Alberta Business Marketing

The internet is social.  We get that.  But it’s also mobile, meaning people want to access “current information” any time they want it.

That’s right, it’s the consumer or subscriber of the media that matters.  If travelers want current media, the tourism industry has to start thinking about the best way to produce media in an ongoing, continuous story-telling fashion.

The Conference that Never Ends

Here at Tourism Keys and at the Tourism Café we’re going to be investing a lot more time producing multimedia training material for the tourism industry using new tools that we have recently invested in.  Cameras, lights, microphones and sound editing and production facilities will make it easier for us to share live-streaming media content and archived training and learning materials to keep the tourism industry at the cutting edge of social, mobile, media-rich Web-of-Now.

I’m thinking of it as the Tourism Conference that never ends.

I hope you’ll join me.  Stay tuned.

Tweet This

Tags: tourism marketing
Posted in Alberta Business | | Comments Off

Sales is all about links.

In order to sell, it helps to get to know people. It helps to stay in touch with them. It helps to connect with them. People like to buy from friends. More friends - more sales.

In the old days, one of the ways to do this was by playing golf or hitting the links. So at one time (some people would still say that time has not passed and insist this is the only way even now) golf links were very important.

Then came the era of LinkedIn. LinkedIn is an awesome tool for staying in touch with people. Mostly because many people are increasingly changing jobs and it's tough to keep in touch with everybody. LinkedIn has your friends maintain their contact information rather than you having to keep current.

Essentially it allows you to stay in touch whenever you want to. LinkedIn also allows you to send updates, similar to Twitter of Facebook, which are a good, soft way of staying in touch with people.

LinkedIn is also a great tool for connecting to people whom you don't yet know because you can see who is connected to and ask for a warm introduction.

The third link is about links to your website and blog. Increasingly people are finding business partners and suppliers on the Internet and the most common way to do this is through Internet searching. In order to rank high on the Internet searches (you really want to be on the first page), you need to have what's called a high PageRank. PageRank is determined by the number of quality inbound links coming to your page.

As you can see, it's all about the links.

Tags: technology, This and That
Posted in Alberta Business | | Comments Off

Hello from Phoenix, Arizona

This evening I managed to invest some time with HTG1 and the HTG Advisory Council here in the Valley of the Sun, Phoenix, Arizona.  Tonight is a sad night for me.  It was my official last social engagement as a member of Heartland Tech Groups (HTG) and the HTG Advisory Council.  A great bunch of awesome guys, however with my new career direction in the Calgary Search Engine Optimization and Social Media world. it is unfortunate but I am no longer a fit for HTG, as a member at least.  There maybe something else we can figure out, hopefully.

Canada’s Social Media Landscape

Yesterday I mentioned the Social Landscape and what I feel are contributors to the overall landscape in our socially connected online world that we live in.  A critically important online world that can’t be overlooked any longer by business, families and anyone else who is stuck in a log cabin up north totally disconnect from all human interaction.

Many of us as professionals in social media, throw the words “social media” around pretty loosely.  But really what is social media?  Many of my peers including myself have different descriptions for social media and as a consultant serving the Calgary community I may just continue to use it, out of context in my mind, because that is what people know.

In my opinion, Social Media is simply the art of communicating, the art of delivering the message to a reader, the crafting of the message for people to view, and the reaction to the original message or posting.  Print media is the same thing, the newspaper you read is the tool for reading print media.  I can get the message in a magazine, paper or even a cocktail napkin.  In our online world, Facebook is just a tool for you to read social (online) media.  I hope this make sense to many of you.

Social media is the message, Facebook is the tool, and social networking is the art of creating mutual win-win online relationships and social currency is the “go giver” of the online world.  Like I said, I hope this makes sense to many of you.

Here is another example.  If you are a publicly traded firm in Canada and need to combat some negative press coverage in the print media world, you can turn to social media to help share your side of the story to reach your audience.  Different tools and perhaps the same message.  Twitter can be a service or tool for you to get your word out (the media).

Love to hear what you all think on the this topic.  This is my first leg of what I can the “Social Landscape”.

Tags: Arizona, Calgary, canada, collaboration, Consultant, Facebook, Facebook Inc, heartland tech groups, HTG Advisory Council, HTG1, important online world, member at least, mutual win-win online relationships, Online social networking, online world, Phoenix, print media, print media world, search engine, Social information processing, social media, Social Media Ventures Inc, Social network service, social networking, Technology/Internet, Twitter Inc, World Wide Web
Posted in Alberta Business | | Comments Off