Archive for September, 2008
Written by Mhairi Petrovic, September 30th, 2008
Where did the month go? Despite the hot and balmy weather, fall is definitely on its way and the leaves are a tumbling. There were many new media reasons to be cheerful this month including:
I’ve been looking for an online equivalent to Illustrator for a while now and I think I’ve found it. Inkscape is an open source graphics editor.
Another gem I discovered thanks to Mary Boles of Virtual Business Solutions is GIMP an image manipulation system similar to Adobe.
A local company is helping people achieve their dreams – non materialistic ones that is. Dreambank allows people to post their dreams and have others in the community contribute towards fulfilling them. What a great way to make a difference in the world.
Our hunt for a great online invoicing system is over. Blinksale is the one. Its easy to brand and use and allows you to send invoices via email or to print them out. I like the neat thank you generator too.
Finally check out MusicLinkUp a great on-line music resource aimed at connecting music teachers with students. Way to go Voya!
Written by Mhairi Petrovic, September 26th, 2008
I had the great fortune to present last night to the YWCA Connect To Success Program here in Vancouver. The subject of the presentation was “How to rise above the rest of the world on the Internet” and we looked closely at using Social Networks (Facebook, LinkedIn and MySpace) as well as blogs and other tools that you can use to enhance your career or find a job.
I wanted to follow up on the presentation to provide links to some of the sites I mentioned and to some very useful resources that I came upon when researching the presentation.
Jim Stroud is a recruitment specialist. He uses the microblog Twitter to very effectively reach his target audience.
Twithire – another Twitter based application this time designed specifically for jobs although I am not sure who would want to hire a Twit anyway!
Mashable list of 70 tops sites to use for jobhunting.
Squidoo – this is a great way to create your own lens or website dedicated to your area of expertise.
PeopleMaps – is a great online service for both job seekers and employers providing highly accurate personality reports (I know I did one). Add their “Psychologist in a Box” Facebook application to your profile to let potential recruiters know more about you.
Land Your Dream Job is another Peoplemaps innovation – its about to launch and is getting a lot of buzz so keep your eyes open for that one in the next week or so.
Great job hunting or career development and thanks again to the organisers and all those who attended. You had some brilliant questions and excellent insights.
Written by Mhairi Petrovic, September 24th, 2008
You’ve put together a great podcast. It is creative, interesting and adds value for your intended audience now what? What do you do with your podcast to make it available to intended recipients. In order to explain this I like to use the newspaper analogy from traditional media. Its all very well that you have a great rag but without newsagents, newspaper boxes and delivery services it doesn’t have a chance of being read.
By creating an RSS feed you can solve the delivery services component but where should your podcast appear so that people can find it. The answer is by listing your podcast in with the major podcast engines. These are:
iTunes
Blubrry
Odeo
Podcast Alley
Podcast Ready
Yahoo Podcasts
Podnova
It takes a bit of time and effort and you have to register with most of these to do so but the benefits are multiple in extending the reach of your podcast. Just be patient as the process is far from instantaneous.
Good podcasting!
If you have more to add to the list – please let us know.
Links:
New Experiences in Podcasting 5
New Experiences in Podcasting 4
Podcasting – Dead or Alive
New Experiences in Podcasting 3
New Experiences in Podcasting 2
NewExperiences in Podcasting 1
Written by Mhairi Petrovic, September 22nd, 2008
Out-Smarts has been working on a really exciting podcast project with local branding evangelists and business coaching firm LeapZone Strategies.
The podcast is called Rise and it tackles the issues companies and entrepreneurs face as they grow their company and establish their brand.
Each episode is short and to the point and covers pertinent issues such as getting more done in less time, effective time management and learning tolerance. Even more important, the podcasts are entertaining and well worth a listen so visit the site and subscribe via iTunes or your favorite podcast reader for some valuable insights that will help you raise the bar in your business endeavours.
Written by Mhairi Petrovic, September 19th, 2008
Another Friday Funny from Rob at Social Signal.
Written by Mhairi Petrovic, September 18th, 2008
After a brief hiatus over the summer, our podcast is back and once more were having some great adventures producing and presenting the feed. This week we tackled branding and next week we’re looking forward to discussing some design and development tips to make your website more magnetic.
The hardest podcasting lesson we’ve learned lately is that if you set up an RSS feed for your podcast, there is a good chance that RSS readers (like Google reader) will pick up blog posts as well as podcasts. This isn’t ideal, especially if you want to promote your podcast channel effectively.
Thankfully we came upon a great solution thanks to the good folks over at WordPress. Simply categorize each podcast in a dedicated category (ours is podcast) then add some code to your .htaccess file to redirect the traffic. The result: a dedicated podcast feed featuring only your audio work.
Our next New Adventures in Podcasting post will tackle how and where you should promote your podcasts until then check out the previous posts in this series and good podcasting!
New Experiences in Podcasting 4
Podcasting – Dead or Alive
New Experiences in Podcasting 3
New Experiences in Podcasting 2
NewExperiences in Podcasting 1
Written by Mhairi Petrovic, September 15th, 2008
Our latest podcast tackles the issue of branding with Isabelle Mercier, co-founder of Leapzone Strategies: a Vancouver firm dedicated to working with motivated entrepreneurs to help them realize their version of massive success through business and branding strategies and performance coaching. Prior to Leapzone Strategies, Isabelle headed up an award winning creative firm that specialized in managing brand identity so she really knows a thing or ten about branding.
[audio:http://www.out-smarts.com/Podcast7.mp3]
Podcast: Download
Written by Mhairi Petrovic, September 10th, 2008
For business people used to marketing in the traditional way, the new way of marketing can be confusing. There’s little wonder that this is the case because the fundamentals of marketing have, essentially, be turned on their head.
With traditional marketing, companies created, controlled their brand and crafted it in such a way as to appeal to their target audience. These days control of the brand has been turned over to consumers. Whilst this is great news for Joe Public, it can create major headaches for organisations used to the old way but it doesn’t have to be that way.
Numerous articles both in the press and on TV have drawn attention to corporate new media fiascos, note able among them the Tim Horton employees’ Facebook group (which poked fun and more at their employer), Wallmart (the company created a fake blog and got caught out) and the social network groups against telecommunications changes in Canada (customers banding together to mass complain in networking forums). These are all examples of how companies have failed to recognise the true nature of new media.
Companies should not try to use the forums to control their brand – it will back fire and you will be caught out. You cannot manipulate your audience. A seachange in thinking needs to happen where companies recognise these forums as a constant interactive loop rather than a one way street. Rather than a threat, make social media work to corporate advantage. Its a great way to understand your audience, customers and to better serve their needs.
Organisations should put in place policies and processes to: manage and monitor employee participation (put it in your company handbook); to use these forums as research tools to help keep a pulse on the industry; to improve brand awareness through better customer service, and in getting creative by using these new media to build positive consumer loyalty.
New media needn’t be scarey for marketers. Simply take time to understand how the changes are playing out in your industry and alter your marketing approach to include your consumer/audience rather than exclude them. Look on this as an opportunity and not a threat.
Written by Mhairi Petrovic, September 04th, 2008
This post originally appeared here in the spring of 2007 but the lessons still apply to those about to embark along the corporate blog path. We’re posting it again in case you missed it because the post consistently attracts visitors to our site suggesting its still of interest to you, our audience. Here are 10 tips to bear in mind when blogging for business.
1. Keep entries to one page or less – a blog entry should be short and to the point.
2. Blogs are intended as on-line logs or journals and are more informal than other marketing mediums so write accordingly.
3. Use simple terms – dont include jargon or abbreviations unless you are sure your audience will understand otherwise it will simply put them off.
4. Dont use your blog as a forum to attempt to promote or sell – its not appropriate.
5. It is generally accepted in the blogosphere that you can quote from another blog as long as you state your source and link back to it.
6. Remember to add value. Think about who your intended audience is and write posts that are informative – share useful links to cool sites and on-line services.
7. Emoticons may be okay for a personal blog but in a corporate one they look unprofessional. Unless your target audience is the under 20 consumer crowd then its best to avoid using emoticons at all.
8. Its good to include video clips, images and podcasts.
9. Dont use fonts that are too large or hard to read and be sparing with capitals (no need to yell!).
10. When you include links to other web pages, always remember to check that your links work before publishing your blog article (theres nothing worse than clicking on a link in anticipation only to find that it doesnt link take you where its supposed to).
