I’m elated to have won Epilepsy Toronto as a new client.   My team and I  are responsible for the social media strategy, planning & execution for Scotiabank’s BuskerFest 2009 – planned for Thursday, August 27 thru to Sunday, August 30th at the St Lawrence Market neighbourhood in Toronto.   [Become a FAN on the Scotiabank BuskerFest Facebook Page or join our twitter @buskerfestTO and #BFTO]

Certainly, coming onboard in July for an August festival has a lot of challenges [and so technically, I call this a social networking marketing plan not social media due to what makes for a reasonable focus in a short time period] and yet, I really heartily applaud Epilepsy Toronto.   They are open minded, familiar with social media, time and resource crunched but willing and interested to barrel forth into new territory.  The leadership team also asks very good questions around our strategies and initiatives – which always makes for interesting work.

Being a time sensitive event – BuskerFest will provide a fast and furious window of learning and experience for an organization that is interested in adopting more social media corporately.   If it weren’t for a major event – social media/networking corporate adoption would plug along much slower.   As part of our path, we have acknowledged there will be collective learning internally, among partners, among all of us.  (It feels like early days web 1999!)  One of our marketing goals, afterall, is to set Epilepsy Toronto up for 2010.

I’m pretty pleased with our plans for creating excitement for social media with Epilepsy Toronto’s volunteers – detailed on the facebook fan pages.

Epilepsy Toronto is currently offering its Secondary School BuskerFest volunteers up to 34 hours of community involvement for those who train and work shifts at the BuskerFest event.

We are now offering an additional 6 hour credit (to get students to the full 40 hour requirement) by introducing social media volunteer assignments.

As a member of our social media team, you get:
• Mentorship from a leading social media industry expert
• Training on ‘writing for social media’
• Identification as an exclusive member of the BuskerFest official social team
• Community involvement meeting a team of other secondary student volunteers from across the city.
• Automatic entry into the BuskerFest citizen journalist contest recognizing the most influential social media marketers/journalists.

For me – I’m really excited about the mentorship opportunities.  I’m not talking about mentorship from myself – I’ll do my fair share, of course – but because I have a great social media network and its all about using the network, I’m hoping I can pair up students producing youtube videos with online video social media experts, or facebook enthusiasts with facebook gurus, etc.   The possibilities would just tickle a match maker.

Having worked as a marketing director in the home building industry,  I see so many opportunities for the game changing marketing.

The home building industry feels like the last bastion of old style marketing & communications [and I'm not bashing my former employer here - they were very gracious with my change agent ideas].   In an industry where the majority of ad spending focused on print advertising, websites are merely extensions of phone numbers.   E-mail marketing are mailed pdfs.  Sales agents want to phone prospects and some DON’T EVEN HAVE EMAIL ACCESS.  [i swear].

True, many Canadian home builder sites have added detailed maps and migrated the silly user registration forms online [i can't believe marketing spend is influenced by these forms] but how many are really mining customer information better yet conversation to change the game?

Anyone in the low-rise industry might look at high-rise marketing for inspiration  – high rise commands more marketing dollars, flashly campaigns and original creative.  But who actually uses social media to create a lasting impression with customers?

I introduced corporate blogging with my past employer (and did – first in low-rise -thank you very much).  But I left on mat leave before it really attained the vision that I had for it.

One blog that I always liked was Riverfront in Denver.  I spent a lot of time in Denver, visiting tons of condo presentation centres, analyzing websites, etc and Riverfront was very interesting.  The writing style is informal.  Still lots of opportunity.   In Toronto, M5V’s blog is commendable – they are showing comments including the age old – ‘when will construction start’.

Blogging for sharing more marketing information e.g. (*&)(*& press releases – is not revolutionary.  The real opportunity is in satisfying customers along the entire customer experience.  Not just prospects but buyers.  Ah.. I have so many ideas.

Sometimes you listen to a podcast or watch a video and your head starts spinning.  You can’t finish the podcast without taking copious notes, pausing to think about a business idea, and it takes a long time to finish the cast.

Tim OReilly’s Feb 20th keynote address is such a videocast.

He does an excellent job explaining web 2.0 concepts in a very easy and compelling way.   He gives a very good shakedown on how this ‘new world’ has taken shape and why it is important.  And you can see the video and get the presentation slides to boot!

Excellent fodder for sr. mgt or executives that need to educate themselves on web 2.0.