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What the *bleep* is a social media consultant!

I empathize with many organizations today who are trying to build a social media strategy. There are thousands of success stories about big and small companies using social media. From Naked Pizza to The Roger Smith Hotel to Calgary City Mayor Naheed Nenshi, if there is a business out there in any industry…there is also a leader in that industry using social media.  However, most company’s do not understand the systematic architecture of a social media strategy and throw the duties of  digital communications on someone who has the most “time to spare”. Often, that person doesn’t have any spare time so they just “do” social media. (more…)

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Mom was right: It’s important people like you!

It is important that people like you, if they don’t, your business is going to suffer.

I am often confronted with a statement that goes along the lines of “Sentiment? Really? Can you measure that? Does it really affect your company?”

And the answer is, YES!!!!

It REALLY affects:

Let’s look at an example:

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Awesome Calgary Foundation Pitch Night

I have been chosen!

I have been accepted as one of the 4 finalists to pitch my idea to Awesome Calgary for micro financing of $1000.00!

Want to know what my idea is?

Come to the pitch night on Thursday January 26th!

Here are the details:

Where: UBU Lounge (Grand Theatre – 608 1 Street Southwest)

Time: Pitches begin at 6:00pm on the 2nd floor (open area above the bar)

History of Awesome Foundation

Created in the long hot summer days of 2009 in Boston, the Foundation distributes a series of monthly $1,000 grants to projects and their creators. The money is given upfront in cash, check, or gold doubloons by groups of ten or so self-organizing “micro-trustees,” who form autonomous chapters around geographic areas or topics of interest.

The Foundation provides these grants with no strings attached and claims no ownership over the projects it supports. It is, in the words of one of our trustees, a micro-genius grant for flashes of micro-brilliance.

Since its humble beginnings, many Awesome Foundation chapters have sprung up globally to conserve, sustain, and support the worldwide ecosystem of awesomeness. Projects have included efforts in a wide range of areas including technology, arts, social good, and beyond.

We’re still waiting for something with dinosaurs (hint, hint)

Awesome Foundation Calgary

Awesome Calgary was literally founded on Bow Trail in the midst of West LRT construction on a freakin’ cold last day of January 2011.  I was listening to CBC radio and Matt Galloway was chatting with Matt Thompson

We are still learning about social media…kinda

When I was recently asked what the trends are for 2012, in the digital communications industry, I quickly started to think of new social platforms like Pinterest.com, or new personal news publishing aggregators like Scoopt.it, or thought about how search might become less and less reliant on Google as mobile  competition like Siri and Facebook come up with search results from their own data or masked Google data.

The real question to me though is, how are businesses going move their organizations forward and generate more revenue using social media marketing and digital communications?

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Get in the game, get a corporate blog

Corporate blogging, get with the times!

Ernest and I talk about how a corporate blog or business blog can really help your organization in a time of crisis, or in the good times! Though we only scratch the surface of blogging for business or corporate, it all comes down to what your business goals are and how to tie this into the long term health of your company.

Before we get into that though, Ernest tells us about his plans for the rest of the year and we talk about some new “Twitterheads” joining the Twitterverse. We also talk about our first time experiencing twitter.

Give me, or Ernest, a shout on twitter at @kevinhayesca @ebarbaric

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