For the third year in a row, Strategic Media Solutions is sponsoring the Night Before Christmas Foodbank Fundraiser.  Each year I take the reigns and organize the event as well as bring my band, Tell Mama, out to play - we have such a great time!  This year we are pleased to share the organizing spotlight with Dorothy Linden of Linden Financial Services.  Dorothy will be taking responsibility for coordinating all financial contributions and sponsorships this year.  We are also pleased to welcome back Julia Dashcevich and Images InterAlia as our printing and signage sponsor.

Tickets for the event are $20 a person plus a donation of food or $5 in lieu at the door.  However, this year we are adding a new twist - in the hopes of encouraging more people to donate to the food bank on a regular, monthly basis, we are offering free tickets to anyone who commits to give $10 a month to the foodbank.  This can be done either automatically by credit card or with post-dated cheques.  For a committment of $15 a month, generous donors can get their ticket for free and will also not have to make a donation of food or money at the door of the event.

Carefor Health & Community Services has retained Strategic Media Solutions to streamline it’s Raiser’s Edge database.  Carefor wants to review it’s Campaign / Fund / Appeal structure as well as generate some custom reports to help them keep a closer eye on the status of their fundraising activities.

The Art of Being Green Festival has partnered with Strategic Media Solutions and OnCouRSS Web Solutions to promote and advertise the festival.  Strategic Media Solution is publishing this year’s programme as well as managing all of the graphic design needs of the festival - OnCouRSS Web Solutions has developed a new web page and is developing an online community at: www.artofbeinggreen.ca

The Great War Memorial Hospital Foundation has retained OnCouRSS Web Solutions, a child company of Strategic Media Solutions, to design, implement and host a new social media web portal for them.  The new site will allow visitors to make donations online and will be a showcase for all of the wonderful work that the Perth, Ontario Hospital is doing for it’s community.

I recently decided that I needed to find a more efficient way to take photos from my gigs and post them to my website because, to be perfectly honest, I just wasn’t finding the time to do it and considering that web promotion is my business that just makes me look really bad! I figured that there had to be some kind of widget out there that would let me at least only post them in one place while feeding them everywhere else. I have been playing around in facebook lately comparing groups to pages and exploring the nuances of integrating facebook into my marketing strategy so that seemed like a good place to start.

Facebook has a great photo album feature that lets you upload photos into as many albums as you like and integrates a very nice tagging system which is excellent for the viral marketing end of the equation. In fact, they even have a mobile upload feature that lets you take pictures with your MMS enabled phone and upload them in real time to your facebook page - nice! All you have to do is send a photo email to facebook mobile, receive an activation code back by email and voila, you have an active mobile photo account. I followed all the instructions over and over and constantly received the message that my phone or provider was not able to provide this function and that no photo was received. I have a brand new Palm Treo 700p and would be pretty surprised if it didn’t have the capacity to perform this function.

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Breathe Productions recently appointed Strategic Media Solutions to manage their growing web portfolio. With a strong background in web marketing and a fully-customizable content management tool, Breathe Productions offers their clients the best marketing and management opportunities the internet can offer.

Together, Strategic Media Solutions and Breathe Productions make a powerhouse team that can guide your business through any marketing mystery and help you to get the job done on time and on budget!

A strong, flexible identity is crucial to launching and growing a business both on and off-line. Brian Dodo of BM Dodo Strategic Design in Kingston speaks with Shelley about why.

Brian Dodo, RGD - BIO

Brian is a strategic designer and co-owner of BmDodo Strategic Design, an award winning full service Strategic Design Company based in downtown Kingston Ontario.

Brian has more than a decade of international design and communication experience in the publishing, advertising, packaging and new media industries. He has worked with Hummingbird Ltd. within their Corporate Identity and Design group.

Brian worked as the Manager of Creative Services for Streampipe.com in Washington, DC. He has also worked on projects for the United Way KFL&A, Eastern Lake Ontario Regional Innovation Network (ELORIN), Queen’s University, Food and Agriculture Organization of United Nations, World Vision International, Inter-America Development Bank, The Nature Conservancy, BET, Design Exchange in Toronto and recently for the United Way KFL&A Success by 6 campaign.

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Join Shelley Montreuil, President of Strategic Media Solutions, in an interview with Leesa Barnes, author of Podcasting for Profit, and find out how blogging and podcasting can propel your business towards greater visibility and success.

Leesa Barnes - BIO

Working with management teams, entrepreneurs and businesses, Leesa Barnes teaches insider tips on how to open doors, generate leads and make money using a podcast. Leesa has been featured in national and international media and is recognized as an expert in podcasting and online media.

She speaks regularly about podcasting and receives rave reviews for helping audiences release their fear of technology through her use of relevant visuals, analogies and humourous stories.

She is President of Toronto-based Caprica Interactive Marketing and is author of Podcasting for Profit (Maxpress, September 2007) which shows individuals and businesses how to make money podcasting in seven simple steps. For more information about Leesa, visit www.leesabarnes.com.

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