Alberta Business Marketing

Tags: education, Out Front
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How is your business sending out relevant information to your future customers, those who don’t know about your business or your loyal customers who have the potential of becoming your next batch of raving fans?  You may have a blog, podcast or even invested in some great video about your business…but really how are you reaching these new audiences?

In the past and unfortunately an ongoing practice by many organizations is the traditional press release.  Corporations would spend thousands of dollars each year and engage with a firm who specialized in sending out or distributing your news to the media, agencies and basically anyone else who had a fax machine or a telex device.  There are many firms out there who specialize in the distribution of news for organizations.

Is it a good investment.  I have never used one in the past.  I remember helping many of my IT consulting clients in the past with complex software that would submit the news stories to their respective agencies.  This was long before the Internet.  Funny, I still remember working late at Petromet in the 90’s with a frustrated Admin Assistant and some PR software.  Fortunately for many, the tide is shifting and the social media news release is starting to gain momentum in the marketplace over the traditional press release.

In the past a press release would have information about your business, maybe a quote from the CEO or a flagship client and then the news that you wanted to share.  I recently stumbled upon a 2006 article from Tom Foremski entitled Die! Press release! Die! Die! Die! which shares how ineffective traditional press releases are for the average organization.  In my experience, I think many of them are full of information but no relevant information to the average reader.

Enter the Social Media world and the new way we send out information.  Social Media News Releases now focus on interesting things happening in your business or the community.  It is real news about what your organization is actually doing and perhaps a bit of humour tossed into the mix.  The nice thing about social media news releases is that the barrier to entry has been eliminated and many of these services cost little or no money to take advantage of.

Social Media News is about engaging with the community and sharing relevant information that is useful.  Not to mention as a bonus, the great SEO opportunities associated with social media news.  It is something that many non-profits, small businesses, and entrepreneurs needs to look at and take advantage of.  Did I mention you can start to use these services with little or no investment.

Members of the Ulistic Mentoring Program spend lots of time review with me one-on-one and understand how to leverage social media news into their overall social marketing strategy.  Interested in learning how your business can learn more about social media news and how to maximum this excellent strategy?  Give me a shout at 403.775.2205.

Tags: 403.775.2205, Admin Assistant, Business, Business/Finance, CEO, Die! Press, education, Entertainment/Culture, Journalism sourcing, Mass media, media coverage, media news, media news release, media news releases, mentorship, News media, News release, Social information processing, social media, Socially-responsible investing, Tom Foremski
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Some news from my Kiwi friends at Naverisk. From time to time I help friends of mine with a little PR about their business.  This solution for many of you is something you need, talk to your IT guy today about how they are looking after you…ask them if they are using Naverisk?

Naverisk Ltd, the leading Australasian based provider of Remote Management and Monitoring (RMM) automation software for the MSP and SMB markets has today announced the public availability of Naverisk Version 3.0 Beta:

“Easily our most powerful release to date, Naverisk V3.0 has several new features as well as enhancements to existing core functions, such as patch management.  One of the key features of Naverisk V3.0 is the “Zero Touch” Cloud based Email Security.  Our partners can now deliver annuity based Email Security Services to their clients via the Naverisk platform”, says Jon Kalaugher, founder and CEO.

“The automation improvements and Cloud based Email Security Services offer immediate tangible benefits.  Not only can we increase the quality of our current service offerings whilst lowering costs, but we can now add value in new areas for our clients, whilst increasing our monthly revenues”, says Trevor Fowler, Technical Director at Intelllium, a leading New Zealand based MSP.

“One of the strengths of the Naverisk development model is the continual input andguidance we receive and seek from the user community on features and enhancements. V3.0 is another strong step towards our goal of making Naverisk the global platform of choice for SMB IT Service providers to deliver both Managed IT Services and Managed Security Services to their clients” says Mark Checksfield, Naverisk Sales and Marketing Manager.

Naverisk is a web-based RMM automation software platform that enables IT Service Providers to deliver automated Managed IT Services and Managed Security Services.  Differentiated by its ease of use and a strong value vs. price proposition, Naverisk is available as either an on-site installation, or via the Cloud.

For more information, or a free trial of the Naverisk Platform, please visit http://www.naverisk.com/contact-us

Stuart’s Note:  Naverisk and their team are good friends of mine and from time to time I help my business colleagues share some of their great news.

Tags: automation software, automation software platform, Business IT, Business/Finance, CEO, Cloud storage, education, Email Security Services, Intelllium, Jon Kalaugher, Mark Checksfield, marketing manager, MSP Partners, Naverisk 3.0 Beta, Naverisk Ltd, Naverisk Version 3.0 Beta, New Zealand, patch management, Product Release, SMB S.A., spam filtering, Technical Director, Technology/Internet, Trevor Fowler
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People attend conferences and events for education, entertainment and engagement – a desire to engage in meaningful conversation with other attendees and with presenters.

Gary Vaynerchuck’s presentation at LeWeb sparked a blog post on Why Livestreaming your conference is a no-brainer.  His followup interview with Gianfranco Chicco extended my thinking on the value of the conference / event experience to attendees.

Perhaps the highlight of Gary’s presentation at Le Web was his interaction with Loic LeMeur, founder and host of Le Web who said: “[Le Web] is not a conference, it’s a community” to which Gary exploded with this remark “If this is a f*%king community, why aren’t we doing Q&A?!”

I highly recommend checking out Gary’s full conversation with @Loic but be prepared, if you haven’t seen Gary Vee before, he uses the #F word at least a half dozen times in his presentation.

The future of Conferences

Successful Events can be measured by how successfully they balance the three E’s.

• Education,
• Entertainment
• Engagement

Technology has made access to information free.  Education can help attendees put the ideas and information to use in a meaningful hands-on sort of way.  This demands smaller breakout group sizes and meaningful interaction with presenters. This is why the unconference / barcamp learning environment has been such a successful event formula.

The Q & A forum advocated for by @garyvee is a good one, and the ability of the presenter to dance on their feet and provide great value for the audience will require recruiting speakers who know their stuff backwards and forwards, understand the needs of their audience and are comfortable in a “Bring it on” environment.

This clearly isn’t the entire spectrum of presenters who took the stage at #leweb, or any other conference or event you have recently attended. Some of the brightest lights in social media and tourism – sadly, are poor presenters on stage and do not engage their audience.

Entertainment and Performance Matter too

Gary’s points taken into consideration, some presentations are performances. Lawrence Lessig comes to mind. Give me a front row seat for one of Larry’s presentations and I don’t want to interact or engage with him.  Although the online version of his presentations will fail to fully capture the value he brings to every presentation I urge you to give him a few minutes to see what the Stanford Law professor brings to the stage.  We need more like him.

Rethinking Conferences and Events: Put the Three E’s front and center

I think the large conference / event format itself may be broken. Smaller breakout groups are really valuable and providing access for Q & A and authentic engagement is much more valuable than panel discussions because attendees can get exactly what they came for.

Big names will put bums in seats, but the measures of success that matter most to attendees will always be the richness of audience engagement and off-stage social interactions.

Are your attendees getting the education, entertainment and engagement they desire?  Consider asking this question to gauge feedback at your next event:

Did you get what you came for?

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Tags: conferences, conferences & events, education, engagement, entertainment, event planning, events
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