Looking to leverage social media or word of mouth marketing expertise for your business or clients?

Karen Richards is a senior social media strategist and consultant, public relations advisor and word of mouth marketing instructor.

Karen has 20 years experience in marketing and communications with 15 years specializing in social media and word of mouth marketing and community building. She was fortunate enough to create one of the first established roles in social media and carve out her own career which has allowed her to be a leader in the industry, experiment, be wildly creative and embrace changing technology. Karen fundamentally understands how social media is reshaping internal and external communications for organizations and is equally adept at shaping policy through knowledge management. 

Word of Mouth Marketing

Expertise in building loyalty with online communities that lead to genuine recommendations and referrals of your business.

Build trust with existing clients and customers to create a loyal community that recommends your business to friends and followers

Create ambassador, loyalty and referral programs to substantially increase brand reach authentically

Leverage a variety of networks of influencers to increase online engagement, positive brand mentions and grow your following

Demonstrate brand through unique in-person experiences communities will want to share online

Expertise in combining influencer and experience marketing with brand and community engagement to continually build loyalty, in turn continually increases recommendations and referrals of your business.

Marketing

Develop or refresh a focused, concise brand that demonstrates how you stand out in your market consistently across all marketing and communications materials.

Develop a brand persona to apply to tone, voice and behaviour on socials, online and customer service

Consultation on photography, videography and visual imagery, campaign storyboarding across multiple mediums

Creatively turn a single idea into a fully fleshed-out pitch deck, fully integrated strategies and meaningful campaigns

Targeted, measurable campaigns for specific goals and audiences on various digital channels within allotted budgets.

Social Media and digital paid advertising campaign development (Facebook, Instagram, Threads, Tik Tok, LinkedIn), Google Ads and targeted online advertising

Senior Social Networking Strategist and Public Relations Advisor

Conduct business social media and digital marketing audits, assessments and recommendations

Organizational reputation management across online platforms.

Development of organizational Strategic Social Media Plans, Social Media Guidelines and Social Media Crisis Communication Plans.

Assist in the strategic growth and management of organization’s brand online via digital engagement to meet measurable objectives and institutional goals.

Measurement of social data, translate data to reporting that will better inform communication to an organization’s key stakeholders and audiences.

Best practices in online security, copyright, privacy and issue management to protect your brand.

Incorporate social media guidelines, EDI and crisis communications best practices, protocols into your business

Help manage reputational issues on brand channels

Education and Training

Create and implement employee/volunteer/leadership onboarding, programs and training on company marketing, communications social and digital guidelines, policy

Create and facilitate tailored workshops or course development for businesses or marketing and communications teams on topics such as; social and digital content strategy, integrated marketing strategy and planning, word of mouth marketing, influencer marketing, engagement, paid digital advertising, grow social media presence, content facilitated brainstorm, EDI and marketing, public relations and crisis communication

Poutine With Purpose Founder and Organizer

Want to know what Word of Mouth Marketing looks like in the real world? The Poutine With Purpose brand was built from the ground up starting in 2010 as a one-day Poutine Crawl in Calgary created as a fun social media experiment by MRU instructor Karen Richards for her Word of Mouth Marketing class. The poutine passion grew into Calgary Poutine Week, the city’s first one-food festival.

When Karen first heard about Mealshare in 2013, she knew this program would give poutine a purpose and by solely using word of mouth marketing, the brand evolved into an annual food festival ‘funraiser’ in Calgary, Edmonton, Victoria and Vancouver in support of Mealshare. The idea was simple but fun - for every poutine you buy and enjoy during Poutine with Purpose Week, one simple, healthy meal will be provided to a youth in need. Mealshare’s mission was to end youth hunger in our lifetime. Over 40,000 poutines were sold during a decade of Poutine With Purpose which equated to over 40,000 meals provided to Canadian youth in need.

Poutine With Purpose was the ultimate word of mouth marketing campaign; connecting passionate ambassador influencers in the restaurant industry with Mealshare’s advocate influencers and local food security charities, with foodie Influencers who love to eat - all to raise awareness and money in a really fun way.