SMOjoe.com

Halloween came and went and I have loot bag full of memories from Deb Lewis function at the Gardiner Museum.

Deb Lewis looked great and her party was a big success.

This is me with Farah Fawcett

At the Gardiner Museum.

Halloween is a healthy opportunity to wear a full body mask and truly be someone else.  Three glasses of rye and I became The Gladiator for a spell.

On Halloween night the fourth photo contest on Lenzr ended. Ontario Tourist Attractions amassed over seventy five different submissions which accumulated almost 3000 votes.

It came as no surprise to me that Mommakoala’s image ‘No Pesky Neighbours Here‘ was the winner with 93 total votes and a registered rating of 8.7. This is a quirky image and unusual pictures seem to win Lenzr photo contests.

Sponsored by Kanetix.ca this car insurance quotes provider was thrilled with the success of the endevour and asked politely if they could renew the contest and sponsor  the same event for another sixty days? I accepted and Ontario Tourist Attractions 2 was born.

On Monday I woke up to find an email message from the head of marketing at Mazoolo.com and we came to an understanding regarding the interactive photo challenge keyword landscape.

The keywords photo contest belong to Lenzr

The keywords photo game will link to Mazoolo.com

Check this place out - its the weirdest photo game I’ve ever seen and strangely compelling. I tried the free setting and have now invested $10 ( the minimum) via Paypal on my photos, which are better than average and so for this reason I think its a good investment. Let me explain, on this site the user’s photos are submitted to random challenges which they may win or lose by their own merit and according to other people’s votes. So its a bit like Lenzr except for the fragmentation and sheer randomness of the encounters and competitive activities. Anyway suffice to say I was intriqued immediately and wrote a passionate proposal to secure the business the next day.

On Tuesday I had a morning meeting with Faith Seekings of Rapport Communications and Design. I went to meet her with a copy of my Smojoe Social media Manual, hoping to persuade her to let me speak at her next gathering, but she sidelined me with an unexpected information share and theoretical discourse involving many and varied elements of B2B social media constructs.

Here’s Faith beside Dean Goldstone of Goldstone Studios at 64 George St in downtown Toronto, her downstairs neighbour.

We’re meeting next week to work on the Rapport blog which I’m going to trick out in front of a live audience. This will be a smojoe blog makeover.  Go there now to see the before and then go again late next week to see the after. Keep your eye on this portal and watch carefully - first I will add new Flickr and Twitter widgets, then MyBlogLog and finish with Facebook and the buttons of the social web blog indexes.

On Weds Darryl Cheung of Deezilla asked me to help his wife promote her cake baking business under the keywords Toronto wedding cakes for which she already ranks on page one but has adopted a defensive position in the shadow of some new corporate players in the local market.  So of course I told Darryl to put her picture on the site and let her drive a Wordpress blog with tips tricks and recipes and no corporation could ever displace that - especially if the recipes were her creations and other folks bookmarked them and linked to them in their cooking blogs etc.

Then Sir Richard Branson asked me to define what it is to be fearless...

Virgin Mobile has launched a clever campaign that hopes to instigate a new holiday  Nov 19th all of Canada will celebrate and his

Richard is cool guy, He has sailed the Atlantic in an open boat I remember and has floated a helium balloon around the globe. So he’s probably one of the most fearless businessmen in the world, and as such he’s the perfect choice to be the judge of a video contest that asks Canadians to submit their most fearless video for consideration and a chance to win $5000

Virgin Mobile Canada has announced that Nov 19th is National Fearless Day.

Do something fearless and you could win $5000, plus a chance to meet Richard Branson ! Info and entry at National Fearless Day.

Smojoe with City Events seminar, How to Market Events in Toronto went off smoothly at the Spoke Club on Weds Oct 14th , and we had an excellent audience that came to listen and take notes - twelve folks shared their own ideas in exchange for a free 375ml jar of pure Canadian honey.

The first half of the talk was Deb Lewis doing her thing, sharing her secrets and generally bringing the gathering together. At the very start of the night she polled the audience for a show of hands to determine that pretty much everyone in the crowd was somehow involved in event marketing.

Michael Braun the publisher of Bizbash.com was waiting in the audience and came forward to share his business model with everyone… He made it clear that his magazine is always willing to help promote and market events, and his specialty is of course publishing high quality articles with nice glossy photographs detailing the production of upscale parties.

Smojoe Gets Specific About The Path to Web Personality

One thing about my presentation, like my blog, is that it’s filled with good information, and lean on positive affirmation. I don’t butter up the crowd with useless success stories, or tell bogus tales of personal empowerment, because I have so much real information to communicate in such a short period of time. My talk is like a checklist of things to do to complete a long journey.

My speech comes complete with short anecdotes outlining mistakes, scams and things to avoid. The greatest payment I get is seeing the attendees scribbling notes and filling their pads with website URLS and insights and new marketing ideas for their own enterprises. One lady made three pages of notes!

At the end of the evening I walked away drunk with sore feet and a fist full of business cards, promises and compliments; I left a twenty seven dollar bar bill unpaid in the lounge and my half finished paperback novel in the gallery.

Attending the event was David Yohands, a gifted composer and audio production engineer, singer, songwriter and piano bar crooner. David is a class act and likes to laugh and listen and learn things about social media – we put out laptops together at the Dizzy gastro pub on Roncesvalles on Tuesday Oct 20th.  Despite the traffic problem and the loud construction outside, the restaurant is still my first choice for meetings because it has free wireless, a great burger, and commercial free classic rock from sattelite. It was an enjoyable meeting because nobody tried to sell anybody anything; we just shared ideas as we explored the audio tech keyword landscape together.

Everything Smojoe knows about how to market an event in Toronto will be revealed on Weds Oct 14th, 2009 starting at 6:00pm - 8:30pm inside the Spoke Club 600 King St W, Toronto.  Get tickets in advance here they’re cheaper.
https://secure.gettickets.ca/?event=15422

Deb Lewis has certainly outdone herself with this picture she has created to help promote the upcoming How to Market an Event in Toronto seminar at the Spoke Club. This is why Deb Lewis of City Events is one of the best event marketers in the city. Her Photoshop creation is strangely compelling and the bees represent buzz, but they might also represent the honey that I’ll be dispensing to reward audience participation.

Can Social Media Work for Event Marketers?

Social media is defined as using online networks to connect and share stories and information with friends. But its my opinion that effective social media marketing campaigns need time to generate interest before they can affect strangers outside the storyteller’s own sphere of influence.

Most marketers are disappointed with their results after they attempt to use online tools like Facebook and Twitter to sell tickets and ‘put bums in seats’ at actual live events. Nine times out of ten it just doesn’t work, and if you are starting from scratch then building short term solutions is doomed to failure.

Because online media lasts forever, good stories should be used to engineer audiences in long term scenarios.

Smojoe has lots of experience event marketing weird things like ballet movies for Empire Theatres, plays at Shaw Festival and comedy at Second City.  My moment of epiphany came while marketing the Miss Teen Canada-World pageant event this summer. That’s when I went on a quest to find and index all manner of online services that are built to capture event listings. That’s what I’ll be talking about on Weds. There are so many ways to shout out so many different types of messages, but unless you’re actually having conversations with your audience, it isn’t really true social media. Twitter followers and Facebook friends have real value to event marketers, but only if they are niche targeted and qualified to appreciate the messages.

Online Marketing is different than Social Media Marketing

When people ask to use my tools to help sell paid attendance to events, I generally caution that social media shouldn’t be used like that, and any money spent creating perishable stories will be wasted. Rather, I would digitally market their event using Craigslist and Kijiji.com and Eventful etc more on this Oct 14th * You can build widgets on Eventful.com that can be posted on your friends’ homepages.

How to use Social Media Marketing to Build Ready Audiences?

I would attend and document the artist’s event and make videos, take photos and write stories. Then I’d comb the media for the very best story hook. I’d certainly write about any celebrities that attended, detail the fight that happened outside, the forgery that was discovered, the food… whatever I’d combine the media in wonderful stories split across classic Smojoe story funnels that spiral down to the artist’s gallery and blog. I’d hope these destinations have proper conversion tools necessary to sell paintings or register subscribers so the artist’s work is better known and easier to market next time they host a live event.

It has been a long time coming, and it’s still not done yet, but Deborah Lewis of Toronto City Events has a handsome new Wordpress blog at DebLewis.ca

It’s pink of course, and has some bells and whistles. Darryl Cheung of Deezilla.com skinned the Brian Gardiner Revolution Lifestyle template that was downloaded by Smojoe over a year ago.  I paid sixty bucks for the files, and made QueenWestGirl.com (which I sold earlier this spring), but those same files are free now, open source available here.

Anyone visiting DebLewis.ca will see Smojoe’s fingerprints in the content and fossilized in the sidebar.  The Lenzr blog widget runs in the bottom corner, three links in the Blogroll, and my own pretty face graces two Featured Content windows.

The layout and design of DebLewis.ca was selected because of those dynamic featured content windows, those big sliding pictures on the homepage are very compelling. But learning how to make them display properly was the principle cause of our delay.  Anyone struggling with these issues should look for conflicts between other third party widgets and applications. Darryl Cheung revealed that Deb’s own upload custom calendar was somehow affecting the featured content display; developers should look for those kinds of problems.

Deb Lewis is the owner, founder of and principle planner at Toronto City Events. This new blog was a lot of work to build, (not much money but a lot of time) and it will no doubt be a lot of work to maintain.

However her blog debut shows how she has embraced web share and is now keen to post her info and grow seven different communities at once, each filled with the people of Toronto, her target market.

This is probably a good time to reflect on my own belief that even now in the age of Twitter and Facebook status updates, blogs have never been more necessary.  That’s because the blog is the perfect place to showcase the other more spontaneous media.  Like myself, Deb runs the MyBlogLog ‘what’s new with me?’ widget in the 300x sidebar as this displays her Flickr images, tweets and social bookmarks. This makes her blog destination the perfect place to get up to the minute insights on the woman that is Deb Lewis, and witness in real time her expertise in action planning and promoting concerts and live events in the City of Toronto.

More Smojoe / City Events Seminars on Horizon

Look for another co-presentation in September 09 called How To Market an Event in Toronto using the Internet for Free. This is something I’ve been kind of obsessed with after pioneering procedures and gaining new insight into the Canadian teenscape in regards to the Miss Teen Canada World pageant. During the July campaign I was real proud of the widgets I’d made on Eventful.com (which many of the 54 contestants in the 2009 MTC-W Blog Army speedily added to their OnSugar blogs), and the hooks I’d sharpened to leave as bait on other local TO events indexes; in the next presentation I’ll spend time showing folks just exactly how I concoct more compelling Craigslist advertisements.

Bret Patriquin went to High School with Deb Lewis

Smojoe lunched with Bret Patriquin at Amsterdams (King St at Portand) in downtown Toronto sometime on Aug 20th 2009. We shared our brains on the state of search marketing in Canada and profited from each others’ perspective.

Bret Patriquin is perhaps ‘the most well known unknown’ internet marketing consultant in the city of Toronto. I’m keen to solicit his advice and help spreading the word about my photo contest that helps business sponsors target keyword driven organic search results. At lunch I ate a chicken Gouda sandwich with red melon balls; this picture I offer in homage to the local bloggers I emulate.

Just last week I had a beer with native actress and model Rachelle Whitewind at a curious cafe on Queen St East just past the bridge and before Broadview Ave. Didn’t get the name of the place but it was super cute and the beer was cheap. Rachelle is fresh back from Los Angeles where she experienced first hand the American film and television industry. For two years. She told me now she really appreciates all that Canada has to offer artists and performers. Rachelle is friends with Urban Native Girl and we talked about Lisa Charleyboy’s success helping showcase the lives and achievements of Canada’s aboriginal people online.  Rachelle is inspired again.

Also in the month of August and also totally unrelated to Deb Lewis, or her blog or Bret or Rachelle, is a young woman named Brandy. She is the blogger behind Artistic Tendency. Last week she came to listen and learn from Smojoe. This very talented artist and designer, blogger and business woman is centered in Barrie Ontario where she works to promote an artists cooperative that will soon be a major tourist attraction for the area.

I can’t say enough good things about The Spoke Club, at 600 King Street West in Toronto (416) 368-8448. The layout is excellent, the prices are affordable and the staff is exceptional. They’re super accommodating. These people really try to help their members get the most out of their memberships.  I’ve been impressed with this organization every single time I visit.

Deb Lewis of Toronto City Events also deserves the strongest accolades in preparing and executing another flawless event. The Smojoe Social Media Workshop at the Spoke Club went off without a hitch on Tuesday March 31st 2009. Over twenty people attended the two hour workshop where I spoke nonstop about basic, and advanced social media marketing from the blog up.

Because I maintain that blogging is only 1/3 of the job, I focused my presentation on blog widgets and community building exercises, and used a power point presentation in combination with a printed and professionally bound 36 page Smojoe social media manual to hammer home some fundamental concepts. The search for experts drives the internet, and keywords unlock the door to SERP traffic - an hour later I was explaining to how to use blog friends, comments, discussion forums and articles to make yourself an expert, and how to write and create rich media for better keyword ranking.

Thanks to everyone who stuck around and joined us after the workshop. The round table discussions over a beer in the lounge of the Spoke Club are the most enjoyable aspects of the event (for me). That’s when I usually learn something, and Tuesday was no exception; thanks to Gary Puppa of Epixome who schooled me in the business of owing and operating a dot com start-up.