Entries from August 2009 ↓

Posted on Tuesday, August 25, 2009 by mike.dwyer

Last week I was fortunate enough to be asked to speak at the first Chicago Social Media Breakfast. SMB has been in existence in other cities since 2007 but this was the first one in here in the Windy City. The event was separated into different groups with specific topics to discuss. My group was focused on social media and personal branding in regards to the job search and career advancement.

As marketers we are seeing a wholesale change in how companies engage in communication with their clients and consumers. In addition, the ways we as individuals communicate are also changing dramatically. I think for the most part marketers (especially in the last year) are really starting to grasp the enormous changes going on within their space.

What has continued to be a struggle for people is telling the difference between “blowing your horn” in regards to your talents/expertise and “communicating your passion” to a wider audience than your existing personal/professional network. The ability to help people and in turn receive recommendation has never been more important. It’s a very organic way of self development which also can help you gain recognition and ultimately a new job, a promotion or new business for your organization.

My Top 5 Takeaways from our group discussions were:

1) “The golden rule” treat others the way you would like to be treated. This will ultimately be something that will come back around to you.

2) When networking on LinkedIn or other sites don’t “ask for a job” use the tools available to create awareness for your expertise to gain a larger network of targeted individuals for potential career placement and/or advancement.

3) Use social media to create an integrated marketing campaign around a helpful blog post you have written (become a resource). This is a post I wrote describing an initiative I created here at Paladin:

Paladins Marketing Ninja guide: The 30 Minute Challenge

4) Don’t close yourself off to just blogging, Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. One of the attendee’s was discussing his use of Tumblr something I am going to attempt to utilize.

5) Nothing replaces face to face contact. Definitely get out from behind your computer and regularly get out to coffee meetings, association evening events and luncheons. This is a post I wrote regarding networking events in Chicago: Paladins Galaxy Guide to Networking in Chicago

We are all hearing the constant chatter (no pun intended) around social media. Some of the discussions are valid and some of are based upon lack of understanding and experience. My recommendation is to continue to share openly with each other and pay it forward. It’s a great community we have here in Chicago and I’m excited to attend future Social Media Breakfast’s!

Join Jacksonville-based entrepreneur Damien Robinson who spearheads and hosts the inaugural Social Media Breakfast Jacksonville on Saturday September 26th at Five Points Coffee & Spice from 8:00-10:00am.

Event Details: Social Media Breakfast Jacksonville

Date: Saturday, September 26, 2009

Time: 8:00-10:00am

Location: Five Points Coffee & Spice, 820 Lomax Street, Jacksonville, FL 32204 / Click here for a map

Cost: $10.00

Registration: http://smbjax.eventbrite.com

Event Info on Facebook

Please RT: #SMBJax 9/26/09 8:00-10am, Jacksonville, FL, speaker Damien Robinson from CIME4.com discusses the vaue of social networking.

About Social Media Breakfast The Jacksonville Social Media Breakfast series is a regular breakfast meetup organized by Bryan Person and Damien Robinson. The Jacksonville SMB is part the larger Social Media Breakfast family, which includes events in more than 25 cities around the world.

Originally posted by Gini Dietrich on August 19th, 2009 on her blog, F.A.D.S.: The Fight Against Destructive Spin

Yesterday morning I moderated a discussion on social media measurement at#SMBChicago. We started the discussion with some of the free tools I blogged about a couple of weeks ago (see it here).

Then we spent some time discussing additional tools. They are as follows:

* su.pr: I personally love this URL shortener because it’s much more accurate than bit.ly, plus it shoots your content into StumbleUpon, which helps with your search engine optimization and search engine marketing.

* Double Click: I don’t know much about Double Click from my own experience, but maybe @earthbelowus can guide you.

* Hootsuite: There is a debate between Hootsuite and TweetDeck for a desktop application. I use TweetDeck, but have been playing with Hootsuite. The only reason I haven’t fully gone Hootsuite is because I have too many groups set up in TweetDeck and it’ll take me a full day to transfer them. But those in the discussion today swear by it!

* TubeMogul @Big_Teeth was telling us he uses this to track video users.

But the biggest take-away was not in the free tools we discussed, but in the five areas that offer the most ROI, measurement, and dollars and cents:

1. Brand awareness: Hard to measure straight to dollars and cents, but you’ll know from siteVOLUME, Google searches, popuri, and other tools whether or not your brand awareness has increased. You’ll also be able to tell from gut, if you’re really paying attention.

2. Thought leadership: You’ll know whether or not this is successful if you’re invited to speak at conferences, on panels, interviewed for stories, or people are linking to your blog/Web site when they publish content. Unless you eventually get paid for these things, it won’t automatically translate to dollars and cents, but everyone wants to work with the popular, smart kid and the more you’re out there, the more business you’ll drive.

3. Prospecting for new business/customers: Create referral networks or (as much as I hate them) affiliate programs to drive business to you. Use social media just like you would a networking event. Go often, network, connect, and find people to work with. This is the best way to drive dollars and cents because new business means added revenue and bigger profits.

4. Recruiting new talent: I’m sorry to headhunters out there, but social media is going to put you out of business. You absolutely can recruit new talent just by being open and transparent about a day in the life of your company, what your culture is like, and what the vision is for the business. You’ll attract people who want to work with you just by being out there.

5. Brand loyalty through engagement: It doesn’t matter what your business is – B2B or B2C – if you’re engaging with your customers, you are creating loyalty. Today people EXPECT to have a personal relationship with the people who work at the companies they buy from, including the CEO. And if people are loyal because they have a personal relationship with you, you can make a mistake, apologize, and not lose the customer.

Thanks to @monicaobrien, @Big_Teeth, @tamcdonald, @julibarcelona,
@tektitegroup, @lindantonio, @cgrab34, @earthbelowus, @dockane,
@chiarchitecture, and Akanksha Hoskote, for the lively, and informative, discussion!

Do you have additional measurement tools that you use?

It’s time for another Austin Social Media Breakfast! Join us at the offices of the Austin Statesman-American on Tuesday, August 25.

Event details: Mainstream media goes social

Statesman social media editor Rob Quigley (Twitter handle: @RobQuig) leads a panel discussion on how local mainstream media professionals and organizations are making the transition to social media.

Panelists:

• John Bridges, former sports editor and current senior editor for metro and state news at the Statesman. Twitter handle: @JohnBridges
• Elise Hu, former KVUE-TV (ABC) political reporter and now a reporter for the Texas Tribune, a new Austin Ventures startup nonprofit news site. Twitter handle: @EliseWho
• Chelsea Stark, web producer for KEYE-TV (CBS) who has spearheaded her station’s social media efforts. Twitter handle: @ChelseaBot

Agenda for Austin’s SMB9

• 7:30-8:15am: Event begins. Food, drink, and mingling.
• 8:15-9:05am: Panel presentation and questions
• 9:05-9:30am: More mingling and wrap-up

Sponsorship from INK PR

We’re grateful to Austin-based INK Public Relations for its sponsorship of SMB Austin 9.

Arrival instructions and parking

• Use the Riverside entrance (across from Thundercloud Subs, one block east of Congress) to the Statesman headquarters, located at 305 S. Congress Ave. (Google Map)
• Park in any spot marked “visitor” – there should be plenty.
• Enter through the main lobby and look for the “First Floor Conference Room” on the 1st floor.
• Questions? Send Twitter @ message or DM to Rob Quigley (@RobQuig).

About the Austin Social Media Breakfast

The Austin Social Media Breakfast series is organized by Amie Throndson and SMB founder Bryan Person; it brings together social media veterans and newcomers alike for a morning of eating, meeting, sharing, and learning.

Marketers, PR pros, entrepreneurs, bloggers, videobloggers, podcasters, students, new-media enthusiasts, Twitterers, community managers, recruiters, online social networkers, etc. are all welcome!

Making online media?

Please use the #SMBAustin hashtag on Twitter and SMBAustin tag on Flickr.

Questions?

Please contact:

Bryan Person: Bryan – AT – SocialMediaBreakfast – DOT – com
Amie Throndson: AmieThrondson@gmail.com

REGISTER BY CLICKING HERE (BE THERE OR BE SQUARE) (Please bring your family – just remember to register them for their own tickets, too)

By popular demand, the Social Media Breakfast NH (SMBNH) is taking a departure from the traditional “play hooky in the morning on the way in to work for breakfast, networking and learning” model, and taking full advantage of summer to play hooky in the afternoon for networking, learning and BBQ. Summer here in New England has been short this year, so why shouldn’t the hard working have a little fun while they do business?

The SMBNH BBQ is on August 21, 2009 at Rick’s Pond View, #92 Route 125, Kingston, NH. Rick is giving us the run of the floating gazebo bar, the grassy lake side, the floating band area and more. If it rains (let’s hope not) we can even move it all indoors.

Why an afternoon event?

1) You asked for one as a reward for all of those early morning commutes for SMBNH over the last few months
2) It’s summer. It’s just plain wrong to spend the entire short summer we have here in NH cooped up in a cubicle or slaving away at a coffee shop. We deserve our chance to network in broad daylight!
3) There is a band. Musicians don’t do early mornings, as a rule.

Why Kingston?

1) Rick is a client, and has generously offered his venue for free and the food and staff at a reasonable cost
2) Rick’s is 8 minutes off of I-495, 10 minutes off of Highway 101, and less than five minutes off of Routes 107, 108, and 111 where they meet Route 125. 30 Minutes from Manchester and Portsmouth, NH, 10 minutes from Haverhill, MA and 40 minutes from Nashua, NH – it’s hard to get more “central” than that!
3) Three words: Floating. Gazebo. Bar.
4) You can bring a canoe or paddle boat (no swimming, no motorized boats, it’s a reservoir)

Why isn’t it free?

With a tight economy, sponsor dollars are a little tight. We have partial sponsors this time that have donated either money or items to give away. Gold Sponsors are Custom Scoop and e-Forecasting. Their monetary donation is helping to keep the event cost low for you. Gift sponsors include Sullivan Tire (gift certificate), San Francisco Kitchen (Nashua, Gift Certificate) and Uptown Uncorked (Restaurant.com certificates to Rick’s A Cafe and Grill, Pesce Blue, Keys Grille, Gauchos Churrascaria). I will also give away a copy of Twitter for Dummies.

Sponsors:

Gold Sponsor: e-Forecasting

e-forecasting.com, an international economic research and consulting firm, offers forecasts of the economic environment using proprietary real-time economic indicators and produces company and industry-specific leading indicators for its clients. In cooperation with its affiliate, Infometrica, Inc., e-forecasting.com works with business publications and clients across the globe to provide industry, country and state-level economic content on a monthly and quarterly basis thus their predictive intelligence input is used by practitioners around the world.

Gold Sponsor: Custom Scoop

A pioneer in the online news monitoring industry, CustomScoop has been providing fast, accurate media monitoring to clients since 2000. Our proprietary technology keeps our clients informed about traditional and social media.

We customize each client account to deliver meaningful media intelligence to make our customers more effective and efficient. With a database that includes hundreds of thousands of newspapers, magazines, web sites, blogs, podcasts, and more, you can be confident in your results.

Theme for this Social Media Breakfast BBQ:

We’re Playing Hooky To Get To Know You, Because Real Life CONNECTIONS Are Key

This Social Media Breakfast NH (hashtag #smbnh) will be all about meeting each other, collaborating and forging alliances – networking in real time. 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 and more importantly to help the next generation succeed. This meeting will help us lay the foundation for a richer, better education, tech and new media community in NH. It will also give us a chance to spend one last (or first, if you’ve been that busy!) day to enjoy summer before the kids start going back to school in various districts and fall schedules take over.

In addition to myself, who will be your host and MC for the morning, you will have sponsor speakers giving brief introductions on why they chose to sponsor this summer networking celebration.

Speakers:

• Opening Remarks by Leslie Poston, Uptown Uncorked and co-author, Twitter for Dummies

• Sponsor Speakers (Maria Simos of e-Forecasting, Steve Bracy from Custom Scoop, more TBA)

This is going to be a great breakfast BBQ!

Details

Rick has generously offered his venue space for free and a reasonable price on the food and the use of his staff. He will be roasting a pig for real pulled pork BBQ, serving all the fixin’s and serving coffee, tea and water. There will be a cash bar if you’d like a summer brew or mixed drink to make your afternoon complete.

We will also have a band (Kryptonite Jones), and our sponsors will be available to tell you more about what they do and why they sponsored. FYI: there is a launch ramp. If you have a paddle boat or SMALL canoe/kayak, talk to me about possibly bringing it so you can row or paddle around the lake during the event – I’ll need to clear it with Rick for legal reasons. Note: this lake does not allow swimming or gas powered motors – it is a reservoir pond.

Why Friday? It’s wedding season – Saturdays and Sundays are booked (or just prohibitively expensive) at most area venues.

A made a quick QIK video of the venue for you. As you can see, I am not destined to be a film maker with this level of camera genius, but it gets the job done:

Attendee tickets open for sale 8/14/09. I need one more Friend or Gold level sponsor, also, for the band. TELL YOUR FRIENDS! I hope to get a BUNCH of people coming to this fun, summer networking celebration.

On Friday August 6th we gathered a modest crowd of 40ish  people at  Coffee Groundz, a local social media friendly coffee shop for our 4th Houston Social Media Breakfast event.   This month there were a few less people in attendance because  Entrepreneur Camp that was happening at the same time, just a few blocks away. From what I understand Entrepreneur camp was great, but those who missed this event missed some really good information and some really great coffee.

This month we had Erica O’Grady from Peanut Butter Media in to present Van Wilder’s Guide to Social Media! Her comparison to the life lessons proposed by the professional college student, Van Wilder compared frighteningly well to the issues many corporations and organizations face when attempting to examine social media as a communications strategy. Through the wisdom of Van Wilder Erica helped the audience to understand how to manage  issues like dealing with worry,  making mistakes, doing good deeds and taking things too seriously. She gave good examples of social media failures, and ideas on how to make your social media relationships more meaningful and productive.

In Houston, Social Media breakfast is on the first Friday of the month at Coffee Groundz.

To keep up with what is going on and receive regular invitations to the events join our facebook group http://www.facebook.com/houstonsocialmedia

Social Media Breakfast | Chicago 1
Tuesday, August 18, 2009 – 7:30a

RightPoint Consulting
200 West Madison St.
Suite 2240

Click Here To Register

Topics of Discussion:

Social Media Measurement
Gini Dietrich, Founder and Chief Executive Officer, Arment Dietrich

Using Social Media to Advance Your Career
Mike Dwyer, Business Development Manager, Paladin Recruiting

Social Media for a Cause
Amber Porter Cox, Founder, Everyday Leaders – Military Service Network

Social Media’s Role in B2B Communications
Allan Schoenberg, Director of Corporate Communications, CME Group

Social Media for Business Development
Jeff Willinger, VP of Business Development and Marketing, Rightpoint Consulting

Event Details:

• Event sign-in will begin at 7:30a, followed by networking and breakfast, provided courtesy of Synovate: Research Reinvented
• Registration is mandatory prior to the event. Each attendee will need to indicate their top two choices of discussion as listed above.
• Space is limited per discussion and attendees will be placed in a first-come, first-served basis
• WiFi is available
• Registration closes at 4:00p on Monday, August 17
• The Twitter hashtag for the event is #SMBChicago

Sponsored for Social Media Breakfast | Chicago 1:

We had our 7th session yesterday of Social Media Breakfast San Diego, which ended up being a very intimate, energetic group.  Our featured speaker this month was Oscar Lutteroth, Digital Strategist for ParkerWhite.  ParkerWhite is a social branding agency located in Cardiff By The Sea.  Oscar kicked off his speech with a discussion about a recent campaign they launched called, Hansen’s Loves San Diego.

He discussed both the challenges and successes of the campaign and walked us through the marketing strategy that they came up with.   One of their fundamental goals for the campaign was to create something that people would want to share with their friends.   They wanted the brand to make a personal connection to its audience.  A few strategies they used to create this personal connection were:

• Creating a branded microsite
• Enabling people to upload photos of themselves and their friends with a Hansen’s soda in view
• Creating a way for users to share their submissions within other social networks and campaign for themselves
• Integrating ShareThis
• Connecting with influencers on Twitter and Facebook

Along the way there were some challenges like:

• An existing list of social media profiles some with and some without login credentials
• Finding metrics to measure offline promotional tactics like radio
• Promoting a campaign that was already in place without time to educate the audience

ParkerWhite found some great ways to overcome the previous challenges by:

• On Twitter they encouraged mroe submissions and photos to get people more involved.
• They answered questions, engaged their followers and RT their mentions.  This helped increase their follower count.
• On Facebook they created a fan page and promoted the contest via an events page.

With some great social media strategies put into place by ParkerWhite, the campaign was a great success.  It was so successful that there will be a Hansen’s Loves San Francisco campaign launching very soon.

A big Thank you to Oscar Lutteroth for speaking this month.

You can view the session at:

San Diego – Social Media Breakfast 7

We also went over our Top 10 in 10 and found some interesting things going on in Social Media.  Here’s what I found,

1.  Digg just hijacked your Twitter links: Digg.com changed the behavior of its shor URL’s so they no longer go to the source of the story for logged out users:  Instead they direct visitors to a landing page on Digg.com

2.  Twitter correcting follower counts 1000’s of spammers perish: Notice a drop in your Twitter follower count lately? Twitter annouced that the company is purging spammers.

3.  The longest solar eclipse of the century online: LIVE! UNIVERSE webcast displays a live webcast from Japan: for the latest info(in Japanese) you can follow the Twitter page www.twitter.com/liveeclipse2009

4.  Google Wave is here: 100,000 invites go out on September 30,2009 for the next version of Google Wave

5.  Alice and Wonderland Trailer Hits YouTube, Disney Deletes it: Movie is coming out March 2010.  copy of trailer arrived on the web and found its way to YouTube. Disney forced YouTube to take it down

6.  Want to find marijuana? There’s an App for that: App is $2.99 named cannabis for all you iphone users. Purpose is to help find legal medical marijuana in states and locations where it can be purchased.

7.  A Twitter contest too far? Comic-Con contest hosted by Electronic Arts that some say objectifies women. The “Sin To Win” contest to promote Dante’s Inferno, encourages attendees to take photos with the so-called “booth-babes” and Tweet the photos to the @danteteam account. They are told to “commit acts of lust”. Sexual Harasment?

8. Newt Gingrich Promises to Tweet harder next time: He spelled the word “military” wrong in a tweet and critics got down on him. He promised to make more of an effort to Tweet better.

9. London Tower bridge is on Twitter: What does it say? It tells you when it’s open and when it closes.

10. Twitter enters the dictionary: Twitter will enter the dictionary this year.  It will be defined as “a website where people can post messages about their current activities” under verb it will read: “to write short messages on the Twitter website”.

We ended our session with our feedback in 5, which allowed a couple people to present some issues they’ve been facing with their own social media strategies.

A big thanks to Milano Coffee Co. for having us and to Oscar Lutteroth for speaking.  You can follow Oscar on Twitter @el_gigante and ParkerWhite @ParkerWhite

A very special big thanks to Resume Bear for sponsoring this month’s breakfast.  You can follow them on Twitter @resumebear

Join us at 7AM on August 26th at:

Atlanta Bread Company Town Center
2555 Prado Lane
(Barrett Pkwy Prado Center)
Marietta, Georgia 30066
770-420-9225
MAP

http://smbatlanta2.eventbrite.com/

Social Media Breakfast | Chicago is pleased to announce our first event.

Social Media Breakfast | Chicago 1
Tuesday, August 18, 2009 – 7:30a
200 West Madison St.
Suite 2240

Guest moderators include:
Jeff Willinger
Gini Dietrich
Allan Schoenberg
Amber Porter Cox
Mike Dwyer

There will be more information to follow, including registration details. Due to building security protocol, registration is mandatory.

Please follow SMB Chicago on Twitter @SMBChicago or e-mail Craig Bagdon, craig (at) craigbagdon dot com with any questions.

Social Media Breakfast | Chicago is made possible through sponsorship

by Jeff Willinger and RightPoint Consulting

and

by Alicia Kan and Synovate: Research Reinvented