By Francis Moran.
FounderFuel participants enjoy a pizza lunch
When I first learned of FounderFuel, the Montreal-based accelerator program developed by the folks at Real Ventures, I asked if I could be part of their mentor program. I was pretty up front about what I was looking for; we had been writing a fair bit about accelerators and I wanted the chance to see the process from the inside even if, like sausages, you should never look too closely at how some things are made. Because Real Ventures focuses its investments on companies in web, mobile and digital media, none of which are really my sandbox, I didn’t think I’d be the most useful mentor they recruited so I was pretty chuffed when they let me in with the first cohort and delighted that they asked me back for the second. The truth is, many of the companies in the first and, now, especially the second cohort are working in areas where my experience has some relevance and I’ve enjoyed the work with these teams of young entrepreneurs.
I stepped up that contribution a bit yesterday when I put on a class looking at the basics involved in developing a marketing strategy. It was the shallowest of dives into the planning process as I tried to skim over in an hour what it usually takes me several weeks of work to bring a client through. Still, attendance at the session was pretty good, the questions were excellent, and it was only the necessity of catching my train home that obliged me to put a halt to the one-on-one consultations I had with several of the teams that could have gone on for some time.
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By Alexandra Reid
Outsourcing community management is a cost-effective way for companies to run successful social media programs even if they don’t have the internal social media resources to support such activities on their own.
Sometimes a company’s marketing department is in the midst of developing internal resources and engages with a third-party community manager to provide strategic and practical guidance to help them get their footing before taking over social media activities later on.
Other times, a company is too small or new to have its own marketing department, but realizes the benefits of social media as a relatively inexpensive marketing program. It hires an experienced, external community manager to run its program, saving the cost-heavy training and trial-and-error activities required to learn the platforms on its own.
Here at Francis Moran and Associates, I am responsible for developing social media strategies and also, if clients require, carrying out those strategies on their behalf. I’ve done this for large enterprises based right here in Ottawa as well as tiny startups located as far away as the U.K. Regardless of how much space there is between agency and client, the processes required to carry out successful outsourced social media activities are the same.
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By Alexandra Reid
As a regular weekly feature, we are going to provide our readers with a round-up of some of the best articles we have read in the past week. On the podium this week are CIRA, Globe and Mail, Financial Post, Next Montreal and MarketingSherpa.
CIRA2012 Factbook
This Factbook, published by the Canadian Internet Registration Authority (and written by our own Francis Moran), provides a fascinating overview of the domain name industry both globally and here in Canada.
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By Alexandra Reid
Facebook has announced that it will roll out new brand pages on March 30. However, businesses and organizations already active on Facebook can take the tour and publish their new pages now. This presents an opportunity for social media marketers to prepare content for new pages according to new features and specifications prior to the mandatory upgrade.
The layout of Facebook’s new pages is different from the current one in a number of ways and page users who have not prepared their content for the new format may see their once beautiful pages butchered. Please do yourself a favour and take the necessary steps outlined in this post to ensure your page and content strategy are perfect before the deadline. If you need a kick in the butt to get you moving, turn on your preview for the new page design by clicking the green button at the top of your page to see the horror of what an ill-prepared page looks like.
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This is the fourth article in a continuing monthly series chronicling the growth path of Genevolve Vision Diagnostics, a life sciences startup based in Albuquerque, NM that is commercializing cutting edge genetic research to develop new diagnostic tests and gene therapies for colour blindness.
By Francis Moran and Leo Valiquette
Sometimes, you need to take a step back to get two steps ahead.
In the almost two months since we last touched base with Matt Lemelin, CEO of Genevolve Vision Diagnostics, this has certainly proven to be the case.
Genevolve was planning to make a big splash at the annual meeting of the American Academy for Pediatric Ophthalmology and Strabismus this month. An impressive showing here could spark the endorsement and early adoption from the broader medical community Genevolve needs to kick start the process for qualifying its Eyedox Genetic Test for Color Vision for insurance reimbursement. However, Lemelin decided to pull out of the show and refocus on the largest industry show of the year – the annual meeting of the American Academy of Ophthalmology taking place in Chicago in November.
“The stars are not aligning as planned for our launch,” he said. “We have had delays on the science side. A major challenge lies in, for a lack of a better word ‘transferring’ the test collateral from the research side to a commercial entity so that it works flawlessly. This has turned out to be quite a challenge. It is imperative to release a perfect product to preserve our reputation.”
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Tribal marketing
March 13, 2012 by Bob Bailly
My recent posts have looked at how our evolutionary past has shaped our modern business behaviour. Recently I looked at the desire to live and work in a tribal setting – a feeling so powerful that many of our business practices are based upon a tribe’s primitive […]
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Why I find the Stop Kony 2012 campaign so offensive
March 12, 2012 by Francis Moran
I first became aware of the Stop Kony 2012 campaign late on Wednesday evening and, from my very first viewing of the video, I had a sharp visceral objection to what I was watching […]
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The keys to delivering a killer pitch
March 09, 2012 by Martin Soorjoo
By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail
– Benjamin Franklin […]
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Startup Weekend coming to Ottawa
March 08, 2012 by Francis Moran
Ottawa is about to finally get its own edition of Startup Weekend, a global phenomenon that has seen more than 45,000 technical and business people come together in more than 200 separate events around the world to spend a full weekend building new businesses […]
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February Roundup: What does it take to bring technology to market?
March 06, 2012 by admin
We kicked off the second year of our new blog with a strong month of posts that covered a wide range of topics including leadership, content marketing, SEO, Pinterest for B2B businesses, trademarks, free tools […]
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Yeah, I am trying to get a product to market
March 05, 2012 by Leo Valiquette
For 12 years I have worked as a business journalist and marketing and public relations professional. In these roles I have engaged with a horde of entrepreneurs, executives, investors and other ink-stained wretches who would rather write about corporate stars than movie stars […]
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Yikes … we forgot the demo!
March 01, 2012 by Peter Hanschke
The ability to demo your product to a prospect is a key activity in the sales process. Prospects struggle to make the connection between what is shown in a slide deck and the issues that they need to address or the problems they need to solve […]
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A timely post about succession planning in PR
February 29, 2012 by Linda Forrest
In the modern age of wikis and intranets, there’s no excuse for your PR program to fall apart when there’s a change in personnel […]
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