Browsing Tag

holidays

Happy Valentine’s Day! Love, Brands

Valentine's Day posts

It’s interesting to see Valentine’s Day posts on social media from brands considering it’s a Hallmark holiday. I’ll highlight the posts I like and ignore the embarrassing ones I stumbled upon. Let’s just say that making a pun about the word “sweet” isn’t going to make the cut. Perhaps you’ll get some ideas for next year!

My favourite Valentine’s Day posts fit into 3 categories: roundups, greeting card templates and community. Roundups are easy to create while greeting card templates require more design resources. In 2018, I wrote about brands creating templates for Instagram Stories, so it’s cool to see this trend continue on a larger scale. Community posts are always a smart choice too!

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Hot On The Street Turns 6

Hot On The Street's 6th Blog Anniversary

Last year I celebrated Hot On The Street’s 5th anniversary and that was a really big milestone. Marking Hot On The Street’s 6th anniversary is sweet too. Aside from going to school or camp, this is the longest I’ve ever done something and it feels great.

I’d like to thank all of my readers for your support. I’m also grateful for the encouragement I’ve received from friends, family, publicists and strangers. The blog has given me the opportunity to meet a lot of people and I’ve particularly enjoyed connecting with the people who I’ve interviewed.

I’m always open to hearing feedback on previous posts or suggestions for upcoming content. Please email me anytime at hotonthestreet[at]gmail[dot]com with questions, comments or ideas. Let me know if you’d like to collaborate on a future post!

Instagram Inspiration: Happy New Year

Many top brands were eager to help consumers ring in the new year. Overall, I noticed that brands posted more GIFs and short videos this year, which signals progress. Last year’s round up included only three posts and this year’s list includes three categories to help marketers with content development on Instagram.

I hope you’ll bookmark this for future reference and maybe even print it in colour to discuss at your next brainstorm meeting!

Inspiration for Small Businesses

While evaluating posts in my feed, I looked for simple posts that small business owners can learn from and treat as templates for future holiday posts. With the right stock photo and some text overlay in a program like Adobe Photoshop, a post that looks like this one from Aroma is fairly easy to create.

Hot On The Street - Happy New Year - 2015 - Aroma - Instagram

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Hot On The Street Turns 4

Hot On The Street Turns 4 Cake - pizzazzerie-4th-birthday

Blogging involves so much more than writing, SEO and social media. Blogging is ultimately about creative self-expression and building relationships. So when I look back on the last year, I don’t think about how much time I spent on WordPress. I think about the inspiring people I met in cool places.

Blogging is rewarding because it provides access to experiences I would not enjoy otherwise. I think the tagline for Smirnoff’s Exclusively for Everyone campaign captures blogger outreach quite well because everyone can start a blog and therefore become eligible to participate in blogger outreach programs. With so many free online resources available, there’s no better time to join the blogging community than right now.

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Happy Birthday Tim Hortons

TIM HORTONS - Tim Hortons recreates 1964 at Yonge-Dundas Square

“It’s like Mad Men around here.”

Even though Tim Hortons never had a chance to work with Don Draper, they’ve done quite well in the last 50 years. According to Marketel, Tim Hortons is Canadian women’s favourite brand and it ranks high on my list too.

To celebrate its 50th birthday, Tim Hortons threw a huge bash at Yonge & Dundas Square today. Actors wearing vintage garments created a vibrant scene set in the 60s, featuring parents with a baby carriage and a police officer who was delighted to put people in his black and white cop car. They put on quite a show and a caffeinated audience ‘ate it up,’ as my grandmother likes to say.

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