Personnel Reflection

This is already my last blog post for this program and if I had the opportunity to return in time I would do it again without hesitation.

  It was for me a big challenge to do online courses in English as my first language is French. When I started this program, my goals were to keep me busy to help reduce my PTSD symptoms and learn how I could help my wife with her network marketing project. I can proudly say that I have achieved both goals and that I also discovered that I love writing so, I have decided to start my own blog in the next weeks.

Image from techrounder

This course was the most interesting and important for me at the same time. It made me realize how important storytelling is and everybody like to hear stories. Two other important things I have learned in this program is the importance of social media listening and to interact with our audience. As a blogger, you need to know what your audience wants, and you also have to make them feel they are important for you.

 My blog will be a mix of my life experiences as soldier, combat veteran with disabilities, nomad lifestyle, word traveller and expat. I believe there is an audience for this type of content and my first goal is to share my experience and help others who want to live the same things

My greatest Achievement

For me, my greatest achievement was my contribution as an Infantry soldier in the Canadian Armed Forces mission in Afghanistan. I was deployed in Kandahar from July 2017 to March 2008, this period of my life is at the same time the best and the worst period of my life. More than15 years have passed since I have returned from Afghanistan where I witnessed the horrors of war. I am still proud of my contribution, and I have no regret to have sacrificed my mental health and would do the same thing I have had the opportunity the return in the past.

Me during a foot patrol

In the last days almost, every media is talking about Afghanistan since the complete withdrawal of US troops and that the Taliban’s and almost regain all the territory with had fought the gain and protect at the cost of 158 soldiers live. In the last day a lot of media have been asking the question: Did we do that for nothing? Did all these soldiers die for nothing? My answer is no! During the period the coalition forces were in Afghanistan, we gave an opportunity to the local population to have a better life. We allowed the kids to go to school, we gave the opportunity to women to work, we gave medical care to those who needed and didn’t have access to it. So, for myself just to have given the opportunity to one Afghan to like a better life for just one day it was worth risking my life and everyday when I’m having a panic attack or nightmares, I tell myself that I’m suffering because I gave the opportunity to an Afghan child to have a better life for a certain time.

One of my friends giving school supplies to Afghan children’s

Of course, I felt sad this week when I saw the Taliban’s retaking the country and seeing the local population suffering from that. But I repeat to myself that I can’t control political decision and I did what I could. The most important thing I learned over this experience is to never forget that I am privileged to be a Canadian citizen and to be thankful of the possibility it gives to me and my family.

Personal Brand

 What are some personal qualities or characteristics that set you apart from your competitors?

 I’m not afraid of trying new things even if I may look a little crazy or funny, I’m always up to try new experiences.

This is a picture with a friend when she challenged me to try water acrobatic ski.

What have you done lately to make yourself stand out? 

Me and my wife have decided to demand our residence in Mexico and realize one of our dreams which is living close to the sea. As we had no place to live in the summer 2020 we chose to rent an apartment in a brand new building and because we had sold everything in 2018 we had to buy all the furniture needed to live comfortably. One installed I discovered a book named the Why Cafe, and in on of those books the author asks this question: Are you at the right place? After thinking about it a few weeks we decided that we had to live the life we really wanted and start selling everything again and start the immigration process to live in Mexico.

 What would your colleagues say is your best trait? 

My best trait is that I have never given up. Since March 2008 when I returned from my combat tour in Afghanistan my life has been for a long time a nightmare. I had multiple PTSD symptoms, learn I wasn’t able to continue my military career, etc.  With the time I have learned to live with PTSD and accept that I will never be like I was before Afghanistan. But with all these challenges I never stop fighting and I will never stop in honor for those who don’t have the privilege to live anymore.

What do you do that you are most proud of?

What I am the most proud of is that I have always followed my dreams and I am not living like the society is telling us too. In our society anyone who doesn’t live like everyone else is going to be judged. It’s been my case since in 2018 me and my family have chosen to become nomad and now in 2021 we have decided to move to Mexico and live our dream of living in the Caribbean. I’m proud that I have shown my son that we always should follow our dreams whatever is it.

COM0015 Blog 4

Thinking out of the box is something very important for business in these days as everything changes quickly with social media and business have to adapt very quickly. When a new crisis arrives most will automatically start to think out of the box to survive and this is exactly what happened in March 2020 when the Covid-19 pandemic and many lost their job and incomes.

In Canada, we were lucky to have financial programs from our government (even if our children will have to pay for that for their entire live everybody had money to eat compared to many of my friends in Asia or Mexico). One of my friends in Mexico had just moved to Yucatan to start a new career in tourist, but lost her new job. She had to find a new way to earn money so she start her own clothing company selling on social media her personnel creating. Another in Indonesia who own a tattoo shop start, to sell gift certificate with 25% discount so he has some money to eat during this rough time.

Something I didn’t expect to grow fast as it did in the last two years is Zoom.  With most people forced to work from home, companies, government, school and artists had to adjust quickly and needed to find a way to continue operating their business. Of course it was not possible for everybody to continue their activities online, but most found a way.

Professional Networking now and in the future

Me during our first years as backpackers in Vietnam

The travel industry got hit hard by the Coronavirus pandemic and even if some have started to travel again, I don’t think it will never be as it was before or it will take at least a few years to become the same. What will change in my opinion is the way people will travel. Travelling the world, one country to another every month or so will be difficult in the next years as most countries have different travel restrictions.

The latest trend in the travel industry are digital nomads, expatriation, and all-inclusive vacations. I will personally focus more on expatriation because it is something I’m currently doing. At the moment I’m writing this post me, and my family are on our way to our new life in Playa Del Carmen Mexico.

Me, my wife and our son at Playa Del Carmen

 My current strategy is to restart posting regularity on my family travel Facebook page that we didn’t post on since we came back to Canada in March 2020. In the last week we have shared our all about our expatriation to Mexico with our audience and have worked on growing our audience and since then we have passed from 400 to 460 members.

Screenshot of our Facebook page.

In the following months I will continue working on increasing the number of members on our page. My goal is also to start a blog on a platform like WordPress to share our experience as world travelers, expat, and digital nomad to others. While searching for information about moving to another country in the last year we realized that there are not many sources for French Canadian, so we want to help others who have the same kind of project as ours. When we will be in our new home in Mexico, we want to create either attend or create expat meet up so we will have even more information to share with our followers.

Study Case: Team Never Quit

Team Never Quit

Image from Team Never Quit

Team Never Quit is a business I discovered this summer, but I had heard the story of Marcus Luttrell (the owner) a long time ago and since then I have been inspired by this special man. For those who haven’t heard of him, he’s the only survivor of Operation Red Wing in Afghanistan and you can see the story in the movie The Lone Survivor.

Mission

Image From Team Never Quit

Team Never Quit sells clothes, accessories, and books. The business mission is to: Honor those who have fallen, stand with those who have survived, and share their stories that might inspire others to Never Quit.

Social Media Presence

TNQ uses various platforms to promote their products and mission. They use Facebook, Instagram, Podcasts, Twitter, and YouTube. At this moment they have a lot of interaction of most of the platform they use, but they must remain careful about using so many different platforms and to remain present and all of them.

Why they have success?

There are many reasons why they have so much success of that most of their products are often out of stock.

1. The Story: Marcus Luttrell story has inspired many and not only other combat veteran.
2. They know their target audience: I am personally a part of the audience they want to reach and as a combat vet I know he understand my situation
3. Their Presence: They are present on social media, and they interact daily with their community

And you who inspire you the most?

Strong and Weak Organizations

When launching a new social media marketing campaign, organizations must consider some important elements that are common to every successful social media campaign like being true to their brand, using a different strategy for each platform and originality. Let me show you two successful campaigns and one that didn’t have a lot of success.

Coors Light: Could use a beer campaign

Image from ProjectDigital

Who doesn’t want free beer? Coors Light decided to give free 6 packs to some clients who had bought one and post a Tweet saying why they needed a beer. The timing of this campaign was perfect, with the Covid-19 pandemic a lot of people needed to decompress, and their audience felt the campaign was directed to them.

Casper: Sleep Channel

Image from Oberlo

Casper mattress have created a unique playlist to help its costumers sleep better. The playlist contains meditations, relaxing sounds, and bedtime stories. By doing this original campaign Casper gave value to their audience that have resulted in sales.

Delta Airline: Giraffe for Ghana

Image from Buzzfeednews

It’s crazy how an error as simple as not doing a google research can ruin a social media campaign. During the 2014 World Cup when team USA won against team Ghana, Delta Airline used a giraffe image to represent Ghana and the Statue of Liberty for USA. The problem is that the person in charge of social media for Delta airline didn’t knew that there are no giraffe in Ghana.

What are the best and worst social media you have seen?

Nomad and minimalist

Image from quitminimal

As some of you already know, since 2018 me and my family have become nomad and since then I have learned to appreciate experiences rather than things. Being nomad doesn’t mean you have to become minimalist, but you will learn that having more material won’t make you happier.

My Target audience

Image from easyaffiliate

The audience I would try to reach when writing about minimalist will not be gender specific or for a certain age range. I will for sure try to reach people already interested in minimalism, but also: digital nomad, travellers’ people who are looking to change their lifestyle. I also found an article from EUROMONITOR INTERNATIONAL saying that the best ways to target minimalist seekers is to: write about sustainability and community. They also wrote that minimalist is not looking for the cheapest items, but things that will last longer even if it’s more expensive. Another important thing will be to focus on building a trust relationship with the audience because they tend to think more before deciding to buy something.

Tools

Image from Techwyse

The primary tool I will use is a blog and I would use other social media platform as Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter to promote the newest post. Another thing I would use is e-mail marketing to create a long-term relation with my audience.

Here is the like of one of my favorite minimalist websites, they also made to documentary that are available to watch on Netflix

Storytelling and Communication Styles

This week I have learned that Storytelling, using the good communication style and encouraging interaction my our audience are three important things to be a good digital communicator.

Storytelling

Image from martechadvisor

Since our childhood we have been used to hear stories and even as adult we still like it. This is why I think storytelling is one of the most important things in a social media strategy. One of the reasons why our audiences use social media is to be entertained and to create or maintain their relationship. So, if we only focus on selling or getting likes, shares, and comments we are not getting full value from our social media platforms. It does not matter what your story is about, you just need share it with your audience.

Communication styles

Image from connectedmarrige.org

This is probably the biggest challenge for me because English is not my first language. I must be very careful to use the active writing style and to check my spelling and punctuation. What I do every time I write an article or post is using an online tool to check and I always read my text at least 2 time.

Encouraging interaction

Image From Socialmediaweek

There are different ways to encourage Interaction, it can be by asking questions, doing surveys, quizzes or by simply asking your audience to share your content. I think that asking your audience to interact with your social media account, it tells them that their opinion count for you or your business.

COM0014 – Blog #1 When we needed a break from travelling

I am sure that you might think it is weird to take a break from travelling, but I am sure you will understand after I will have explained our lifestyle since the summer of 2018.

In the ferry from Playa Del Carmen to Cozumel island

Becoming nomads

In June 2018 me and my wife decided to sell everything we own and travel the world with our son Fred and only one backpack each. The first year we visited more than a dozen countries in Southeast Asia and Europe. The second year we had planned to visit Mexico and the United States, but when we were visiting the United States, we had to come back to Canada because of a pandemic named Covid-19 you might have heard of. When we were in Mexico, we decided to spend 8 days in an All-inclusive Resort on the island of Cozumel. Since we were used to living in Guesthouse or Hostel since for more than a year being in an all inclusive was like a vacation for us, so we told our blog followers that we took a vacation from travelling.

Resort life

We had a great time in the Resort even if it was not the most luxurious resort, we had more comfort than we were used to have in Guesthouses. We spend most of the time in the pool and had a blast participating in the crazy games organized by the Geo like the belly splash flop content (which I did not won) and a pool water balloons war. My son Fred tried for the first-time scuba diving in the pool and was very happy to have a French speaking teacher. We also like spending time at the amazing beach and spent hours snorkeling.

The resort beach

Pool water balloons war

Fred first experience with scuba diving

Sadly, after our eight days in Cozumel we had to back our backpackers travelling lifestyle (just kidding, we know that we are privileged to live the lifestyle we always dreamed of and enjoy every second of it.)

And you were your last vacation?  If you had the choice and unlimited budget what would be your next vacation destination?