Social Media

Social Media Marketing Summit: Tara Hunt

Posted on Oct 2, 2008 in Conferences & Networking, Social Media |

So blogging Shel’s keynote worked nicely, so here’s my take on Tara Hunt’s presentation.

• Tara Hunt, Founder and CEO, Citizen Agency.

Something unique that I noticed right off the bat is that Tara’s presentation had a lot of slides, but they weren’t information – they were just words on the screen that she was reading, which I wasn’t too keen on actually.  But it was definitely a different take on a presentation that might really connect with some people just because it’s outside the box.  Towards the end it slowed down and there were a ton of lists, which I find helpful, and I hope you do too!

Bullet Point Review!

• Whuffie is a social media currency idea coined by boingboing.
• #1 component to raising whuffie – turn that bullhorn around.
• Focus on individuals while understanding the needs of the community.
• Developed 10 Commandments of Feedback
  • Thou shalt listen to the “experts”, but design for novices.
  • Thou shalt remember that what people want and what they say they want is very different.
  • Thou shalt respond to all feedback, even when thou need to say, “No thanks.”
  • Thou shalt not take negative feedback personally.
  • Thou shalt give credit to those whose ideas you implement.
  • Thou shalt flag even small changes thou makes.
  • Thou shalt be agile: make small, incremental, iterative changes, rather than hold off for big ones.
  • Thou shalt realize that sometimes the smallest, simplest improvements make the biggest impact.
  • Thou shalt remove thou’s ego from the picture (it’s not about thou).
  • Thou shalt avoid consensus at all costs.
• #2 component to raising whuffie – become part of the community.
• Figure out what problem you are solving and for whom.
• Join them, but not as a voyeur or for market research. Authenticity matters.
• You need to be remarkable – why should they choose you over a competitor?
• Word of mouth is really going to amplify sales.
• #3 component to raising whuffie – create amazing customer experiences.
• 10 Things to Create Amazing Customer Experiences
  • Pay close attention to details.  (The lining of a handbag, Easter eggs on a website.)
  • Go above and beyond.  (Find a great example within the industry, and knock it out of the park making it better.)
  • Appeal to emotion and nostalgia. (Creates relationships between consumers & your brand.)
  • Be a social catalyst.  (Connect your customers with one another on whatever level they’re going to naturally connect at, not necessarily around your brand.  Ex: white headphones on iPods)
  • Inject fun into your product.  (Flickr coloring contest from a few years ago is an example of not taking yourself too seriously, as is Virgin America’s silly airline safety video).
  • Experiment and be agile. (Try little things all the time, Threadless is a good example.)
  • Turn banality into something fashionable.  (Method cleaning products are trendy.)
  • Design for flow.  (Think like a game designers, increasingly more difficult challenges, game like flow to engage with each other.)
  • Let people personalize.
  • Make happiness your business model.  (Make it core – competence, connected, autonomous will all boost happy.)
• #4 component to raising whuffie – embrace the chaos.
• You can’t control the message, especially in social media.  The more you try to control it, the more it fights back.
• Lay the foundation, set a template & get ready to discover the everyday magic.
• 7 Ways to Embrace the Chaos
  • Stop moving and look around until you see everything clearly.
  • Transfer the knowledge.
  • Every tome you feel anxiety, acknowledge it.
  • Define your own measures of success.
  • Get outside of your personal circle.
  • Realize that everything is out of your control anyway (the zen point).
  • Have patience.
• Whuffie only works if it’s circulated.
• #5 component to raising whuffie -find your higher purpose.
• Find a way to give back to the community.
• A lot of companies do good AND make money so you can pay your rent.
• Think: what can you give away something that won’t leave you broke?
  • Democratize something – give something to everyone that they didn’t use to have access to.  Blogger gave this to journalism, YouTube gave it to production.  What did you used to have to hire an exper for?
  • Open it up – open source is good and allows people to get involved.  WordPress is a great example of a late comer who just did it better by using open source and innovating faster.  They only have a team of like 5-6 people still due to open sources adding value.
  • Build bridges – connect things, embrace data portability like OpenID.
  • Spread love – give people incentives to be better people.
  • Value something bigger than yourself.
• Being whuffie rich will lead to better word of mouth, increased sales, and a big fat increase to your bottom line.

Points brought up during the Q&A

• There is a power shift going on now, and as people understand it they will embrace it and demand it.
• The inevitability of social media is clear.
• Are there certain segments of industries that ‘get it’ more than others?  Perhaps eco-friendly stuff?  Tara didn’t have any stats but it would certainly be interesting.  She does see a lot more eco-friendly companies with Facebook & social media interaction, as well as fashion and politics.  There’s still a lot of consumer products that need a lot of help.

I wish there had been more time for some for questions, despite not having any questions to ask myself.  I have found that I’m learning more, actually, from hearing other people who are a bit more confused than I about social media asking questions.  Good stuff thus far!  I hope all you readers are enjoying my blog-o-thon of the day’s sessions, brought to you by the fact that the company I work for now has provided a much better laptop than my own!

Social Media Marketing Summit: Keynote 2 Shel Israel

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

I’m going to attempt to post this RIGHT after it’s done, so as I’m typing Shel Israel is talking.  Don’t worry about not being rude.  I have an uncanny knack of being able to type without looking at the screen.  Nifty, huh?  I digress, this presentation was given by:

• Shel Israel, writer, GlobalNeighbourhoods.net

Shel took most of the presentation to talk about people he’d interviewed.  Some of the anecdotes were useful and some were just that – anecdotes.  I only outlined some of the more interesting ones for you that might have some take-home value.

Bullet Point Review!

• Has been following social media since 2005, taking a business look at human stories.
• He gets paid to interview people about social media & how it impacts their business and culture.
• Whether you want to or not, social media is where it’s going.
• The internet came and gave us email, but it wasn’t as conversational as social media.
• The growth of social media has been more phenomenal than people realize.
• When they started their book in March 2005, there were about 4 million bloggers worldwide, not that impressive.  If you add up all the social media content now you get close to half a billion people.  And growing.
• There are great tools to find the conversation – Google Alerts, Radian6, Google Analytics.
• Since starting his project, he’s done 110 interviews, 33 countries, 5 continents (mostly bloggers).
• 2 billion people will be online by 2011.
• Michael Dell, Dell Computers.
  • Dell might just be the world’s most prolific social media company.
  • Conversations are more valuable than ads.
  • Engagement beats impressions.
• Laurel Papworth, social networking strategies.
  • Was invited to help set up a social network for Saudi women.  Shel Israel asked her ‘what are they like’ and she said ‘they’re like all women’.
  • They need anonymity online to avoid real world repercussions and need to support each other.
  • Queen Rania of Jordan is on YouTube with near 4 million visitors doing almost daily posts & talks about the myths about Muslim women.
• Isaac Mao, China’s first blogger.
  • The rate of growth for Twitter and Facebook seems to be higher than blogging in China.
  • The Chinese blogging community has figured out how to bypass firewalls to publish outside of China through use of IPs, etc.
  • Feeds the collective power of crowds.
• People’s voices will be heard – they are going to use these tools to have the conversations they used to have at the water cooler and now it’s amplified and can travel around the world very fast.
• Sun Microsystems is using a behind the firewall internal social network to collaborate and get products to market faster.
• Youth is the killer app.  Its driving everything because social media is coming second nature to the upcoming workers of the world.
• Tools are allowing people to interact online much like they already interact offline.
• People are the same.  Cultures differ.
• Useful info > pitches.
• Community now has the power.
• Generosity is competitively lethal.
• Adoption is faster than you think.
• Scalability is the new ROI.
• Measurement is being resolved.  This is what people are super focused on this year.
• Using social media in a recession: it’s the most cost-effective option for communications with customers.
• 1 person can scale worldwide very quickly.

Points brought up during the Shel Israel Q&A

• What would you have in your shopping cart for low cost options?  He hasn’t a clue – when he started, it was just blogging, but now there’s a powerhouse of tools.  Where are your customers?  What tools are you the most comfortable with?  There are basic tools, but you may be better with one over another so you have to decide.
• Is there anything going on within the political campaign use of social media that businesses can learn from?  They’re using incredible intelligence gathering tools and this is the first presidential election in history where social media is playing a role.  Looking back during the next election will be interesting.  This is a big step in a revolutionary process.  People’s voices are being amplified.

Overall a good presentation, well done, with valuable case studies and a few ace takeaways.  This is the first time I’ve heard Shel Israel speak, so it was a great opportunity that I hope to repeat at future conferences.  There wasn’t much time for questions, but I get the impression that the questions would have gone on into generally tangential directions, so perhaps it was for the best.

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!

Need Inspiration?

Posted on Aug 28, 2008 in Affiliate Marketing, Career, Conferences & Networking, Social Media |

Then listen to this…

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If you didn’t have the privilege of being at Affiliate Summit East earlier this month and need a kick in the pants to get you moving, this is a must listen.  Cory Booker, Mayor of Newark, NJ, gave a riveting and inspiring keynote address at the summit.  Tears welled up, and people were moved to reach the highest they could – then reach 3 inches farther.

Mayor Booker has a real penchant for the uplifting, and while the speach was not directly related to marketing it did touch on some sales and marketing themes and was generically motivating to anyone.  So whatever industry you’re in, this is a great listen.  My summary doesn’t give justice to the actual recording, so please give it a listen!

Online Marketing Glossary: Paid Inclusion

Posted on Aug 28, 2008 in Affiliate Marketing, Rambles, Social Media |

Paid Inclusion:

• Advertising program where pages are guaranteed to be included in a search engine’s index in exchange for payment.

The most common cases of paid inclusion happen on directories.  While they allow almost anyone to submit a link, users are offered a paid solution that’s guaranteed to get their links in front of more users in a more prominent location.  These links are also given more weight in terms of IT resources to make sure they’re coming up in all possible keyword searches rather than just a few or one.

____
Glossary Definition From ABC’s of Online Marketing by Alexandra Wharton, Issue 22, Revenue Magazine

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.