I sat down with Peter and his team and we talked about various ways to use digital channels to increase the public’s awareness of the gift certificates offered by Oasis Spa. I presented a framework that Doug had introduced to me called “The Hub & Spoke Model”. I had used variations on this technique in the past but never this specific model. Let me say that it is effective – you should try it. But I added a twist that makes it even more effective. More on that in a bit.

Jeremiah Owyang has written an excellent article on various models that companies use for organizing social media. In his blog post, he presents 5 models but concludes that the Hub & Spoke model is the one most often used by companies.

The idea is to pick a central location (or hub) and focus all marketing and communications efforts to that central spot. When I teach marketing concepts we call this “Integrated Marketing Communications”.

I like the model but it lacks action, direction, movement, or flow – all the components just sit there. To me an effective model for marketing and for social media should point or direct people toward a certain goal. Or to put it another way, there should be a call to action. As you can see in the model above, there is no real call to action 0r at least it isn’t obvious.

Being a true marketer and wanting my customer to be successful, I changed the model. As you can see below, the campaign that we developed for Oasis Spa is built on the structure of the Hub & Spoke model but with a difference. The “hub” is a Facebook landing page with various communications channels driving people to the hub – e-Newsletters, Calgary’s Twitter community, Radio, LinkedIn, Facebook ads, Google AdWords, and potentially a video on YouTube.

But the campaign needed a purpose or an objective; some type of action. We considered the objective of increasing Likes on the Facebook page but for a holiday season marketing campaign that objective didn’t seem like enough. We wanted to meet Peter’s objective which was lots of sales and many happy customers. As a result, we modified the model by adding another circle in the lower right corner. We wanted to show that we people should land on the Facebook but then move to an e-commerce page where they could actually order a gift certificate.

One channel that proved to be very effective was involving others in the YYC social media community. The following people blogged, tweeted and posted on Facebook:

• Marie-Eve Mayrand – @MeMay2 – http://bloomingmarketing.com/oasis-spa-calgary
• Randy Milanovic – @Kayak360 – www.kayakcreative.ca/blog/bid/105123/Holiday-Online-Marketing-Campaign-for-Oasis-Spa-Facebook-Style
• Crystal Tost – @RemaxCalgary – www.calgarylistings.com/oasis-spa-calgary
• Al Dhalla and Doug Wagner  – @Doug_Sunwapta – http://blog.sunwaptasolutions.com/weblog/2011/11/buying-attention-in-social-media-does-it-work.html
• Mike Nelson – @sabrecaptain
• Linda Trinh – @RentClickCgy
• Cidnee Stephen @CidneeStephen
• Deepa Acharya – @TheDeepster
• Ryan Kelly – LinkedIn
• Tom Hanger – @TomHanger
• Toni Guffei – @ToniRoni
• Susan Rutherford
• Christina Burnside – http://graysacademyesl.com

The campaign was wildly successful. By December 24th, hundreds of people had purchased online and thousands had visited Oasis Spa to buy certificates in person.

Now that the infrastructure has been developed we are looking forward to Valentine’s Day, Mother’s Day and maybe even Father’s Day.

Guest were invited from various groups related to social media:

• FridayBeersYYC Meetup – #FridayBeersYYC
• Calgary Professional Business Owners & Managers Meetup
• Third Tuesday Calgary Meetup – #TTYYC
• Quickinars – #Quickinars

If you attended the event, please Like the Facebook page of the restaurant: http://www.facebook.com/LaBrezzaRistorante

If you would like to make a reservation please use OpenTable.

Below are video shots of some of those that attended.

Variety of people at La Brezza

Toni, Trayah, Marie-Eve, Pat, Hanif and Shamsu

Hamish and Doug

Wait staff: Ali, Amber and Greg

Lyn Cadence and Brian

Moca Joe and Toni

Alma and Marco Abdi (La Brezza owner)

Greg, Matt, Yves, and Hamish

Trayah and Marie-Eve

Amber and Greg, again

For this event, we are inviting you to La Brezza Ristaurante to network, drink wine (or beer) and try La Brezza’s famous Antipasti (that is the plural in Italian for appetizer).

Here is a list of all the good things offered during this networking evening:

• Free glass of wine for the first 20 people, complements of Marco, the owner of La Brezza
• Free antipasti, compliments of Anduro Marketing
• Draw for one $100 gift certificate at La Brezza, compliments of Anduro Marketing
• Draw for two $50 gift certificate at La Brezza, compliments of Anduro Marketing
• Shirts and other swag, compliments of communicatto

Hope to see you there.

Jeff and Doug

I’ve heard these stories a hundred times. I’ll confess that on occasion when I run out of stories to tell my friends, I resort to repeating my Dad’s stories. Shameless, I know, but they are good stories. Of course, whenever I tell them they are about a minute long. I never seem to be able to remember all the details and I don’t have the “gift of the gab” (or verbal diarrhea) like he does. A month ago, when my Dad was in Calgary I pulled out my Flip Video camera and asked him to tell a few stories while I recorded.

Dad turned 81 this year. This blog post is my tribute to him.

To give you a bit of background, my father wanted to be a missionary doctor since he was 12. This was a steadfast goal of his after he heard a missionary speak at his church in Malmo, Alberta – a ways northeast of Red Deer. He was (and still is) smart, ambitious, dedicated, and disciplined. By the time he was 17 he was accepted to medical school at the University of Alberta. This was after he taught school as a 16 year old for a year in Uranium City, Saskatchewan because he was too young to be accepted after he graduated from high school 2 years ahead of schedule. Like I said – smart as a whip. He graduated at the top of his class and added another year to get his Master of Science degree.

In 1957, he married Beth Minogue and early in 1958 they headed to East Africa via the Suez Canal. By some strange coincidence I was born in September. My father had decided to work with the British Colonial Service in Uganda which was at that time a British colony. They were stationed in Arua which is in the northern part of Uganda.

We started our discussion over lunch at Spiro’s Pizza on 17th who, by the way, have the best Greek food in Calgary.

The first story is not as exciting as some of the others but this story is interesting because Dad talks about traveling on the Queen Elizabeth in 1958.

Not all medical treatments involved slicing and stitching. In this story, Dad talks about an older lady that he helped who had bilateral dislocated jaws – very uncomfortable. I love this story because Dad shows his tremendous humbleness and humility.

In this next video, Dad talks about 10 terrorizing seconds when he and a friend were hunting buffalo.  These are huge buffalo, called Cape Buffalo.

My father was always more than just a doctor – he was a surgeon. I even watched him in surgery: removing cataracts, cutting out tonsils (from the throat of one of my classmates) , slicing and applying skin grafts, and removing a large bladder stone. Usually, these operations ended with me going outside and throwing-up in the flower beds – my first clue that I was not going to follow in my father’s footsteps. Although, he had done many types of surgery, I had never heard of him doing brain surgery. One day a few years back I jokingly asked him if he ever done brain surgery. I thought that this was going to be a short discussion. But he surprised me with a story I had never heard before. Here it is and it is one of my favorites.

Here is Dad’s story of Arasto Migilee. It is one of my favorites. I love this story because of the perseverance Arasto had to get into nursing school at Kolandoto Hospital in Tanzania. My father was the medical director there for 10 years.

In this video my Dad talks about his involvement in both Small Pox and Polio epidemics in Tanzania. A huge motivating factor was that his brother, Dave, and sister, Gwen, both had live long disabilities from Polio.

9 a.m. – 4:30 p.m.
Roderick Mah Centre for Continuous Learning

Mount Royal University’s Continuing Education and Extension is hosting a one day forum and trade show on social media marketing featuring a variety of dynamic speakers from the forefront of this growing phenomenon.

Social media is here to stay and is an increasingly important factor in marketing and communication strategies for growing businesses.

Hear first-hand the pitfalls and payoffs of using social media for your growing business. Gain insight through real-life case studies and examples from people working in the trenches of social media.

Get practical advice and be inspired about the possibilities of using social media for your thriving business.

The forum is specifically designed for small- to mid-sized business owners and anyone charged with marketing, brand or customer loyalty programs for their organization.
communicatto’s Doug Lacombe is the master of ceremonies and will be sure to keep you entertained.

Some other speakers are:

• Scott Stratten – Social Currency
• Ernest Barbaric – The Ripple Effect
• Richard Einarson and Stephen Carter – Marketing a Mayor
• Karen Richards – Marketing a University
• Greg Hounslow – Owners Online
• Eric Weaver – Be Seen, Be Found, Be Engaging

Location

Roderick Mah Centre for Continuous Learning
Mount Royal University
4825 Mount Royal Gate SW
Calgary, AB  T3E 6K6

Cost

Lunch and refreshments are included.

Regular rate: $299+GST (as of May 26, 2011)

To register and more information, click here!

There are scores of free QR Code generators. I did a Google search and settled on www.goqr.me because I could customize the size of the QR Code image. I wanted to send the printer the largest image possible.

Now to decide where to send the QR Code. There are plenty of options of where to send someone once they’ve scanned the code. I could send the user to my LinkedIn Page, the Anduro website, a YouTube video or any URL for that matter. I really wanted mine to send a VCard right into someone’s address book. However, too much data in the QR Code makes it more error prone and some phones have difficulty reading complex QR Codes. So on the advice of  a colleague of mine (Reginald Tiangha) I sent the QR Code to an About.Me page, which is a mini website with all of my contact  and Social Media information: www.about.me/mattolah.

Now that I had everything ready, all I had to do was send it over to a name tag printer and instruct them that I wanted to use a QR Code instead of a corporate logo. I was a little nervous that the code wouldn’t work after I got it back from the printer. I’ve seen plenty of QR codes on business cards and whatnot at networking events that didn’t work (due to too much data or not enough white space around the code). However, to my relief my QR Code name tag works perfectly. I scanned it and it went straight to my About.Me page. Success!

I just tested the above picture of my code and of course it didn’t work, but trust me it works in real life.

Finally, here is a great article on how to make QR Codes more pretty: http://mashable.com/2011/04/18/qr-code-design-tips.

M

As mentioned in a previous post, Article: Liberal leadership social media monitor: No runaway successes, Gillian is following the Liberal leadership race in BC. The BC Liberals will choose new leader on February 26th.

The main question of the article is wondering if the use of social media will have an impact on the various candidate’s campaigns.

I’m not involved in politics very much but something tells me that the situation in BC is different. On one hand Naheed Nenshi was aiming for the mayor’s chair in a race open and visible to the general public.  What he needed was lots of people voting for him and one way to do that is create buzz and chatter on social networks. For him it worked well.

In contrast, the audience (voters) of the BC Liberal leadership race is restricted to party members. This is a finite audience, who may not want the debate to be open to the public arena. As a result, one might question the value of using social media as a communication channel to engage and influence voters.

There may be another way, however, to use social media to help move the goal posts (my compliments to Reuters for the photo). In addition to courting existing Liberal party members, a leadership candidate could set an objective to increase new memberships with the implicit understanding that these new members would vote for them. According to my local contacts this is in fact the strategy used by Alberta Liberal leader, David Swann who won leadership in December 2008.

If recruiting new members is one of the objectives then I would say using social network may work, quite well in fact. With this in mind, the channels may include:

• A website that encourages sharing on social media channels
• An email sign-up option with regular updates sent by email
• A YouTube channel with videos on the candidate’s background and policies
• A Facebook page that has a inviting Welcome tab and a call to action
• A campaign on Twitter to reach out to those who are active on Twitter and interested in the Liberal party
• A blog with regular updates on topics that are relevant to potential new members
• A discussion on LinkedIn on the leadership race (this assumes that the candidate has over 500 local connections; otherwise there aren’t enough people to hold a discussion)
• Potentially, an iPhone app that gives regular updates to those who are interested

In other words, if a leadership candidate is serious then they should open up the avenues to share, communicate, discuss, debate and interact. If the objective is to increase membership sales, then using social media will help!

That’s my 2 cents worth. Thanks Gillian for the quote.

Obviously, we are going to use social media platforms and techniques as a way to market the seminars. That makes sense to me and I should have kept my mouth shut. Instead, I put my foot in my mouth. I made the mistake of mentioning to Doug that I would jot down a list of what I’m doing.

Here’s the problem. Social media takes effort and time. Then on top of that I have now obligated myself to record what I’m doing. It’s like doing everything twice. Once again, I’m convinced that I’m not too smart. Oh well, here goes.

1. Eventbrite.com

The first thing we did was decide on a platform to manage the events. We looked at cvent mainly because they hosted a fantastic lunch in the Fall. But they wanted to lock us into a 2 year contract and Doug and I aren’t ready for that, yet. In addition, we had used Eventbrite for the workshop on November 29th and we liked it. It has a lot of features that we needed:

• Unique URLs for each event – http://quickinar-tweet-like-a-pro.eventbrite.com/
• Unique URL for a list of all events – http://quickinars.eventbrite.com/
• Ability to add multiple pricing options
• Ability to add discount codes
• Ability to save draft events and ability to publish an event, then switch back to draft
• Link to our account on PayPal so that it is easy for participants to purchase
• Include address and map of event location
• Some links to Social Media like Twitter and Facebook

Eventbrite has it all, so that is what we chose to go with. The one downside is that Eventbrite seems to be expensive. We are paying 2.9% on every ticket. Seems steep to me.

2. LinkedIn

Next I added all the seminars to LinkedIn under More / Events / Add an Event. My opinion, so far, is that this is totally useless. My guess is that there are millions of other events posted on LinkedIn and ours are just lost.

My next step will be to identify mavens (as popularized by Malcolm Gladwell in The Tipping Point) who I’m connected to on LinkedIn and let them know about Quickinars. I have over 900 connections so I should be able to find a few mavens.

The issue I have is that when I’m sending the mavens a message I’ll probably use the link on Eventbrite not the “event” on LinkedIn. As I said, posting events on LinkedIn seems to be useless.

3. Blog Post

Yesterday, I created a post on our blog. See Quickinars – Short Business Seminars for Calgarians. We have quite a few subscribers to our blog so they will receive an email update.

4. Twitter

A quick summary of our blog posts are posted on Twitter via www.dlvr.it.

Dlvr.it is very slick and free.

A friend of mine, Sharon McIntyre, noticed that I had double entries on LinkedIn. I checked LinkedIn under Settings (hard to find) and noticed that my account was already linked to my Twitter account. And I had setup Dlvr.it to send summaries from our blog to my Twitter status. I tried explaining to Sharon that “double impressions” are a good thing but she didn’t buy it. So I deleted the link on Dlvr.it. Problem solved – I hope.

So I have a question. On Twitter it is easy to see a list of all your Tweets. But on LinkedIn where is the list of status updates?

Oh, I found a link but it is hard to find. Click on the “More” link under the “Share an update” field.

But you’re not done yet. Now you have to click on “See all of Jeff’s Activity”. Sometimes I’m convinced that LinkedIn is managed by idiots.

5. eNewsletter

Technically, eNewsletters are not really “social media”. However, emails and eNewsletters are not dead yet. So we decided to send an eNewsletter to Anduro’s list of subscribers. We use ConstantContact which creates a shortened URL of the eNewsletter. You can view it here: http://conta.cc/hEqNYC. So far the response has been very positive. We are encouraged.

6. Quickinars Website

Doug has started developing the website. You can see a draft version here: www.quickinars.com. We are also working on having a logo developed. More on this later.

That is as far as I’ve gotten so far. I’ll write another post in a few days.

Using Social Media to Market Events – Part 2

Last November we hosted our first seminar on Online Marketing Strategy in 6 Hours. It was sold out and a tremendous success. So much so that we are offering this seminar again – re-titled as Social Media Strategy in 6 Hours.

The topics and dates for these new sessions are:

• Quickinar: Tweet Like a Pro in under 3 Hours on January 21
• Quickinar: Social Media Strategy in 6 Hours on Monday, January 31
• Quickinar: Lights, Camera, YouTube Action in under 3 Hours on Thursday, February 10
• Quickinar: Facebook Business Page in under 3 Hours on Thursday, February 17
• Quickinar: Kick Your Blog Up a Notch in under 3 Hours on Thursday, February 24
• Quickinar: Social Media Strategy in 6 Hours on Friday, March 25

As you will notice we are calling these sessions, Quickinars. This is a name that we came up with to emphasize that these are short, intense seminars that focus on relevant topics. Right now we are focusing on providing social media training for the Calgary market – we may expand.

We hope that you find these seminars useful and valuable. For the entire list of seminars and more details look at our Quickinars page on Eventbrite.

If you have questions please email me, jeff.nelson@anduro.com or call me (403) 410-3803.

Hope to see you at one of the sessions.

As a result, we had an objective (do the video) but this was one of those situations where we had no time, no media room, dysfunctional equipment, and no one to shoot the video.  Being 2 resourceful guys we improvised. We met at Mount Royal University, snagged a classroom, set up our cameras on a tripod, hammered out a script (very loose) and shot the video. Here is what we came up with. Enjoy.