Hello hello (yes that’s meant to be two hellos), thanks again to everyone that participated/attended the event. Everyone had a great time and I have received very positive feedback from the event. Remember to stay tuned for our upcoming events. The first one was only the beginning, future events are going to be bigger and badder!

So without further adieu, here are the pictures from the event. To view the rest visit the flickr page!

Just added more pics here as well, sorry about the 2 flickr accounts, I’m working on consolidating all of this

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The social media champion at your company should rarely be seen in the company office. In fact the social media champion should be out and about whenever possible; attending conferences such as SXSW or the Newcommforum. The social media champion transcends the online world and bridges the gap between online and offline communication.

The reason for this is that your social media champion is essentially a face of the company. You can’t have the company face hidden in a cubicle while he plays on twitter. What’s the point of having thousands of twitter followers if you don’t know who they are? Why have a bunch of facebook friends if you haven’t met them (or aren’t planning on meeting them)? The whole point is to have the social media champion meeting the twitter friends, networking with bloggers at SXSW and picking up new strategies from the Newcommforum. If you are out there networking and meeting people, then those people will talk about you and begin to recognize you and your company. Not only that but you can also spread the word about your twitter profile, facebook pages, etc.

The social media champion position is actually one the hardest jobs out there. It’s not easy to maintain a positive brand image with everyone while simultaneously trying to build and maintain long-term relationships with customers and users. Not only that, but the social media champion needs to have his ear to the ground at all times. He needs to know about all the social media technologies that are out there and how they can be leveraged to build and maintain relationships. Sure the job is going to be a lot of fun, but make no mistake about it, it’s darn hard work.

Who is your social media champion? ….Why is he in the office?

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Ok guys here’s the deal. The Search Marketing Salon launch event in San Francisco is tonight! And I’ll be very honest with everyone, it is going to be packed. We were planning to have around 60 people; we are now over 100. I have mulled over whether or not I should close the RSVP list but I decided against it. I don’t want to exclude anyone from this event. A very special thank you to all of you who helped spread the word about the group. Let’s keep that momentum going! We are already planning our next event. Remember this group is about all of you, if you have ideas or suggestions, I want to hear them, I’m going to try to get a suggestion box going at the event, but if not, then please e-mail me or leave a comment on the blog. If you have no idea what the Search Marketing Salon is, then please visit the link.

So, I promised all of you a sneak peek at some of the folks attending and here it is:

• Michael Brito- Social Media Evangelist at Intel
• Tony Adam- Program Manager at PayPal & SEO Expert
• Mark Fiske- Director of Search Marketing at Bazaar Advertising
• Jason Malm- Director, Search Engine Marketing at InterSearch
• Lemuel Park- Manager at Ernst & Young LLP
• Kwan Kim- Managing Director at Rockon Group
• Brian Caldwell- Senior Director, Business Development at plasq
• Adam Metz- Dir of Social Media Strategies, LaunchSquad PR
• Andy Kaufman- Real Estate Catalyst / Community Manager

I’ll leave it here for now, many other great folks attending as well. This is your time to network and mingle with some of the best and brightest minds in the industry. Bring your questions, stories, and expertise. Don’t forget yours truly will be there as well and I expect all of you to come introduce yourselves!

Once again guys, please spread the group info to as many people as you can, the group is growing at a rapid pace. We really want to start expanding and holding events in other states or countries, but we can’t do this without your help.

We have some very exciting additions and events planned for this year. To stay on top of things make sure to add me on twitter and don’t forget to subscribe to the blog RSS feed.

I want to give a very special thank you to Kevin Heisler from Search Engine Watch for writing about us, check it out! I highly recommend you guys check out Kevin’s blog, it’s great stuff.

Another very special thank you to Brian Solis for helping promote the event and writing about it. Brian is a thought leader in social media and PR, check out his blog, PR 2.0.

If you are interested in partnership/sponsorship opportunities then please contact me directly or chat with me at the event.

Thanks everyone, you guys are amazing and we couldn’t do it without you!

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It is one thing to say you are going to start a blog. It is an entirely different thing to say that you are going to create a social media strategy. Blogging is one part of social media, just as creating a marketing plan is one part of a business. Sure, it is better to have something than to have nothing at all. However, if you are looking to create an overall strategy then you have to employ more than just a blog and more than just a marketing plan. A marketing plan and a blog will only get you so far.

If you are a brand, than you already have a following, people are already talking about you whether you want them to or not. By creating a blog, you are telling your customers that you are willing to take part in some of the conversation. Creating a blog doesn’t necessarily mean commitment though. It’s relatively easy to throw up a blog that has the infamous “comment” link. What people really want, is to know what’s going in with the company and the people running it. They want direct interaction and communication whenever they can get it. Remember, social media is not a marketing tool, it’s a way of life and when people are not out and about they are online and they want to be talking to you.

Believe it or not, people want more than just a blog. Why not include a twitter account? And while your at it, throw in a facebook profile, maybe a Jaiku profile, and you might as well include live streaming videos as well. Jason Calacanis is the CEO of Mahalo. He has a popular blog, tens of thousands of Twitter followers, hundreds of streaming video viewers, a Myspace profile, etc. In fact live streaming videos is becoming quite popular. I recently attended a wine party in Santa Rosa hosted Robert Scoble and Gary Vaynerchuck. Robert Scoble was streaming live video from his cell phone camera to hundreds of viewers who were gladly following along at home. Why? Because people are curious, they want to know more, they don’t just want blog conversations any more. The point is that while your consumers are online, they want YOU to be online, and you should be.

Sure a blog will get you started and may engage your users in a conversation but you have to go beyond that for a social media strategy. Some people don’t read blogs and only use twitter, some people only use facebook, etc. It is important to capture several social media platforms so that you can reach more people and build stronger relationships. Do you think if Steve Jobs or Bill Gates created a Twitter account that people would follow? You bet they would.

Remember, the internet is a very big place, for people to come spend time on your tiny corner of the web is amazing. Attention is priceless, so when you get it, you better do what you can to try to keep it. By creating an overall social media strategy you are continuously engaging and growing your relationships with your customers (readers, etc.). By doing so, you are getting more and more of their attention, which as I mentioned before, is priceless.

So, before you begin creating your blogging strategy, ask yourself if you should really be creating a social media strategy with blogging as one component.

Thanks for reading everyone, you guys are great and I love your comments and e-mails!

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First off, let me give credit where credit is due. I came across this information from reading one of Brian Solis’s post about “Discovering and Listening to Conversations on Twitter.” In the post, Brian refers to Jeff Nolan, who discusses Twitter analytics. Thanks to both of you!

First I’m going to briefly touch on the tools that Jeff addresses, and then show you how they work.

TweetVolume: Type in a few keywords or phrases and you will be shown a graph that compares their volume. As Jeff Nolan pointed out, this is great for monitoring a particular brand, trend, buzzword, etc.

TweetStats: This tool let’s you analyze your own twitter traffic. Also great if you work for a known brand and are twittering for your company.

TweetScan: This is really an interesting tool that let’s you see real time twitter search information. Think of it as a search engine. You type in your query and then are presented with all the Tweets that include your search.

Now let’s pick an industry and see how we can use these tools. I chose the automotive industry.

Let’s look at the twitter volume for Ford, Honda, GM, Nissan, and Toyota (note: you get a slightly different result based on capitalization, but not much)

Start off with TweetVolume. Below we can see that Ford is clearly dominating the Twitter space, Nissan has virtually no Twitter presence. We have to be careful here because terms can have multiple meanings. For example, Ford can refer to the car or to Gerald Ford. (This is where hashtags can come in, see Brian’s post for info on this).

Now let’s take a look at the actual conversations that are taking place using TweetScan. I typed in Honda as a search query and these were a few of the results that I saw. You can also get a bit more specific with your searches and type in Honda Civic, etc.

Finally, we can take a look our Twitter usage using TweetStats. Jeff Nolan was kind enough to post his stats so that is what I am including here.

Finally, you can begin to draw correlations. For example, if I am Honda and I just announced that I am giving away 100 free Hondas (via twitter, etc.) I would expect more people to talk about “Honda” (if I’m doing a good job marketing the promotion on Twitter).

Do not get too caught up with analytics and statistics. Social media marketing is not as cut and dry as web analytics is. It is not that easy to attribute revenue or traffic to a particular tweet, etc. The quality of the conversations is more important than the quantity. However, this is a topic for another post.

Thanks again to Brian Solis and Jeff Nolan.

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