to identify the most effective words to use and those to avoid.
9. Use bold and headings to identify key terms in your text.
10. This one should be first on the list but it seems so obvious I almost left it out. In case you haven’t done so, remember to submit your site to Google and other search engines otherwise there’s no hope whatsoever.
Written by Mhairi Petrovic, February 19th, 2008
Back in August we introduced you to the web 2.0 map of Vancouver “Techcouver”. Well the new media map just got better thanks to Techvibes and Bluelime Media. Its gone nationwide, covers more tech and its been Googlized too. Oh and we’re on there now…..
