Apologies to all my wonderful fans out there who have been waiting with baited breath for my latest posting.  Today won’t be one of those ranty and arguably incredibly negative posts I normall post.  I know I’m a bit of a vain person, but I thought some people might be interested in an update on a few things that everyone’s favourite small firm, Denote, has been up to.  I’d love to provide something more substantive regarding each individual project, but launching three new arms of the company can take some time.

The big news today is that our, what I hope will be a long and fruitful, partnership with Helly Hansen Canada has officially kicked off!  Today, after a lot of work and effort by our team, we’ve launched the web site for the Helly Hansen Outlet Store out in Dartmouth.  We’re really excited as Helly Hansen Canada is a great local success story that exists right here in Halifax.  The operation is absolutely astounding and if you ever get the chance to take a factory tour, go for it!

The store itself is an amazing spot and sometimes I fear many don’t know that Helly goes beyond ski wear. We really tried to reflect the depth of Helly’s product line through amazing photography while keeping the overall site simple and clean.  That said, the common consumer is definitely going to find amazing leisure wear for all seasons.

Here! Have a random look at a random mockup we were working on at one point!  What a wonderful journey this was.

Other than that, we’ve been doing some really cool stuff on the market research and data collection front, as well as launching a program geared at the political side of things. As a pretty huge baseball fan, I’ve got the inherent love of stats and data.  Really excited to start gathering data on why people do what they do, the correlations between various actions, and really figure out what makes people buy.  Of course, it’s all for the consumer’s benefit.  I’m a firm believer that people only hate ads because they are not relevant.  Hopefully, through our market research, we’ll be able to identify the best audience and, create things that better resonate with them.

As for the political arm, it kind of goes back to what I was saying earlier.  Denote doesn’t just communicate, do advertising, design, etc. etc.  We get results.  In this case, we get people elected. Listing the services we offer would be of no consequence as, as a candidate, getting elected, and knowing we can do it for you, should be all that’s on your mind. (Note: Had to remove a bunch of details and a paragraph as I was apparently going to be violating a non-disclosure agreement.  I realize it looks incredibly shady but I assure you we aren’t breaking kneecaps .)

Those are pretty much the largest things that have been keeping us busy at Denote.  We of course have our new web business platform, Boost, coming out, but that is a big enough deal to warrant its own post.  That post may indeed come soon.  I truly believe it will revolutionize the way businesses look at web sites.  If anything above interests you and you’d like to hear how we can help you, please get in touch.

We love new challenges and would love to help build a comprehensive solution for you.

In addition, we have new web, graphic, and marketing campaign planning for our clients, and a new non-profit we are helping get started on a web presence and on user engagement.  But…this post is already longer than I’d like.

Until next time….

So you’ve just started your business.  You’ve got your savings, loan, government handouts, etc., and a dream to make money.  I’m surprised at the amount of people who immediately think their top priority is a social media plan.  I realize this is industry specific, but unless your industry is providing social media services (a suspect business in itself, and I’ll explain why in a future post), I don’t see how it should even be in the top 5 of things that should concern you as a small business. (EDIT: I suppose some sort of public speaker or someone on a quest to Internet fame could prioritize this)

This is not to say that social media is not something to pay attention to, there are just far more important things to deal with.  The foremost (and arguably 2nd, 3rd, and 4th-most) important aspect is generating sales.  I have personally seen few examples of a tweet resulting in direct sales.  Sales should always be at the forefront of your business as without sales, your business is not a business…it’s a hobby.  Unless you’re really good at writing grants, that doesn’t cut it.

What I have seen, is Twitter building brand and establishing a presence so that people are aware of your existence.  In a short, free advertising.  Unfortunately, nothing is ever free and the time it takes you (even if you just schedule a bunch of updates) is not worth the time for most business owners.  In the time it takes for you to create (or even schedule) your updates, read what’s up with your followers, and interact with them, think of how your time could have been dedicated elsewhere into actions such as project management, sales, or account/relationship management.

You can outsource project and account management, but, theoretically, nobody will ever be able to sell your business as well as you can.  Whether it’s going into a coral of other hungry business people called a ‘networking session’, or having a beer with someone you have a genuine (potential money-making) connection with, as the face of your organization, you’re better off utilizing that face instead of a keyboard.

I would never excuse doing something like sales or account management to update my social media.  Again, I have spoken with far too many people who prioritize their social media presence higher than the most important things a business can have.  Your social media is not a priority, it doesn’t make people give you money.  It can make people be slightly aware of you so they don’t slam the door in your face, but it is definitely not a substitute.  It may be the way this company started, but I do not believe there will ever be a substitute to pounding the pavement and speaking to people.

I waste my time sometimes. It pains me to admit it, but I am not as efficient as I can be.  It is times like this that I update my social media.  I only do so enough to remain in people’s sight and minds, and on my downtime as a leisure activity.  Also, as Denote grows, we are beginning to have others manage our social media for us (we are assembling an AMAZING team by the way).  I believe after nearly 3 years, that we are also at a point where we can benefit from emphasizing brand awareness and it is time to take our organization to the next plateau.

Denote is not yet at a place where we can benefit from a comprehensive social media strategy, but our client experience has taught us that after a certain size, it’s a worthwhile investment.  Large brands, politicians, charities, events.  These are all great examples of types of organizations that can benefit greatly from engaging an audience on platforms on the web (You could probably defeat me in a debate over politics though).  When you get to the point where you’re large enough that you can sustain the costs of a comprehensive social media strategy, call us and we’d be happy to develop one for you.  Until then, call us and we’d be happy to help you out as much as we can anyway.  We’d love to find enough work for us to do that we don’t have to feel guilty just charging you for social media.

What do you think?  Is social media a waste of your time? (Think hard before answering that one!) Has social media directly made you money?  What industry are you in?  I’d love to learn!

I had absolutely no intention of ever turning my blog into a tips and tricks page by any means.  There are far too many blogs that do that and I was hoping to offer a bit more of a macro look at what is going on than deal with minor items.  In a way, I’m doing a similar cop-out on this one but, what can I say, things have gotten busy.  More than that, I was actually a bit perplexed by this one recently and actually found it fairly difficult to figure out, or find information on, what was up with a Facebook page we were managing for a client.

The main rub came when dealing with a Facebook page for a fairly prominent client we are working with. I started to notice that several of the comments were turning out in different shades of grey and the coloring was slightly darker on some posts.  After some research, I found that these darker shaded posts are having been marked as spam. You can easily unmark comments as spam by clicking the marking in the top right corner of the post and choosing to reveal it or not.  My favourite feature of it is that the post is still visible to page administrators and the original user.  This allows those in control to see the comment, but none of the other page fans.  For controlling what type of message is shown, this is an awesome (albeit justifiably sneaky) way of keeping the message positive and handling negative feedback in a discrete manner.  Honestly, I wish this worked for my own Facebook profile…I might post things a bit more.

Now, I’m not the only admin on the account (you can appreciate the client likes to retain SOME control over their content ), but I do not believe that they have been marking people as spam. As such, I’m left to believe that either Facebook itself is using some sort of algorithm to determine what is spam, Facebook admins are monitoring the page, or the page’s fans are vigilant in protecting the Facebook page.  I’m sincerely hoping for the latter as that means our user engagement has succeeded beyond our expectations, but I also have an inkling that the Facebook machine is flexing it’s muscles.

With that said, I hope I’ve, at most, got you interested in the level of buzz we can create for you or your brand, and at the least, informed you on why your content comments look like grey-scale piano keys.

What does anyone else think?  Is Facebook taking control? Am I crazy? Or is Denote Communications just that awesome at what we do?

My thoughts are all of the above!

University and Beyond

There’s not much to mention about my video gaming life in University. Now in Halifax, I couldn’t very well bring up all my systems (especially in my little dorm room). I had a PS2 that fulfilled my needs throughout my Bachelor of Commerce and it did the trick. A lot of my first year could easily be divided into the 3 games played after dinner. The Star Wars: Battlefront months, the Super Smash Bros. Melee months, and the DotA months. By 4th year (having moved into an apartment after 1st year), I had managed to slowly bring my TG 16 and (what was now my) Atari 2600 from Toronto. I now had a multi-tap and 3 controllers for the TG 16 and played Bomberman just about any time there were more than 3 people in the apartment. There was a time Keith and I logged about 5 hours of consecutive Bomberman time during the Summer of 3rd year. With the advent of Rock Band, it was not long before Bomberman was replaced as the de facto multiplayer game of the household.

Having realized that my dream (and as far as I’m concerned, the dream of anyone who played video games as a child) of being a video game guy (read: designer) wasn’t going to happen, I figured I needed to prepare for a career in something else. Not sure what to do, I decided to go into my next interest, Commerce, and bank on the fact that everything has a business aspect to it. The theory being that I could find my way into the company I wanted to work for by entering through the business side. Progressing through academics, extra curriculars, and internships, I learned more about what I didn’t want to do, than what I wanted to do. My favourite business-related activities at the time were brainstorming entrepreneurial and business ideas with friends, but without any solid and respectable experience to back it up, I’d have a tough time being a new-grad consultant.

Upon graduation, I headed back to Toronto with the hopes of finding work. As a graduation gift for myself, I purchased an Xbox360 (which I also have no attachment to), After a few possible prospects drying up, a standing offer from an Investment and Insurance firm to work as an adviser (read: salesman), a standing offer to work as an equity day trader, I came across a job posting for a Nova Scotian game company, HB-Studios. Realizing that this was once my dream, I applied to the position of Game Designer. I was incredibly impressed with the company’s portfolio, what was being said about them, their facilities, and was eager to remain in Nova Scotia. After completing the company Game Designer test and going through a phone interview (I was still in Toronto), I was lucky enough to be invited back for an in person interview at the studio. It’s now been 4 months and I love having the opportunity to brainstorm, problem solve, and create. There’s still lots to learn, but I’m up to the task. And my TurboGrafX-16? It’s still close by, hooked up to the TV at my desk.