For personal trainers and other fitness professionals, your ability to be a top-notch fitness leader in the field can no longer be established solely on your ability to help clients see results. In addition to being able to inspire people to get off the couch and get moving, educating client’s on the latest fitness trends and research findings, and possessing the knowledge to develop fun, innovative and effective fitness programs, it is now a necessity to incorporate social media into your business plan. To say the competition is fierce is an understatement – a quick Google search of ‘personal trainer Ontario’ yields well over a million results. So how is a privately owned studio or personal trainer to get a lead on the pack? Social media. Not just engaging in social media but using metrics to ensure that you are getting value for your efforts. In preparing for her participation in the 2013 ITU World Championships, Amy Moss-Archambault, a dedicated triathlete and personal trainer faced a quick learning curve to fulfill social media contractual obligations with sponsors. “Six years ago Twitter was really successful for my goals,” she said noting the model of stream of consciousness and earlier use of hashtags allowed for unique and powerful posts. Today, the Twitter climate has changed and so has Ms. Moss-Archambault’s business focus. The busy mom of 3 is no longer focused on sponsorships but now operates the very popular TriMom Fitness Studio in Millgrove, Ontario. She uses her earlier leap into social media to engage with her clients and further develop the Tri-Mom community primarily through the use of Facebook and Instagram.

On Sept 22 my trip to The Toronto Premium Outlets in Halton Hills included a surprise lunch! That day Halton Region hosted an event promoting local agricultural and retail businesses. Grilled cheese, pumpkin soup and pumpkin brittle were amongst the tasty offerings. Next to the complimentary samples there was a “selfie spot” sign for the Pumpkins to Pastries Trail, also known as #p2ptrail which caught my attention. Selfie photos taken at any of the 37 Trail locations (featured on the Halton Region website) and posted on social media with tag #p2ptrail were entered into weekly contests. Gift basket prizes from local vendors have been awarded to the contest winners. This program ran from Sept 12 through to Oct 31, 2016.

Social Media Metrics can be used to benefit virtually any business, but are even more beneficial for small businesses and those in the early stages of growth and establishing themselves. Metrics help to illustrate and clarify which aspects of the business are gathering the best response and most traffic over various social media platforms. This allows marketers to select and focus more attention on the platforms that are getting the best response rate, to keep doing what’s working, and to improve upon what’s not.

When I think of a women’s lingerie store, my mind automatically goes to Victoria’s Secret, La Senza and La Vie en Rose. When walking by these stores in the mall and while going inside the stores, women are constantly bombarded with images of perfect looking models wearing the products. I think that trying on the products with these images in your head makes a lot of women reluctant to buy the items. Most women forget that yes, these models are beautiful and have thin bodies, however even they don’t look like the photos. Countless hours of retouching and photo shopping go into making them look like they do in the posters.   Modern American standards have created this perfect image of what women should look like, resulting in low self-esteem and dangerous eating disorders. Body image has become extremely important to women, especially at a young age.

To take a picture is to capture a moment in time. Each captured image has the potential to carry its own unique feeling through time, and bring you back with happiness and wonder to the origins of that moment.1  “I grew up around lenses, my dad worked in television and seeing life through a lens seemed more real to me” 2 says Paula Capella.  Paula Capella Photography not only captures those precious moments, but uses social media to capture important information to help grow her small business.  

If everything around running a small business or non-profit organization (NP) isn’t tough enough, try adding social media performance metrics to your list of tasks.  Metrics for social media can be scary and confusing for small businesses and non-profits when they have no time, no extra staff and no budget. But not all social media metrics need to be relegated to the doghouse. Some easily taken metrics are important and can measure a level of success. As I was driving on highway 11 through North Bay, Ontario, the fun looking storefront of Lisa’s Doghouse caught my eye. So, I went in and talked social media metrics with the owner of this upscale healthy pet food store, Lisa Rousseau. The business is only four years old and she has relied primarily on Facebook and her website for staying in touch with her customers. On the success of their social media efforts on their business, store associate Brendan Vandermeulen says, “ It’s a hard one to gauge. It does not bring in new people as much as engage those who are already keeping an eye on us.”. And about translating their social media efforts to sales Brendan explains, “Again, it is a hard one to gauge because the other advertising overlaps.” Right now, Lisa and her team are comfortable with their current social media strategy and look forward to when there is more time to improve and measure the success of what they are doing.

Timmins, Ontario is experiencing a cultural renaissance. Young entrepreneurs with lofty goals and a high tolerance for risk are spurring a revolution in this mid-sized mining town. The organization that served as the catalyst for this change – Radical Gardens. Radical Gardens (RG) is a multi-faceted company that is comprised of a Certified Organic farm, a LEAF certified farm to table restaurant, and an online market that distributes to the region.

The American Red Cross The American Red Cross is the number one non-profit emergency relief and preparedness organization in the United States offering assistance, training, and preparedness services to hundreds of millions of people each year. Not only are they saving lives but they have been paving the way for other non-profit organizations through the use of social media for years. Back in 2005 when hurricane Katrina struck the Gulf Coast, the Red Cross introduced it’s Text 2HELP campaign which was one of the first major industry-wide fundraising campaigns via text-messaging. A study conducted by the Red Cross over the past couple of years shows that social media is the fourth most popular way for people to get emergency information and this method is quickly becoming more prevalent. When you are judging success in terms of property saved and loss averted, it is crucial to have a solid plan in place when it comes to social media and a tangible impact on the organizations ability to serve the community. The Red Cross receives on average 5000-7000 posts on social media daily, so how do they sort through all of the “noise” to collect valuable lifesaving data?

Rice Krispies, Special K, Corn Flakes, these are just a few iconic brands from Kellogg’s. I know for over 40 years I have enjoyed a bowl or two for breakfast. Established over 100 years ago, Kellogg’s is a household name in 180 countries around the world today. The company continuously delivers high-quality breakfast foods and attracts consumers through some of the best advertising and marketing campaigns in the consumer goods industry. During the summer of 2013 Kellogg’s wanted to run a 3 month, UK-specific social media campaign for their breakfast cereal Krave. The one difference from previous activities is they wanted to bring this campaign in-house. When bringing a campaign in-house Kellogg’s needed to make sure they had a way to track their KPI’s, and carefully align the social media metrics they were using to their organizational goals in a way that would contribute to the goals’ achievement.  

“#Parentingquestion What are your teething baby survival tips?”, “How much #TV should I let my child watch? #Parenthood” These are just two examples of recent parenting questions that were sent out into the Twitter world today. More and more millennial parents are turning to social media for parenting advice. In fact, some reports have found that millennial mothers are two times as likely to seek parenting advice on the internet than to ask other people and as high as 50% of Dads use social media once a day for the purpose of parenting. Since the sources of parenting information online are endless and anyone can post anything, parents are more likely to come across information that is not evidence based, motivated by consumerism and even potentially harmful. For many years now, Ontario Public Health Units have been involved in the promotion of positive parenting. The mandate of the public health system is to improve the health of the population through activities that promote health, protect health, and prevent disease and injury. Guided by the Ontario Public Health Standards and their Agency Strategic Plan, Wellington Dufferin Guelph Public Health has made promoting positive parenting one of their 5 strategic program priorities. In order to do this effectively and reach the right people with the right information, social media involvement has expanded. Wellington Dufferin Guelph Public Health has an existing agency Twitter and Facebook page as well as successful program-specific social media accounts such as the Twitter, Facebook and webpage for the Circles Guelph Wellington program aimed at changing how the community thinks and acts about poverty.

Social media experts know exactly what impressions, reach, klout, community growth and engagement mean. Although, these words seem familiar to us, they might not be for your CEO. One of the hardest challenges for social media experts is to quantify the monetary return on investment (ROI) of social media. How can you convince the investment with metrics that are unfamiliar to the upper management of your company? Social media wise, the infamous Formula 1 has been considered a dinosaur on social media, and it might have been because of its Chief Executive.

Conversations, leads, engagement, reach, impressions, bounce rate, time on site, audience growth rate, response rate….. which social media metrics are meaningful to a campaign? After reading about 20 articles, I found that the more I study on this topic, the guiltier I feel. Because it makes me realize that I have been following some “vanity metrics” of my previous social media campaigns. People follow us, read our posts, and get our emails….. But can any of these metrics say that our audience will go further with us?

It’s safe to say that when German brothers Adolf and Rudolph Dassler first founded footwear and apparel giant PUMA in 1924 the world was a much different place. Computers, the Internet and social media were obviously not of concern whereas merely having reliable electricity to manufacture their shoes was. Fast-forward to nearly a century later and the game has changed in ways that would have once seemed unimaginable. In order to compete in today’s global marketplace companies need to have an online presence. While initially it may have been adequate to just have a corporate website, it is now becoming increasingly necessary for companies be active on social media. But merely participating in social media does not ensure success. Companies need to be analyzing their social media traffic and taking advantage of the insights that it can provide in order to ensure that their time and effort is providing them the optimal return on investment.

With the intentions of partying like it’s 1999, the Hamilton bar scene is leaning heavily on social media to pop-off their next hit event, in addition to gaining some insight into what the local competition might be spinning up.