#Social Media Optimization Summits, #Social Media Week, #Start-up Mixer, & #Musicians Institute - Part III Final Wrap-up

By Joy A. Kennelly

Now that my life is settling down a bit, I finally have the time to write about my recent experiences at the Social Media Optimization Summits in Dallas, TX, the recent seminars I attended during Social Media Week here in Los Angeles, the Start-up mixer at Wokcano in Santa Monica I enjoyed, and teaching Social Media and Fan Management at the Musicians Institute.

What some people don't realize, but I'll keep reminding them until they understand this fact, is believe it or not, there are women interested and involved in technology contrary to the young Meetup leader who thought women in the audience at a recent tech event meant we were there solely to look for a husband. lol

Can you believe it? He was a little drunk so I'm giving him the benefit of the doubt for speaking without thinking. Kinda like Jerry Brown allowing his associate to call Meg Whitman a "whore" and then his not apologizing for them during the Gubernatorial debate last night.

 

DUMB and Sexist! I'm really tempted to call Jerry's number and bawl him out since NOW continues to support him. Why? I don't know. Blind adherence to their "religion" I suppose.

But I digress...

Now to give you a little of my tech history. I've been around this industry since the 90's when the dot com craze first hit and produced a very successful online film festival called Media & Entertainment Festival (affectionately nicknamed ME Fest) for Penton Media back in the day.

I have friends who have produced, marketed, and sponsored tech events which I always attend and also keep up-to-date on information by reading and attending conferences. In fact, heading to Las Vegas tomorrow to hit blogWorld too.

I've been incorporating digital marketing into my PR & Marketing strategy for clients for over ten years. I also used to attend all the tech events VIC (Venice Interactive Community) threw and still fondly remember the HUGE party held at the Skirball Center just before the tech crash.

Anyone else remember?:)

If my recent positive experience at Wokcano for the Start-up meeting is any indication of the growth of tech again, I'm sure LA is primed to explode. I enjoyed hearing Investor Mark Suster of GRP Partners sound a rallying cry to tech heads in Los Angeles to stand their ground and refuse to leave for SFO & Seattle to help build up our LA Infrastructure for bigger long-term growth.

I micro-blogged during his talk (editing out his profanity) and you can review that here:

#Mark Suster of GRP Partners speaking @Wokcano

The common thread out of the talks I attended during the Dallas conference seemed to be:

1. Listen to your audience to hear what they're saying about you and your brand

2.Create a strategy based on that research

3. Then contribute.

Here's some highlights of the people I heard once my talk was over.

Jodi Gersh spoke on the Power of Place and analyzed a variety of geo-location tools out there. Her favorite is GoWalla, whereas Jason Falls enjoys Whrrl.

I'm giving Whrrl a whirl although GoWalla is intriguing because of the passport aspect since I love to travel and it would be fun to have a place to showcase my trips while I'm out and about.

I liked having the Geo-Location overview from a marketing person's perspective because then the following week during Social Media Week in Los Angeles, I was able to hear some of the CEO's of even newer geo-location services share their presentations on what made their geo-location service better than the others.

If you click here, and here, it will lead you to my micro-blog coverage of that series on Geo-Location Marketing which was sponsored by Moment Feed. Great evening.

Completely different perspectives and different ways of presenting information, but that's what makes Social Media so interesting. It's constantly evolving due to the creativity and technology utilized by people all over the world.

It's not just about Foursquare people!:) Even though there are now 3 million users using it, this entire type of marketing really isn't mainstream just yet which is limiting it's reach and visibility.

Jodi mentioned even more options too: Foodspotting, footfeed, tri-out, aroundme, tonight.im, m.check.in and to be honest, I haven't had the time to check them out. If you do, let me know what you think.

I ducked in and out of a few Social Media Optimization Summits seminars to make sure I heard as much as possible and if my notes are scarce, that's why.

I popped into Jun Loayza's "How to Implement Ambassador "Experience" Campaigns who stuck with corporate examples for his talk. I never gathered whether or not he was behind the strategies presented, or merely sharing other's successes as examples.

Here's one of his case studies for review. Click the highlighted name to learn more about the actual social media activities for this successful Ford Fiesta launch:

FORD FIESTA MOVEMENT

11 mil social network impressions

2.5 mil shares

11k videos 15k tweets 13k photos

38% gen y

What I enjoyed about his presentation was the direct ROI examples. People still have trouble understanding the value of social media vs. traditional public relations thinking they're separate and don't support each other, but I have never found that to be the case.

Traditional media relations is currently fueled by social media believe it or not. Sometimes the first place journalists learn about what's hot is on social networks. They also regularly read blogs, and constantly comb the internet looking for stories of interest.

I remind people of this all the time, because I have numerous journalists, civic leaders, celebrities, publicists, and others who pop in to read my blog due to my coverage of such a wide variety of topics. I never want to be focused on only one subject because I have a wide interest in all kinds of things and consider my blog more of a magazine style format, than an analysis of just one topic.

Again, I digress.

Back to examples of Ambassador campaigns that worked courtesy of Jun Loayza:

1.      Sharpie Squad - http://blog.sharpie.com/2009/05/meet-the-sharpie-squad/

2.      Red Bull University - http://www.redbullu.com/

3.      The Dew Crew - http://www.carsoncritique.com/college-career/my-job-as-a-mountain-dew-brand-rep-part1/

4.      Charmin – Enjoy the Go http://www.charmin.com/en_US/enjoy-the-go/index.php

As always, Fashion is on the cutting edge of social media and Jun shared how his company had helped create the LG campaign using popular fashion bloggers to spread the news. (Where was my invite? LOL)

Apparently, Jun's company, www.postrank.com, (according to him,) is recommended over Technorati  to find bloggers (which I find hard to believe knowing the CEO of Technorati and learning in another seminar Technorati is considered the 4th largest social network, but hey, Jun may be right among a certain tech demographic...)

His bottom line was determine what you want to accomplish, find the influencers who will help you achieve your goals, and then implement the strategy to achieve your goals. I asked what a band could do to and was given some good ideas which I'll be able to share with my students.

I attended the luncheon where I heard a few speakers including Shashi Bellamkonda from Network Solutions who discussed optional trends in New Media.

He basically gave a bunch of links and a quick highlight of each. You can find it on the company site here somewhere (I don't have time to research it for you.:): http://blog.networksolutions.com/

The speaker I most enjoyed hearing present was Erica Campbell, Senior Manager of New Media Marketing for Rent - Video & Photo Sharing for Optimum Growth & Brand Exposure which you can review here:

Video & Photo Sharing for Optimum Growth & Brand Exposure

View more presentations from Erica Campbell. Be warned, there are 175 slides and trust me, she had to talk REALLY, REALLY fast to go through all of them in the three hours allotted for her chat.

That said, it was great and even though this was applied to the apartment rental industry, the principles apply across the board to any industry and her presentation is excellent.

And I'll close with this speaker since you're probably tired of reading so much data all at once, right?:) Now you know what I feel like after attending all these conferences and seminars! lol

Strategic Planning by Jenn Kane Co.

KD Paine Measurement Checklist:

1.      What are your objectives?

2.      What audiences are you targeting?

3.      How would you prioritize these audiences?

a.      Media, influencers, bloggers, competitors, etc.

b.      Prioritize how you’ll reach them.

4.      What are your Key Performance Indicators?

a.      If this is really working, then>>>>

5.      What is the right measurement tool?

a.      Where will you know you’ve achieved this?

                                          i.     Socialmention.com – free! Use with Kids

                                         ii.     Peoplebrowsr

                                        iii.     Alterian

                                        iv.     Raidan6

                                         v.     Klout

                                        vi.     PR Newswire

                                      vii.     Jive

                                     viii.     www.search.twitter.com

Setting Benchmarks

               To define “Return,” ask:

a.      What are we measuring, and why?

b.      What does success look like?

c.      How will we know when we get there?

d.      Are there incremental milestones worth noting?

There's more, but you should hire Kane Consulting since that's all I have time to cover at the moment. Sorry. :) I enjoyed her talk because I've utilitized a lot of her suggestions as a leader of goal setting groups over the years.

I really enjoyed my experience in Dallas, TX because I was able to hear from a wide variety of speakers from all over the country and everyone was very interesting. Kudos to Tami for putting on a great conference which is sure to only grow as word gets out.

Now here's a great video of the Social Media Week seminar I attended at the House of Blues
entitled: "THE NEXT STAGE OF ENGAGE: BRINGING ONLINE MUSIC COMMUNITIES TO LIFE" with some great panelists.

I learned a lot and had other information confirmed to share with my students.

I'm teaching Social Media & Fan Management in the Musicians Institute's Music Business Program and am delighted to be working with such ambitious entrepreneurial students.

My kind of people!

Okay, that's all for now. Gotta run. I have a store launch to attend with my friend. Let me know what you think of what I've written!