{"id":81923,"date":"2012-05-01T21:56:43","date_gmt":"2012-05-02T02:56:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/metroactive.org\/wordpress\/?p=81923"},"modified":"2012-05-01T21:56:43","modified_gmt":"2012-05-02T02:56:43","slug":"journey-to-ingersoll","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/metroactive.org\/wordpress\/2012\/05\/01\/journey-to-ingersoll\/","title":{"rendered":"Journey to Ingersoll"},"content":{"rendered":"
The Elmhurst Inn \u00a0& Spa in beautiful \u00a0Ingersoll Ontario-\u00a0 what a perfect place to share information\u00a0 with the\u00a0 Workplace Planning Group board of Directors \u00a0of f on a weekend retreat.<\/div>\n
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I would be going there to explain \u201cHow Email and Social Media\u00a0 Work Hand-in-Hand to Grow Business\u201d, <\/strong>this being a \u00a0critical part of my program covering online strategies. The trip would take an hour\u00a0 and forty-five minutes. It\u00a0 looked to be a gloomy Saturday morning drive, with rain in the forecast-but at 8 am\u00a0 there wasn\u2019t\u00a0 a drop in sight.<\/div>\n
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\u00a0This would be my first visit \u00a0to Ingersoll though I have been London for numerous conferences, as well as Woodstock for a wedding. Ingersoll is right in the middle of the two. Getting out of the city is\u00a0 always a great thrill for me: the new sights and sounds of the world, the expansion o f infrastructure, from roads to new buildings, and transportation trucks going east and west on the 401 with plenty of products headed for various destinations, all showing\u00a0 that the economy is alive and well.<\/div>\n
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Whenever\u00a0 I\u2019m on the road\u00a0 I like to play a game that involves looking\u00a0 out for \u00a0great licence plates and trying to figure out what they mean. Even though I have a CD playing most of the time my \u00a0visual focus is always on the road,\u00a0 On this trip it was a surprise to see \u00a0black Nissan zipping by with the place WUT FUN. He was zipping by too fast to honk! I saw three water towers and lots of horses and truck \u00a0carrying new 2012 Mustang GTO\u2019s \u00a0(heavy and expensive payload)<\/div>\n
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Of course I had my trustworthy \u00a0GPS system guiding\u00a0 my every move, but in this case \u00a0\u201cKate\u201d remained silent most of the trip (yes it has name-but that\u2019s a story for another time). However as \u00a0\u00a0I neared my destination increased \u00a0Kate\u2019s volume \u00a0so she can guide me to the Elm Hurst Inn, and as soon as I had exited the highway she announced \u201cyou have arrived\u201d<\/div>\n
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\u00a0\u201cWhere?\u201d I asked. But of course , she didn\u2019t answer.<\/div>\n
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So I continued \u00a0straight and stop at a local gas station to look at my back-up map which is when I realized\u00a0 had just passed the entrance. I went\u00a0 into \u00a0the gas station to find out where the centre of town was\u00a0 then doubled back to locate the hotel. Since I had arrived bit early I \u00a0headed \u00a0back centre of Ingersoll to get a coffee, stretch and get mentally prepared for the presentation.<\/div>\n
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Tim Horton\u2019s was the busiest place in town that morning the drive-thru was busy and walk-in traffic was making\u00a0 it a hectic place for everyone to get \u00a0their \u00a0morning breakfasts. But , hey,\u00a0 I won a free donut, so it was worth it! (Mind you, I had to drive all the way to Ingersoll to win it)<\/div>\n
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I started back to the \u00a0Elm Hurst Inn. This time taking the opposite way, I found the exit easily.<\/div>\n
On arrival , I walked to the main desk and was advised \u00a0that the meeting \u00a0was in the basement in the Heritage door, so I \u00a0took a mini elevator one floor down and made my way there. \u00a0\u00a0To my surprise there was huge portable screen and projector\u00a0 set up with lots of space to speak and move around.<\/div>\n
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I proceeded to meet some of the board member of the Workforce Planning Group and get \u00a0acquainted with \u00a0how they wanted to use social media. There group\u00a0 included a real\u00a0 cross-section of types: some were social media- savvy users, others were online but very limited experience. At \u00a0the table to the \u00a0left of where I was standing they all had \u00a0blackberry tablets (\u201ctech corner\u201d is what I \u00a0called them), few others had Blackberries\u00a0 many \u00a0were comfortable with social media.<\/div>\n
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Had handed out my business cards and advised everyone that they could connect via LinkedIn (many of them were users) Twitter and Facebook.\u00a0 At one point one of the participants following me and had one my followers\u00a0 following them, great to see on \u2013line networking happening quick!<\/div>\n
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I had 90 minutes to present my material, and my presentation had three parts to it.\u00a0 After each\u00a0 section there\u00a0 was a \u00a0brief Q &A regarding the topics and there were some \u00a0great questions being\u00a0 asked. \u00a0We got into \u00a0how to use :Constant Contact with Social Media\u201d \u00a0to do a successful email marketing campaign, and how content is an important \u00a0way to engage and interact\u00a0 with your network. We\u00a0 shared key strategies , and the\u00a0 \u00a0two \u2013way conversation is one\u00a0 of the \u00a0goals \u00a0that is crucial to growing and managing your business.<\/div>\n
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There were also \u00a0slides\u00a0\u00a0 showing \u00a0how populated the social scene is and pointed out that it was not easy to find the top three on the slide (they were there). The \u00a0social scene\u00a0 will become even more populated in the years to come, and it take time to see how effective these new social templates\u00a0 become.<\/div>\n
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At the end of the presentation I received\u00a0 a gift card \u00a0for a local restaurant, courtesy of the board;\u00a0 an add a bonus one of the participants had a referral to give me regarding opportunity to write article on social media for the local paper (awesome).<\/div>\n
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As I head back to Toronto it was exciting to visit a new place in our great province and to see some new people and admire what a great country we have.<\/div>\n
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I have loved the journey through \u00a0Toronto, Kingston and Ingersoll over the last few months. The moral of the story for me: \u00a0enjoy the journey and admire the destination we learn and see new things everyday.<\/div>\n
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Jim Pagiamtzis sharing insights on raving fans<\/div>\n
http:\/\/youtu.be\/GjlykJQ513Q<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Elmhurst Inn \u00a0& Spa in beautiful \u00a0Ingersoll Ontario-\u00a0 what a perfect place to share information\u00a0 with the\u00a0 Workplace Planning Group board of Directors \u00a0of f on a weekend retreat. I would be going there to explain \u201cHow Email and Social Media\u00a0 Work Hand-in-Hand to Grow Business\u201d, this being a…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-81923","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/metroactive.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81923","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/metroactive.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/metroactive.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/metroactive.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/metroactive.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=81923"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/metroactive.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81923\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/metroactive.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=81923"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/metroactive.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=81923"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/metroactive.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=81923"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}