Please share these links with someone qualified who is looking for a job opportunity in these areas:

zenPeak contact
Frank Abrams
(416) 733-3001
email: fabrams@zenpeak.com

Marketing Associate & Executive Assistant

Financial Advisor & Planner

Mortgage Agent

Sales Manager – Communications Solutions and Services

Public Relations Account Manager

Commercial Insurance Lines Sales

Sales Positions (multiple companies throughout Toronto GTA)

Coming out of this economic collapse, many Internet business processes and business models for small and mid-size business will take shape and REPLACE past efforts – In other words, bye-bye printed Yellow Pages AND bye-bye online Yellow Page type portals.

Proximity marketing (geo-marketing, location-based marketing) is going to be big as new applications using GPS or cellular location technologies empower mobile devices and PCs. This means that an SME operator, even with just one location, can spend her money reaching, engaging and transacting with her target market, without buying a yellow pages ad.

It’s basic stuff, and it will drive the need for more talented people who can create and execute Search Marketing campaigns.

If you are looking for a great career path this is one of the best!

WordCamp Toronto 2009 convinced me I have a lot to learn about using  WordPress as an authoring platform for a website.

I am committed to being hands-on as much as I can when it comes to technology; although I will admit WordCamp was a sobering event! To begin with, WordPress is complicated. It is not a self-contained program but a platform that absorbs external visual themes, plugins, widgets, and user tweaks. Hopefully what I learned will become apparent when the zenPeak website delivers a better experience to more and more client technology companies, and job candidates in Toronto, Ontario and throughout Canada.

Lorelle VanFossen showcased woopra which is a great real-time analytics tool for WordPress websites. While Lorelle VanFossen set me up with a beta woopra account,  she told me at least 2 dozen things that needed urgent repair on the zenPeak website – ouch! First step was buying her book!

I enjoyed the talk Rob Campbell gave on Internet Marketing from SMOJOE as well as the keynote talk from Nick La on custom fields and conditional tags etc…..  Not that I could absorb it all that fast!

Met some interesting people along the way too. Overall I’d give the WordCamp Toronto 2009 experience a 7.5 with marks off for the temperature = COLD, the chronic late start times, the choppy Wi-Fi connectivity, and the lack of explanation in advance of what each session was about. But its a lot of work to put on an event like this (as volunteers!), and the content was good, so it was a worthwhile weekend and appreciated!

If you are in the game of registering people and collecting their emails, setup a facebook page and direct your traffic to it. No worries, people don’t have to be signed up at facebook to see your page OR TO ENTER THEIR DATA!

I discovered this by accident when I have been unable to get into FB this am. and popped one of my pages.

Then it dawned on me… some folks don’t need a microsite or blog unless they are restricting access pending a registration.

OK so maybe its not for everyone but a useful tool.

All the work and preparation to setup the meetup, invite people, pay for it, create content will fall on your shoulders. Don’t expect to share the work – the committee system doesn’t work and that’s not what meetup members want. If you are prepared to be subject-focused and not your product or company focused, the meetup will be a success!

At the end of every meetup, its time for one minute of democracy. Ask group members about how its going? And, when would they like to meet next etc. Get some feedback. That will help you run a better meetup with higher levels of satisfaction. Every member gets to rate the meetup – you let them leave with the feeling that they are getting great value but also participating in the direction of the meetup group. When they get home, an email from meetup is waiting for them in their inbox, asking them to rate the meetup – What’s the last thing they remember?

English 35.1 %
Japanese 8.9 %
German 6.7 %
Chinese 6.1 %
French 5.3 %
Italian 3.8 %
Spanish 4.2 %

Consider the diminishing returns and poor ROI unless your company has significant operations in a local language.

http://www.commonsenseadvisory.com/members/res_cgi.php/0709_countries_and_languages.php

Its a constructive social networking case study of a big company, being responsive in dealing with squeaky wheels and bad press. The Dell website traffic numbers after the Aug. 2006 event, show that the web is the critical service information channel.

IMO when someone has a bully pulpit, in any media, and is unfair and unbalanced, lets first give the consumer some credit for their intelligence and fairness, present the facts, ask for forgiveness, and get to the heart of solving problems. Thats what Dell did with bundles of transparency and quick action.

Dude… you got some good service from DELL!

Other companies should follow suit and not wait for disasters or lousy service to erode their business.

BTW…Ask me about how in my mind, Apple ripped me off in the 1990s for $13,000. in royalty profits from my CD-ROM "Search for Ancient Wisdom"  that was in the Apple CD-ROM collection, by using a middleman publisher (Double Impact Multimedia) that went bankrupt just when the checks were supposed to be mailed. Apple did nothing for the designers, developers and creatives for ours and many other titles.  Today, I would blog that injustice so nasty 24/7 – we would see their response and how they fix the problem.

Debbie Williamson provides thoughtful interpretation of the new features in Facebook. Excellent interview from the Jenn & John Show, Vancouver, BC

http://www.emarketer.com/docs/eMarketer_Debbie_Williamson_Nov_7_07_NPR.mp3

Many retailers around the
world are hoping to win back lost market share by making their
customers’ shopping experiences a little more meaningful – and even
theatrical – with emphasis placed on the sensuous elements of an
in-store shopping trip, according to a report from Datamonitor.

As the growth in multichannel and discount retailing grows,
retailers are turning to technology to refine the in-store experience,
and retain market share. But these technologies bring with them a
variety of challenges for vendors and retailers alike, in terms of
integration and standardisation, and also in terms of achieving the
maximum ROI. fabrams This article is copyright 2007 TheWiseMarketer.com).

The next stage in customer retention
The report, entitled ‘Shop X: Where’s the store heading?’
suggests that the next step in the battle to retain customers is to
streamline the buying experience, bringing it more in line with
internet shopping in terms of ease and speed of transaction.

Datamonitor believes that new technology will shortly enable digital
signage screens (suitably equipped with image capturing hardware and
image processing software) to guess the sex and approximate age range
of customers looking at the screen, as well as to differentiate between
individuals and groups. In this next stage of development, screens may
also be able to log when people point at a particular product on a
shelf and then display more appropriate adverts and offers on the
nearest screens.

Proximity sensing systems
As well as incorporating increasingly sophisticated display functions,
proximity sensors can already enable these systems to determine when
someone is nearby. When the system receives notification that a shopper
is within a certain distance range, the screen’s sound level can
increase accordingly, and then decrease again when they leave the area.
To help reduce noise pollution in the store environment, these sounds
can be even made relatively directional, targeting only the area where
shoppers are actually standing.

Tests carried out to-date on in-store digital signage systems have
showed them to be an effective method of advertising, leading to
increased spending and elevated brand awareness. And although the cost
of installing and maintaining a digital signage system is significant,
the authors of the report believe that the benefits of deployment are
likely to make it worth investing in, for larger retailers at least.

Technology reduces ‘ad fatigue’
Given the commonly quoted statistic that the average consumer is
targeted with approximately 3,000 messages per day, retailers are
keenly seeking to differentiate products through any medium more
engaging than static signposting and traditional television screens.
Digital signage, the report concludes, offers retailers a good means of
doing exactly that.

The report also found that near field communication (NFC), in itself
an off-shoot of radio frequency identification (RFID) technology, can
also help remove the need for physical touch and contact. In retail,
NFC technology is already being used for contactless payments such as
Visa PayWave and MasterCard PayPass, among others. Consumers and
merchants both benefit from this technology because transaction times
are faster, and research has shown that in some circumstances consumers
also tend to spend more when paying contactlessly.

The rise of the NFC mobile phone
Of course the inevitable growth of NFC technology in consumer markets
means that the mobile phone is set to become an important tool for
retailers, due mainly to its capability as a fast and relatively secure
payment device – particularly when the handset is NFC-enabled at the
factory.

But retailers have another opportunity that arises as a result of
NFC’s growing popularity among consumers. NFC or Bluetooth enabled
mobile phones can also become a means of direct marketing to consumers
in-store. If consumers are encouraged to use their mobile devices for
NFC payments, the report suggests, retailers will then have an
opportunity to establish more of a personal relationship if they use a
consumer’s mobile handset to deliver well-focused and relevant adverts
and promotions. Better still, this can be achieved in real time just
before the point of purchase decision – while the customer is still
standing in the store.

Point-of-sale battleground
According to the report, the point of sale (POS) is also an important
battleground for retailers because it represents the last chance in a
shopping visit to increase sales, advertise to a captive audience, and
reinforce brand values.

Within the POS industry, self-check out is one of the technologies
currently garnering the most interest. The technology is popular due to
its ability to cut checkout times, with a single attendant being
capable of overseeing up to six terminals. It also appears to enjoy
favour with consumers so far, with a study in Woolworths’ Big W stores
in France last year reporting 25% of customers choosing the self
service option. Other grocery stores that have conducted similar tests
have reporting anything between 20% and 50% of their daily transactions
being processed via self service check-outs.

…there are several key metrics in podcasting. First, there’s your
overall audience, download requests per episode, download completes per
episode, unique download requests per episode, and unique download
completes per episode. We also are looking at consumption metrics,
which can be broken out into partial plays and complete plays. 

Then
there are what we call the engagement metrics, which occur beyond the
media consumption. Your RSS subscribers, your Web site/podcast site
visits as a percentage of downloads. Any blog, forum, or page activity
as a percentage of downloads (that shows the relative appeal of the
podcast). Then there are more standard Web metrics, like Web site page
views and time spent on the site and the overall impact of your
podcast. This includes ad awareness, call-to-action responses, sales,
lead generation, referrals, etcetera.