A frequently sought-after investment expert, commentator, and educator, Amine is the author of the best-selling Commodities for Dummies, a partner at Parador Capital, LLC and the founder of Commodities Investors, LLC. Amine lives and breathes commodities.

Amine’s semi-monthly column, The Commodity Investor, covers a broad spectrum of topics throughout the commodity markets, providing valuable insights in emerging macroeconomic issues and how they affect the resource markets.

Resource Investing News does not just report the news, but we also provide our investor audience with a valued, educated opinion and recommendation in the commodities space.

The Commodity Investor will add to the journalistic diversity of thought and leadership in our independent and unbiased coverage of the resource markets.

Please join us in welcoming Amine to our team.

Thank you!

Helen Habernickel
Managing Editor

To get the latest on the commodity markets, you can sign up here for your subscription to our daily Resource Investing News newsletter.

An hour later I had received an email from Neil Lock at Market Edge Media thanking me for my participating as a presenter for their conference and that my speaking slot was from 1:40-2:25. 45 MINUTES????  I thought I had signed myself up to present for 5 minutes to the 15 colleagues I see every day.  Not a 45 minute presentation to a room full of strangers.  I was left with only one option, take control of the situation and do the best job I knew how to do with any resource I could think of.

I spent the next week and a half talking to colleagues, reaching out to people I knew had given good presentations, and people that had lots of experience giving presentations.  I researched my topic a bit and I reached to my inner creative side a bit in an attempt to build an engaging presentation. (Click here to view)  Upon doing so my “converting leads into investors’ best practice” broke down into this.

• Qualify your leads
• Don’t spam (be respectful of people’s time)
• Engage, Communicate and Build Relationships
• Tell them why…

As I write this blog post it seems that these 4 points are pretty obvious, not just for converting leads but for anything you do that involves people you want to work with, as this was pretty much the strategy I used to figure out this strategy. I established who would be a good person to help me (qualified), I reached out to them politely but did not call them 20 times a day (didn’t spam), I asked them questions about themselves where the answers I knew would help me (engage, communicate build relationships) and then told them why this was important for me and why they were my choice (tell them why).

Among doing so not only did I manage to put together and give a kick ass presentation (if I say so myself), I managed build a small group of supporters who were tweeting me well wishing, coming to support me, telling others to come watch me, sharing my presentation among others after it was over and introducing me to their colleagues.

So whether you’re trying to convert a lead, build a presentation on how to convert a lead or figuring out who your next hire should be it seems that these 4 steps are a safe bet.  Doing nice things and working with people we like makes our days enjoyable and the above strategies make it easier to be that enjoyable person.  If that’s not working for you…maybe you went wrong somewhere in step 1 and they aren’t a good fit for your end goal.  But persevere with these concepts in mind and I feel confident it will all come together on most fronts!

Given the factor of time for putting this presentation together I only had the chance to speak with some of the Dig clients to uncover their best practices for converting leads but please take the opportunity to share.  Your ideas and experiences are most welcome!

Finally, I want to thank those who took the time to help me with my presentation, those who came to watch me give my presentation, and those who came and introduced themselves after my presentation.  It was a most enjoyable experience all around.

Ashlee Uttersbeck : Castle Peak Mining @ashleeu
Kristina Knopp: South American Silver @SoAmSilvercorp
David Matousek: Eagle Hill Exploration @Eaglehillex
John Hope: NBC Universal
Ann Handley: Marketing Proffs @MarketingProfs
Anthony Wright: RBC Olympians
Anne Marie Mccaffrey: Ellicom
Stephanie McKnight: Fraser Academy
Travis Cooper: Citi Group Financial
Diana Forzley: B-TV @BTVCeoClips
Joness Lang: Riverside Resources Inc. @rivres
Kaley Reid: Riverside Resources Inc. @rivres
Charlene Robertson: Quantum Rare Earth @quantumrareQRE
and
The entire Dig Media team! @DigMedia

Cheers,

Meredith

Before Christmas, I set myself the goal of figuring out “social media” over the break. I’m on Facebook, I blog on Stockhouse, I have a Twitter account. I’ve even tweeted, but I only have 7 followers, so I’m not changing the world.

But I didn’t really use these things much. I didn’t know what everyone was so excited about. (I felt old, too.)

Part way through the break, I read an article about tech company Atos banning internal email. This article lead to an ‘aha’ moment: Social Media is the evolution of non-verbal communication.

Think of how photography has changed since it went digital. For example, 20 years ago if I wanted to share photos with my friends, my options would include:

• drawer full of photos – introvert
• stack of photos on the table – extrovert
• photo albums – organized extrovert
• slide shows (including projector, screen, carousels of slides and hopefully lots of alcohol) – for organized extroverts with friends to lose

That’s it!

Think of how different it is now. As Kodak teeters on the verge of bankruptcy, you have many, many more options to share your photos. Add them to , put them up on Flickr, tweet them one at a time, sell them though iStockphoto, use one of a gazillion programs to create a slideshow and add it to YouTube. Add them to a blog on blog.com or blogspot. You can create your own books for a fraction of the cost of 10 years ago, you can have them all on a digital picture frame or just load them onto your phone and show your friends that way. You can even create your own motivational posters.

The point being that with digital photos and the internet, everything has changed. So much so that it wouldn’t be recognizable to people from 20 years ago. And it’s still changing.

The non-verbal methods of communicating are in the midst of the same evolution. You can text, tweet, blog, (is that a verb now?), instant message and, of course, email.

What non-verbal communication options did we have 20 years ago? Snailmail. Telex (don’t know what that was). Telegrams? Memos sent around by courier? Letters to the editor? Obituaries! Notes on cork-boards. Annual reports. Even as I write this, it amazes me how much things have changed.

So non-verbal communication has evolved. Now we send text messages rather than phoning. We send emails rather than write letters or memos or telegrams. If you are like me, you email a lot. Just about my entire life is buried in my email somewhere. I’ve become very good at searching my email, whether it’s for a password or a quote or an article on Atos banning internal email.

I’ve realized that using email for everything is a little like loading all my pictures onto an electronic picture frame and then carrying it around with me to show people. Kinda sad, even to me.

So off on the new frontier. Using instant messaging to ask a quick question rather than emailing. Tweeting an interesting link rather than emailing. Blogging about my social media progress, rather than an email that would go in the “to look at someday” folder.

And likely most important, spending some time thinking about the best way to communicate with our audience, our clients and with industry thought leaders. It can’t just be email any more.

Note: I’m leaving faxes out of this conversation. I remember working in an office before faxes. And I’m pretty sure I will work in an office after faxes are no longer used.

Give us another 5 years and I think people will look back and say “remember when we used to fax?”. Just like 15 years ago when people said, “Remember what it was like before faxes?”.

Faxes are a technological anomaly. But perhaps they were a necessary stepping stone in the evolution of non-verbal communication. Maybe we needed faxes to help us bridge the gap between the age of analog and our current world. Like CD’s and DVD’s. Maybe that’s why books haven’t jumped into the digital realm as quickly – no stepping stone between pure analog and pure digital.

Dig Newsletter – January 2012

Contents

• Educate Brand Connect: Doing What Dig Does Best – Letter from Chris Smith
• Upcoming Events (including our New Years Party on Friday, Jan 20!)
• Resource Investing News Network Top Content
• Dig’s New Blog
• The Digs on Dig

Educate Brand Connect: Doing What Dig Does Best

In 2011, Dig Media generated over 200,000 investor leads for the more than 150 clients that utilize targeted campaigns across our 30-site network of resource news websites. Although these leads help our clients connect with qualified investors, they are only a portion of the ongoing value we deliver for those who entrust us with their advertising dollars.

Our successful lead generation results are due in large part to our successful cultivation of a serious investor-based audience, which we have achieved through:

• Our commitment to deliver independent, well-researched and original content that has attracted such noteworthy syndication partners as The Street.com, The International Business Times and Business Insider;
• Our use of social media – e.g. Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter – which allows readers to share our content, further driving traffic to the Resource Investing News Network; and
• Our custom search engine optimization that has placed the websites in our network amongst the top ranked resource news sites on the web.

These strategies have earned our Network an international presence, placing our content and our clients in front of hundreds of thousands of potential global investors every month.

The majority of our audience is based in the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom, but recent data indicates our audience base includes some of the most important developing economies in the world.

According to Google Trends the majority of searches using the term “gold investing” originated in Singapore, which is not only a premiere financial hub for Asia, but also a major global financial center that boasts a number of world-class banking institutions. The Asian nation of India is also responsible for a significant number of “gold investing” searches. India’s exploding economic growth is expected to propel its middle class population to 200 million in the next five years, eclipsing that of the United States which has seen its middle class shrink over the past few decades.

Dig Media’s effective content and search engine optimization strategies have led Google to list our Gold Investing News and Resource Investing News sites as among the most relevant results for the search term “gold investing,” placing Singapore and India in our top ten list of countries from which our readers hail.

A recent article addresses this topic: Canada Attractive to Foreign Investors: How to Invest in the TSX

Dig Media offers several avenues for connecting clients with this growing international resource investor-based audience. The Educational Profiles we create for each client build brand awareness and allow the audience to learn more about a particular company’s value proposition. These professionally written profiles attract traffic from readers interested in learning more about opportunities with up and coming companies in the resource sector. Each profile includes features such as social media sharing tools, links to analyst coverage, latest company news feed, multimedia material and a custom information request form.

We create additional value for our clients by offering several options for increasing brand recognition and education including:

• Branded Press Releases — Client company news is published on the home page of relevant Investing News sites and to Twitter offering increased exposure to the international investing community. Each company news release includes a logo, press release summary, links to the company educational profile and the entire press release online.
• Stock Catalysts Reports —  Each month our respected analyst partner Thomas Schuster helps the investor identify future client news items or “Catalysts” that address significant company milestones that could move the stock price in the near term. This monthly report is published in all of our Network Newsletters for five days for subscribers before being shared on Resource Investing News.
• Analyst Commentary — Professionally-written commentary by Thomas Schuster, these reports accompany client news releases and aims to help the investor understand the significance of the news and how it impacts shareholder value. These paid reports are published on the home pages of relevant Investing News sites, company Educational Profiles, in the 30 daily newsletters across the Network and through social media campaigns.

As always your thoughts, comments and suggestions are appreciated.

Sincerely

Chris Smith

csmith@resourceinvestingnews.com

back to top

Upcoming Events

Dig Media Open House New Year’s Party: The Dig Media Team would love for you to come celebrate the New Year with us!
January 20^th, 2012 from 4PM until late!

560 Beatty Street (between Chambar and Medina)
Suite L200 (Lower Level)
RSVP at 604-688-8231 or by email
Be prepared for a great evening of beer, wine, appetizers, ping pong, pool, foosball and music! Looking forward to seeing you!

Market Edge Media IR Conference (Vancouver)
January 20^th (before our party!)
We have partnered with Howard and Neil for this show and recommend it to all IR professionals. Take a look at the agenda and we think you’ll agree.  A full day educational event for Investor Relations professionals and public company executives to sharpen their skills and learn the latest information in an ever changing and challenging field. For more information: Click Here

Vancouver Investment Resource Conference (Vancouver):
January 22-23
Featuring a world class line-up of speakers, covering direct investments in public resource companies, speculative investing, resource exploration, oil & gas, green technology and clean energy, world outlook, investment strategies and more!

Technology Metals Summit (Toronto):
February 1-2
The Technology Metals Summit 2012 is a 2-day global event hosted by REE World and co-produced by Pro-edge Consultants Inc. and Market Edge Media. Bringing together the rare earth, rare metal and critical metal industry sector.

Mining Indaba (Cape Town, South Africa):
February 6-9
For 18 years, Investing in African has been at the forefront of investing in African mining. Investing in African Mining Indaba is the world’s largest gathering of mining’s most influential stakeholders and decision-makers vested in African mining.

Whistler Capital Conference (Whistler):
February 17-19
The conference is a full day intensive series of 20 minute one on one meetings between resource exploration companies and finance teams.

PDAC (Toronto):
March 4-7
The four-day annual Convention held in Toronto, Canada has grown in size, stature and influence since it began in 1932 and today is the event of choice for the world’s mineral industry. In addition to meeting over 1,000 exhibitors, between 27,700 attendees from 120 countries, it allows you the opportunity to attend technical sessions, short courses as well as social and networking events.
Looking forward to seeing you there!

back to top

Top Investing News Network Content

Top 3 Articles this last quarter and who wrote them, how popular they actually are and how we gaged this. If you have not already taken a look perhaps you might want to!

• Silver Investment On Par with Gold by Melissa Pistilli was read over 5,000 times with an average read time of 8 minutes 42 seconds
• Ten Junior Gold Company’s for 2012 by Dave Brown was read over 3,000 times with an average read time of 3m 40s
• Emerging Heavy Rare Earth Deposits by Michael Montgomery was read almost 3,000 times with an average read time of 5m 34s

Google Analytics’ enables us to see a lot of cool things such as how many times people have read certain articles, how long they have spent reading the articles, how many of these are new readers etc. From our 30 websites I pulled the top 3 articles this quarter and the information that I thought would be the most interesting to you. With all our different websites we put out a lot of great pieces, but you may have missed these top ones.  If that was the case feel free to have a look by clicking on the titles above and don’t be shy to “like” or “share” these articles on our facebook, twitter or linkedin accounts!

back to top

Dig Blog

Thank you Mike for the inaugural post on your “Aha!” moment of social media. Click here to read Mike’s take on “What is Social Media”

As our company has grown over the past 3 years so has our team and the range of expertise and helpful information we come across. We will be sharing some of this information via our new Blog on the Dig Media site.  Please check in with us weekly as members of our team share their insight, information and experiences.

back to top

The Digs on Dig

We like to do business with people that we know and that we like. We know that our team consists of amazing and unique people, but we want you, our clients to know as well.  Subsequently we will be giving you the Digs on a new Dig team member with each of our newsletters.

First up…Me!  Meredith Eades.

DM: How long have you been working with Dig and how did you end up on our team?
ME: I started with the company 10 months ago on the 16^th, man I can’t believe it’s almost been a year. I guess time flies when you’re working all the time, and having fun of course!! Haha! I came from the nonprofit world so this has been a big change but my education is from UBC in Marketing and Finance so really this is a great place for me to be right now!

DM: What exactly do you do for the company??
ME: Well I guess that depends on the day… It varies A LOT. I will go with Marketing.  Really I do a range of things including changing layouts on our landing pages, helping increase conversion rates so our clients get more leads, creating newsletters, such as this one, so our clients are aware of what we are doing to add value to them and our company as a whole. If you catch me on a Friday afternoon though, my hands are usually tied kicking all the boys butts on the ping pong table!!

DM: What is your most embarrassing moment since being in this industry??
ME: My first week Mike asked me to edit a press release. Being completely unfamiliar with the language and the industry in general I was SUPER nervous. But I was VERY confident when pointing out 2 spelling mistakes I had come across, Adit and Assay.  I learnt pretty quickly that those are not spelling mistakes, but it was definitely the most embarrassing and humbling moment since I’ve started!

DM: Although you’re not from Vancouver, you’ve pretty much made this your home now. So what is your favorite thing to do in Vancouver?
ME: Well this is definitely a season depending question. Winter I would have to say getting out of the city/rain and go skiing in Whistler or surfing in Tofino. In the summer I would either head to the North Shore for some downhill mountain biking or hit the seawall on my cruiser bike!

back to top

Dig Media Inc.

info@digmediasolutions.com
Twitter: @resourceinvest
604-688-8231

L200 – 560 Beatty Street,
Vancouver, BC
V6B 2L3

Magnesium Investing News is the latest addition to a series of 30+ commodity-focused websites in the Resource Investing News network. Dig Media’s sites educate and inform an audience of investors about what is influencing the markets, while providing branding and connecting opportunities for exploration and mining companies.

“Primary magnesium production in North America is solely dependent on one company and protected tariffs are in place on imported magnesium metal, both of which create an opportunity for Molycor Gold,” said Molycor Gold President and Director, Ed Lee.Magnesium Investing News will provide our investor audience insight into the macroeconomics influencing the magnesium market as well as specific insight into public companies exploring and producing magnesium.

Magnesium’s status as the lightest of all metals may lead to it replacing aluminum in many everyday products and technologies. Scientific research companies and steel manufacturers are partnering to develop magnesium sheets for use in several products and technologies including the manufacturing of automobiles, aircrafts, hand-held electronics and bicycles.

The European Commission has added magnesium to its “critical” raw materials supply list that includes other metals and minerals under elevated risk for supply shortages, such as rare earths, cobalt and platinum group metals. Currently, 82 percent of global magnesium supply comes from China.

“The need for higher fuel-efficiency and lower emissions in the auto and aircraft industries has manufacturers looking to lighter-weight materials such as magnesium which is 33 percent lighter than aluminum,” said Chris Smith, Publisher. Magnesium Investing News is home to original independent articles that will help investors understand the forces driving the magnesium supply and demand chain. Furthermore, investors will be kept up to date with regular magnesium market and company news.

About Molycor Gold Corp.

Molycor Gold Corp. (TSXV:MOR) is a Vancouver B.C.based junior resource company. Molycor’s primary focus is on advancing their NI 43-101 Tami – Mosi Magnesium Project in Nevada which has 412 million tonnes of inferred resources containing 111 billion pounds of magnesium.

“Significant chromite ore discoveries in the Ring of Fire have made Canada one of the top five chromite ore resources in the world. Noront’s Blackbird chromite deposit has attracted investment from one of China’s largest steel producers, Baosteel Resources International Co., Ltd.,” said Noront Resources President and CEO Wesley C. Hanson. “This partnership will be a valuable asset in developing our chromite and nickel sulphide discoveries.”

Chromium, mined as chromite ore, is one of the most important industrial metals due to its hardness and resistance to corrosion, making it a critical component in the manufacturing of stainless steel. Most stainless steel contains about 18 percent chromium.

Chromium Investing News will provide insights into the macroeconomics influencing the chromium market as well as speific insights into public companies exploring and producing chromium.

“Ferrochromium prices are rising as China’s stainless steel industry continues to expand. The long-term outlook is overwhelmingly positive given that Chinese stainless steel producers aim to double production in the next five years and are seeking long-term supply of raw materials,” said Chris Smith, Publisher.

About Noront Resources Ltd.

Noront Resources Ltd. is focused on developing the high-grade Eagle’s Nest nickel-copper-platinum-palladium deposit, the exploration and development of the Blackbird chromite discovery and regional exploration for additional mineral deposits within its large, highly prospective land position in an area known as the “Ring of Fire”, an emerging multi-metals camp located in the James Bay Lowlands of Ontario, Canada.

For more information access the company’s website at www.norontresources.com.

As quoted in the press release:

Magnesium Investing News is the latest addition to a series of 30+ commodity-focused websites in the Resource Investing News network. Dig Media’s sites educate and inform an audience of investors about what is influencing the markets, while providing branding and connecting opportunities for exploration and mining companies.

“Primary magnesium production in North America is solely dependent on one company and protected tariffs are in place on imported magnesium metal, both of which create an opportunity for Molycor Gold,” said Molycor Gold President and Director, Ed Lee.

Magnesium Investing News will provide our investor audience insight into the macroeconomics influencing the magnesium market as well as specific insight into public companies exploring and producing magnesium.

Click here to read the Dig Media Inc. press release.