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Do you have a list of favorite mobile marketing blogs?

You can bet your special sauce that we do, and we’re going to share the ones that make the cut with you on the latest edition of our podcast.  We’ve culled our list of mobile marketing blogs and chosen the ones that we think have the best info and the best presentations.

[LISTEN: Favorite podcasts for event planners – PODCAST EPISODE]

Over the years we have developed a pretty long list of blogs we read and podcasts that we like to listen to regularly.  Some of these have gone stale and no longer update, so it was high time that we went through our lists and picked out some current and relevant mobile marketing blogs and revised our spreadsheet.

Our grunt work = your shortcuts!

There are so many blogs out in the wild that it’s absolutely insane.  A lot of them have information that is outdated or irrelevant, especially when it comes to mobile marketing.  Frankly, mobile is THE way to catch your customers and prospects these days, and even Google is going to make websites that are not putting mobile first go to the end of the line (ie search results) next year.

[READ: Writers block, the gift that keeps on giving – BLOG ARTICLE]

Maybe you aren’t all that savvy about marketing via mobile devices, or perhaps you’re just now starting to educate yourself.  We’ve been in the mobile business for nearly a decade now, and the continued growth is absolutely astonishing.

There’s no reason for you to have to reinvent the wheel; nor should you have to go out and read through a hundred different mobile marketing blogs to find the key information that you should have at your fingertips.  We’ve done the leg work for you and have the results in a quick and easy podcast episode that will point you in the right direction, right now.

[LIKE TO TALK?  Be featured on our podcast – TELL US WHAT YOU KNOW]

As we mentioned above, mobile is THE big thing for Google results in 2020, so if you aren’t using the medium to its full potential, get onboard with these mobile marketing blogs and get your act together before your search engine rankings plummet and your traffic nosedives.

 

Grab your earbuds and have a quick, ten minute listen to the latest podcast episode!

Event planners, take note.

We listen to a lot of podcasts every week – we’re always trying to find the ones worth subscribing to in a wide variety of categories, and we like to share the good ones with our listeners, especially if the podcasts in question might be beneficial to our customers – like event planners or VIP hosts, for instance.

[LISTEN: Negotiating the best price for your event venue, part 2 – PODCAST EPISODE]

Whether you put on a local event, good size trade show, large scale conference, or just book meetings and luncheons. This next episode is for all those event professionals who are always on the lookout for the next big thing.

Event managers  are always on the move, which makes finding time to listen easy as in the car to a venue, for instance. Many event professionals want to be informed on the latest event trends and news.

[READ: How do you know when it’s time to pivot? – BLOG ARTICLE]

We’ve spent some time combing through our subscriptions and pulling out a few that are really geared towards event planners and how to plan events – and we also have several episodes in our own archives that are absolutely fantastic, especially if you’re new to the industry or haven’t quite mastered the art of getting your events to run smoothly yet.

Some of the event planner podcasts that we are featuring in the episode aren’t regularly produced, but they do have a treasure trove of good ideas in them, so we have included them in the list.  Others are pushed on a specific schedule and can always be counted on for some fantastic new ideas, discussions about how to head off trouble before it hits your events, or how to make the best of a bad situation.

Show me the money!

We’ve also got a couple of entries that deal with planning on a tight budget, which is always appreciated by a large number of our customers and potential customers.  These include ideas about using technology to do your heavy lifting, and where you might be able to get good deals on venues if you’re quick and keep up with the local news in the cities where you plan to host an event.

So grab your earbuds, sit back, and join us for a discussion of our favorites, as well as the reasons that we like these over some others we might have chosen! 

 

Canadian cannabis sales for adult use has been legal for just over a year now.

If you’re not familiar with the situation, Canada enacted a federal law making Canadian cannabis sales to adults legal, and that law went into effect slightly more than one year ago.  We’re taking a look at where things are overall at the federal level, and breaking down a few provincial issues as well in the latest podcast episode.

[LISTEN: 18 Days in Instagram Jail – What Did We Do? – PODCAST EPISODE]

As the world watches, Canada is closing in on one year of cannabis legalization and there’s a lot that’s happened over the course of this last year. No one could expect that the CEO of a major LP is ousted, an LP itself lost its cultivation License nor that the black market is still going strong – wait people did predict that one…this and more on today’s podcast.

[READ: Disaster hits Ontario’s cannabis lottery winners – BLOG ARTICLE]

There have been a few upsets and downsides to the legalization process as the year has progressed, but things are still moving along at a really rapid pace.  Stores have opened, online sales are going strong, and people seem happy, but all is not roses and sweet smells in the land of adult use Canadian cannabis.

Pardon me?

Many cannabis advocates have worked with the Canadian government to get past cannabis convictions overturned, since its not a crime. And the government announced in the summer that pardons are now available for Canadians convicted of simple cannabis possession. The introduced bill C93 which enables Canadians to obtain a free, no wait pardon for simple possession of cannabis.

“We know that this is particularly significant for many in minority communities, including black and Indigenous Canadians who have been disproportionately affected by the enforcement of cannabis laws.”

So many people who have been convicted of Canadian cannabis related crimes will find themselves not completely cleared of wrong doing but with a partial redemption on their records.  Neat, huh?

 

But wait!  There’s more – grab your earbuds or your headphones and join us for this episode of the podcast!

Negotiating event venues can be tricky.

We’ve all heard stories about conference hosts who ended up so far in the red by the time their event was over that they spent the next year paying off the credit card bills; it’s true, negotiating event venues is often fraught with pitfalls that you don’t even know about as a new conference organizer.

[LISTEN: Negotiating Event Venues, part 1 – PODCAST EPISODE]

We recently hosted an episode (link above) about negotiating event venues, but there was so much information that we simply could not fit the content into a single episode, without making it a super long episode, and we like to keep the same format all the time.

If you’ve already listened to the first episode about negotiating event venues, then you know you had a homework assignment and we’re going to help you do the math on your (hopefully) real world event that you’ll be hosting.

[READ: The Introvert’s Guide to Trade Shows & Conferences – ARTICLE]

In this episode, we are walking you through the specific budgeting process, how much you can expect in freebies and comps from the event venue, and what the process is that you’ll most likely go through with your possible venues in order to arrive at your magic number.

We’re also taking cost overruns, what kind of backup reserve you are going to want to have in place to cover the potential overruns, how you can allocate sponsorship effectively, which leads to more sponsors and more sponsor dollars to offset the overall budget.  We walk through the liability of serving alcohol at your event, who pays for it, who is responsible if there’s a problem with overserving, and more.

[TALK TO US: Sign up for a demo or get a consult – CLICK HERE]

We talk about how to maximize your use of the space you are allocated at your venue, and how to avoid being charged for extra labor or setup that you don’t really need if you just think carefully about the ways that you can use – and reuse – your space in the event venue.

Negotiating event venues is not rocket science, let’s be clear.  But it does take a bit of organization, a well thought out set of goals for maximizing your budget, and the willingness to stand your ground with events coordinators and salespeople that are trying to maximize their own profits (and possibly commissions) by tying you into a contract that is better for them than it is for you.

So grab your headphones, settle in, and listen to part two in our series about negotiating event venues!

Have you ever spent the night in Instagram jail?

Maybe you’re not even sure what Instagram jail is, or maybe you’ve also been in this situation.

This episode – our 100th (yay for us by the way!!!!) is where we tell you what happened, how we think it happened, and what we did to finally get out of lockdown and back to increasing our account following and using the platform normally.

[LISTEN: Best of Podcast Marketing Episodes, part 1 – PODCAST EPISODE]

Instagram for business is becoming the foremost way for businesses to engage with their client base. Creating a profile is one thing, organically building up the profile is another. It takes lots of time, lots of images and a lot of l/c/f. But what happens when IG decides to put you in their penalty box or even worse Instagram jail?

We discuss our experiences and what we did on uphill path towards the coveted 10K follower mark – that’s today on the podcast.

Is it really that easy to land in IG jail?

Well, apparently it is, and there’s no real way to be sure of exactly what you did to cause the problem.  There are also a variety of time-outs and “penalty box” actions that Instagram can and will take that penalize your account.  We’ve seen a couple of these up close and personal in the past but this was an all out slam dunk, in the form of what’s known as an “action block”.

[READ: The Introverts Guide to Trade Shows & Conferences – ARTICLE]

As luck would have it, while we were in Instagram jail, there was a Facebook/Instagram event taking place in Toronto, so Hazel decided that she would attend and see what she could find out in person from the FB/IG representatives at the conference.

But…  that didn’t really go as planned either.

[GET DEMO: See how mobile ads benefit your business – FREE SIGNUP]

If your business depends on Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest, or any other half reputable social media platform for traffic and engagement, the last thing you want to do is piss off a faceless organization full of algorithms, automated suspension flags, and the like.

 

So grab your earbuds and listen to our 100th episode — 18 Days in Instagram jail!

So it’s time to negotiate the contract for your event venue.

You’ve spent a lot of time planning a trade show or conference, and it’s finally time to decide where you are going to host it, and what sort of amenities you are going to provide for attendees, speakers, and sponsors.  The next step is choosing your event venue and negotiating the contract.

[LISTEN: iBeacons + Events:  3 Ways to Use Them at Your Next Event – PODCAST EPISODE]

In this episode of the podcast, we’re going to teach you half of what it takes to negotiate with your prospective event venue in order to get the most bang for your buck.  It’s not rocket science, or even rocket engineering, but if you’ve never worked with hotels, conference centers, or that type of business, then it can be intimidating and hard to know exactly what you should be pushing for in your contract terms, and where you can find some extra discounts off the list pricing for the line items.

Getting the right location can make or break your event.

If you’re lucky enough to have multiple event venues that you can use, then it’s not that difficult to get them bidding against each other for you business.  There are plenty of line items that can be included, comp’d, expanded, etc for your benefit without raising any eyebrows in the accounting department of your host location.

[READ: The Introverts Guide to Making Trade Events Bearable – BLOG ARTICLE]

The key here is to know which parts of the contract are the most important to the event venue, versus which ones they have the ability to use as incentives to get your business.  It’s also very important to understand how the expected size of your event can impact their bids, and you can’t forget that the type of industry you’re in will also have bearing on their final offers.

Most hotels, reception venues, conference centers, etc will not tell you in advance where they are willing to play ball with pricing, freebies, inclusions, and so on – it’s not their job to tell you how to cut into their profit margins.  They recognize that newbie producers will not be likely to know all the corners they can cut, so they’re not going to cut them unless you request it in their final bids.

Grab your earbuds, sit back and relax, and listen to the first part of our two part mini-series about how to negotiate with your event venue for the best deal!

 

Makers, artists, creatives – this episode is designed for you!

We’ve combed through our subscriptions and playlists and pulled out a few podcasts that we really like – series and episodes that focus on makers, artists, and creatives.  You know, the kind of people who really love to make things – all kinds of things.  The sort of finished products that you find on Etsy, Artsy, and a ton of other e-commerce sites.

[LISTEN: 6 Strange Podcasts You Probably Haven’t Heard of Yet – PODCAST EPISODE]

Whether you are an artist, a craftsperson, or a designer, if you are any of these things, then you are one of the makers in our book!  We have a great appreciation for those who can take ideas and turn them into concrete (or paint, or fiber, or metal, or cake…) pieces of work, and then have the cojones to put that work out for the entire world to see and judge.

What happens when art smashes headlong into tech?

The era of too much technology has created a very strange intersection of technology and old fashioned physical labor.  It’s nearly impossible to sell your creations unless you use technology – in the form of social media, search engines, online e-commerce platforms, and so on – which means that makers are automatically going to have to be marketers; it’s few and far between that have dedicated PR departments or gallery representatives when you look at the entire number of people who are out there creating things on a daily basis.

And there are so many style specific platforms out there now –

Digital Art & Design – Behance, Dribble, Artsy

e-Commerce for makers and recyclers – Etsy, eBay (still the king), 1st Dibs

e-Commerce for artists – Pixels, LevelPress

e-Commerce for designers – Society 6, PrintedMint

This is by NO means a complete list, it’s just the tip of the iceberg.  We could seriously do an entire podcast episode about the rise of Depop (don’t feel bad if you are over the age of 25 and don’t know a thing about it yet) and how young people are becoming e-commerce entrepreneurs before they’ve graduated from high school.

[READ: The Secret Art of Journaling Wisely – BLOG ARTICLE]

Our list includes podcast series for makers that are focused on design – digital and physical, music, the recycle/upcycle movement (again, we’ll tackle this Depop thing later in the year), and art, particularly the super hot illustration movement that’s taking over the web right now.

Last but certainly not least

We will close out with some of our own thoughts about translating the creative energy and process that makers use to produce into marketing at a higher, more efficient level.  After all, if you spend all your time marketing, you don’t have any time left over for making, and that would be a shame.  But art supplies and musical instruments aren’t free – at least not the good ones, not that we’ve seen – so the bills have to get paid one way or another.

 

Grab your earbuds and take a load off with us while we talk about our favorite podcasts for makers, creatives, and artists!

 

[SEE THE DEMO: Find out how to effectively market your business using mobile – FREE SIGNUP]