Capulet Communications blogs

Social Media Marketing Bootcamp Heads Back to Calgary

Fri, 25 Sep 2009 04:45:09 +0000

We've had a fantastic month leading Social Media Marketing Bootcamps in BC and Alberta. We've met many creative marketers who are ready to embrace social media and who ask great questions and bring new marketing insights to the full-day workshop. Thanks to all of you who have made the sessions so fun and thought provoking.

And we're not done yet! There was so much interest in Social Media Marketing Bootcamp in Calgary we're heading back over the Rockies next week for sessions on September 29 and October 1.

If you're in Calgary and would like to join us, there are a few spots left on both days. Find out more about bootcamp or register now. We're looking forward to seeing you in Calgary!

I Never Click Ads

Thu, 11 Jun 2009 16:25:47 +0000

During our social media marketing bootcamps and some of the other speaking we do, we briefly cover advertising on the web. The 15-second precis: only spend your money where you can target your audience with razor-like precision, and rapidly measure outcomes. Google AdWords and Facebook ads are two good places to start.

It's right around this time that somebody usually raises their hand and offers some variation of "I'm skeptical about your advice, because I never click online ads".

It's a classic misstep of logic that everybody makes occasionally: "I behave a certain way, so my customers will behave the same way". Its assumptions like these that can limit new ideas about reaching your audience.

I also sometimes encounter a certain snobbishness from tech marketers, who assert that most of their geeky target audiences uses browser-based ad-blockers, rendering online advertising ineffective. As with the above assumption, I encourage them to spend a little money and test that hypothesis. We've had clients who get the lion's share of their annual revenue (which was not insubstantial) through judicious use of Google AdWords.

I guess this is just another blog post about assuming, an ass, you and me, but I encounter the behaviour often enough (and sometimes in myself) that it's worth keeping in mind.

PR Book Club

Thu, 04 Jun 2009 00:45:02 +0000

Last week an email was circulating among some of my PR colleagues discussing which PR and business books we're currently reading. I thought I'd share our top reads with you:

Death Sentences: How Cliches, Weasel Words and Management-Speak Are Strangling Public Language by Don Watson
E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don't Work and What to Do About It by Michael Gerber
Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations by Clay Shirky
Naked Conversations: How Blogs are Changing the Way Businesses Talk with Customers by by Shel Israel and Robert Scoble
The New Rules of Marketing and PR: How to Use News Releases, Blogs, Podcasting, Viral Marketing and Online Media to Reach Buyers Directly by David Meerman Scott
PR! A Social History of Spin by Stuart Ewen
Purple Cow: Transform Your Business by Being Remarkable by Seth Godin
What Would Google Do? by Jeff Jarvis
Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything by Don Tapscott and Anthony D. Williams

Have we missed some good reads? Please let us know which other books should be on our summer reading list.

Don't Miss Social Media Marketing Bootcamp in Victoria on June 4th

Tue, 12 May 2009 23:59:18 +0000

Back by popular demand... after a sold out session in April, we're running another Social Media Marketing Bootcamp in Victoria on June 4th. What's SMM Bootcamp all about?

In this full-day workshop, we'll show communicators and marketers, as well as small business owners, how to add social media into their marketing mix.

We'll discuss the dos and don'ts of social media marketing; look at successful marketing campaigns; introduce the social media tools every marketer should know about; and cover online communications etiquette. You'll learn how to:

Bring more visitors to your website
Increase your company’s visibility online
Approach bloggers and other online influencers about your products and services
Get your website social media ready
Craft a potent social media pitch
Incorporate online channels like Facebook, YouTube and Twitter into your marketing programs
Avoid campaign killers and online faux-pas

Students will leave with:

A copy of our social media marketing ebook, Getting to First Base: A Social Media Marketing Playbook
Templates for creating a social media marketing plan
Templates for creating an influencer database

There will be a session in Victoria on June 4th. The workshop fee is $299 (taxes included).

Want to save $50? Blog about our workshop on your own established (meaning not brand new) site. Don't have a blog? Ask a friend or a local blogger if you can write a guest post for their site.

Vancouver Bloggers Hit the Road with the BC Healthy Living Alliance

Thu, 07 May 2009 04:24:06 +0000

We recently helped to create an online marketing plan for the BC Healthy Living Alliance, an organization that focuses on British Columbians' health. One of their goals is to encourage politicians and citizens to recognize how social determinants affect the health of individuals and communities as a whole.

With the BC provincial election coming up, the BCHLA is encouraging British Columbians to Live Healthy, Vote Healthy: voting for a commitment to improve conditions that impact our health:

Neighbourhoods need certain things to be in place in order for residents to live healthy. In particular, we need safe streets to walk or bike on, parks to play in, affordable recreation, and local stores stocked with affordable veggies and fruits. Access to affordable housing, healthy food, a livable wage, education, early childhood education and recreational opportunities influence our physical and mental health as well as life expectancy.

Social Media Marketing Training in Vancouver and Victoria

Wed, 01 Apr 2009 04:56:34 +0000

Building on the sold-out course we taught for UBC Continuing Education this winter, Capulet is running full-day workshops in Vancouver and Victoria to teach communicators and marketers, as well as small business owners, how to add social media into their marketing mix.

Bring more visitors to your website
Increase your company’s visibility online
Approach bloggers and other online influencers about your products and services
Get your website social media ready
Craft a potent social media pitch
Incorporate online channels like Facebook, YouTube and Twitter into your marketing programs
Avoid campaign killers and online faux-pas

Students will leave with:

A copy of our social media marketing ebook, Getting to First Base: A Social Media Marketing Playbook
Templates for creating a social media marketing plan
Templates for creating an influencer database

There will be sessions in Victoria on April 30, 2009 and Vancouver on May 28, 2009. The workshop fee is $299 (taxes included).

Want to save $50? Blog about our workshop on your own established (meaning not brand new) site. Don't have a blog? Ask a friend or a local blogger if you can write a guest post for their site.

Mixed Reviews from South by Southwest

Thu, 26 Mar 2009 19:16:57 +0000

Last week, we shared some thoughts from the South by Southwest interactive conference on the TechVibes blog. Here's a brief summary of our impressions as first-time South by Southwesters:

Julie: If you didn't already know that social media marketing is the new black, then the huge number of panels on this topic at SXSW would certainly tip you off. The panels had plenty of conflicting advice on how to move marketing and PR to the web--from dropping your email newsletter in favour of Twitter to focusing exclusively on building word-of-mouth marketing programs. While I did not agree with all the touted strategies, it was good to see rooms full of marketers taking this stuff seriously.

Darren: Despite the star-studded line-up (hey, there's Heather Armstrong! There's Hugh McLeod! And so forth), the overall caliber of the panels followed the typical conference curve of average to great. In truth, the quality was not better than smaller technology conferences, like Gnomedex. It's the scope of SXSW that makes the conference unique.

We enjoyed meeting new people and connecting more deeply with aquaintances, but neither of us came away singing the praises of SXSW like we often hear others do.

Julie Joins Social Media Marketing Panel at the Massive Technology Show

Thu, 26 Mar 2009 18:34:24 +0000

I'm looking forward to joining the 'Leveraging Social Media for PR' panel at this year's Massive Technology Show on April 1 at UBC Robson Square.

Want to incorporate social media into your PR strategy? Join us as we cover topics including:

How to use social media to build a brand online
Managing relationships with customers and online influencers
Potential risks to running a social media marketing campaign

Check out a complete overview of the panel.

Hope to see you there.

Thoughts on Gadgetry from SXSW

Wed, 18 Mar 2009 03:02:51 +0000

We're at South by Southwest this week, a huge web, music and film conference in Austin, Texas. The next few posts are some of thoughts from the conference...

I feel like a luddite. Not compared to 'normal' human beings who don't work in the tech sector, but certainly compared to my fellow SXSW attendees. I have an iPhone, I have two blogs, I'm on Facebook and LinkedIn, and I tweet when I come across some interesting tidbit to share. But, am I falling behind?

In almost every SXSW session, people around me are multi-tasking on multiple devices. They're live blogging/live tweeting the session, organizing lunch with friends or just trying to keep up with the 'statosphere'. I, on the other hand, take notes with a notepad and pen. I feel like a dinosaur.

I can't help but wonder if we can really parse so many inputs at once? For instance, I met fewer people at SXSW than I expected because most people were focused on their iPhones instead of chatting with the people around them. Social media is meant to enable relationships, but I wonder if it fractures our attention so much that we're less able to engage in the real world?

Looking for Creative Book Cover Ideas

Thu, 05 Mar 2009 22:14:39 +0000

As you know, we've been busy this year making Getting to First Base: A Social Media Marketing Playbook into a real, grown-up, hard cover book. We're pleased to announce that we've finally titled the book, with the help of our publisher No Starch Press. The title is...

Friends With Benefits:
Online Marketing with Blogs, Facebook, YouTube, and More

We're pretty happy with that title. Plus, you know what they say about sex and sales.

Now it's on to the cover art and we're soliciting ideas from all you creative folks out there. If something fun, compelling or creative pops to mind, please let us know!

See You 'On the Edge'

Wed, 25 Feb 2009 23:11:33 +0000

We're pleased as punch to be speaking at this year's Canadian Public Relations Society's conference, On the Edge, in Vancouver June 7-9, 2009. We'll be covering tips on how to avoid online blunders when marketing to bloggers and online communities.

Here's our session blurb:

Everyone wants to have a strong social media presence but no one wants to commit one of the seven deadly sins of marketing on the social web. Learn how to fool-proof your online marketing campaigns from real world case studies in this session by Darren Barefoot and Julie Szabo. Save yourself some sorrow by learning from the mistakes of others. Julie and Darren will help you avoid campaign killers and online faux pas.

Check out the conference site for more info. If you're going to be there, let us know!

Northern Voice, Better Than Ever

Tue, 24 Feb 2009 22:49:34 +0000

Five years ago, Darren got the idea for Northern Voice in the shower. A handful of Vancouver bloggers got on board and Canada's first personal bogging and publishing conference came into being.

Five years on the conference has continued to grow in numbers and caliber. Last weekend's conference highlights included keynotes by CBC's Nora Young and Stewart Butterfield, the cofounder of Flickr. As a marketer I was also pleased to see sessions that touched on keeping corporate blogs fresh.

For those of you who missed Northern Voice or couldn't get tickets because the event sold out in just three days, all the sessions have been recorded and will be available online for free. We'll give you the heads up when the video is available.

Thanks to the rest of the volunteer organizers and to everyone who attended and made Northern Voice such an exceptional event.

Big Dumb Buttons and Effective Calls to Action

Thu, 22 Jan 2009 21:30:45 +0000

We're not a web design company, but we regularly end up contributing our two cents worth to how a client's site looks. We know our way around SEO, design theory, analytics and so forth, and we're generally nosy parkers, so we often make recommendations. This is doubly true when we're helping clients with their CPC campaigns.

It's surprising how many websites we encounter that don't follow best practices with regards to converting site visitors into 'users' (where 'users' might mean buyers, petition signers, subscribers and so forth). It's not rocket science, but it seems like many organizers (or their design agencies) emphasize other, less important design aspects in lieu of optimizing their conversion rates.

When discussing this with clients, I often refer to our Big Dumb Button theory. That is, ensure that you've got a big, obvious button that features your call to action. The Mozilla Foundation offers a good example of the Big Dumb Button theory in action. No fuss, no muss and no ambiguity--just a big green button.

It's also important to have the same call to action linked in the text, because studies have shown that some users will skip the graphical content altogether, and focus on the words.

I was reminded of this topic by an excellent article on Boagworld:

Having an effective call to action is an essential part of any website. A call to action is not just limited to ecommerce sites. Every website should have an objective it wants users to complete whether it is filling in a contact form, signup for a newsletter or volunteering their time.

It has an ugly cover, but I'd definitely recommend Call to Action by Bryan and Jeffrey Eisenberg. It has tons of practical, tactical advice for anybody in charge of an organization's web presence.

Twitter and the Usefulness of Real Time Social Networks

Fri, 03 Oct 2008 03:39:50 +0000

I don't feel the same way about Twitter as I do about my blog. If I don't get a chance to, uh, tweet for a couple of days, I don't feel an itch to get back at it. I'm in Twitter because, as my colleague once put it, "it's an excellent lens for focusing attention". These days, I can't not be in Twitter. In a year, I'll be saying that about some other tool, no doubt.

That said, Twitter sure is handy for solving tiny, localized problems. For example, today I asked my tweeps (and don't get me started on the language around Twitter) three questions, and each one was well-answered:

What's your preferred local ISP? I got two quick votes for Retrix.
Where, aside from Future Shop, could I order an external hard drive online from a Canadian Vendor? I probably got ten responses, and most of them were for NCIX. They're reputable, but pretty geeky.
What's up with the live, online feed for the Canucks game? I had some browser troubleshooting to do there--others verified on Twitter that it was "working for them".

We need to continue to be skeptical about the value and distraction effect of these always-on and always-connected tools. Still, they can prove handy if you've got a problem (and particularly a geeky problem) to solve.

Everybody Loves Lists

Tue, 19 Aug 2008 20:48:05 +0000

This comes as no surprise to anyone who's lived through the last fifty years, but humans in the modern world love lists. If it's not American Bandstand, it's Letterman's top ten schtick.

Bloggers of all stripes understand the power of the list, and exploit them all the time. I was reminded of this courtesy of popurls. Check out what the list of top items for del.icio.us--seven of the ten are lists: