Sunshine on “cloud computing”

May 22, 2009

In his recent article “Going Mobile” in the Financial Post, Paul Barker defined “cloud computing” as a main driver to the “mobile computing” trend. The trend sees smartphones and other portable devices as the next inevitable tool of business. This is rather interesting to us at CleanPix, our total operation is based on “cloud computing” and we just received the go ahead plus grant money from the NRC Research Council to enable CleanPix to develop it’s service to be further extended to mobile devices. Clearly, our clients are savings hundreds of dollars per year as through us they are tapping in to our “cloud computing” knowhow. On this interesting point, Paul Baker focuses our attention on mobile computing and stresses the direct infrastructures saving from a business perspective awaiting its users.

The rise of mobile computing, however, cannot be attributed merely to the arrival of new devices..The main driver, however, has been the development of so – called “cloud computing,”…
With so much functionality increasingly being delivered to smaller, cheaper devices, mobile computing is poised to fundamentally alter our relationship to computing. And the biggest benefits will accrue to business. Paul Barker
The rise of mobile computing, however, cannot be attributed merely to the arrival of new devices..The main driver, however, has been the development of so – called “cloud computing,”…
With so much functionality increasingly being delivered to smaller, cheaper devices, mobile computing is poised to fundamentally alter our relationship to computing. And the biggest benefits will accrue to business. Paul Barker

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Posted by cleanpix

We are flattered

March 24, 2009

love-itThis feedback from Tourism Squamish , a new member of CleanPix, delighted us.

Hi Chip,

We are more than happy to comment on the spead in which Clean Pix can be set up and the efficiency and level of excellent customer service of the Clean Pix team.

From the time we sent back our signed contract our account access was imediately available.

The following day we arranged a telephone conference training session with Nathanial which took place an hour later on the same day!! In the training session, 3 members of our staff participated and we went over all the processes for setting up, inputting, and managing our initial images and the ongoing process of sending in our full set of assets.

Prior to the training session we sent over 3 images to Nathanial to load for us to work from during the training and those were loaded within only an hour – right before the training session- in all the different formats.

The entire process of getting set up on Cleanpix has only been delayed at any point by our own limited resources in being slow on returning the paperwork to Chip. Imediately after our initial training session we were ready to set up our first Press Brief, create suitecases and set up a link on our website media page!

Currently we are in the process of selecting a number of images to get loaded into Cleanpix later this week and will be setting up another phone training session with Chip to complete our first Press Brief as well as linking Cleanpix to our media page and personalizing our Cleanpix account with our look and feel.

My only wish is that we had more than 2 members of staff so that we could have got all of these things done within 2 days which would have been completely possible given 100% of our attention!

thanks
Katherine

Katherine Folinsbee
Sales & Membership Supervisor – Tourism Squamish
Squamish Sustainability Corporation
Squamish Adventure Centre
Squamish

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Posted by nelsonvigneault

Marketing with connectivity (part 4)

February 23, 2009

For the next several weeks, the CEO of CleanPix, Nelson Vigneault, will be sharing his thoughts on “Marketing with connectivity”.

WHEN IT WORKS AND WHY … IT DOES NOT

For the journalist, pressuite.com provides a platform to discover, pick up content, or elect to receive RSS feeds that meet their specific interests. For our clients, the posting of several, short stories per week creates a momentum that works best. A very good example of use is by Space Coast CVB, where twice a week a new “landing” on pressuite.com of a newsbrief creates sparks of interest from the media. In this manner, stories are picked up and transferred from one Social Media news stream to another. We have also noted some cases where, after a few fervent initial weeks of positive results, clients suddenly slow down their posting activity. Almost immediately the stats register proportional slowdowns on their success score. Again, presence and consistency appear to be key … the “seeds” need nurturing. When asked, “Why did you stop?” The most common answers boil down to: “I ran out of ideas!” or, “I did not believe I needed to keep at it!” Hey!  It’s called s o c i a l  media … you have to keep interacting with it for it to work. Secondly, truer then ever, marketing on the Internet is the business of IDEAS. For success in marketing with connectivity you absolutely have to keep coming up with new and fresh ideas. This means finding new angles, new avenues to tell the story by reviewing and questioning upside down your knowledge about your product, destination or event. A sort of revisiting of your campaign and your product from a Web culture perspective, a perspective where the audience defines how they connect with you and dictates what they are looking for.

Because Social Media is a LIVE medium, its architecture is as digital as it is volatile. It appears that everywhere you look, speed of action is paramount — interaction must be prompt. The need to actualize content (i.e. make the news responsive, attuned to world events, trends and new emerging contexts) puts writing for Web at a premium even if the final destination may very well be print media (i.e. how you write for the Web differs from how you write for traditional media). One must constantly create fresh content.

Check back again soon for part 5 of this series.

Check out part 1 of this series
Check out part 2 of this series
Check out part 3 of this series

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Posted by cleanpix

Marketing with connectivity (part 3)

January 30, 2009

For the next several weeks, the CEO of CleanPix, Nelson Vigneault, will be sharing his thoughts on “Marketing with connectivity”.

BUSINESS LEADERS LEAD ON MARKETING

Typically with these clients, we have noted a business organizational shift from compartmental divisions between PR/marketing/communications toward a business model, where communication is more integrated and concerted. These shifts do not come from IT but, rather, through executive decisions addressing directly the purpose of marketing. Simply said, marketing in Social Media is not about computer networks, it is about people networks. In these models, for example, a photo collection is no longer the domain of a gate keeper, but is instead viewed as a live asset that can be pooled and tailored instantly to meet the demands of communicator teams, whether PR , marketing or media relationists.  We note that the BEST RESULTS, in posting news, come from quite brief (single focused) and targeted stories/headlines. One journalist user said it best when she said, “we want the seeds not the tree” — meaning: not several pages or even a page-long newsletter, but a news brief consisting of a few lines of text with pertinent and press-ready photos.

Check out part 1 of this series
Check out part 2 of this series
Check out part 4 of this series

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Posted by cleanpix

Famously Hot TRIO from Columbia SC

January 29, 2009

sc-hot-trio-copyNicole Smith, Mandi Engram, and Kelly Barbrey, of Midlands Authority for Conventions, Sports & Tourism graduated from CleanPix online coaching with the greatest honors. That means getting famously HOT media attention for the Midlands Authority, following the posting of only a few consecutive briefs on pressuite.com

WAY TO GO!

“We’re excited to be using this for press releases and all of the PR capabilities!”
says Mandi.

Columbia SC brief: www.pressuite.com

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Posted by nelsonvigneault

Marketing with Connectivity (part 2)

January 22, 2009

For the next several weeks, the CEO of CleanPix, Nelson Vigneault, will be sharing his thoughts on “Marketing with connectivity”.

REVISITING THE 4 Ps OF MARKETING

Long-established newspapers find it hard to attract advertisers. Is the automotive industry, amongst the largest players and supporters of this medium, also rethinking its effectiveness in reaching targeted audiences? The new reality is that a large sector of the audience gets its news neither from the papers nor even from TV, but from the Internet instead. TV anchors advise, “To find out more, go online”. Obama placed advertising in Xbox  games, courting an important sector of his audience right where they are located. Some say, “traditional advertising is dead” and it may well be. But one thing is for sure: journalism is thriving in the Social Media arena. It is a question of attitude, a definite shift in culture. Creating feeds is the new art and it comes with a magical twist: In Social Media, the audience is now also author — users control the content through full “LIVE” interaction with the information. In turn, this also implies that the traditional 4 Ps of marketing need revisiting (PRODUCT, PRICE, PLACE, PROMOTION) and consequently so do the tools and methods for reaching an audience, or rather I should say “participating with” the audience.

TOOLING FOR THE DIGITAL WORLD

Despite the fact that having a solid asset management service was paramount for our clients, the CleanPix team soon discovered that using it simply as a tool for photo management was not sufficient. The need to act as a seamless visual support for getting our clients’ news out, in a concerted effort to foster media relations, was why the asset management service was created initially. Subsequently, what was critical was the creation of tools to enable our clients to tap into the Social Media space and they needed to do this while making rich media files available on demand.

We did it. Pressuite.com is effectively a bridge to Social Media. Clients who use pressuite.com in that fashion get unprecedented results, for a fraction of the cost of conventional means.

Check out part 1 of this series
Check out part 3 of this series
Check out part 4 of this series

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Posted by cleanpix

Marketing with connectivity (part 1)

January 15, 2009

For the next several weeks, the CEO of CleanPix, Nelson Vigneault, will be sharing his thoughts on “Marketing with connectivity”.

From every side we are hearing the dreaded words: “budget cuts”. This is not all bad news, but certainly an indication that world economy has changed both suddenly and drastically. From a marketing perspective, it means that money is severely restricted for … just about everything.

For reliable results, one needs proof of ROI (return on investment). The problem is, to some extent, that the practices of marketing and PR deal with so-called “soft” measurables — built over time, from a combination of repetition and message consistency.

As a result, when the lack of measurable returns derived from classic tactics combines with steeply rising costs of delivering the message via traditional means, a new breed of SMART is definitely needed — or at least, a new business model — to promote business in challenging economical conditions.

SOCIAL MEDIA: A NEW PLAYGROUND OF CONNECTIVITY

What are the avenues one can take and what are the tools one could use? Certainly a good pointer is the success of the recent Obama campaign. One word comes to mind: CONNECTIVITY. Connectivity is a type of viral information dissemination where the recipient gets involved in enhancing the story path. This, in itself, keeps the news fresh, but best of all it ensures it is READ/VIEWED. Social media is probably the richest, yet least tapped source of connectivity.

The one thing we all have in common is a product or a program to sell or to promote. The unshakable certainty of classic print and TV mediums as the means to reach markets is definitely questionable. The way in which audiences are sourcing content is reinventing journalism. SOCIAL MEDIA is becoming the new playing field. Revamping websites for tens of thousands of dollars, budgeting a mass-media brochure distribution or orchestrating a PR strategy that does not prioritize Web connectivity may be decisions that require serious reconsideration.

Check out part 2 of this series
Check out part 3 of this series
Check out part 4 of this series

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Posted by cleanpix

CleanPix Pressuite

December 4, 2008

CleanPix Pressuite

Publishing a story on CleanPix Pressuite is advantageous for several reasons.

The first major reason is that you are able to provide access to high quality images, ready for press or web, in parallel with your new story. This means when a journalist picks up on your news release and would like a good quality picture along side it, they don’t need to go searching or brace for a high resolution picture in an email that doesn’t suit them perfectly. Instead, you are able to provide them with just the kind of pictures you would like them to have and they are able to choose just the right picture for their medium of choice.

We get new journalist from all over the world signing up every day. Members of the media from Brazil, Korea, China, London, Germany, and of course from across North America. Each member is able to subscribe to automatic email notifications, register your news with their syndication enabled devices or browsers, and Google is also able to pick up on the title and intro of your story, as well.

Many of our clients have seen success with this platform, often getting responses and requests for pictures from their web libraries within hours of posting a new story. With Pressuite, journalist have easy access to interesting stories and members of CleanPix are given a great strategy for getting free press. It’s a win-win situation, and we encourage you to try it today!

Here are some tips:

• The briefest briefs tend to get the most attention (avoid “walls of text”)
• Clients who make lots of short stories a couple times a week tell us they get the best results
• Tailor your images to the story to make them relevant
• If you have lots of images, make lots of stories!
• Publish event oriented news with a catchy headline
• You can also link your brief to your website just like a WebLink

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Posted by cleanpix

Electronic Billing

September 9, 2008

In our efforts to further reduce our impact on the environment, we are proud to announce the availability of our new electronic billing system. You will now be able to opt into receiving your invoice directly to your email inbox as a pdf attachment as an alternative to receiving it through the mail.

This change is not automatic. If you would like to assist us in the reduction of paper use, please send an email to Inese Birstins. Please confirm the email address you would like your invoice mailed to and we will send you a confirmation of the switch.

If you do not request to be billed via email, you will continue to receive your invoices through the mail as usual. If you have any questions, feel free to contact us (toll free) at 1-866-266-1861.

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Posted by cleanpix

Post your pressbrief everywhere!

July 18, 2008

Here at CleanPix, we encourage publishing your pressbrief stories wherever you can in as many ways as possible. We want you to post your story on pressuite.com, but we also want you to post your release onto your own website. Did you know you can even post your press release directly into Facebook? Here’s some tips on how to maximize the mileage and viewership of your pressuite stories:

By copying the unique URL that is generated with each pressbrief you make, you can post your story directly onto your website just like your weblink. Of course this works for any third-party site you like to use as well. Not only will you get traffic to your story from the many visitors on pressuite.com, but you will also get hits from your own web traffic.

And what about Facebook? By using Facebook’s “posted items” tool, you can even spread the word using the worlds largest social networking site.

Here, we’ve taken the link from a winter story we had called “CleanPix gets a visit from Jack Frost”: http://www.pressuite.com/pressuite/PressBriefEmail/0h0b:gSC:apA

With this link, we log into Facebook and then head over to the Posted Items page here: http://www.facebook.com/posted.php

Once the page loads, we simply paste the pressbrief link we copied into the “post a link” field on the right hand side. If done correctly, we see page like this one (click to enlarge in new window):

As you can see, you have many choices for publishing when using Pressuite. We hope you take advantage of some of the different publishing options available to you! Please contact the CleanPix support department if you would like any assistance doing something similar or if you have any questions.

Toll free: 1-866-266-186
email: support@cleanpix.com

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Posted by cleanpix

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