Alberta Business Marketing

Last week our team from Ulistic met with the great folks at MSP University in Garden Grove, California.  Together, we started to carve out what will become an awesome relationship.  MSPU is one of the leading managed services firms globally and the clients they work with are market leaders and enjoy the fruits of the hard work. I have personally known Erick Simpson and Gary Beechum for a number of years, they are rock solid guys and the entire team at MSPU is built on the same core values Gary and Erick bring to the table.

During our chat last week we got looking at Facebook Marketing and how businesses can leverage Facebook to market their offerings.  It is no secret that Facebook is growing.  Their recent partnership with Microsoft BING has shot Facebook up to the 6th most popular search engine.  One in Four page views on the Internet is Facebook related and the average person spends anywhere from 10 minutes to an hour on Facebook each day.  Still many question Facebook’s effectiveness in the market place.

During our time with MSPU, a number of ideas were discussed, but it was this fact amongst all the others that kind of surprised me when I stumbled upon it.  There are almost as many Facebook users in California that what there is in the entire country of Canada.   This is no secret really, we have heard for years that there are just as many people in one state in the US than what we have in Canada.  15.4 million Facebook users in Canada and almost 15.5 in the entire state of California.  What does this mean for business?

Does marketing on Facebook now make sense to your business?

If you look at the numbers closely, the 15 million or so folks from either California or Canada represent about 50% of the population.  That represents a good portion of the Canadian or Californian landscape uses Facebook.  Pretty impressive.

Are you leveraging this to get your message out there?
How can you use Facebook to market your business?

There are many ways to do this from Pay-Per-Click or Pay-Per-Impression ads, Facebook Pages and regular interaction with people.  Engagement with folks on Facebook, talking with your community, the people in your network and simply serving the market.

Do you need to know more about how to create a Fan Page that sings?
Want to know how to engage with Facebook?

I invite you to reach out and let’s have a chat about how you can use Facebook right now.

There are a number of opportunities and Facebook can be another important channel for you to help with your marketing.  You know the old saying about LOCATION, LOCATION, LOCATION or what Wayne Gretzky has always said “skate to where the puck is going, not where it is”.

Need a hand to figure it out…visit my Execute On Facebook or Marketing On Facebook page and take the first step in creating a marketing strategy for Facebook today.

Tags: Blog software, Business Partnership, California, canada, Criticism of Facebook, Erick Simpson, Facebook, Facebook features, Facebook Inc, Garden Grove, Gary Beechum, Human Interest, LOCATION LOCATION LOCATION, Microsoft BING, MSP University, Online social networking, search engine, Social information processing, Technology/Internet, United States, wayne gretzky, web 2.0, World Wide Web
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Join David and I as we review “Producing Your Own YouTube Videos for Business” This Ulistic webinar will explore the compelling reasons why delaying an Internet marketing video strategy online may leave you in the dust on search results.

Our team from Ulistic will discuss some of the tools necessary to produce semi-professional video and how to do basic editing for the web. Finally we will review creation of your YouTube channel and how to post your new videos.  Tune in and invest an hour on how to step up your online marketing today.

Take ownership of your online video marketing. The trend of Internet delivered video is here, are you ready?

Then finally we will briefly discuss optimization of your Video to help it perform on the Worlds second most frequented search engine – Youtube.

Register online today – Producing Your Own YouTube Videos for Business webinar.  Live Noon Eastern/9 AM Pacific on July 12, 2010.

Tags: Business/Finance, Entertainment/Culture, frequented search engine, Internet, online video marketing, search engine, search results, Subtitling, Technology/Internet, Video hosting, web 2.0, World Wide Web, youtube, YouTube Inc
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A full onslaught war is brewing online between Google and Microsoft.  For those military friends…forces are assembling and loading the mags.  As a career Microsoft Partner (Ulistic is a Microsoft Partner) who wandered away from the mother ship for a while I am starting to slowly move some of my day-to-day technology use back my colleagues from Redmond.  I am very excited about the upcoming Microsoft Office 2011 for the Mac and interested in learning more about what Microsoft has to offer online through there Office Cloud.

My friends at CRN Canada recently reported that the new Microsoft Office Cloud (get Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote online) has been opened up to Microsoft SkyDrive clients as a response to Google slamming the Redmond software powerhouse a few weeks ago urging Office users to switch to Google Apps.  Microsoft Office Cloud solutions is a  free Web-based Office applications, dubbed Web Apps, gives users access to Web version so Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote. Web Apps has been in beta for roughly nine months but no Outlook or email client.  Maybe Microsoft still wants people to use Windows Mail or some other mail solution.  Microsoft claims that Office online will work exactly like the desktop version…looking forward to testing it out on June 15, 2010.

Prepare the forces, a war is brewing on another front between Microsoft and Google.

I wonder how it will work with Safari on the iPad?

I am sure readers of this blog can go and find examples of where I praised Google and their Apps solution as a suitable replacement to Office.  I gave Google Apps and Google Doc an honest attempt in my early days at Ulistic but since those days I really missed the functionality Microsoft’s productivity solutions and I recently moved back to Office.  Electing to go with Office 2008 on my MacBook and now I rarely use Google’s online apps.  The move back was brought on simply by a lack of simple and common features that Microsoft offers that are nowhere to be seen in Google Apps.  Simple features that may not mean much to the average user but this power user who requires basic functionality to work noticed.

Sure my email is hosted with Google on the back-end, as a mail platform Google is pretty good for $50 per year.  However you really need a mail client.  I have elected to go back to my MacMail which is a good mail platform on the MacBook.  But nothing beats the look and feel of a robust email client (something I miss by not having Microsoft Outlook) and with Office 2011 bringing in the powerful Outlook application that will be a wonderful upgrade from Entourage.

But, who should you trust with your data.  Do you trust Google or Microsoft?  You will get a chance on June 15 to test drive Microsoft Web Apps and compare to Google.  Both solutions are free for you to test out or use.  Give it a chance…but keep in mind where the data is housed.  Web solutions normally offer storage and the Microsoft offering with SkyDrive or Google both supply a limited amount of data storage as part of the free offering.

It will be interesting to see what happens.

For those who are concerned on what is missing:

1.  Booking meetings across multiple time zones (calendaring)

2.  Page breaks (Google Docs vs. Word)

3.  Smart Art (Google Docs vs. PowerPoint)

For the record…I still love my MacBook..but need Office to survive!

Tags: apps, Apps solution, Cloud applications, cloud computing, Computing, day-to-day technology use, Everything as a service, File hosting, free Web-based Office applications, google, google apps, Google Docs, Google Inc., mail solution, microsoft, Microsoft Corporation, microsoft office, microsoft outlook, Microsoft Windows, online apps, presentation software, productivity solutions, software powerhouse, Technology/Internet, USD, web 2.0, Web Apps, Web solutions, Web version, Windows Live SkyDrive
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Sometimes you just gotta hit the delete key!

That is what I did today, I  dumped the my entire inbox into the Trash of my Google Mail account.

Boy, what a relief and a huge amount of stress taken is now gone.  Nothing like having a tonne of email first thing in the day to get the stress level up.

Have you declared email bankruptcy?

How did you feel the next time you opened your email to see nothing in your inbox?

Tags: Computing, Cross-platform software, E-mail, Gmail, Google Inc., Internet, Stuart's ramblings, web 2.0, World Wide Web
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I am flowing a very interesting discussion on one of my LinkedIn groups which focuses on Social Media.  The question raised by one of our members was on “what makes or what qualifications does a social media administrator require?”  Interesting question since the person asking the question has a title of “Certified Social Media Strategist”.  I was shocked to hear that there is actually a program for a Certified Social Media Strategist.  It is provided by Social Media Academy.  Very interesting.

Back to the question at hand, what skills or requirements does a social media administrator need to have?

Does business acumen matter?

How about a marketing degree or equivalent career history?

What risks does your business take by having someone who doesn’t get it?

I believe that alignment with the overall marketing strategy of the business is crucial, social media doesn’t stand on its own for many companies.  It is very important but the company can’t rest everything on the modern tools of the day.  Most businesses today who are looking at or implementing social media are not dumping their existing or proven marketing or communication activities.  The successful organizations continue to send postcards, making phone calls and hosting meetings. Their social media activities play a supporting role in many of the activities of the corporation including marketing, corporate communications, customer support and forming strong business networks.

Alignment is critical to the overall success of social media into your business.  Does your social media administrator need to understand where they stand in the pecking order?

Social Media is just another spoke in the wheel of your business.

What about maturity, is this important? Would you rather have someone who has a proven track record in your industry or someone new.  Everyone has to start somewhere but when it comes to maturity I mean you don’t want to risk having someone, regardless of age, tweeting what they had for breakfast on your company Twitter account.

Is social media deeper than Facebook and Twitter? What is the depth of knowledge of your social media administrator?  Do they have press contacts or know where the industry or your clients go to research information?  Is your administrator’s depth of Social Media knowledge stop at Facebook or Twitter?

How about thinking out of the box? In other words, creativity!  Can your social media administrator come up with creative solutions to enhance your company’s reputation or ability to serve your clients better?

What about the size of their ears? Well, not physically.  Can they listen to what is going on around then.  What is happening in the marketplace?  How about understand what news Bloomberg is reporting and what it means to the organization.  Can they listen and then approach the leadership to formulate a response or plan to seize opportunities which may exist.

Lots of stuff to consider.

If you would like to engage with the Social Media group on LinkedIn and our discussion, click here.

Tags: administrator, Blog hosting services, Bloomberg L.P., Business/Finance, Certified Social Media Strategist, creative solutions, Facebook, Facebook Inc, linkedin, LinkedIn Ltd, Online social networking, Social information processing, Social Issues, social media, Social Media Academy, social media administrator, Social Media Strategist, Social Media Ventures Inc, The Facebook Era, Twitter, Twitter Inc, web 2.0, World Wide Web
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