Hi Everyone,

It has been months since we have put a post on our blog. Not because we didn’t have anything to SHARE or celebrate as there is plenty of that, but rather because the demands of prioritizing as we continue to grow as a company – became our main focus.

As mentioned over the last year, I joined the millions of adults who faced the “unplanned” reality of a parent facing significant illness and the change to their lives and mine was monumental.

I think we all believe we can do it all and when reality hits you – sometimes we need to rethink “what doing it all means“. For me it has meant being the best daughter I could be first. Second it meant helping our clients understand, create and implement social/digital strategy and tactics to meet their business objectives and establish meaningful relationships with their customers.

Some may perceive this absence – to be a lack of savvy or klout for us as a business or a company. Others may have thought we dropped out of the game. Neither could be further from the truth! Marketing guru Scott Stratten often tweets on Twitter as @unmarketing -  the idea that one is better to post nothing on a blog, then to post something that is not of value.

What is amazing about substance – is that we began this blog in November 2008. That was almost 4 years ago and right out of the gate I began writing about social media and digital strategy. At that time, all the clients I visited were curious to listen to what I had to say – but none of them were ready to take the chance and test it out. The information over that span of time shared on our blog and website is now relevant and used by many companies and businesses to meet their objectives and establish honest and true relationships with their customers. Funny, that it is now a mandate for all businesses to be engaging social media as a marketing strategy – for success!

From that perspective, the content, opinions, ideas and many examples from the many posts over an almost four year period are well worth the read! We encourage you to look back and see what we had to say then and see how that information matches up to your goals and needs now.

As the summer comes to a close – we look forward to once again becoming engaged and active by continuing to lead the way with ideas, opinions and new styles of engaging and encouraging you – to leverage social media and digital channels to meet your business objectives.

Thanks always for all your support!

Best Nicole

I have been writing for almost 4 years now about the power of social media. With Linkedin’s success on their IPO – shares closed at Thursday’s closing price of $94, it’s trading at 36 times its 2010 revenue; Google trades at five times.

This legitimizes the power and success of social media and re-enforces for all businesses – it is time to get into the game. It also points to many other big companies, Canada’s major retailer The Bay is rumored to be looking at an IPO for the fall. But how are these retailers leveraging the power of social media – as they step into the future in their marketing and continue to engage  their customers? Read the rest of this entry »

I tweeted the other day Digitally creative, innovative, design savvy, experiential , savvy to the user experience, agile, hungry = creative tech agency – So what does this mean and or refer to?

I was thinking about our small boutique agency. As we continue to grow and create successful campaigns for our clients, we work to carve out a space for those companies who greatly desire our skill, expertise, creative tech skills & bandwidth -while meeting and exceeding their objectives. Yes and keeping the money in their pockets with low cost innovation and implementation and high returns. Some believe the more “likers” and followers you have the better success you will be – yet they forget that it is quality not quantity you want via information and engagement. There is today no accident that your neighbor, former high school teacher, doctor, dentist and boss former & current are all on Facebook. (Yes we may all want to take an extra minute to review our privacy settings) It means that all the brands you can think of, businesses, products and services know we are all there too and they are looking for new marcom partners and business advisers to help them reach all of us. Both online and offline. It will be those such as ourselves with a wealth of award winning traditional talent and  savvy experiential technical talent – who clearly understand and can translate that user experience – on an array of platforms, that will help you knock it out of the park- in reaching that customer in the place you desire to have them go. Read the rest of this entry »

Google Canada tweeted this week that there are 2 million business in Canada and 1 million of those businesses are not currently online. Many of the responses to those tweets resulted in how agencies like ours will be very busy – we all hope for that. But more importantly is providing businesses with an understanding of the power -on how to leverage the online tools that include social media, mobile, email, search, linking, video etc. – while not having to drop their current offline communications marketing practices -that these said business feel are successful. Total communications means using the offline marketing initiatives, print, pop, television, radio etc. as tools to leverage your online communications and vise versa. Bridging that gap because both worlds still matter. Read the rest of this entry »

It has been a couple of months since I have posted on our blog. The role of care giver to my father over the last year – has taught me that priorities change, time allows you to do only so much in one day and without your health nothing matters. As he is slowly recovering – I am going to try to get back to posting some of the amazing events this year has to showcase, in the warp speed world of digital tools and social media. I commend all of us out there – who are now adding the role of care giver to the list of tasks and priorities that shape how we live our lives.

Normally I post a link to articles that touch me or incite something that I wanted to talk about and share with our readers. For today I am going to post an article that I though was important as more businesses focus on how to market to women. Most of us are familiar with TED Talks. I have posted many of them on this blog over the last few yrs.  Engage Boomers: Media Posts rss feed from today – had a beautiful article written by Stephen Riley who attended the most recent TED Talks. What got me was the line “What Boomer Women Look Like” and the subsequent overview of some of the world’s most powerful women and how they reflect accomplishment – not reflected as a targeted age group – but rather as women making a grand difference around the globe – and as Riley writes “creating goals with a purpose.”
Read the rest of this entry »

I first came across this video last week posted by my friend @alexasamuels and variations of this theme have been roaming on Twitter in the last couple of days. The discussion revolves around the success of social media. P&G made a huge declaration -“The nation’s largest advertiser said it would forgo further involvement with daytime television serials (called “soap operas” because P&G used them to sell soap, dish washing liquid and laundry detergent) in favor of a hefty investment in social media.” I say that is certainly putting a stake in the sand!

As we work to gear up with new campaigns for our clients in 2011 – using a digitally ahead- total communications outlook – leveraging tools like Facebook, Twitter and Youtube do and can work - not only for consumer engagement but to increase sales too! In a great article posted on Brandchannel.com – Going Social: Brands Large and Small Must Adapt to Social Media in 2011, Author Barry Silverstein says” Going social will demand a whole new level of consumer responsiveness from brand marketers – and a whole new way of looking at lead generation and qualifications process. Those who rise to that challenge will have the distinct advantage over their competitors in 2011. Click here to read more of this article.

For us the proof is always in the case studies and examples of success to show how powerful something can become. Everyone by now is familiar with the Old Spice campaign. That campaign garnered 140 million views on Twitter, an increase of Facebook fans of 2700% and 1.2 million Facebook fans. Sales rose 107%, according to Neilsen Data. You can’t get better than that. Here’s a link to a video from CREATIVITY that provides a case study for you to see how it worked so well.

The famed agency Weiden Kennedy knocked it out of the park with this one. What are you gonna do?

Best Nicole

May 2011 be the best year yet for leveraging social media marketing initiatives and experiencing the success we saw with our clients in 2010!

Best Nicole and the BCAD Group Team

The latter part of this year has been difficult to keep up with blog writing. As an ongoing care giver for my 90 yr. old father (yes no cane, wheel chair or walker and living by himself) – helping get him back to health – has turned out to be another small business to run! I am sure there are many of you out there that can relate and for me family is always first. As we get closer to our solution of having him get back to his life…I too will be able to focus on providing you with more regular posts of interesting and thought provoking ideas, opinions and happenings in the world of technology and social media.

Search in the world of technology is the main driver and source of revenue for all of us looking to build our visibility online. “As a marketing strategy, SEO is used to increase a site’s relevance. The SEO recognizes how search organics work and what people are searching for. It also initiates efforts to include unique content to a site to ensure that its content is easily indexed by search engine robots, making it more appealing to users.”

As this year winds down it is important to reflect and see what the past year’s successes, failures, tragedy’s and challenges were- in order to help plan and build enthusiasm, goals and growth for the year ahead. I came across this video via Google Zeitgeist 2010 that provides you with a great overview of the top searches in 2010 around the globe. Great way to get the juices flowing as we all plan to search on in 2011.

2010 in Review

Re-live top events and moments from 2010 from around the globe through search, images, and video.

Enjoy!

Best Nicole

Since we began this blog we have been writing continuously about brand ambassadors and the power behind the people that love and support your brand. In creating an online community – it can be great to find someone with a following and profile related to your product and service – that you can leverage. Someone that can lend some passion, credibility through their following and knowledge of your products or services – that can share with the community you want to build. Read the rest of this entry »