Our client from Park Royal Shopping Centre, Cindy Papa, recently moved to gorgeous Kelowna. Prior to her move, Cindy led Park Royal’s marketing department for many years. Under her direction Park Royal was one of the first shopping centre’s in Canada to start using social media.

Here’s an interview with Cindy about the Park Royal strategy.

Q: Why did you start using social media as part of your marketing strategy at Park Royal?
A: We started to use social media to reach our back-to-school demographic. This is a difficult demographic to reach with traditional marketing. We are not moving away from traditional marketing – but we are adding social media into the mix. We want to see how the two work together.
Q: What would you say to someone who is hesitating to try social media marketing?
A: You can experiment with a whole new way to reach customers. We have not been working in social media for very long but the results we have seen to date are good. What you’re accomplishing is setting up dialogue and interactive communication. This is an excellent compliment to traditional media.

Q: Why did you choose Soya for your social media strategy?
A: Soya came recommended by our creative director. Upon meeting with Soya, I found them to be informed, respectful of our perspective and our position with our customers.

Q: What did you value most about working with Soya?
A: Very quick turnaround. They delivered on what they said they would and they were flexible to work with.

About Soya Marketing

Soya Marketing is a new kind of PR agency. Soya helps companies boost their brands on Google using social media story telling. Clients include: 2009 World Police & Fire Games, Blast Radius (a member of the Wunderman network), SmartDesign Group and the Dalai Lama Center for Peace & Education.

Dave Calder is the VP of Strategic Development for the Vancouver Aquarium. We consider him to be a leader on the social media scene. Dave has applied his background in broadcasting, storytelling and marketing to create a huge, global brand presence for the aquarium.

We asked Dave what advice he would give to companies that are questioning whether social media makes sense for their business.

Here’s how he responded: “First, I’d tell them that conversations about their company are happening all around them in the digital spaces, whether they chose to participate or not. Second, I’d say that they should worry less about the new jargon and technology and various latest hippest sites, and focus on developing a strong communications plan that embraces storytelling above all else. Once you do that you find the inclusion of social marketing elements easier to consider, simpler to prioritize and much more effective for your particular business.

Finally, I’d say I’m old enough to remember the boss who told me that all the time I was spending working on a computer (in 1985) was wasted because the machine did nothing of value. Then I remember being told that spending time with Datapac and forums and newsgroups was useless because not enough people had access to these tools. Later I was told that I was crazy to suggest email would be a form of communication people might embrace versus conventional mail … you get the idea … for me all social marketing represents is another array of extremely compelling and functional communications tools that when used properly allow your organization to connect to people in ways never before possible.”

Wise words. Thanks for your perspective, Dave.

Often when we meet with new people about Web PR, we get the question: ‘must I blog?’. Fair enough. When many people think of blogs, cats come to mind. You know what mean? People think about those blogs they’ve seen where people recount the life of their feline friend, the wacky escapes of their toddler, or their passion for drupal. Nothing is wrong with any of that mind you – but if you’re trying to figure out how blogs apply to your business, you will be puzzled.

We think of blogs completely differently. We think of a blog as a marketer’s best friend. Simply put, it’s the best way to communicate with the market super easy, and super fast. Did you land a new client? Did you launch a new product? Rather than spending weeks developing a news release and figuring out a strategy to pitch reporters, with a blog (and a social media distribution strategy), you can get your news immediately to way more people. You can get your news directly to the segment of the market you’re trying to reach. No more middlemen.

That’s why blogs are cool for business.

Is the business cocktail party dead? No, but business networking is definitely changing. A while back, Debbie and I had the great pleasure of presenting to an organization called YES (which stands for Young Executives for Success). They asked us to talk about how business networking has changed in the past couple of years, since the emergence of Twitter, Facebook and other social media tools. It was a cool topic, and a different lens for us since we typically discuss how social media changes PR, marketing and branding. Here’s a link to the Soya Marketing: La Geek, C’est Chic powerpoint presentation from that event. I hope you find it useful!