The signs are:

• You spend a lot of time thinking about Facebook or plan use of Facebook.
• You feel an urge to use Facebook more and more.
• You use Facebook to forget about personal problems.
• You have tried to cut down on the use of Facebook without success.
• You become restless or troubled if you are prohibited from using Facebook.
• You use Facebook so much that it has had a negative impact on your job/studies.

If you answered yes to all these questions -  you are a most likely a Facebook addict or as I like to call it, a social media enthusiast!

Today Facebook purchased Instagram for $1 billion.

Pinterest is surging in popularity and now has 21,5 million users.

In response to the demand for more information, Jeff Nelson and Doug Lacombe are hosting a session of Quickinars featuring 6 organizations that are using social media successfully.  This day long seminar will be held in Calgary on April 24, 2012 featuring real people from real organizations who have successfully used social media to further their communications and marketing objectives.

We’re still lining up the guest speakers but we have confirmed:

• Cetus Automotive – Kay Gupta, Owner
• Glowskies – Huda Serhan (virtually from Dubai), Owner
• Encana – Dean Paddock, Lead, Communications Services
• Inn From The Cold – Yvette Rasmussen, Executive Director
• Calgary Municipal Land Corporation – Clare Nolan, Manager, Marketing Communications

A fabulous lunch is included, as are refreshments and snacks throughout the day.

Register now as seating is limited. Take advantage of our early bird special and save $100 by registering prior to April 17, 2012.

After a period of hibernation the Quickinars boys are back at it with “Social Media Successes – real world case studies you’ve been wondering who’s having success in social media in Calgary and beyond, this day-long seminar is for you!

You’ve been to the “social media is great” seminar. You’ve heard the “you need a strategy” speech. You’ve frittered on Twitter and fooled around on Facebook, but where is the seminar on proven success in social media?

Come find out on April 24 where we will spend a full day (6 hours) reviewing local, national and international social media success stories.

Each of the “success segments” will begin with a strategic overview, followed by a special guest speaker who actually put social media theory into practice and realized results!

We’re still lining up the guest speakers but you can expect representatives from:

- oil and gas
- automotive service
- non-profit
- retail or hospitality

With variety like this you will see how social media is being successfully implemented by organizations large and small, B2C and B2B, for profit and not.

Draw inspiration from your peers and from the solid strategic insights of the Quickinars team, Jeff Nelson, president of Anduro Marketing and Doug Lacombe, president of communicatto inc. These two Internet marketing veterans will guide you through case study after case study that is sure to inspire you and turbo-charge your social media marketing efforts.

A fabulous lunch is included, as are refreshments and snacks throughout the day. Register now as seating is limited. Take advantage of our early bird special and save $100 by registering prior to April 17, 2012.

This conference will engage you and inspire you through practical tips and take-aways presented by industry leaders which include Chris Brogan, Peter Shankman, Alex Samuel and Julien Smith.

Click here to Register!

Today, a friend mentioned Freemind. It is what is sounds like: freeware for creating mind maps.

It is excellent software, easy to use and, did I mention – FREE.

Now I have to get back to .

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.

The client was Marco Abdi who owns La Brezza Ristorante, a delightful Italian restaurant in the heart of Bridgeland. I have known Marco for years and I had been to La Brezza many times but not recently. This was a great excuse to meet with him again.

There is an excellent write-up about Marco meeting his adorable wife, Filomena, on a bus. The full story is on the Alberta is Energy website. See http://www.albertaisenergy.ca/marco.

Marco and I sat down for lunch a few days later and he told me that he wanted to improve the reputation of his restaurant on the Internet. He had been reading up on social media and thought that he should stir-up a strategy. For lunch we had calamari, probably the best I’ve had – ever. I would highly recommend trying it.

After some chilling online research we figured out that in contrast to other Italian restaurants La Brezza online presence was half-baked. The presence they did have was limited to about 8 reviews on Google Places (a few were unsavory) and a 67% rating on Urbanspoon. Not much to be proud of after 25 years of hard work.

The recipe we cooked up included the following:

• Launching a page on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/LaBrezzaRistorante
• Developing a process to encourage guest to write a review online
• Creating a small card to handout to guests

Marco is very happy with the results:

• Likes on the Facebook page increased dramatically – they now have nearly 100.
• There are many many more reviews online.
• But most dramatically, the rating on Urbanspoon increased to 85% saying that they “like it”.
• Nearly 20 reviews on Google Places
• And #1 ranking on TripAdvisor for “Calgary Restaurant”.

Update: January 19, 2012 – Mario Toneguzzi added a blog post on the Calgary Herald site about this, see: http://blogs.calgaryherald.com/2012/01/19/calgary-restaurant-owner-cooks-up-recipe-for-business-success/. Thanks Mario.

Last Fall I was meeting with our client, Jason Taylor, to review the various online marketing campaigns that we are doing for Skyline. At the end of our conversation, Jason lamented about the dated photos on his site. The company had wonderful aerial shots of many buildings where they had done the roofs but only a few of the photos were recent, most were quite a few years old.

I suggested that I use my Facebook account and Twitter feed to help find a pilot. Jason thought this would be worth a try so the next day I sent the following post on Facebook.

Here’s a copy of the Tweet that I sent:

I received a couple of responses. One very promising lead came from Norman Blades of Sunwest Aviation. His reply was: “Hi Jeff, as per our telephone conversation, here is my contact info.  I’m a commercial rated pilot, with access to a small two seater aircraft well suited for aerial photos.  I can work from a Google Map, or I can take someone along to take the photos themselves.”

So I put Norman in touch with Jason at Skyline. The result was that Norman piloted Jason for 2 flights and Jason got all the photos that he needed. A couple photos taken by Jason Taylor, showing work done by Skyline, are shown below.

Olympic Speed Skating Oval:

BassPro Shops:

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