Key Takeaways from the San Francisco Writer’s Conference

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February 15th, 2010

This weekend I had the opportunity to present two sessions at the San Francisco Writer’s Conference; both sessions were focused around how authors can use social media to their advantage.  Out of the 400 people in attendance I think I saw two people pull out their laptops and maybe one person tweet.  The event was completely opposite from the tech events that I am used to, and it was great.  Nobody was taking about Facebook, tech news, or anything else even remotely related to tech or social media in any way.  The attendees were comprised of writers, poets, authors, literary agents, screen writers and anyone else that was somehow interested in or involved with writing.

As someone who is very involved with tech and social business, I tend to forget that a large portion of the rest of the world is still so new to all of this.  Here were my key points for authors to use social media:

  • Develop a home base for yourself and for your content, typically a blog/website.  This is where you create your content and point people to where else you exist online.
  • Use wordpress as your blog/site of choice and make sure that you host it yourself so that you can chose your own domain name and avoid any limitations that you may come across from not hosting the site yourself (such as title tag changes and images).
  • Use other platforms such as Twitter and Facebook as extensions of your home base where you can share content and find relevant people/conversations to interact with.
  • Don’t be scared to give away your content.  I’ve given away over 1,000 pages of content for free on this.  It helps build trust, authority, and your reputation.
  • Work your ass off and make sure to comment and interact with people on other sites, not just your own.  It takes time and persistence to get the job done, don’t give up.
  • Bring your readers into your community.  Scott Sigler offers contests for readers where he actually mentions some of their names in his books.  Bring your reader INTO your book, literally.
  • Focus your website and your time and building yourself as a brand instead of building your book as your brand.  You want people to connect with you, then they can connect with your book.
  • Offer incentives for your followers or readers to connect with you online.  Start conversations, ask questions, and build a community.  You have to interact with your readers.

Overall I had a great time at the conference talking with non-tech folks.  It was a bit refreshing.  Have any other words of wisdom to add for authors looking to get involved with social media?

TAGS: san francisco writer's conference, sfwc, social media for authors, social media for publishers, social media for writers

Vote For Me and Olivier Blanchard to Present at Enterprise 2.0 Boston!

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January 15th, 2010

Myself and Olivier Blanchard are in the running to present at the Enterprise 2.0 Conference in Boston.  Our topic is Enterprise Social Media:  Best Practices in Development, Deployment and Integration.  The two of us are going to work on making this a killer session for enterprise organizations looking to get involved in the social media space.  However, we’re going to need your help in getting this session pushed through as it works on a voting system.  If you think this session is a valuable topic then PLEASE visit our panel, sign up (it takes 30 seconds) and vote for us.  As the title says we are going to focus on best practices across three key areas:

Enterprise social media development

Companies looking to get involved in social media need to start somewhere.  In this section we’re going to cover how companies need to look at developing their social media strategies while tying those strategies back to ROI or impact metrics.  This is going to cover everything from identifying how social media can support existing company initiatives to how new social media initiatives can be created to drive business objectives and impact the bottom line.

Enterprise social media deployment

Once the strategies are development the next steps is actually rolling them out.  This section is going to cover everything from how companies need to structure their teams to setting timelines and expectations for a full scale social media roll out.  This is an important topic because killer strategies are only as effective as their ability to be executed.

Enterprise social media integration

Once strategies are developed and deployed the next step is actually integrating social media into the organization.  Large companies have multiple departments across various geographic locations which can oftentimes be an obstacle.  One of the big challenges comes into play when trying to integrate social media across an entire company so that it is a PART of the way the company does business and not some external add-on.  In this section we’re going to address how enterprise companies can really start to integrate social media into existing (or new) business functions and processes.

Myself and Olivier are putting a lot of time and effort into making this a valuable session for Enterprise (and smaller) organizations.  Please take 30 seconds to register and vote for our session, it would be much appreciated!

TAGS: best practices, enterprise 2.0 boston, olivier blanchard, social media, social media deployment, social media development, social media integration, social media strategy

Free Social Media ROI Webinar on Tuesday with Biz 360

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December 14th, 2009

Chess Media Group and our partner Biz 360 are hosting a free webinar on social media ROI tomorrow.  The webinar is going to combine some of the ideas and principles that I shared during a previous online keynote that I did and will combine some insight from the Biz 360 platform.
As we get ready for [...]

My Presentation on Social Media ROI

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November 19th, 2009

If you missed my keynote presentation on social media ROI from this afternoon during social media tools week, I put it up on slideshare.  It’s also embedded below:
Social Media ROI Presentation

TAGS: social business process, social media academy, social media presentation, social media roi, social media tools week

Doing a Keynote on Social Media ROI for Tools Week

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November 17th, 2009

From November 16-21st the folks over at the social media academy are hosting an online conference called “tools week.”  The conference is bringing together folks from various aspects of the social media space to address things such as best practices, strategies, and measurement.  The entire event takes place online so you have no excuse not [...]

TAGS: social media academy, social media roi, social media tools week

Join Me Tomorrow on Hashtag Social Media to Talk About ROI

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November 9th, 2009

Tomorrow I’m hosting the Hashtag Social Media conversation and it’s going to be all about ROI in the social media space.  Previous hosts of the event include Brian Solis, Jason Falls, Aaron Strout, and Scott Monty; so I’m really thrilled to be a part of this.  The folks over at Hashtag wrote this blog post [...]

TAGS: hashtag social media, social media accountability, social media for business, social media roi


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