Panel speakers include:

• Zahra AL-Harazi – CEO and Creative Director, Foundry Communications
• Deanne Carson – VP Marketing and External Relations, Calgary Stampede
• Susan Donlan – VP Corporate Communications, TD Bank Group
• Ruth Kelly – President and Publisher of Venture Publishing Inc.

Agenda:

• 11:00am to 12:00pm – Registration and Networking
• 12:00pm to 12:15pm – WIL Welcome and TD Comments
• 12:15pm to 12:45pm – Panel Presentation
• 12:45pm to 1:15pm – Q&A

For more information and to reigister: http://womeninleadership-calgary.com/women-in-communications-luncheon-may-29-2013/

Follow Women in Leadership Foundation on Twitter: https://twitter.com/WIL_Fdn

Details:

• March 11, 2013, 8:30am
• Bisset School of Business, Mount Royal University, Calgary, AB
• $100 per person
• Created and presented by accomplished instructor and speaker: Ernest Barbaric

Five components of the workshop:

• Advanced Target Market and Stakeholder Profiling
• Social Media and Digital Marketing Objective Development
• Crafting the Ideal Digital Marketing Mix
• Engagement Mapping
• Content Development Strategies

Each participant will also receive a Minimalist Marketing Strategy Framework workbook that allows you to rapidly prototype your communication strategy. You will walk away with a blueprint for a simple and effective digital marketing plan. These can then be further developed and iterated with your team back at the homebase.

Who should attend:

• Non-profit executives including CEOs and Executive Directors
• Corporate marketing and fundraising professionals
• Community relations
• PR & CSR staff
• Event sponsorship and marketing staff

Attendees should have functional knowledge of social media networks to get the most value from our time together. This program is designed in such a way that it can be applied in different organizations including youth development, community development, environment, advocacy, health care, education, philanthropy, religion, arts and culture – with an emphasis on organizations that focus on social impact.

Registration closes March 6, 2013

Learn more here.

Register now: A WordPress Primer – full day of basic WordPress instruction

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This special meeting of the Calgary WordPress Meetup Group is a one-day primer about the world’s best online publishing platform, WordPress.

This day-long meetup is intended for users with limited experience with the technical aspects of WordPress. You may have only heard of WordPress, or you may have used it for publishing your blog for years, but you have very limited exposure to actually customizing your WordPress installation. Intermediate users will find this to be too basic for your interests.

Cost:

A fee of $20 applies to this day-long meetup. Proceeds will be donated to Brown Bagging Calgary Kid Society. Tax receipts will not be provided.

What to bring:

• Most of the day will be a lecture format, but bring your laptop long with you as there will be a workshop portion during the lunch break.
• We are not anticipating being able to accommodate special dietary needs. should you have such needs, please come prepared with your own lunch.
• While we’re not going to need your credit card again, if you are registering a domain name or setting up web hosting during the lunchtime workshop, having a way to pay for those things online will be vital.

About the Presenter:

Marshall Stevenson is a Calgary based internet marketer and digital content creator using web design, development and podcasting. He’s been designing websites since 1995 and working in a WordPress world since version 1.2.1 — or about October 2004. His passions are impacting others in a positive way to affect change in the world — in other words, let’s get your message out!

Synopsis:

9:00 am to 9:50 am – .org versus .com

You can use WordPress on their own site (yourwebsite.wordpress.com), or by self-hosting under your own domain name (www.yourwebsite.com). You’ll learn the pros and cons of each. The remainder of the day will be on the presumption that you will be self-hosting your website, though many of the topics will be applicable to both kinds of WordPress usage.

10:00 am to 10:50 am – Themes and essential plugins

Learn more about what themes are and how you will use them. Discover how to find themes that will work for your site, and how to install them onto your server. Learn the essential plugins that you want on your website to extend the functionality of WordPress.

11:00 am to 11:50 am – Theme customization

If you use the same theme that thousands of other people use, your website will look like thousands of other websites. In this module, you will learn more about changes that you can make to the default theme, as well as learn the basics about custom theme building.

12:00 pm to 1:15 pm – Lunchtime workshop (lunch provided by ING DIRECT)

This working lunch will provide you the chance to mingle with other attendees, as well as get customized help with things like registering a domain name, setting up web hostings, installing WordPress on your host, troubleshooting problems with your existing website, etc. Definitely bring your laptop with you for maximum benefit during the workshop.

1:30 pm to 2:20 pm – SEO and media library best practices

This hour is dedicated to teaching you the basics of search engine optimization (SEO) and how to use your WordPress media library. SEO is the phrase ascribed to a wide-range of practices that will help Google and other search engines to best understand what kind of content that you offer and present it to people searching for those topics. Proper use of your media library will not only help to make your site run better, but can even help with your Google ranking.

2:30 pm to 3:20 pm – Site structure

Learn more about how to properly set up your site to begin with. Learn the difference between categories and tags, and why you wish to use each. Make changes to the way that WordPress displays the addresses that lead to different parts of your website.

3:30 pm to 4:20 pm – Social media integration, marketing, and promotion

A website is no longer just an island of information. With millions (billions?) of websites on the Internet, you can’t just expect to “build it and they will come”. Learn the art of promoting your website so that you can achieve your likely goal, getting interested people to visit and read what it is that you offer.

4:30 pm to 5:00 pm – Wrap-up, questions, and a few additional tips

In the last portion of the day, we’ll deal with any questions that didn’t previously get answered, offer some additional tips on where to learn more about WordPress, and wrap up the day’s learning.

To Register: A WordPress Primer – full day of basic WordPress instruction

Click here for sbk’s Calgary Marketing Events Calendar.

The first 20 minutes was a bit of a rant, then he gets into the question: should someone do a podcast (or blog) every week? How often should one blog or produce podcasts?

Cliff’s advice was this: it’s okay to take a break when you need to, like when you are off on holidays, travelling etc. This does depend on what your “business/interest” is though. As Cliff said, he educates on podcasting, so it might be a bit odd for him to podcast sporadically, he is trying to set an example of the ideal podcaster. His users expect him to podcast once a week, and come to expect that, and search for his podcasts on his broadcast day. He suggested doing two podcasts at once, in advance of times he knows he will not be able to post something. Doing a few podcasts or blog posts at one time can actually save a bit of time.

I think of how I consume information. I do check a few blogs/audio feeds frequently – knowing that they publish every week. I do also consume information from others that may not publish every week (I use Google Reader for online reading of blogs, Google Reader > Listen Subscriptions for podcasts on my Android and iTunes on my iPad also for podcasts).

I consume good, entertaining, quality information. Ideally this information is published consistently (because if it is really inconsistent people may unsubscribe or forget about you/it). If all you can do is publish good, quality content infrequently – keep it going. If you can do this consistently – even better!

Blog on, and podcast on!

• Central Library
• Nov 1, 2012 (Thursday)
• 12:00 – 1:30 p.m
• 50 spaces available, registration not required. Valid library card may be required.

Follow Lonnie on Twitter @LonnieTaylor

Find Lonnie writing for the Huffington Post Canada.

Event details: http://calgarypubliclibrary.com/services/programs-events/register-for-programs?id=4135l1

I often read Copyblogger’s blog, and has also viewed some of their videos. The content they publish on SEO is very useful and I highly suggest tapping into the resources they provide. They also have a podcast that I enjoy, although I find I tune out during the cast as the speakers are sometimes not overly energetic, but the information they share is very helpful.

Back to the webinar today on the Scribe SEO Tool….

This tool looks incredibly useful. They showed a WordPress blog, with the Scribe software enabled. It helps content creators (bloggers, online community managers etc) see what search terms they may want to write about (what are people typing into search engines that are applicable to your industry), see what headline titles may direct more people to your site, what tags are suggested for your blog post, information on internal linking etc.

Scribe

It is self described to help:

• Discover topics that matter
• Choose smarter language
• Optimize for social and search
• Attract links, likes, and shares
• Increase leads and sales

This tool appears to have so much built into it to help content creators really analyze what types of content they can product that will increase visits to their sites. It looks easy to use, and quite intensive, so if you are really looking at SEO for your site, and want a comprehensive and fairly easy tool to use, Scribe by Copyblogger may be a good SEO tool for you.

The tool (as of Oct 2012) is $97 a month for “Scribe Professional” and $247 a month for “Scribe Agency”, although if you do the free month offer it looks like you can get it $67 a month and $197 a month respectively.

You can try it for free for a month: http://scribecontent.com/offer/

The session is from 8:30 to 3:30pm. Early bird rate is $295 through Nov 21st and is then $395.

Described as an introduction to a framework for “applying metrics and measurement tools to your digital or integrated marketing strategy” the course plans to cover:

• Brand awareness
• Churn rate
• Customer Satisfaction (CSAT)
• Take rate
• Profit
• Customer Lifetime value
• Internal rate of return (IRR)
• Payback
• Return on ad dollars spent (ROA)
• Online Lift Index

Lunch and snacks are included, enjoy!

Register for Calgary Social Media Quickinar.

This exciting one-day course on June 26, 2012 will introduce you to a framework for applying metrics and measurement tools to your digital media or integrated marketing strategy. Learn how to introduce ongoing assessment of Return on Marketing Investment to your marketing practice.

We live in budget conscious times and often marketing budgets are the first to get cut. Why? When non-marketing executives take a hard look at the numbers, they often can’t see a tangible link between marketing and overall revenue. So if you’re a marketer today, you’re probably facing the need to do more with less, justify all investments, show results, and still beat the competition. The secret to this balancing act is having – and correctly using – the numbers.

The presenters are Jeff Nelson of Anduro Marketing (I have attended a class he instructed as well as a meetup he spoke at – he is very knowledgable and quite funny too!) and Joanne O’Connell of O’Connell Enterprises.

$295 Early Bird pricing to June 19th, $395 after June 19th.

Lunch is included.

Learn more here.

Stop by Belgo (Calgary) to hear Calgary’s social media leader Doug Lacombe, Founder of communicatto and Guy Huntingford, Publisher and CEO of the Calgary Herald discuss the current state of the digital publishing industry.

Guy Huntingford

The event starts at 5:30pm on Monday, March 26th.

Moderated by Markham Hislop of Beacon Calgary and Michelle Sklar of Digital Alberta.

Topics are creating content, sustainable business models and the growth of Citizen Journalism.

Sure to be an interesting night, full of conversation, and hopefully debate!

For more information and to register (tickets are $10-15) click here.

Doug Lacombe