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 »

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 »

There has been a large amount of buzz, articles and info. on businesses getting into mobile. In the last couple of weeks I have personally attended two conferences that had mobile as one of their key topics of discussion. My thoughts come from an article that I just read and will include with this post – about the fashion business and how that industry can make the most of mobile commerce. Coming from the fashion business as my first career it triggered some thoughts.

Most of us, even those of us who still do not have smart phones own phones that provide cameras, texting and email. We take those phones with us everywhere and use them as a beacon to stay connected, informed and give us the answers to the info. we need immediately. This simple deduction makes mobile a key player in how we live our lives day to day. For those that have a smart phone such as myself – apps are a key way to get information from brands, products and services we use and evangelize and keep customers  informed. In some cases these apps allow the purchase of products from a mobile device, other apps provide updates about sales, events, promotions and new product launches. It makes sense in the retail world that finding ways to leverage mobile commerce should be high on the marketing budget and strategy list. Read the rest of this entry »

This morning I attended an event hosted by IBM. The topic of the half day conference was The Future of Interactive Technologies. I decided to title today’s post as The Future of Interactive Technologies is NOW. Why? As I sat beside many businesses – both retailers and suppliers such as myself – many of these business on the retail side or B-C sector, are just starting to implement their social media strategy. For me the future is now. Every business needs to be involved in finding ways to engage and build their tribe/community – as so aptly written – by one of my marketing guru’s Seth Godin. There were some great stats about the trends of social media, the emergence and importance of mobile and of course the value and power that is now wielded by your customer. Over the last 3 years we have written about all of these topics. The power of the brand ambassador, the idea that they are talking about you whether you are there or not, understanding how your target market wants to communicate and then focusing on those digital tools to engage them and featuring businesses that have been doing social media right. Read the rest of this entry »

One of the ways that companies can be successful with a  ROI via onine initiatives – is through search. Search defined as Search Engine Marketing is defined as “a form of Internet marketing that seeks to promote websites by increasing their visibility in search engine result pages (SERPs) through the use of search engine optimization, paid placement, contextual advertising, and paid inclusion.” in Wikipedia.  One of the regular questions we receive from our clients both current and new is what is the next thing? Read the rest of this entry »

These days in marketing – many are looking to mobile and the ipad and how to create apps and mobile campaigns to leverage their social media and marcom campaigns. As a communications company that continues to expand – as one of the few truly global leaders in Canada – we are interested in the power of mobile – not just how we use it here in our day to day life – but how the world is using mobile and the power it has on the global stage. Read the rest of this entry »

One of the wonderful things taking place at BCAD Group - is our expansion plan and addition of new team mates – who are working with us on new and exiting projects as we continue to grow! Every week we are going to feature a guest blogger. Sometimes they will guests that are working with us and on other weeks we will feature a variety of interesting people that we respect and admire to SHARE with you – their thoughts, ideas and opinions on a variety of topics. Read the rest of this entry »

As we begin to eagerly move forward in the last quarter of 2010 – social media is no longer something that is unfamiliar to most. Today via my Twitter feed, I saw a question from Mitch Joel of Twist Media and Author of the book Six Degrees of Separation – that asked
Does complaining about customer service in social media make a difference?

All sizes of companies big and small have lost their leverage with purchasing customers – because the public in many cases has lost trust in brands. These customers who have had information pushed to them for years and years – now have the opportunity and are armed with the information they need about products and services -without the assistance of the companies that produce and offer those products and services. Read the rest of this entry »