Happy New Year! kitestring closed the holiday season with the success of the third annual Christmas Spectacular pageant and after party, raising the equivalent of over 350 months of after school programming with Culture for Kids in the Arts (CKA)!
He said. She said.
"The team at kitestring was extremely accommodating and responsive to our needs. Including kitestring in our project was imperative to our success." — Jeff Leggo, Acting Superintendent, St. Lawrence Islands National Park of Canada
kitestring recently had the pleasure of facilitating some of Toronto’s brightest minds in a workshop with the team at the Toronto 2015 Pan/ Parapan American Games.
We were inspired by the intense creative energy that came together to explore innovative branded possibilities for how the Games will be experienced by those who will attend the events.
The Small Business Enterprise Centre (SBEC) and kitestring are offering up a smorgasbord of branding expertise in three delicious picnic sessions. These three sessions run on February 9, February 16 and February 23 from 5:00 to 8:00pm. The first session, “Gathering Ingredients”, will help you understand how to properly assemble your own brand and learn a fresh philosophy about how to communicate through social media. Second you’ll need to get “In the Kitchen” and define your brand online using the ingredients you’ve gathered. And lastly, your brand will go “To Market, To Market” by collectively developing a fully integrated campaign platform that engages your brand’s target audience through social media. Join in on the (educational) fun by pre-registering with the SBEC by calling 905.540.6400 or send them an email at mail@hamiltonsmallbusiness.ca.
Happy September everyone!! I’m super excited to post my blog on the first day on, what I consider to be, one of the best days of the year.
For anyone who actually stuck around for the past few months, instead of basking in the beautiful summer that embraced us, you will know that the kitestring team has been hard at work – “nose to the grindstone” you might say. We’ve actually had a lot of fun working on some amazing projects this summer. Fun as they may be, it was still difficult to ignore the hot temps and cool beaches that were calling our name!
But, as I welcome in September today, I suddenly feel like the very tantalizing summer fever that I had been feeling is finally lifted – hurray!
Today brings a new energy – it’s the day to get ready to settle into the last quarter of the year. Reflect on what’s been, what we’ve checked off of our list and what’s still left to accomplish before the New Year approaches.
So, as the sandal tan fades, I invite you to join in the excitement of the season! The team here at kitestring has been doing just that. We’ve brainstormed, We’ve re-focused, we’re excited, and, believe me, the creative ideas are cookin’! The studio’s a buzz as we work on bringing our latest wacky ideas to life!
Needing a little help coming off of the summer vacation high? No worries, drop by the kitestring studio anytime. We can help you with brainstorming, focusing and re-energizing too (after all, it’s what we love to do).
Chris and I had the pleasure of meeting with a potential client this morning. During our conversation, the idea of ‘building your business success on your own terms’ came up. I actually jotted this line into my notebook as it really stuck with me – what an important concept!
Often new entrepreneurs are faced with the necessity of taking on any work that comes their way in order to build the business – it may be outside of your area of specialty and it may be for clients that frankly, aren’t fitting into the landscape of what you envisioned. You can’t turn it down, right? YOU NEED THE BUSINESS!
It’s easy to understand this logic and quite honestly, it is most likely necessary. It provides you with work, a track-record and most importantly, capital to keep building your dream. The important thing to remember as you’ smile and service’ your way through these projects is that all of these ‘experiences’ help you define and build your business – and your brand.
Continue to build a strong brand that clearly articulates what your business is and the experience that you promise to your clients. Most importantly, infuse all of this into the marketplace! Ensure that your unique brand is being consistently used in all of your marketing materials (both in print and online) as well as your social networking efforts, face-to-face interactions, your physical environment, the style in which you answer the phone, your business card…I could go on and on.
By doing this, you’ll have your first filter in qualifying clients. The right clients will be naturally attracted to you. Your cultures will align, the work will excite you and TA-DA – you’ll start to build ‘success on your own terms’.
I’m not a bookkeeper. I don’t like bookkeeping, I’m not trained as a bookkeeper and, I’m certainly not good at bookkeeping. Believe me – you do not want me in charge of bookkeeping!
So, how does our bookkeeping get done? We hired a bookkeeper!
Too often, entrepreneurs take on all of the functions involved in managing and growing their business – bookkeeping, purchasing, marketing, sales – you name it, there’s a hat in your closet for it!
The problem is – you’ll spend so much time on trying to do the things that you’re not so great at that you’ll have no time to add real value using your real skill set.
My point? Use your core skills to contribute to the business most effectively. Whether it be a bookkeeper, lawyer or marketing firm, find the right partners to help you with the areas that you’ll just end up wasting your very precious time on. After all, your business deserves the best!
The holiday season is just around the corner. Have you started your shopping yet? Jenn was telling me today, on the way to a client meeting in TO, that she is almost done all her shopping for her little guy Jack. I haven’t even started to think about it yet. Maybe I better.
What about you? Have you started your Holiday shopping yet? We’ll I have a few links for you to help find just the right thing for that little person in your life. And they are all my clients!
…what kind of twitter strategy really “works”? And what defines tweet success for organizations really?
I know, I know, awareness, image and reputation management, being able to reach a customer with a good or bad review in real time and being able to respond in an instant.
I guess, more specifically, I’m wondering what comprises a successful twitter follow for an organization’s twitter?
Today I tweeted about a kijiji link to someone selling a group of vintage cameras. Two minutes later I was followed by DigitalCamFan and UniqueAntiques. This makes sense right? Camera. Antiques. Antique cameras on kijiji.
Really?
Although I understand why this type of following on twitter occurs (mention + connection= profit), and could make sense in someone’s business mind, I have a hard time finding the time spent on following anyone who tweets about bananas as a banana company’s best investment. How do you measure the time spent by the banana company’s social media specialist against banana R.O.I?
For some organizations twitter is an excellent tool to reach, poll and even persuade their target audience to create, collaborate and even consume. But for DigitalCamFan and UniqueAntiques, that ten seconds they spent searching “antique” and “camera” was totally lost on me. And believe it or not, ten seconds can really add up.
Maybe our searches should be more specific than a noun and a geographical area. Maybe twitter is just a small step towards something even better. A social media that instinctively knows what you want, like that E-Harmony website claims to do for dating. Sometimes I wonder…
We are! Meg and Chris from kitestring will be at Supercrawl this Friday. We will be handing out big prizes. BIG prizes. Make sure you spot us in the crowd. We will be wearing our underpants so it won’t be that hard !
kitestring is celebrating its second successful year of business in Hamilton. Thinking back to how much love went into our brand to launch it as the business we know today, we wanted to give something similar to small business entrepreneurs getting started around us.
Maybe you know someone who should enter. Like a new entrepreneur that doesn’t like to give out their business card because they were designed in some unlucky parent’s basement by a guy who swears by youtube tutorials. Or a new business owner who has gone though the branding, print or web design process and came out the other end with nothing but some dumb t-shirt or a really ugly tri-fold brochure. That is who should enter this contest. Maybe that business is yours.
The story centers on a convicted serial killer, and the husband and wife writing team hired to help him write an account of his crimes. The killer, Bill Reach, has admitted to the murder of 19 women, but there may have been more. Over many weeks of interviews, the couple, Dan and Iris Henniman, grow more and more uncertain of the ethics of what they are doing. Are they simply relating terrifying events, or are they helping readers consume rape, murder, and mutilation as if they are consuming any other product of our society? Are they, in fact, helping to turn Bill Reach into a celebrity?
Starring:
AJ Haygarth as William Reach
Alexa Holbrook as Iris Henniman
Jared Lenover as Dan Henniman
Directed by Matt Moore
Stage Managed by Monica Cairney
Set Designed by Chris Farias
Tickets: $15
Show times:
Friday, May 8th, 8pm
Saturday, May 9th, 2pm
Saturday, May 9th, 8pm
Thursday, May 14th, 8pm
Friday, May 15th, 8pm
Saturday, May 16th, 2pm
Saturday May 16th, 8pm
Reserve online before May 6th for a chance to win some killer door prizes!
Video and Promotion Material by kitestring.
Chris Farias – Hamilton Ontario – www.kitestring.ca kitestring creesign – graphic design, marketing, illustration, web design, creative thinking, strategic markeative marketing + dting, total fun!
