High Roller Winnings in Las Vegas!
Monday
Jan 26, 2009
I won big while in Las Vegas for Affiliate Summit, but not at the tables or slots. For someone who rarely wins anything, I’ve had great luck lately winning some goodies in the last three weeks, from three different affiliate networks! I managed to win some cool prizes that will most definitely help me out in my blogging and social endeavors!
So with that, thank you SO MUCH and here’s what I won so far this year and from who. 2009 has turned out pretty awesome so far! I apologize in advance, dear readers, as this will be a long post!
Flip Mino Video Camera from MarketLeverage
Last month, several bloggers I read hosted a contest by MarketLeverage, the “Share Your Secret” contest. The rules were simple – share your marketing secret via blog comment and you can only use MarketLeverage as the example network. I entered on a couple of blogs, and was chosen to be the winner from 11|15 Media’s blog! So thanks Mike! Here’s what I shared:
As I said there, my secret isn’t really a secret – work smarter, not harder. I picked up the saying from one of my college roommates and I’m sure some genius generations before me coined the phrase, but I apply that mantra to everything. I try to make things more efficient and do things better so that my time is more effectively used and I can work smart without necessarily making things harder on myself.
To apply that to the affiliate example, I use MaxBannerAds on my blog. When I label the ads, not only do I add the merchant name but I also add the network name, i.e. MarketLeverage, to help me to group them together when I go to look at reporting so I can easily group things for myself. That’s just one small example of how I work smarter, not harder.
There were a lot of great contenders, so I was surprised to have won! I was given the choice between a 4th generation iPod Nano or a Flip Mino, and since I had just bought an iPod for my husband for Christmas and have my own classic iPod, I chose the Flip. I have to give MarketLeverage extra thanks for such a good prize because I just realized that my Aiptek HD camera is on it’s way to death. So yay! I hope as soon as I receive it and check out the cool content they’re going to preload onto it that I’ll have the guts to video blog more 
A new service from marketing master Joel Comm was launched at Affiliate Summit. The service, called TextCastLive, is a SMS messaging service that texted updates to opt-ins about the conference, like when sessions were starting and other events. They also peppered in some contests in. During the tail end of a session, a text went out announcing that the 7th person to show their phone the good folks at the oneNetworkDirect booth would receive $500 in network credit. So I wandered over and with the good fortune of being with some other people who showed their phones (or, their phones were immediately more visible I might say) I was number 7! I was actually surprised to see that they have a lot of tech offers on their network, including Lavasoft which makes the awesome anti-spyware program Ad-Aware that I love and swear by! So thank you to TextCastLive and oneNetworkDirect!
Merchant Bag from buy.at
When you see those bowls on booth tables that say “drop your business card here to win”, DO IT! This is how I was the lucky recipient of the merchant bag from buy.at. The bag was a veritable treasure trove of swag, all provided by the merchants on their network. At face value, it was an awesome Patagonia backpack, designed to comfortably pad a laptop. It’s nice a slim, which is a benefit since the current backpack case I have is huge and bulky. They also handed me a $100 Ticketmaster gift card, and said there was a Bonobos gift card designated for me as well. I shook hands and hugged those I knew, took a picture with the guys decked out for the Affiliate Triathalon (Kim & Ayako – I WANT THAT PIC!) and wandered off.
I was stoked to get that, and later when I went to open the bag to consolidate some of the other swag I’d received at the show I found that there was even MORE inside! A cool track jacket, which I unfortunately had to give away since it was much smaller than what I wear, a $5 Starbucks gift card, a nifty gel stress ball, a cool pleather (plastic+leather) & metal USB thumb drive, some nifty ear warmer headphones, and… oh I know I’m forgetting something! So HUGE thanks to the people I know from buy.at, Kim Salvino, Ayako Bingham, Amy Ely and everyone else there!
So once again, thank you to MarketLeverage, oneNetworkDirect, and buy.at for their awesome generosity and great prizes!
Social Media: The Marketing Summit Day 1
Wednesday
Oct 1, 2008
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
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!
