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Missed previous Wood Connections issues? 

For busy businesses who often don't have a marketing agency to delegate to, being smart with your time and budget matters. This one-day session will help you learn to select the best channels to connect with your target audience, how to use those channels effectively, how to manage your time, and forget the rest - guilt free because you're marketing smarter, not harder!

Locations & Dates:

Click here to register or for more information. 

Jonathan Christian is the Creator and Chief Strategist at We Make Stuff Happen, a unique BC based Consulting Consortium helping businesses and non-profits locally and internationally tell their story through digital networks. A recognized Social Media Thought Leader, Jonathan brings tremendous energy, experience and enthusiasm to his sessions. 

Jonathan has trained hundreds of local business how to "get and go Social" In many cases reducing existing marketing budgets but delivering a much higher ROI (Return on Investment) You'll learn that the real value of Social Media is ROR (Return on Relationship).

Tip #1: Make the Contest Relate to Your Company

Everyone loves the chance to win a coveted prize like an iPad. But does this really relate to your business? Instead of giving away a generic prize that everyone wants to win, consider giving away something that speaks to your potential customers and relates to your company. Tailoring your promotion or giveaway to your industry means that you'll be able to better target new customers, which can make following up after the event easier. You don't want your sales staff to follow up with people who don't have a need for your product or service and targeted leads can help make this happen.

Roy Manion  

The final touches have been put on our first foray into the American Architect Community which will take place in Seattle, Portland, and Spokane on February 11, 12, and 13 respectively. The response from the Pacific Northwest architects to our program has been excellent, especially in Seattle, and bodes well for future sessions. In the meantime, we continued with our domestic activities by holding lunch and learn sessions, booking future sessions, and finalizing details on Buildex which will be held on the 19th and 20th of this month. I even took time out last week to learn more about social networking (an education I desperately need) and its importance. I learned about social networking programs I never heard of before but I found out later that my kids were quite conversant on and use several of them. It is indeed a different world out there!

Pacific Northwest and Alberta Architect Seminars:

As stated, the final touches have been completed for our first meetings with architects and designers in the Pacific Northwest. Most notable is in Seattle where we worked with the Canadian Consulate who supplied a meeting room. Our collective goals were 25 architects. After the invitations describing the seminars and the speakers went out, we immediately began to receive RSVP's from architects and designers who wanted to attend the session. After a week we received 35 RSVP's. Within 2 weeks we had 50 and had to get the largest room available at the Consulate, which could accommodate 50 people maximum. In total, we received almost 70 RSVP's and unfortunately, had to send our regrets to almost 20 - with the comment that we will be back. While the responses in Portland and Spokane, being smaller centres, were not as great as Seattle's, they were still excellent with 30 architects signed up for our Portland session and 20 for Spokane. The responses in all three centres have exceeded our initial expectations. In the next Wood Connections, I will review how these sessions went.

Along with these sessions, we are also working on our initial entrance into Alberta's architect community. We are planning on holding group sessions in Edmonton, Calgary and depending on response, Lethbridge. While it is a smaller centre, my experience is that architects in these places very much appreciate when approved seminars are held in their city so they don't have to travel to the larger ones. As of writing this article, we are finalizing venues and will send out the invitations by the end of the week. As mentioned previously, our plan is to go to Alberta next month when hopefully, the weather will be more hospitable.

BC's Specifiers Program:

While it is exciting to expand BC Wood's US and Canadian programs to include the US and Alberta specifiers, the BC Specifiers Program continues to move along at a good pace with January having 5 lunch & learn sessions, 2 of which were to architectural firms we had never visited before. The other 3 were from members from industry. While all our activities in February will prevent us from continuing the pace of one session a week, which we have been doing for the past several months, we still have a couple of sessions booked. We are also in the process of scheduling at least two more.

Buildex Vancouver:

Everything is in place for Buildex. All the exhibitors in the BC Pavilion have been finalized. Yours truly will be manning the BC Wood booth for the entire 2 days so please drop by. I would be pleased to discuss the Specifiers program or any of the other BC Wood activities with you.

As always, should you want more information on any aspects of the Specifiers Program, please let me know by contacting me at rmanion@bcwood.com.

The Turkeybuild show in Istanbul is fast approaching. For a number of very good reasons this will be the fourth year that BC Wood has organized the participation of BC companies at this show. Turkey is one of the strongest of these regional economies within Europe. Turkey also has a long history and affinity of building with wood. With their growing affluence, Turks are rediscovering their traditional preference for wood construction, particularly, in higher-end residential and recreational home construction.

Last year, five BC companies and BC Wood's representative attended the Turkeybuild show and reported that there was very strong interest shown in BC's products and services by the local timber and building materials distributors. The products generating the most interest were specialty WRC lumber and exterior finishing, and prefabricated structures including log and timber frame homes and platform frame structures. Turkish companies showed a great deal of interest in partnering with Canadian companies that supply high quality wood products and more advanced building systems.

Last year, the Istanbul show drew over 110,000 visitors, many of them from the neighboring Eastern European and Islamic countries. For any company interested in participating in the Turkeybuild show as part of the BC Wood pavilion, please contact Brian Hawrysh at bhawrysh@bcwood.com or i at 604-882-7100 by Friday, Feb 14th, 2014.

For many years BC Wood has produced a Japanese language brochure that included a member directory for companies interested in promoting themselves at all of our in-market trade events. As one of our last activities for this fiscal year, we are again re-producing this brochure but also adding Chinese and Korean versions so that members can access those markets as well through this cost effective promotional opportunity.

The is our main promotional piece for the Japanese market and thus is given out at every trade show, seminar, client visit, as well as in response to every inquiry received through our advertising/promotional campaigns. Therefore, it is the most cost effective way to reach a large number of industry people in Japan. The content of the brochure will be updated so that it meets the needs of the Chinese and Korean markets as well. In addition, the Member Directory Section will be unique to each market so that members can target the specific markets they are interested in.

Highlights  

• Be included in the brochure distributed at every BC Wood East Asian trade promotion activity for the next two years
• Introduce your company/product to thousands of wood industry contacts in China, Japan, and Korea in the most cost effective manner
• Develop new contacts and inquiries in these countries

Requirements

Members will be requested to submit their contact information, brief company/product profile, logo, and image/product shot which BC Wood will use to have your 1/4 page company introduction professionally translated and produced.

There is only a small fee to BC Wood members to join this program and it is your option to place an ad in 1, 2, or all 3 markets. Cost effective and simple! Just let Jim Ivanoff (ivanoff@canadawood.jp) know which versions you would like to be included in. Space is limited so please act fast!

After a very successful Japan Home and Building Show, we are now starting to prepare for the Nikkei Architectural and Construction Materials Show that will be held at Tokyo's Big Sight from March 4th through 7th, 2014. With the Japanese housing market being the strongest in many years, companies are investing in new business development as shown by the fact that the Nikkei Show is already sold-out. Luckily with BC Wood's longstanding participation in the show, we have secured a pavilion in a prime location on behalf of our members.

The Nikkei Show is the largest show of its kind in Japan and sees over 250,000 industry professionals over the show's four days. The show attracts a great number of architects, but is also well attended by importers, distributors, and both residential and commercial builders. Therefore, the show is a good fit for producers of cabinetry, millwork, house packages including log and timberframe, as well as lumber, engineered and remanufacturerd products. For more information, please e-mail me at ivanoff@canadawood.jp