Alberta Business Marketing

Several of them probably represent your view of what you’d like Calgary to be. But how do you decide who has a serious chance at winning – and should get your vote – and to which candidate would your vote be a throw-away?

Polls are one way to find out what other Calgarians are thinking. I don’t know about you, but I’ve never been asked to participate in a poll. (I don’t have a home phone, so my opinion is automatically ineligible.) Plus, in these polls you can only pick one candidate, so we can’t really tell who else you are considering.

The good news is we have a freely accessible tool that represents the average Calgarian perfectly: Facebook.

The site’s demographics are almost exactly the same as Calgary’s. (Yes, people over the age of 45 do use the networking site, making up about 35 per cent of its users, while 34.4 per cent of Calgarians fall into this demographic.)

On Facebook you can tell who is considering multiple candidates — they are a “fan” of several. You can also tell who doesn’t care — they haven’t joined any candidate’s page. It takes everyone into account. More importantly, you can gauge each campaign’s momentum.

On Facebook it’s clear that Ric McIver is in the lead, and has been for some time. However, what is also clear is that his support has flatlined.

Naheed Nenshi and Barb Higgins, meanwhile, are gaining a following at a rate no other candidate has come close to sustaining. But will either of them have enough time to overtake McIver’s lead before election day? If the current trend continues, the answer for Nenshi is “yes,” and the answer for Higgins is “no.” Things can change over the next 45 days, however so I wouldn’t count either out.

It is also surprising that there is a very clear fourth candidate in this race. Kent Hehr is plodding along at a growth rate similar to the candidates below him, but he has almost double the “fans.”

However, he’s got a long way to go to catch up with the Big 3.

Everyone else has some soul-searching to do. If you can’t even drum up support on Facebook, I’m not confident you’ll be able to bring citizens together after you’re elected.

Original: http://www.metronews.ca/calgary/local/article/622474–writing-s-on-the-facebook-wall

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Tags: Calgary, Metro Column, Politics
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We now stand at 17 mayoral candidates. Obviously only one of them will be our next mayor.

Several of them probably represent your view of what you’d like Calgary to be. But how do you decide who has a serious chance at winning – and should get your vote – and to which candidate would your vote be a throw-away?

Polls are one way to find out what other Calgarians are thinking. I don’t know about you, but I’ve never been asked to participate in a poll. (I don’t have a home phone, so my opinion is automatically ineligible.) Plus, in these polls you can only pick one candidate, so we can’t really tell who else you are considering.

The good news is we have a freely accessible tool that represents the average Calgarian perfectly: Facebook.

The site’s demographics are almost exactly the same as Calgary’s. (Yes, people over the age of 45 do use the networking site, making up about 35 per cent of its users, while 34.4 per cent of Calgarians fall into this demographic.)

On Facebook you can tell who is considering multiple candidates — they are a “fan” of several. You can also tell who doesn’t care — they haven’t joined any candidate’s page. It takes everyone into account. More importantly, you can gauge each campaign’s momentum.

On Facebook it’s clear that Ric McIver is in the lead, and has been for some time. However, what is also clear is that his support has flatlined.

Naheed Nenshi and Barb Higgins, meanwhile, are gaining a following at a rate no other candidate has come close to sustaining. But will either of them have enough time to overtake McIver’s lead before election day? If the current trend continues, the answer for Nenshi is “yes,” and the answer for Higgins is “no.” Things can change over the next 45 days, however so I wouldn’t count either out.

It is also surprising that there is a very clear fourth candidate in this race. Kent Hehr is plodding along at a growth rate similar to the candidates below him, but he has almost double the “fans.”

However, he’s got a long way to go to catch up with the Big 3.

Everyone else has some soul-searching to do. If you can’t even drum up support on Facebook, I’m not confident you’ll be able to bring citizens together after you’re elected.

Original: http://www.metronews.ca/calgary/local/article/622474–writing-s-on-the-facebook-wall

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Tags: Calgary, Metro Column, Politics
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“Wilful blindness is a great trait of Albertans. It’s what gets us to where we need to be – regardless of what the headlines from the East tell us we should be doing.” by Marzena Czarnecka Adam Pekarsky has a secret life. By day, he’s an aggressive and ambitious legal recruiter. But by night, he’s quietly and carefully [...]

Tags: Calgary, Next Up, Politics
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How many of the 2010 mayoral candidates have you met so far?

You’re in the majority if you said none.

Rest assured, candidates are trying their best to fix that. At least, a few are.

With the summer festival season ending this weekend, the biggest opportunity for candidates to meet you is officially ending, too.

Kent Hehr (with his balloons for the kids) and Naheed Nenshi (with his bright purple signs and t-shirts) were likely the busiest during the season, attending all the major festivals. Wayne Stewart’s volunteers were out in full force handing out brochures, while Bob Hawkesworth was out at some festivals doing the same.

Barb Higgins, Paul Hughes and Ric McIver weren’t big into having a booth and instead chose to fly under the radar by walking the street talking to people they bumped into. (McIver did have a booth at Kensington’s Sun and Salsa, but packed up and left early.)

Craig Burrows chose a different tactic with his “100 communities in 100 days” RV. Many know him only from seeing that big blue and yellow camper.

But those heady days of summer are behind us. Candidates have had their moment in the sun — literally. If they haven’t got a full head of steam by now, it will be a struggle to win the race.

They’ll still try to get your attention by attending events, mostly forums and debates. But this format doesn’t provide much time for one-on-one interaction.

They’ll spend money on impersonal computerized phone calls. They’ll spend time slowly going door-to-door in your neighbourhood or having volunteers make equally time-consuming personal calls. They’ll figure out that Twitter and Facebook really are good places to have conversations with Calgarians.

But most of all, they’ll realize the best opportunities to meet us face to face are gone. And they’ll have to wrestle with whether they have proven they know how to listen to Calgarians when it’s most convenient.

Original: http://www.metronews.ca/calgary/local/article/613438–sun-setting-on-face-to-face-time

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Are you sick of hearing about Ric McIver and Barb Higgins yet? This week, I did a few media interviews on the candidates’ use of social media.

Following one interview, the cameraman wanted to get images of the different websites they were using. I started by showing him some of the sites that I thought were done well. He then asked to see more from McIver and Higgins.

I took him to McIver’s Flickr page. It hadn’t been updated in over a year. I took him to Higgins’s Twitter feed. Not one conversation. These were bad examples, but it’s what he wanted footage of.

I was disappointed he didn’t want to see more from those who were doing it well. Instead he and I had fallen into the two-candidate trap.

So far there are 13 candidates running for mayor, and another 56 running for alderman.

It’s hard to get to know that many people well enough to be able to decide who you trust the most to ensure you have the services from the City you want, at a price you can afford.
And so the two-candidate trap was created.

It’s much easier to only focus on two options. This or that. The American system has been perfected in this manner. Republican or Democrat, those are your only real options.

The problem is, the two-candidate trap is a self-fulfilling prophecy. Once the two main options are selected, all others suffer.

But why were McIver and Higgins the two selected to be talked about? The answer is simple: name recognition.

Admit it, when Barb Higgins entered the race you immediate said to yourself, “I know who she is. I think she’d be a lovely/terrible mayor.”

Did you have the same thought when Wayne Stewart entered the race? I’m guessing no, simply because you didn’t know who he was.

But this is not high school. We shouldn’t be selecting our leadership based on popularity.

Calgarians are smart enough to pick a Council based on their ideas for Calgary.

I challenge you, the next time a conversation about the election pops up at the office or the dining room table, to not just talk about the candidates you already know, but to chat about Craig Burrows or Kent Hehr or Naheed Nenshi or Bob Hawkesworth. What makes them better (or worse) than the big two?

Yes, you’re going to have to go learn something about them first.

I also challenge the media to give us the chance to learn about those candidates by not taking the lazy way out and falling into the two-candidate trap.

We’re adults. We can handle more than two options.

Original article: http://www.metronews.ca/calgary/local/article/607813–broaden-your-voting-horizons

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Tags: Calgary, Metro Column, Politics
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