2018: A year of storytelling
Wednesday, January 16, 2019
We all know the power of a good story. Thankfully at Nova Scotia Business Inc., we have amazing clients accomplishing great things in a beautiful province we all love to call home. 2018 was a banner year for embracing the power of digital storytelling to celebrate and share client successes as they export from and/or invest in the province of Nova Scotia. Here is a recap of the stories that resonated in 2018 and the channels through which they were shared.
2018 was the year Nova Scotia Business Inc. added Instagram to our storytelling arsenal, and our ever-increasing engagement rates tell us this channel is a great way to connect.
The top three Instagram posts for 2018 were:
- The Santa Exports campaign promoted #NSGifts to encourage Nova Scotia companies to share their export stories, and for consumers to share which #NSGifts were at the top of their wish list. Client company Vesuvius Media provides high-quality games locally and exports internationally with much success. Christmas + games = winning combination for top prize as the most liked post throughout the entire campaign!
- In second place was a story we ran previously but re-promoted about the ongoing success of our client IrisBooth, and the fun fact that the name of the company ‘Iris,’ is the owner’s name spelled backwards. And the iris, like the aperture, is the foundation of photography.
- Our Live Here campaign promotes Nova Scotia as being more than just a beautiful coastal province and the commercial hub of Atlantic Canada. An interesting tidbit shared in the post “In some places, it can take an hour or longer to get to work. In #Halifax, it takes 23 minutes. What will you do with an additional 19,240 minutes a year?” brings home third place.
Recognizing the importance of video in digital storytelling, NSBI shared a number of videos in 2018.
- In Good Company — Featuring four world-leading businesses succeeding here in Nova Scotia. We brought the ‘c-suite to the sea-suite’ with a video profiling each business.
- In June NSBI celebrated our province's exporters at the Nova Scotia Export Achievement Awards at Pier 21 in Halifax. For the first time in the award's 34-year history, five companies walked away as export Champions of the Year and two companies were selected as our Nova Scotia Exporters of the Year. Watch the 11 videos featuring the winners, champions and nominees.
- In our first-ever video case study, we partnered with Go Productivity in the Just Us! Coffee Case Study. The video tells the story of how Just Us!, the first fair trade coffee roaster in Canada, are positioning their company for future growth against an ever-increasingly competitive market.
- Last, but certainly not least, Gwenael Heliou, Studio Manager, Ubisoft (Halifax) shares his story of calling Nova Scotia home after living all around the world. This video has received 66K views so far and is the most popular video on our YouTube channel. We like to think we ‘broke the Internet’ with this one.
2018 was the year we also introduced podcasts. ‘Wavelengths’ is a podcast highlighting businesses and innovations in Nova Scotia produced by NSBI. Take a listen to the stories from the first year of Scale Up Hub in Cambridge, Massachusetts, how to incorporate e-commerce in your business, and even learn about social engineering.
As we move forward in 2019, we’d like to say a big Thank You! to all our followers, clients, industry partners and staff who all contribute to and share our stories.