Yesterday we met with a couple of people from the mcmillan creative team to come up with a few things but most interstingly a video which we hope will spread across the world-wide-web not only because of its message but also because of its creativity.
The mcmillan agency is one of the premier ad and marketing agencies in Canada (in my opinion, anyway). They have a very different way of looking at things and come up with ideas that are leaps and bounds above competitors. Now, granted you're going to pay big bucks for this kind of creative genius but it's worth it. Their work has won numerous awards and if you watch any of the videos on the mainpage of their website, http://www.mcmillanagency.com/, you'll see why.
Not only will they take on the creative elements of a project or program they'll outline an entire communications and social media strategy around it! I don't know yet what they've got up their sleeve based on the minutia of information we gave them but I can't wait to find out. Our next meeting is probably going to be in a couple weeks and hopefully we'll have another good dialogue. And we'll all be inspired to tredge forward.
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Showing posts with label strategies. Show all posts
Showing posts with label strategies. Show all posts
April 19, 2011
Social Media Breakfast
This morning my boss and I attended the Social Media Breakfast on Social Media Trends at the Irving Greenberg Theatre Centre; the speaker was Dave Fleet who works at Edelman in Toronto.
For information about SMB check out their site: www.socialmediabreakfast.com/ottawa
For information about Deve Fleet check out: davefleet.com/about
Your can follow both on Twitter, join them on Facebook, see what Dave likes to read on del.icio.us.
Dave's talked focused on the major trends in social media and best practices. Because the session is only an hour and a half (starting at 7:30 am - too early) he flew through a lot of the content but has provided his slides online here.
His website, from what I've seen, is also a huge wealth of information on all things social media and business. If you have the chance to see Dave Fleet speak somewhere GO. He knows what he's talking about and he's got a charming English accent.
But take some coffee if it's a 7:30 am session, he talks so fast it can be hard to follow without it!
For information about SMB check out their site: www.socialmediabreakfast.com/ottawa
For information about Deve Fleet check out: davefleet.com/about
Your can follow both on Twitter, join them on Facebook, see what Dave likes to read on del.icio.us.
Dave's talked focused on the major trends in social media and best practices. Because the session is only an hour and a half (starting at 7:30 am - too early) he flew through a lot of the content but has provided his slides online here.
His website, from what I've seen, is also a huge wealth of information on all things social media and business. If you have the chance to see Dave Fleet speak somewhere GO. He knows what he's talking about and he's got a charming English accent.
But take some coffee if it's a 7:30 am session, he talks so fast it can be hard to follow without it!
Workshop Day
So today I went to an IABC Workshop called Evaluation Bootcamp lead by Caroline Kealy. For those of you unfamiliar, the IABC is the International Association of Business Communicators.
The session had absolutely nothing to do with social media but it was brilliant nonetheless. I am so pleased to find out that I'm not alone in the canoe with the hole. Regardless of the size of the communications departments we're all facing the same problems - time! The communications department at my organization consists of me, myself and I and I'm running into the same problems as companies with communications departments with hundreds of staff. Which is both pleasantly surprising (because I'm managing to survive) as well as a little disheartening (it may never get better).
A consent theme during the workshop was that many of us in communications have the evil time monster gnawing at us. We have only enough time and resources to create and launch our programs/initiatives but no time to evaluate their success. It brings to mind the idea of Santa's elves building toys, wrapping them up beautifully, throwing them out the window and starting again.
What Caroline pointed out in her talk is that we need to be vigilant when building our communications strategies to incorporate elements that are easily measureable and create benchmarks in the planning phase, thus making evaluation less of a tedious task.
AGREED!
The best part of the workshop was the easy to use templates Caroline provided and the links on her website, Ingenium Communications.
Evaluations is not such a big scary word anymore. Strategic development on the other hand ...... don't get me started ☺
The session had absolutely nothing to do with social media but it was brilliant nonetheless. I am so pleased to find out that I'm not alone in the canoe with the hole. Regardless of the size of the communications departments we're all facing the same problems - time! The communications department at my organization consists of me, myself and I and I'm running into the same problems as companies with communications departments with hundreds of staff. Which is both pleasantly surprising (because I'm managing to survive) as well as a little disheartening (it may never get better).
A consent theme during the workshop was that many of us in communications have the evil time monster gnawing at us. We have only enough time and resources to create and launch our programs/initiatives but no time to evaluate their success. It brings to mind the idea of Santa's elves building toys, wrapping them up beautifully, throwing them out the window and starting again.
What Caroline pointed out in her talk is that we need to be vigilant when building our communications strategies to incorporate elements that are easily measureable and create benchmarks in the planning phase, thus making evaluation less of a tedious task.
AGREED!
The best part of the workshop was the easy to use templates Caroline provided and the links on her website, Ingenium Communications.
Evaluations is not such a big scary word anymore. Strategic development on the other hand ...... don't get me started ☺
Allowing for the dialogue
(I'm going to rant, I'm a bit frustrated.)
I think I mentioned in a previous post that the organization I work for has jumped on the band wagon and created a Facebook fan page. As the administrator of this page I'm running into some difficulties with some executive members of our Association who don't want to see the page opened up to the public for commenting.
I have a problem with this because the whole reason for social media is to engage with people, to start those dialogues and foster a spirit of trust and credibility in the organization. But we (the royal one) can't do that if people can't make comments to post content. It's how you respond to those comments (positive or negative) that people will appreciate and how quickly you can put out any fires should they happen. Why is it that some people are so fearful of change?? I'm just starting to get my feet wet when it comes to social media but even I understand the necessity for dialogue and feedback.
In any event, I'm going to continue to plead my case in hopes that the executives see "the light" as it were and move forward with me, knowing that strategies are in place to deal with any tricky situations before they happen. (I've found that having a communications crisis strategy in place before a crisis occurs to be super handy. Not only for the "what to do" aspect but also in making change happen.)
Rant over. Again sorry.
I think I mentioned in a previous post that the organization I work for has jumped on the band wagon and created a Facebook fan page. As the administrator of this page I'm running into some difficulties with some executive members of our Association who don't want to see the page opened up to the public for commenting.
I have a problem with this because the whole reason for social media is to engage with people, to start those dialogues and foster a spirit of trust and credibility in the organization. But we (the royal one) can't do that if people can't make comments to post content. It's how you respond to those comments (positive or negative) that people will appreciate and how quickly you can put out any fires should they happen. Why is it that some people are so fearful of change?? I'm just starting to get my feet wet when it comes to social media but even I understand the necessity for dialogue and feedback.
In any event, I'm going to continue to plead my case in hopes that the executives see "the light" as it were and move forward with me, knowing that strategies are in place to deal with any tricky situations before they happen. (I've found that having a communications crisis strategy in place before a crisis occurs to be super handy. Not only for the "what to do" aspect but also in making change happen.)
Rant over. Again sorry.
February 17, 2011
Social Media Conference
The opportunity presented itself to attend a social media confernece at the end of March in Toronto and I'm jumping in head first. The conference is called Social Media, Networking and Technology Summit in case anyone is interested in checking it out as well; link.
The conference is being put on by the Canadian Society of Association Executives (CSAE) and it's all about how Associations can make use of social media platforms like Twitter, Facebook, Foursquare, etc to most effectively engage people. It's going to be two days with fairly intensive knowledge transfer, which is going to include case studies about those who are doing in right and those who are failng miserably. I am hoping my organization doesn't pop up in the failing miserably category.
I think for the most part the conference will help me to build a social media strategy which will work even with my limited familiarity with most platforms. Hopefully, if I build a strategy that mirrors one that has proven to work it will, in a sense, buy me some time to learn the rest of my way around.
My boss has said that her vision for our association's strategy is to align ourselves favourably with a structure that is already working for a sister society but ultimately learn all we can to position ourselves ahead of the curve. My boss hopes to see us in the next coming years as the leaders in social media within the medical community. The group that all others look to.
To me these sound like fairly lofty goals, especially seeing as we are getting into the game on the later side of things.
The conference is being put on by the Canadian Society of Association Executives (CSAE) and it's all about how Associations can make use of social media platforms like Twitter, Facebook, Foursquare, etc to most effectively engage people. It's going to be two days with fairly intensive knowledge transfer, which is going to include case studies about those who are doing in right and those who are failng miserably. I am hoping my organization doesn't pop up in the failing miserably category.
I think for the most part the conference will help me to build a social media strategy which will work even with my limited familiarity with most platforms. Hopefully, if I build a strategy that mirrors one that has proven to work it will, in a sense, buy me some time to learn the rest of my way around.
My boss has said that her vision for our association's strategy is to align ourselves favourably with a structure that is already working for a sister society but ultimately learn all we can to position ourselves ahead of the curve. My boss hopes to see us in the next coming years as the leaders in social media within the medical community. The group that all others look to.
To me these sound like fairly lofty goals, especially seeing as we are getting into the game on the later side of things.
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