By Francis Moran
Regular readers of this blog will know that I spend a fair bit of time in the Waterloo region where both the buzz and the substance of the startup scene seem to get louder and more solid every day. (And before folks in Ottawa think I’m ignoring my hometown, let me acknowledge the high-energy, very high-volume event at The Hub last night where the Capital Angel Network brought together an extraordinary collection of entrepreneurs, angel investors and an encouraging cross-section of the local ecosystem. I left quite hoarse from all the fantastic conversations I had, many of which revolved around great things happening on the Ottawa scene.)
I spent much of last week in Kitchener-Waterloo, however, and, as always, came away with a bunch of favourable impressions.
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By Leo Valiquette
Back in March I blogged about the striking similarities between an entrepreneur who is trying to bring technology to market and a writer who is attempting to publish a novel. I referenced the fact that I would soon be attending a literary conference, Ad Astra, as part of my business development and self-improvement efforts.
Ad Astra was in fact this past weekend and it is timely to write about the lessons learned from that experience in light of Alex’s post yesterday about the value of face-to-face contact in the age of social media.
Writers, like engineers, programmers and other creative types, often toil away in seclusion. We think we are staying in touch with the world, and the industries or markets in which we hope to sell our products, by using those ubiquitous social media tools. We can follow and contribute to Twitter streams, discussion threads, post comments on walls and read curated newsfeeds. But this is still akin to drifting over the landscape in a hot air balloon and shouting down at the masses below “how’s it going?” when what you really need to do is drop anchor and go see for yourself.
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By Alexandra Reid
I’m a huge advocate of social media and how it helps bridge new relationships and strengthen existing ones, but I think it’s bad practice to rely on it as a sole means of communicating with others.
I’m a community manager today, but my background is in journalism. One of the first lessons I learned from the veteran journalists who were my mentors was the importance of meeting my sources face-to-face. This is because the human face and body reveal huge amounts of information that can’t be received over the telephone or email (social media wasn’t such a hot topic back then). Some information could be subtle, such as false confidence, while other cues could be blatantly obvious, such as a facial tick, shifting eyes or a bouncing knee that could reveal discomfort or even dishonesty. Even the layout of an office, clothing, personal hygiene and other such visual signals could bring more valuable information to a story.
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By Denzil Doyle
It was encouraging to see the emphasis that was placed on innovation in the recent budget and in subsequent discussions with the federal finance minister, Jim Flaherty. On the other hand, it was discouraging to read the cover of Maclean’s Magazine that appeared shortly afterward. It read, “Your kids are angrier than you think.” What was equally discouraging was that neither party made the connection between innovation in the Canadian economy (or lack thereof) and youth unrest.
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By Alexandra Reid
Humans have used images to tell stories for millennia, beginning with the rock art, tree carvings, and even tattoos of our ancient ancestors. Since the birth of the practice, marketers have used images as a powerful communications method for company branding and to influence the purchasing decisions of other businesses as well as mass populations of people. It should therefore come as no surprise that images have recently risen as a focal point in our most modern communications practices.
There’s no doubt that social media is becoming more visual. The rise of Pinterest, new developments at Vimeo, the domination of YouTube, the proliferation of new image sharing tools, and Facebook’s new Timeline developments and recent acquisition of Instagram demonstrate that social sites are both acknowledging and encouraging a more visual web.
As Social Media B2B explains, “Facebook already told us that photos and videos are the most important types of content because they encourage the most engagement.”
“In a general sense, (Facebook’s) acquisition (of Instagram) on the heels of the dramatic growth of Pinterest in the last few months is a massive reflection of just how fast the Social-Stream is becoming visual in nature, meaning evolving social engagement driven purely around visual media, not text — and just how valuable that will inevitably be to every major participant in the social media landscape,” Michael Downing, founder and CEO of social video service Tout, told ReadWriteWeb. “This is a huge endorsement of the shift to the visual web and visual conversation in a social media framework.”
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Learning how to deal with the unexpected
April 12, 2012 by Francis Moran
When we last checked in with Screenreach, the company was in the midst of tweaking the new version of its Screach application for a March 7 launch. The team was well on track and seemed to have all of its ducks in a row. They had found out what their market […]
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Are we getting value for all the money we’re spending on patents?
April 09, 2012 by David French
“How can we find out whether we’re getting value for all the money that we’re spending on patents within the company?” This is a question I’ve heard before, and it’s a tough one to answer […]
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How to municipimp your municipality
April 05, 2012 by Alexandra Reid
Introduced at Social Media Breakfast as the guy Klout calls “authority on shoes,” Ottawa Tourism’s director of digital marketing, Nick Iannitti, is attempting to do what my fellow Ottawans might consider the impossible: change the perception that our beloved city […]
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There were other business-related incentive tidbits in the federal budget
April 04, 2012 by Terry Lavineway
While last week’s federal budget contained widely anticipated changes to the Scientific Research and Experimental Development (SR&ED) tax credit, it also contained many other aspects of funding and incentives to encourage innovation and commercialization […]
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March roundup: What does it take to bring technology to market?
April 03, 2012 by Alexandra Reid
March was an exciting month, full of changes and new developments. In the commercialization ecosystem, all eyes were on the federal and Ontario budgets last week which shook up government investment and spending in Canadian business and innovation. In social […]
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Getting ready for the big show
April 03, 2012 by Francis Moran
Crawford & Co. labels itself as “the world’s largest independent provider of claims management solutions to the risk management and insurance industry.” In other words, it handles insurance claims on behalf of insurers and, with operations in more than 70 countries, it certainly does not lack for scale […]
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Making measurement work for communications professionals
April 02, 2012 by Caroline Kealey
Some words are hard to love, and I have to concede that “data” is one of them. It doesn’t have any magic that makes the heart of a strategic communicator beat faster. But really, it’s so important that we should all learn to love it a little. Why? Because it’s […]
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Great articles roundup: KPIs, avoiding founder failure, email attachments, social media, SWOT & startup customer acquisition
March 30, 2012 by Alexandra Reid
As a regular weekly feature, we provide our readers with a roundup of some of the best articles we have read in the past week. On the podium this week are The Telegraph, On Startups, eMarketer, Guardian, Inc., and Startup North […]
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The Future of A&R – Walabe : [...] http://francis-moran.com/marketing-strategy/top-10-questions-every-strategic-communicator-should-ask... [...]
Traditional Marketing is Dead – Long Live Bikini Waxer Marketing | Scalexl : [...] pointed out by Alexandra Reid on the Francis Moran website content marketing is becoming more and more like journalism. So, it is not just about the content, [...]
It’s Summertime…and the Networking is Easy? | THE MERRAINE BRAIN : [...] In fact, summer is perhaps one of the times least used to network, yet at the same time has shown to be the most productive time to network. People tend to be in a brighter mood compared to during the gloomy winters-especially where I am from in England! Networking needs to be fun and not approached as another chore, like mowing the lawn. (http://francis-moran.com/marketing-strategy/social-media-strategy-why-meeting-in-the-real-world-matt...) [...]