Posts Tagged "Social Media"

ad:tech San Francisco: Master Class Workshop: Kick-Ass Creative—Left Coast Style

Posted on May 6, 2009 in Conferences & Networking, Marketing |

Session Description: Leading Left Coast creative directors showcase a cross section of innovative digital and integrated work for multiple clients including the strategy behind each campaign and the related pieces that supported the work. Learn from these master class creative directors about how to inspire and harness the big idea in an increasingly digital world dominated by fragmenting media and attention spans. What customer insights and trends spark new ideas and how do leading creative directors factor in evolving trends such as on-demand media and user-generated content when developing campaigns? This is the place to be to see the latest examples of strategic and tactical creative thinking and execution.

This session took place Wednesday, April 22, 2009. The speakers:

• Conor Brady, Chief Creative Officer, Organic (Moderator)
• Niels Aillaud, Senior Manager Digital Marketing, LG Electronics
• Scott Briskman, VP, Executive Creative Director, Agency.com San Francisco
• Jared Cluff, VP, User Acquisition, Ask.com
• John Rabasa, Executive VP, Managing Director, Publicis Modem West

Unfortunately this sessions was really a long brag session from LG and Ask.com.  While the television media they showed was funny and entertaining, I expected this “master class workshop” to actually teach me a few things.  Maybe some tips on creating engaging creative?  Nope.  So I was pretty let down and I only have a few notes for you.

Bullet Point Review!  LG  Electronics:

• Markets may be conversations, but make sure you are invited.
• Social media is about two things: context and people.
• Participation is good but creative participation is better.
• A good campaign is organic and will want to keep going.
• If your brand is befriended (e.g. on Facebook or Twitter), be a friend back.

Ask.com:

• Positioned Ask.com as an answer engine.
• Video ads delivered an 80% reduction in CPC.
• Crawls were 4 times better – higher traffic than traditional 15 second spots.
• They were surprised by the top performing question they asked – Who is Kim Kardashian?
• The agency is not bringing ideas that are exciting to them just because they’re exciting – they’re bringing them because they make sense for their business.

Web 2.0 Expo: The Social Media Trilogy: Three Vital Components for Building a Successful Online Strategy

Posted on Apr 22, 2009 in Conferences & Networking |

Session Description: It’s time to look at the big picture – beyond starting a blog or getting your team on Twitter. To survive in these trying economic times, enterprises must adopt a trilogy of Web 2.0 fundamentals as part of their long-term communications objectives. This session leverages the experiences of some of the world’s most successful communities to help you develop a strategic vision for enterprise-oriented social media. Also included are several use cases that demonstrate the success of having organization-wide Web 2.0 technology and information on how Vignette is helping the world’s leading brands with their social media efforts. Takeaways include how Web 2.0 intersects with a broader online strategy, the social media success trilogy and how to integrate these fundamentals into your organization’s DNA. Sponsored by Vignette.

This session took place Thursday, April 2, 2009. The speaker:

• Gerardo Dada, Vignette

I’m not sure what I was expecting, but this session was good.

Bullet Point Review!

• Only 12% rate their web 2.0 efforts as effective.
• Measurement is key.
• 40% of businesses have no real strategy.
• Web 2.0 is viewed as an immature medium.
• 2008 was the year of Trying, 2009 is the year of Embracing.
• How do you build a strategy?
  • You don’t; web 2.0 supports a strategy.  It’s a tool.  Marketing, Customer Service, Human Resources, Corporate Communications, PR, product development, knowledge management, etc.
  • People are looking for answers and information.  They don’t care as much where it comes from.
  • Social is integrated part of the web.
• How do you build a community?
  • You can only foster a community.
  • Participate in a community.
  • People have persona’s and want to keep them separate.
  • There’s nothing wrong with integrating technology buy you have to ask permission.
  • Strategy has to be flexible enough to work with what’s coming next.
  • Understand what people are saying.
• How do you succeed in Social Media?
  • It’s about the people.
  • Fundamentally change the company mindset.
  • There’s a resurgence of the personal brand.
  • Requires a mind shift and a new culture.
    • Be Passionate!
    • Develop a Strategy (set milestones).
    • Have clear goals and metrics
    • Without metrics you won’t get support from executives.
• Resourcing
  • Needs to be on top of mind
• Promotion
  • Marketing lead it, IT is jumping in now.

I didn’t write anything down from the Q&A portion, though I remember there being one.  I think it was a lot of people asking specific questions that really didn’t have any kind of broad appeal to my readers here, but overall it was a good session.

Slideshow Presentation:

Social Media: The Marketing Summit Day 1

Posted on Oct 1, 2008 in Affiliate Marketing, Conferences & Networking, Social Media |

Day 1 has concluded with some great after hours discussion for the Social Media: The Marketing Summit at Moscone Center West in San Francisco, presented by mThink.  A day full of good pannels on various aspects of social media, including the panel with myself, Brian Caldwell, and Celine Takatsuno on the affiliate channel and how social media applies.

Unfortunately due to some public transportation issues, I didn’t make it on time for the first half of today’s keynote by Charlene Li of Altimiter Group, co-author of Groundswell.  What I did hear was some key insight, and I look forward to finding some notes on fellow attendee’s blogs!

Brian Solis delivered with some great words of wisdom that were highly sought after (the slides of them, anyway) after the session.  He had some really good actionable items in terms of creating a social media plan and allocating time and efforts that the attendees were really intrigued by.  I definitely want a copy to assist with my own understanding of social media planning!

I met with my co-panelists through the Ticketmaster brand highlight so unfortunately I missed that talk, then noshed, then came our panel.  I thought we did pretty well, and for my first more traditional speaking engagement.  I got some good feedback on the panel, including some nice tweets:

@shelisreal – @briancaldwell, Celine Takatsuno & Trisha Fawver are talking about SM & affiliate mktng. Not my fav topic, but these guys are pretty good.

@lornali – @briancaldwell with Trisha Fawver & Celine Takatsuno on social media & affiliate marketing

@TTaxChristine – @TrishaLyn enjoying your discussion of the tie between affiliates and social media. #SMMW08

After our panel were the fellows from Best Buy responsible for their internal social network Blue Shirt Nation, who were a blast to hear from.  There was also a panel on segmentation that I didn’t actually think was that great, and finally a presentation by Karl Long from Nokia on making your customers work for you using social media – great stuff.

Of course, i’ll post my notes as always in coming posts, but I’m jazzed to attend tomorrow’s sessions and soak up the social media goodness like a sponge!

A Happy Blog Birthday to Me!

Posted on Aug 21, 2008 in Career, Writing | 6 comments

In my hustle and bustle lately, I neglected to realize that I’ve been blogging “semi-pro” as I refer to it for a full year.  I went back to see some of my earlier posts from last August and was reminded of this one – Hats, Hats, Everywhere! Could it be that it was just a year ago that I was still managing PsPrint’s mailing services?  It’s also sad to say that I was “in charge of” social media marketing – a project that never took off on the company level, but I’ve obviously been running strong with it.

It feels like it’s been much longer than just a year that I’ve been at this, but I have to say that I’ve learned so much in a year that it’s incredible.  In many ways this blog as served as a gateway to that knowledge and opportunities that I’ve been given.  I’ll never be able to thank this little blog enough lol.

I wish I’d discovered Google Analytics sooner so I don’t have complete data, but thank you to the 16,000+ visitors this year that stopped by.  Thanks for spending those few minutes to check out what I’ve been spewing out there into the webverse.  I hope you’ve come by more than once.  Told your friends.  Subscribed despite my trials and tribulations in getting a freakin’ feed to work properly.  And come by despite going through three URL changes…

Stay Classy, Interwebs.

Social Media: The Marketing Summit

Posted on Aug 20, 2008 in Conferences & Networking, Social Media | 2 comments

That’s right all you conference junkies, there’s a new kid at school.  From the people who bring you Revenue Magazine, Social Media: The Marketing Summit will be taking place locally here in October.  Some of the brightest folks in social media will be there:

1. Lisa Picarille, Publisher & Editor-in-Chief, Revenue Magazine
2. Brian Solis, Principal, FutureWorks and PR2.0
3. Charlene Li, Independent Analyst (formerly of Forrester Research)
4. Tara Hunt, Co-Founder, Citizen Agency
5. Chris Trayhorn, Founder & CEO, PERFORM and Montgomery Research

I’m excited that there’s a new conference on the block, especially one that’s close enough to just commute to!  Unfortunately I won’t be able to afford this on my own and, given my recent changes at work, don’t think the company will send me.

Early bird pricing ends August 30th.  The early bird price is $895, a whopping $400 savings!  As well, I’m officially taking sponsors if someone wants to send me on their behalf.  No travel expenses, just the registration of the conference itself.  If you’re interested in being my BFF, contact me.

Days 2 and 3 of Affiliate Summit East 2008

Posted on Aug 14, 2008 in Affiliate Marketing, Career, Conferences & Networking, Social Media | 2 comments

Well, while I’d intended to recap each day… that didn’t exactly happen as you can tell.  I do intend to post the notes I took from the sessions and the impressions to help everyone learn the great stuff I learned.  Some of the more hot button sessions can’t be covered in mere bullet points, so it will take me a day or so longer to get my thoughts together for those.

I covered Saturday & Sunday (mostly… the ShareASale party was nice although I didn’t stay long), so let’s jump right into Monday & Tuesday, the busiest days of the conference.

Day  2 – Divide & Conquer

1. In many ways this is the day that the summit starts.  In the past the breakout sessions have only been on Monday & Tuesday, however this year they were extended to Sunday.  Regardless, the keynote was given on Monday by Newark, NJ Mayor Cory Booker.  If you didn’t want to jump up ready to go, you didn’t listen to what Mayor Booker had to say.  It was a great speech, and I already posted my thoughts about it.
2. The blogger’s lounge helped save my sanity.  It was nice to be able to go in there in the 30 minute breaks between sessions & chat with people and do a little bit of work.  Had the wifi worked out better for me (not sure if it was my ancient laptop or the actual connection that was the issue) I would have been able to get more posts up during the actual conference.  I hope to have a better laptop by the next show I go to so I can just live blog it!
3. Of the 3 sessions I attended, the best was Content That Kills.  It was informative, had great tips and information, and there were good questions asked by the audience.  I may be biased being a writer by heart, but it was good stuff.
4. The other sessions I attended that day were the Performance Marketing Alliance Q&A, which turned more into a witch hunt filled with personal issues unfortunately, and How is Social Media Changing Affiliate Marketing, which apparently it isn’t because that question was never really answered.  More on those in their own posts.
5. The Great Affiliate Road Rally was a slaughterhouse win!  With just three cars in it this time, the first place car took off like a shot and left the others in their dust!  Congrats to them & to the others?  Well remember the entry fee went to charity & you won’t feel so bad 🙂
6. Monday night I had dinner with a lovely group of new friends & colleagues and then headed over to the LinkShare event at Tia’s.  The event was a whole new group of people to talk to and had a great time talking some shop and reminiscing over Police Academy flicks with Wil Reynolds & Jim Kukral.
7. Oh no, that wasn’t the end!  After that we headed back to the hotel where we shut down the bar there and moved across the street to a small bar by the water & had a great time chatting with people and generally schmoozing before rolling into bed.

Day 3 – Epic Games

1. It was a matter of sleep vs. sessions I wasn’t overly excited about attending, so I missed the Ask the Experts table discussions & The Future of Affiliate Marketing to sleep in & get refreshed for the Copywriting Clinic, which I very much wanted to attend.  I hear I didn’t miss much.
2. Speaking of the Copywriting Clinic, Lisa Riolo did an excellent job moderating and the panelists were excellent.  I took 3 full pages of notes on this session, so you’re in for a huge post later on!
3. The Ethical Issues in Affiliate Marketing session turned into the biggest fail session of the conference for me.  The moderator Haiko de Poel Jr was doing a pretty bad job… usually when you’re the moderator of a panel of “experts” your job is to pass questions to the best suited panel member, not challenge the question back to the audience member who asked it.  I have much more to say, so I’ll save it for later.
4. The un-keynote was very relaxed and I actually got up & talked…which was big for me knowing that it was being video taped!  I just hope when I look back at it that I don’t look like a fool lol.
5. Luckily I was able to attend the Red Sox vs. Rangers game at Fenway with some fellow baseball loving conference attendees.  Being a moderate baseball fan I was really thrilled to be there & the game was crazy!  The Red Sox almost blew a 10-0 lead in the 1st but came back in the last inning to tie it up and then ultimately overtake the Rangers with an epic score of 17-19 Red Sox.  We only spent a few innings in the stands before the rain started, but I got some great pictures and we continued watching the game from inside near the concessions so it wasn’t a waste.
6. More bar shenanigans, then some piano playing until late kept me up long enough to decide not to go to bed before my early flight out of town.  Overall what a great end to a great conference.

Final Thought – Springer Style

Overall I had the best time at this conference – not just because it was fun and I met a lot of terrific people who I’ve had the chance to get to know online and now have had the opportunity to meet in person – but because I just learned so much that I “get it” now.  I remember back in February going to the Affiliate Summit West and having a conversation with my husband that I was actually starting to understand more and more about the industry and that I really felt like this was an industry I could get excited about.

And I have… and this reinforced so much for me how much I really like this industry!  I’m back to the “real world” here and ready to conquer it!