October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month, a time to get everyone thinking about the most frequently diagnosed cancer in Canadian women. As it is a cause that is near and dear to TELUS, during the month, they’re donating $25 to The Canadian Breast Cancer Foundation for every pink BlackBerry Curve 9360 sold.

But how to get word out of this great charitable initiative? Cue High Road to help design and execute the “TELUS Pink Network Weekend Getaway” campaign, a creative blogger challenge that rallied some of the most influential females online to get Canadians to “think pink.”

Over a one week period, High Road and TELUS challenged 20 top female bloggers to write posts detailing who their “pink networks” are (the females in their lives that matter most) and take to Twitter, sharing their stories with their communities. The person with the most retweets received an all-expenses paid trip for her and three members of her pink network to a relaxing weekend of wine-tasting at the Spirit Ridge Vineyard Resort & Spa, located in the heart of British Columbia’s Okanagan Valley.

The blogger challenge was a great success. The TELUS Go Pink initiative trended multiple times on Twitter throughout the week, and the bloggers shared some very touching stories of how breast cancer had impacted their lives, all the while helping spread word of TELUS’ commitment to help in the fight against breast cancer.

All in all, it was a great campaign, and one that High Road was tremendously proud to support.

Put your skills to work for a fast-paced communications firm with a stellar reputation – a place where you can really make a difference. High Road Communications shapes integrated communications programs for the world`s leading brands, serving clients across North America from offices in Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal, Vancouver and San Francisco.  

High Road has an immediate opportunity in our Toronto office location for a Manager, Digital Marketing to provide strategic consulting and hands-on integration of digital marketing plans into the marketing communications and public relations mix for our clients.  This net-new  position that has come about due to business growth.

The Manager, Digital Marketing will lead plan development to drive measurable ROI for clients.  The Manager, Digital Marketing will also work closely with traditional PR practitioners to ensure a holistic communications strategy.  A key component of this role will be to drive organic and external new business.

 Overview:

• An experienced professional with expertise in applying digital marketing solutions within a strategic communications framework.  Particular strengths in digital marketing include word-of-mouth/viral campaigns, content syndication, online advertising, lead- and traffic generation, blogger relations, social media and use of Web analytics.
• Part strategist, part hands-on tactician, capable of envisioning, leading or implementing as the situation requires.
• Excellent relationship skills; good listener; respects the expertise of others; ability to motivate and generate effective action from all levels of the organization. 
• A consummate team player who brings a passionate, positive, high-energy approach to client service and delivering results.
• Comfortable in the role of teacher, trainer, mentor – your enthusiasm for what you do is infectious.
•  The successful candidate should possess enough hands-on experience implementing digital marketing to translate terminology into a language that all can understand. He or she should enjoy training / teaching both account staff and clients.

 Responsibilities:

• Identify marketing problems, perform research, and analyze trends/results to determine strategic implications.
• Implement internal/external engagement models and processes around strategic planning.
• Develop, package and integrate digital marketing consulting and tactical services within the communications mix of several high-profile clients.
• Perform marketing analysis, including segmentation, social media, survey, market share, web behavioural analysis
• Collaborate on proposals and pitches; proactively identify new opportunities for client growth.
• Manage projects for on-time and on-budget completion.

 Qualifications:

• Seeking 5+ years of overall experience working with clients and developing business within a digital firm, PR agency, or advertising/marketing agency.  Agency experience is a must.
• In-depth knowledge of digital, social and mobile marketing communications strategy, analytics and user behaviour (segmented analytics and channel marketing).
• You’re a specialist in paid media (paid digital marketing space/advertising search engine and knowledge of paid content sponsorship), and you work very well weaving your channel expertise into integrated programming.
• Strong understanding of integrated advertising.
• Strong understanding of brands and branding as a discipline.
• An ability to envision and develop holistic, offline and online marketing communications strategy, weaving in digital strategies to drive ROI for clients.
• Proven track record of excellent client counseling, including strategic thinking, verbal and writing skills; you’re a natural at building relationships.
• A passionate and persuasive advocate of digital media.

 If you have the above qualifications, please submit your resume to Raman Uppal, Senior Human Resources Specialist at careers@highroad.com

 For more information on High Road Communications – please visit our Web site at www.highroad.com.

Salacious titles aside, I’ve been wondering lately what people’s predilections are for digesting digital content. Apart from the easy assumptions that people prefer content like video, photos and infographics – how does size (or content length, more specifically) affect people’s perceptions?

If I come across a link to a blog post in my Twitter stream, am I more predisposed to shorter, easily digestible content because I accessed it from Twitter (a short and succinct communications medium)? Am I more inclined to photo and video content on Facebook vs. longer form notes?

Well according to an informal study done by AT&T on their Facebook page, it seems like character count has a direct correlation to fan engagement.

Their study showed that posts exceeding 218 characters were largely ignored, with significant engagement beginning at around 152 characters. A little more obvious was the fact that less engagement with a post meant fewer impressions through the Newsfeed, and generally less spread.

Basically – people don’t like to read and they’re far less inclined to Like or Share longer content on Facebook.

Are people knowingly making these distinctions on Facebook? Are these traits common across all social channels (Twitter, LinkedIn, etc.)?

Either way it shows that being part of the discussion is only one step in a larger strategy, and as marketers we need to understand that what we’re posting is just as important.