I’ll be at PodCamp Montreal this week-end, so if you’re going and that we haven’t met in the past, feel free to say hello (just to let you know, I’ll try to wear my new NVI shirt).

Since the event is organized by few of my (, , ,…) and that some of my friends (including , , , and more) will also be speaking, the whole week-end quickly became a must. Even if the happening hasn’t started yet, I surely can say that I’m very impressed by what people behind this week-end had already set: great conference line up, nice updated blog + an upcoming live feed through Ustream, what else could we expect… they even have a + an on Friday night. Hopefully I’ll meet a lot of other there. See you soon!

Pictures of Podcamp

There are some on my Flickr

One of the best internet marketing analysis that I’ve read in 2008 is certainly the published by Avenue A | Razorfish (probably the world’s well known interactive agency). Into the 164 pages guide, the authors identify Internet’s impact on the 2008 presidential election as one of the top 10 Digital Media Issue to Watch in 2008′. Here is what it says:

The Web will be the most impactful and influential medium in the 2008 presidential race, not only for presidential hopefuls but for voter self-education and self-expression. Much like radio for Roosevelt and TV for JFK, the 2008 race for the White House will be determined by candidates’ abilities to connect with and galvanize supporters online. The Internet has changed the political environment.

How Internet will impact the upcoming canadian election?
Even if internet marketing strategies coming from Canada are way behind what is currently happening in the States, I cannot wait to see how the Web will change this current federal election. For sure I don’t expect anyone using social networking technology but I know that every candidate/party will probably consider investing time and money in order to understand how they could benefit form social media marketing.

So who will win the battle on the Web?
I know it’s too soon to tell… on one hand , on the other hand have these nice social buttons on their site (FB, Flickr, Twitter, FriendFeed, Youtube and even MySpace!). I guess it’s time to see what they’ll do with all these channels. In fact I don’t know if the worst would be if they don’t do nothing or if they’re not doing the right thing with all these opportunities. It will be interesting to keep an eye on their interactive strategy, in the meantime I’ll be waiting for a first ‘Good night Tweeple!’ from Stephen Harper.

Related to this topic
Political partys on the net: | | |
par Francis sur Go-Référencement.org
Few days ago, Toronto Star columnist,

Lot of people seems to struggle when it’s time to hire an SEO. In fact, since the (in comparison of others) and because the , it becomes quite difficult to know exactly where to start in the process of hiring someone responsible of search engine optimization.

Why do you need an SEO?
Based on all the SEO requests that I’m receiving (way more than you would probably imagine) , I can say that while everyone wants to be on the top results of Google, only few have a very specific goal on mind when calling for SEO services. I would say that the identification of your needs would probably be the first logical thing to identify before calling anybody. Please remember that SEO should always be seen as part of a global marketing strategy. So what are you looking for exactly: more traffic? increase online sales? lead generation? getting people subscribe to your newsletter? There are many goals that we can achieve (sometimes more than one) but we still need to know .

Do I need a consultant or a company?
What type of customer are you? Do you already have a marketing department? Who’s responsible of managing your website? Do you have a budget allowed to SEO? According to your previous answers you can select either a consultant or a company. Besides of the princing, the main differences are that a consultant will focus on SEO issues while companies will sometimes be able to provide a full range of services supporting the SEO effort.

Where do I start my selection of SEO prospects?

I would definitely start based on referrals and then go online. Few months ago I wrote a piece about Who cares about SEO Montreal, the article was an attemp to determine who was targeting that specific term on Google. A little bit later I’ve published another post on the same topic to update the exercise (in french that time). By taking a look at my results, I’ve quickly found out that the front page for SEO Montreal is still owned by the same people. Because I’ve used the 1st page of Google in the previous exercises, I’ll go with this time because I like the fact that it merges the results from Google, Yahoo and MSN Live. So here’s the top 10 as of today:

1. Montreal SEO Company | NVI -
2. Agence de Référencement Montréal SEO Specialist
3. Montreal Search Engine Optimization Company
4. SEO Search Engine Optimization Company SEO Expert
5. Search Engine Watch Forums : profile SEO Montreal
6. montrealseo.ca
7. Gabriel Goldenberg - LinkedIn
8. Search Engine Optimization Montreal
9. SEO Internet Marketing Company in Montreal | NVI -
10. seo montreal

Which questions to ask before hiring?
Many great posts has been made on what you should look for before hiring an internet marketing strategist. Please read and this one from Entrepreneur.com on .

SEO Vendor Considerations ()

1) Strong keyword research strategy. How will they determine KW’s you will show up for?
2) Strong copywriting and link building.
3) Optimization plan for organic pages.
4) Measure organic conversion and ROI.
5) Proven results. Ask about failure, success, and referrals.

Where to get further information concerning SEO in Montreal?
list of SEO people in Montreal: (please help me complete the list)
Adviso ()
Ressac Média ()
K3 Média ()
NVI ()
Skooiz ()
Gabriel Goldenberg ()
Uniseo
SEO Expert
Strategic Marketing Montreal ()
Onéroque ()
Eric Bailllargeon ()

As seen today on their website, Bell is taking the Beijing Olympic Games kick-off as an opportunity to .

It didn’t take very long before a lot of people reacted to Bell’s move: there are already many very interesting comments in the feedback section of this . By reading some of these comments, such as ”Bell may be changing it’s names and ads, but if they don’t change their policies, it isn’t going to help them” or ”Changing brands doesn’t mean squat if they can’t improve their service offerings and customer support” or that one:” Improve your service and make the prices more reasonable and only then you can change the names to confuse the people”, the first thing that came up to my mind was this clip making fun of the whole advertising industry.

So you’re not selling the way you used to, maybe it’s time for a bigger logo, what about an extreme make over? , Bell’s brand senior vice president, the new visual representation of the brand was an attempt to “really clean things up.” I guess they’ll have to review this whole document ().

Sympatico got killed

So besides the new logo, Bell is getting rid of Bell Express Vu and Sympatico brands to renamed them Bell TV and Bell Internet. It took apparently four marketing agencies to find out these names and to process the upcoming campaign. I have to confess that I feel a bit sad losing Sympatico because even if I’m no Bell fan, I’ve always loved Sympatico. I probably still have 2-3 boxes with old modems that they sent me, each time coming with really nice softwares to install IE when the only thing I really needed was a username/password. I also think (not sure) that they used to send me a monthly magazine back in the mid ‘90 with helpful listings of websites to visit, that was nice from them. I finally remember their partnership with MSN, which was probably one of their best move ever (no Microsoft fan here but I still can recognize that it was smart). So, RIP Sympatico, I can’t wait to see the new Bell Internet ads and logo, any suggestions on the font they should use?

I remember myself two weeks ago leaving for a 15 days vacation and wondering if I’m gonna be able to make it. The challenge was real: living without any online connection while enjoying an hiking/camping trip in the beautiful national parks of Banff and Jasper both in the Canadian Rockies.

Am I addicted to the internet?

Considering the fact that my work requires that I spend minimum 8 hrs a day logged to the net and that the first thing that I do when coming back from work is turning on my computer, I would say that it might seem that I have some kind of cyberaddiction. While addictions can be healthy, unhealthy, or a mixture of both, , the situation becomes pathological when you start neglecting important things in your life because of this behavior. The problem with this so-called addiction not yet recognized by (the bible for all symptoms and treatments of mental disorders) is that, like , individuals that exhibit problematic internet use often suffer from other psychiatric disorders. Let’s just think about what people are doing besides of working on the net: adult entertainment, online casinos, gaming, social networking; these paterns of behavior can easily be associate with problems that people might also face into the offline world.

Another point of view on the topic is the one from Kim Young, who became an authority in this field and thinks that cyberaddiction is a real disorder. Young wrote she even gives a short exercise with questions to answers that will give you a rough idea if you are considered as dependents. So is CyberAddiction real, who knows? Like many things coming from the web, I guess it’s too soon to tell.

What do you do when you are on vacation?
Back to my two weeks challenge: No I didn’t made it! After a full week without any connection, I had to go check my credit card balance and my banking services… I took also the time to go through (really quickly) some of my emails. Besides this 10 minutes rush, I felt ok for another full week. Anyway, what’s the worst from being apart from the online world? Yes I’ve feared that when I’ll be back everybody would have changed from to but it didn’t quite happen (I mean not yet). I’ve also lost but think that I’ll take the opportunity to leave plurk, BTW anybody wants ? So what did I missed really, has finally launched their API, bravo to you guys. What else? I guess I’ll see when I’ll catch up with the 1000+ stories waiting for me into my feed reader.

Further info on Cyberaddiction and Pathological Internet Use

by Kimberly S. Young (University of Pittsburgh)
by King, S. A. (1996)
by Suler, J. (2004)
by John Suler, CyberPsychology and Behavior, 2, 385-394, 1999
by Jennifer R. Ferris, Psychology, Virginia Tech
by Yair Amichai-Hamburger, Galit Wainapel, Shaul Fox. CyberPsychology & Behavior. April 1, 2002

Rogers will definitely need some reputation management on their SERP… don’t mess with the geeks

The Story
from Reuters
from Engadget

The Customer’s Response

update: few days ago, the www.fuckyourogers.com site was redirected to which is a little bit more politically correct.

How Canadian search industry is different than the American? According to Yahoo’s SEM National Director, , Canadian companies might be missing the boat. We are way behind the States in SEM expenses. Byrne made for online banking services. While they are about 10 PPC ads in yahoo.com, there are about 5 sponsor results in yahoo.ca and even less when searching in French. These results show that Canadian companies don’t take all the opportunity available.

Eric Morris, points out 3 main differences:
1- Canadians are very loyal to Google in comparison of other countries
2- We are facing a bilingual reality
3- the industry is much more developed in the States

According to Morris, US companies have already shifted budgets from traditional channels to internet marketing. While Canadian begin to use and understand all the possibilities of analytics, US companies focus on the next steps of search such as contextual targeting for mobile.

Last on the panel, Guillaume Bouchard from NVI presented a look a the landscape of the SEM in Province of Qubec. Guillaume said that online sales would probably be higher if debit payment was widely accepted because Quebecers use more debit than credit card payment which is not the case in the States. It seems that Quebec users trust their banks before 3rd party websites such as PayPal. Also good to know that Quebec online market is mainly owned by 3 actors: PowerCorp, Transcontinental and Quebecor.

I’m leaving today for SES Toronto ‘08 with 6 of my colleagues. will be presenting on the State of Search Marketing in Canada panel and I plan to cover some of the panels during the two days event. I know that Simon and from Adviso will also be there. I don’t know about other Montrealers (I think Mitch is presenting also). In fact, I didn’t get the chance to take a look at the speakers but that I might be covering:

-Universal & Blended Search
-The State of Search Marketing in Canada
-Beyond Linkbait: Getting Authoritative Online Mentions
-What’s Different About B2B? Tailored Strategies
-Social Media Success
-Web 2.0 & Search Engines
-Giving Credit Where It’s Due: Which Campaign Sold What?

update: Some , so far

Thanks for the people at who provided me a media pass for the whole event! More to come…

Wow this post is a entire copy and paste from a FB event, don’t know if I’ll make it but still… I definitely want to promote the event.

Montreal’s technology and creative communities are mobilizing against a new federal bill to restrict creators’ and consumers’ rights to use digital media.

On June 12th, 2008, Industry Minister Jim Prentice will introduce the amendment to the Canadian copyright act, commonly called “the Canadian DMCA”. The bill was crafted under pressure from American media cartels, and it’s expected to have a chilling effect on free expression and free speech in this country. It will restrict Canadians from freely using their computers and other devices to save, store, and play their legally-purchased media.

The Montreal Chapter of Fair Copyright for Canada is holding an emergency action meeting to respond to the new bill. We’ll have information for citizens to learn more about the Canadian DMCA, and materials for writing and sending letters to MPs asking them to oppose the bill.

Come meet others in the Montreal area who want a balanced, fair copyright system that works for all Canadians. , Meeting at this Thursday 6:00 PM.

I do consider myself both very privileged and happy to work with great people such as the ones at Molson. As few of you might know, I do social media strategy with Molson Dry and sooner this year, and (our client) invited few bloggers to have an open discussion on how brands and corporations should behave in the social media space. Following this unusual meeting, our client’s marketing and communications departments came out with this great idea : creating a special event for bloggers and their communities.

More infos on the party the strategy
You will be able to have further information (in French) about the party on . Because one of the objectives of creating this event is to reward blogger’s community, I’ll take the opportunity to invite people that have commented on my blog in the past to join us on that special evening. Also, since we have previously presented our experience at Webcom, I’ll be pleased to answer questions that you might have regarding social media consulting and my work.

For the party, we’ve launched the contest last week, the response is very good so far and there is still room available, so I’m tagging , , , , and . .