February 8th, 2010
Posted by AndiNarvaez in SMB DC, Upcoming breakfasts
Thanks to everyone who made it out to our pilot event in January! We are officially ready to roll.
Join us at Busboys and Poets (14th and V — U Street Metro) on Monday, March 1 at 8am for our next Social Media Breakfast-DC. You are invited to have breakfast with the DC/VA/MD social media community and to share your thoughts about this month’s topic: Blogging The City. Our speakers (list coming soon!) will talk about popular sites and social media channels dedicated to aggregating the best (and warning us about worst) that DC has to offer. Come hear more about how our speakers are using the Web to help us make the most of what the district has to offer offline.
Want to get more involved?
Please send a tweet using the #SMBDC hashtag or contact @smcdc via tweet, DM, email (socialmediaclubdc [at] gmail [dot] com) or pidgeon if you wish to be a “Head of Table” at any of our breakfast events. Essentially, you will be volunteering to ignite conversation at your table and let others pick your brain during the Breakfast. And don’t worry, we don’t mean this literally.
To keep the event from selling out quicker than everyone who would like to attend can find out about it, we will release tickets in waves three weeks prior to each Breakfast event — 50 tickets will be available with each wave for a total of 150 tickets.
If you’d like to eat, which we hope you do, $10 (cash please) is all you need to get in on the delicious breakfast options … The information and new friendships you will walk away with, priceless.
And remember… We are always looking for partners and sponsors to keep food costs to a minimum (or even better, FREE). Please let us know if you or your company is interested in sponsoring any of our Social Media Breakfast events. If you would like more information, please email us. Thank you in advance!
Click below to register and feel free to leave your comments or reach out to us if you have questions, suggestions, if you would like to help with the event, and, if you would like to serve as a Head of Table.
We look forward to seeing you!
Flickr user daquellamanera
February 5th, 2010
Posted by Geechee_Girl in SMB New Hampshire
NOTE: THE EVENT IS ON February 19, 2010.
Ticket sales end on 2/18 in the evening. Do not confuse the Eventbrite ticket end date with the event date!
•••
This month’s Social Media Breakfast is brought to you by Uptown Uncorked, DimDim, and New Heights of New Hampshire, with breakfast sponsors Portsmouth Regional Hospital and Carpe Diem Coffee.
You already know about Uptown Uncorked, since we are the breakfast maestro each month, and DimDim, who handles the periodic live casting of the breakfasts (note: this breakfast will not be live cast). Let me tell you a bit about our venue:
We’re excited to have New Heights – Adventures for Teens donating space at their Portsmouth Facility (we’ll be in the gym). If you’re not familiar with New Heights – Adventures for Teens, their mission is:
To assist Seacoast youth to develop the competence, character, confidence, and resiliency necessary for a healthy and successful adulthood.
Thanks to Salina McIntire of the Portsmouth Chamber of Commerce for helping with introductions to the venue team and sponsor this month!
•••
Theme for the 9th Social Media Breakfast: Tracking Success
The ninth Social Media Breakfast NH (hashtag #smbnh) will be all about topics related to Tracking Success in Social Media. In this struggling economy and shifting paradigm we need to be working together to be more successful and better weather the storm. We should be pulling in all aspects of technology, new media, old media and social media to succeed. This meeting will help us lay the foundation for a richer, better education, tech and new media community in NH.
In addition to Leslie Poston (myself), who will be your host and MC for the morning, you will have three speakers giving three brief presentations on topics relating to the theme for the morning.
Speakers:
Opening Remarks by Leslie Poston (SMBNH founder, founder of Uptown Uncorked, co-foudner of Film POP!, co-author Twitter for Dummies)
Welcome Remarks by Wayne Moulton of New Heights
KD Paine, founder of KD Paine & Partners and often called the “Goddess of Measurement”, well known around the country for her knowledge on the topic, will be speaking on measurement in an online world.
More speakers being confirmed as we speak – stay tuned here for more details!
This is going to be a great breakfast!
Social Media Breakfast History
On seeing growing demand in this area, I decided to fill the need with a new branch of the nationwide Social Media Breakfast in NH. It isn’t that we don’t love Boston, because we do, but our neighbor to the north is rich in technology and social media, and often overlooked when events are planned. I saw a need for networking opportunities that were easier to get to for the northern tech and social media crowd, and decided to step up and fill it. Because NH itself is a diverse and scattered state, the Social Media Breakfast there will be just a little bit different than the one in Cambridge/Boston. Our first meeting was in January 2009, and was a roaring success.
What is a Social Media Breakfast?
From the official description: The Social Media Breakfast was founded by Bryan Person in August 2007 as an event where social media experts and newbies alike come together to eat, meet, share, and learn. Marketers, PR pros, entrepreneurs, bloggers, podcasters, new-media fanatics, and online social networkers are all welcome to attend.
The breakfast series began in Boston and has now spread to more than a dozen cities throughout the United States and around the world.
How will the Social Media Breakfast in NH be different?
The main difference between Social Media Breakfast NH and other SMBs will be all-inclusiveness. I do not want only social media people and companies to attend, I also want technology types, programmers, coders, tech writers, tech companies and more to attend. As a state that is rich in technology but scattered in distance, I think the best networking and connection making effect will be achieved by combined our different cultures. You never know, as a social media type you might just meet the coder you’ve been looking for to create your dream project if we all come together to connect and to learn from each other!
TO SPONSOR THIS OR A FUTURE SMBNH CONTACT LESLIE POSTON via Twitter, Email or Phone.
Let’s make SMBNH crackle with energy and success! See you there!
February 3rd, 2010
Posted by ColleenPence in SMB San Antonio, Upcoming breakfasts
Guest Speaker: Jeff Vaughn, KENS 5 Eyewitness News anchor
(@Jeff Vaughn)
Join us as we welcome our guest speaker, Jeff Vaughn, to San Antonio and Social Media Breakfast. Jeff is KENS 5’s new anchor and he’ll discuss the role of social media in the changing landscape of news delivery.
Journalists are now using avenues like Twitter and Facebook as sources for stories, but there is also another layer. In the past, the relationship you had with a reporter was based on watching, listening or reading. Now the relationship is a two-way conversation. Reporters are interacting directly with their audience, and it’s having a significant impact on the development of the story as well as on how the audience interprets it.
*****
RSVP
Visit our Tweetvite page to RSVP for Social Media Breakfast San Antonio on Wednesday, February 17, at Absolutely Everything Catering, 3915 San Pedro Ave., San Antonio, TX 78212. We meet from 7:30 a.m. – 9:00 a.m.
Our venue this month, Absolutely Everything Catering, will provide a breakfast taco buffet including three choices of tacos, coffee and juice for just $7. Social Media Breakfast is free to attend but please consider enjoying this reasonably-priced buffet to show our appreciation to the venue.
We look forward to seeing you there!
February 2nd, 2010
Posted by SMB Seattle (@SMBSeattle) in Recaps, SMB Seattle
Brand management is dead. In the new age of brand promise management, companies have to do more than just listen to customer feedback; they have to operationalize it in the development of new products, features and services. That was the compelling message of Ant’s Eye View co-founder and CEO Sean O’Driscoll (@seanodmvp) to the Social Media Breakfast Seattle audience on January 19th.
- Sean O’Driscoll, co-founder and CEO, Ant’s Eye View
The sold-out event, sponsored and hosted by Real Networks, attracted more than 100 attendees, nearly double the attendance of the first SMB Seattle breakfast in December. An additional 80 people followed the presentation online via the SMB Seattle live stream.
O’Driscoll’s lively presentation focused on how companies can create brand defenders, the people who not only have an affinity for a brand but are willing to stand up for it. According to O’Driscoll, the most passionate advocates are those who believe they played a direct role in the creation of specific products. When they see their suggestions and feedback embodied in products and services, they’re far more likely to engage with others in promoting the brand.
“If you’re brilliant at listening to customer feedback but you never close the loop and tell them what you’ve changed, you’ve completely missed it,” said O’Driscoll.
If you’d like to watch the full presentation, you can find it here: http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/4087827
Sean’s slides are available via Slideshare at: http://www.slideshare.net/seanodmvp/smb-seattle-antseyeview
Photos of the event can be found on the SMB Seattle Flickr page: http://www.flickr.com/photos/smbseattle
February 1st, 2010
Posted by AmandaOBrien in SMB Maine, Upcoming breakfasts
Things are getting a little chilly up here in Maine but our monthly breakfasts continue to pull in an amazing group! Just about every breakfast topic has been chosen by our attendees including this one: Creating Social Media Policies.
Social Media is becoming more a part of your whole marketing strategy and less of a stand alone topic. Businesses are nervous about participating. What will people say? What if someone says something bad? How will we keep up? Who is going to do the work? By setting company policies you can structure your expectations, limitations and opportunities in this new marketing space. You can also protect yourself, your brand, your employees and your business with a policy in place.
This month we have two local experts who help businesses craft social media policies and the discovery process that goes along with that. We also will have takeaway documents to help our attendees put together a basic social media policy as soon as they return to their office.
The dirty details
Who: Amanda O’Brien and Kyle Pouliot continue as your dedicated hosts of the morning. Our presenters will be Sarah Wallace (freelance writer and social media ninja) and Brad Lawwill (general counsel of Pierce Promotions).
What: SMBME 7 – Creating Social Media Policies
Where: MPX 2275 Congress St, Portland ME with plenty of parking in the back lot
Food: Provided by Mr. Bagel in Westbrook
Register: www.socialmediabreakfastmaine.com/upcoming/
January 28th, 2010
Posted by SMBChicago in Recaps, SMB Chicago
When a user interacts with you using YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin etc, there is an understanding between you and the user as to what you will deliver.
There are three general content creation categories, (1) Bulletin Board, (2) Informational (3) Emotional. You should focus on one category for each effort. Sometimes, you can mix 1 & 2 or 2 & 3, but don’t try to do them all in one effort.
Bulletin Board – current news and events. These can be as simple as “new address 200 W. Main”. A Bulletin Board could also highlight an upcoming event. For the most part, this content is specific to a time and a place. Here is an example of a workshop video that was done for SCORE Chicago
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4-HXUF46R8c
Informational – “Our new facility is 3000 sq. ft. it includes ..” Product descriptions are also information videos. Training tips, insights into operations etc. Pointed answers to questions. Below you will find a product video and an answer to a question.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DKdvEJDFRtE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8LkxhWcDZYI
Emotional “ we are creating an environment that will …” A good video tour of a house would be emotional., connecting with you so that you want to live there. Emotional, does not have to be complex. Here is a short video done by Google about a person moving to Paris.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nnsSUqgkDwU
Restaurant postings are often emotional. Note the comments on this restaurant video.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hb41h5coP0o
A good news story combines, information and emotional. See this news report that I did with First Business News on web development.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x1SHvebGW9E
Understand what is the goal of your content. Then, create a place that is consistent with that goal. You can have more than one channel or Twitter effort. One person in Chicago has 5 different Twitter accounts, each one targeted toward a different effort.
Jess Constable, a recent guest on my TV show, has a business that sells jewelry. To that end, she has a website that showcases her jewelry (bulletin board + information). www.jesslc.com . Separately, she maintains a blog that connects with a community providing insights into simplifying your live makeundermylife.com . While the efforts are complementary, she doesn’t sell on her blog.
January 28th, 2010
Posted by SMBChicago in Recaps, SMB Chicago
By Marcus Tewksbury
At one point or another I’ve heard someone define crazy as repeating the same exercise but expecting different results. Mentally I have this picture of an old Simson’s commercial where Bart or Homer keeps reaching for a Butterfinger after being repeatedly shocked. Basically, this is exactly how I see most marketers approaching the social space.
The metaphor here is to how the advertising world has learned to run itself by household level data supplied by the Neilsen’s of the world. Was this data every really useful? Did it ever shed insights on what really moved the needle? Or, did we just become so desperate to justify what we were doing we grew to accept them as a course of action. These statistics became an enabler to do our whim – kind of like my Weight Watchers diet.
Why then, when approaching social would we think things would be any different? Immediately, we’ve all jumped on the buzz bandwagon looking for justification. Problem is people have not “settled” yet and are still pushing for a social answer that is more accountable and more related to actual business performance.
As service providers then, the question is how do we step to the plate? How do we provide a measure that truly speaks to business value created? Start by finding the “client of the future.” Producing meaningful metrics is entirely contingent on dumping the current episodic, campaign driven mentality of marketing and re-orientating the go to market with a customer centric strategy. Look for folks who get the “4-B’s” or the like, they are few and far between. Conversely, you can continue to play the Pancho to your clients as they tilt their windmills with cries of “reach”, “popularity”, and “friends”.
January 27th, 2010
Posted by SMBChicago in Recaps, SMB Chicago
The Importance of Social Media for SEO
by Sky Opila
Yesterday, Walker Sands’ very own John Fairley moderated a discussion on social media and search engine optimization (SEO) at the Social Media Breakfast Chicago #3 event hosted by SCORE Chicago. John brought up a lot of great points for discussion in the group about social media and SEO, but after attending and discussing with the group I think there are some key takeaways everyone can start using today.
No doubt social media has a large influence on SEO. Take Walker Sands for example. If you Google a brand, such as ours “Walker Sands”, you will find that more than half of the links are influenced by social media. From our LinkedIn account, to Google reviews, to our Twitter stream and even our blog. Social media plays a large part in the content displayed in the search engine results page.
As John put it to the group, all of these social media sites are linking back to your Web site. And even though a lot of sites have adapted no follow links (meaning you may not get the benefit of link juice from them), they are increasing your visibility in the search engine results page.
So what does this mean?
Social media can and does influence your SEO. However, the goals for your brand may determine what strategy works best for you.
If you are an already well established brand, you may want to leverage social media to help you optimize for other keywords and phrases. For example, if chip giant Lays decided they wanted to enter the dessert game and offer chocolate-covered potato chips, simply putting it on their website may not be enough. As part of their marketing campaign they may leverage a blog to discuss the finer points of chocolate-covered potato chips or even YouTube videos about how to make and eat the chips properly. These social media tools in conjunction with their larger marketing campaign will help Lays rank for dessert ideas and chocolate-covered potato chips.
On the other hand, a less well-known and established brand may take a different approach to utilizing social media for SEO. This may include a startup company looking to fill out their brand more strongly. They might focus all of their social media and community building on branded items that help push their name to the top of the search engine results page and help fill out all of the results when someone searches for them.
John Fairley suggests that focusing strong efforts in some channels (the ones that specifically make sense for your business) is definitely better than spreading yourself too thin. He suggests that everyone should get a blog because that is the social media channel that you can most easily utilize to help influence search engine ranking.
Beyond a blog, if Facebook doesn’t make sense for your company, wait to use it. But if Yelp or Twitter does, make sure to not only leverage that but to build those communities into strong locations for your brand.
Thanks to John for leading a great discussion on social media and SEO, also wanted to shout out to the group members at the SCORE event that helped keep the conversation so lively!
Veronica Pasia
Gordon Dymowski
Hope Bertram
Jen Luby
Jenn Sutherland
Interactive Amy Ravit Korin
Laura Wasilewski
Tim McDonald
Elyse Devries
January 26th, 2010
Posted by AndiNarvaez in Photos, Presentations, Recaps, SMB DC
Other than to say thank you to our speakers: Geoff Living (@geoffliving), Shashib Bellamkonda (@shashib), and Alex Howard (@digiphile); our Heads of Table: Andy Carvin (@acarvin), Daria Steigman (@dariasteigman), Shonali Burke (@shonali), Josh Greene (@josh_greene), and Mike Schaffer (@mikeschaffer); and our guests! … there is not much left to say.
Our inaugural Social Media Breakfast DC (#SMBDC) was terrific!
Don’t believe me? Alex Priest did an AWESOME job recapping the event here.
A day before the Breakfast, Alex wrote a blog post version of his Breakfast presentation titled “Trends and challenges for social media in 2010.”
Before leaving for the Breakfast, Geoff posted a “Get Mobile Now” manifesto on his blog.
After the event, Shashib recapped the discussion and included a Flickr slideshow with pictures of the breakfast on his Examiner blog.
One of our Heads of Table, Shonali Burke, wrote a post about the Breakfast table talk, the engaging crowd and the new friends and connections our guests were made that morning.
Thank you all! You have us COVERED!
Check out our event pictures, courtesy of Rachel Rule (@rachelrule), Social Media Breakfast Co-organizer.
More pictures from Amy D. Phillips (@amydpp).
You’ll notice, no one looks groggy 
Stay tuned for the next breakfast in early February. Information will be posted on our EventBrite registration page: http://socialmediabreakfastdc.eventbrite.com
Flickr user amydpp
PS: Check out Alex Howard’s awesome Breakfast presentation on “Social Media in 2010″, which he made using Prezi.
January 26th, 2010
Posted by SMBChicago in Recaps, SMB Chicago
