This month, my colleague, Marcus Tewksbury has the stage with ‘How to Implement a Social Media Strategy’.

Marcus will be talking about how to add social media channels to your lead generation efforts. He will also be providing ideas on how social media marketing can be integrated in with traditional marketing efforts such as email marketing, PPC campaigns, and search. The webinar is on Thursday, December 17th 10:00am Central / 16.00 UK

Register here

Here’s a sneak peak on what he’ll be presenting.

It’s a busy time of year! Next week I’ll be in San Francisco for two events. I’m doing a 3 hour workshop at Enterprise 2.0 on Frameworks for utilizing social media. The diagram in my last blog post outlines the potential that a community manager offers an organization.

I will share how to use social media to:

I covered the following:

• Which objectives to consider when defining your social media monitoring (SMM) strategy
• What types of tools are available
• How to make sense of the data that is gathered
• The ROI and benefits of social media monitoring

During the webinar it was interesting the exchange of Twitter usernames transition to  requesting to continue the conversation in a community. It underlined how people with a similar affinity will want to gather! Everyone is welcome to join our Community .

One of the challenges that I have in presenting webinars is that I feel like I’m talking to an empty space. But that wasn’t the case in this one. There was a lot of conversation happening in the chat box. I had 5 poll questions and that generated more conversation on the side as well making much more interactive. Here are the results:

Many of those that chose ‘Other’ posted their background in the chat.

I found this to be very interesting that the majority were B2B’s!

This explains why we’re so busy. Social Media monitoring isn’t mainstream yet. People are still learning.

Attendees were primarily from Europe, and there were a lot of questions about language capabilities.

It’s really important to know what your objective is for listening.

I will post a link to the recording of the webinar when it is available.

Two days ago Slideshare sent me an email about my Case Study for using Twitter for Lead Gen:

Your presentation is currently being featured on the SlideShare homepage by our editorial team.

Today I received another email that said:

"Twitter: a Case for Lead Generation" is being tweeted more than any other document on SlideShare right now. So we’ve put it on the homepage of SlideShare.net (in the "Hot on Twitter" section).

It was odd because I had tweeted a link, but Twitter was quiet (or so I thought…). In looking at the stat’s on Slideshare I saw that SocialMediaToday and it’s sister site, MyVenturePad had published my blog post and were receiving a LOT of traffic. There were almost 1500 views between them. Next question, what was driving the traffic? A quick search for the phrase, “Twitter Engagement”, that’s a part of my blog title showed that there was some serious retweeting happening on Twitter!

Slideshare is an active community with great shareable features

For the past three years I’ve been studying why things happen in social networks. Then I unravel them and share the steps so that you can apply them to your situations. And this one is easy to replicate. It will work for YouTube as much as Slideshare too!

First, a quick explanation of Slideshare. Skip this if you’re familiar with it.

Slideshare is a free site where you can host your powerpoint decks. It’s a really active community. They totally understand the concept of ‘shareable’ which is so imperative for word of mouth (some call it viral). (This is one of the main principles that Andy Sernovitz asserts and I highly recommend that you read his book, Word of Mouth Marketing.)

The secret sauce is that it allows you to embed your presentation in your post and others can download it and also embed it. They also offer a nice widget that I’ve put on the side of my blog AND are integrated into Facebook and LinkedIn so my friends there can see my newest decks.  It can grow legs! and Slideshare keeps track of the number of views. The community in Slideshare can favorite presentations and comment on them. So Slideshare has done a great job of helping their users connect!

How can you make Slideshare + SocialMediaToday + Twitter = Viral

I’ll list the steps. You provide the ideas

1. Create your content and post on a shareable site such as Slideshare or YouTube
2. Write a blog post and embed the content
3. Syndicate your blog to great communities like SocialMediaToday.com, MyVenturePad.com, etc
4. They and many others tweeted the link x 180 + times!
5. Engage with the communities on Slideshare, Socialmediatoday & Twitter. Here’s an article I wrote on syndicating your blog. (That post is how I got my job at Techrigy)
6. Watch the ripple effect afterwards and thank those that blog about it and further share my content.

Here’s the stat’s on this adventure 24 hours after publishing my blog post:

On Slideshare.net (note that it’s been downloaded 48 times)

SocialMediaToday.com – 1529 views

MyVenturePad.com – 1147 views

Tonite I was asked a question. Will this work for a company and their brand? Of course! I realized yesterday that Dell had followed me on Slideshare. And their decks are quite interesting! Check out the So So Social Media Strategy. (Note that my deck is also branded & has my contact info.)

Another point is that you don’t need the reason of speaking at events to create and post slide decks. There are also people in Slideshare community that have never posted a deck (but what fun is that?!)

So what are you waiting for? Get busy, and make a slide deck. Link it up here. Need ideas? Go explore the decks in Slideshare.

Special thanks go to Beth Harte & Ann Handley for inviting us to share Techrigy’s story in Marketing Prof’s Twitter Success Case Studies and again at their virtual event! (It forced me to make the slide deck!)

And thanks to Adam Helweh @SecretSushi for his thumbs down on my first draft. You can thank him for his honesty & for pushing me to be more creative!

Now I want to see your work!

in Kindergarten

That’s the usual ending…

But that’s not what I was going to say. I was going to finish it with

online!

Did you know that in terms of blogging, social media and brand building there are many great resources online? With the recession there are even more opportunities. And so many are free! Over the past three years that I’ve been working online I have learned so much from webinars and virtual events.

With that, I encourage you to attend the Marketing Prof’s Digital Marketing World Fall Event

They have a number of great sessions and it’s free!

I’m presenting a case study of how my Techrigy Team has used Twitter for lead generation. And the other two case studies are even more interesting! One is on how the NHL has used Twitter to build community around their advocates. And the third is how mozy.com has increased their brand presence and  promoted their service on Twitter. Some very interesting stuff!

So I highly recommend that you sign up and attend some sessions. Marketing Prof’s has a great blog that always offers high quality information.

On Tues I’m presenting at a Social Media Seminar in Covent Garden hosted by

Tuesday evening would be perfect for a meetup if you’re in the London area.

Drop me an email at conniebensen @ gmail.com or leave a comment here.

My husband & I were in London a year ago for a vacation & I really look forward to visiting your city again!

Upcoming:

In the end of August I’ll be in Chicago speaking at the Alterian summit… more info coming on that! I’ve just started to see their products and they’re amazing tools for marketers! (Alterian recently acquired my company, Techrigy).

On Monday I will be speaking in Minneapolis at a sold out event that will be keynoted by Jason Kintzler.

PR 2.0: THE NEW TOOLS OF THE TRADE
This day-long seminar features keynote presenter Jason Kintzler, founder of PitchEgine a social platform that enables PR professionals to package stories and share them with journalists, bloggers and influencers via the social web.  The day will also feature eight breakout sessions reflecting the most cutting edge and innovative thinking on how to navigate this rapidly changing industry. Special thanks to our promotional partners for this event, the Minnesota chapter of PRSA and Mashable: The Social Media Guide.

My session will be:

How to Monitor and Measure Social Media
PR pros are no strangers to monitoring media, old-school style. But, the same methodologies we use to measure traditional PR placements don’t translate to social media. In this session, we’ll explore some of the monitoring tools that provide visibility into the social media space and discuss the most effective ways to measure the value of the conversations taking place across social networks.

I’m really excited to finally meet Jason in person. He’s flying in from Wyoming so he doesn’t live in a city center either. You know how I feel about working online & living at my house in Minnesota. I believe that someone can live anywhere in the world and contribute at a high level to the social media world. Jason has also proven that! I used PitchEngine to do a SM Release to announce Techrigy’s acquisition of Andiamo Systems. It’s easy to use & definitely a great service!

Jason Kintzler is the Founder of PitchEngine, a web tool enabling PR professionals to package and share press content via the social web. He’s a former print and broadcast journalist turned PR pro and now, entrepreneur.

Jason’s goal is to evolve public relations as a whole, bringing authenticity and engagement to PR through the integration of social media content. By utilizing the PitchEngine Social Media Release, brands are not only engaging media contacts the traditional way, but also consumers. He’s fostering a new approach to a century-old craft.

And I can’t travel 5 hours without meeting my friends! So I asked for a Tweet up. Jennifer Kane, the conference organizer has kindly organized one for us on Monday night from 6-9 pm. So join us to talk about social media, community, and summer in Minnesota!

Where?  Tavern on France    6740 France Avenue South, Edina, MN

When?   Jul 13, 2009      What time?   6 – 9pm

On Tuesday I will be scheduling meetings so let me know if you’d like to get together. Send me an email if you’d like to get together (conniebensen @ gmail dot com). I always enjoy talking with people interested in community & social media!

My hats off to the Enterprise 2.0 organizer, Steve Wylie. When he first talked with me I advocated for sessions on ‘community’. And when I saw the agenda I was so pleased to see many sessions on community related topics!

It was a challenge to create a slide deck to span 3.25 hrs and not know my audience. We intermixed discussion with the slides & we moved through questions & concerns.

Here are my notes that I had going into the presentation:

Fear needs to be overcome. A topic of discussion recently is should social media efforts start at the grassroots level or executive?

There needs to be executive sponsorship and the company’s culture needs to be ready.

• Are you seriously interested in what customers are saying?
• Will you respond?
• It’s not cheap. It’s time intensive

For Case Studies, Peter Kim’s wiki has over 1000 case studies that can be searched by industry.

To ensure success, choose a small project, then establish goals & strategy.

Suggested blogs to read:

• Jake McKee
• Dawn Foster
• Fresh Networks
• Richard Millington
• Brian Solis
• Mack Collier
• Geoff Livingston
• Marshall Kirkpatrick RWW

Let me know what questions you have on the slide deck. And I have other presentations on measurement & community building on slideshare.net

An unintentional mistake …

I’ve watched it happen over the past couple of years. The blogging community is a warm tight knit community. But as with any group the leaders are held to high standards. They’re expected to set the bar.

It’s easy to sit back & watch the kerfluffle unfold. In the past I haven’t said much out loud because it was ‘safer’ to support people in the back channel. We went thru the puppet fiasco with Shel Israel. I got to know him at a personal level by supporting him in the back channel. The puppet videos weren’t funny if you put yourself in his shoes. And there is the person on Twitter who has a parody going. I’m not interested in being on their radar.

This spring I watched when Jeremiah Owyang made a slip on his blog. We talked by phone & he told me that many of the anonymous comments were from the same IP. I was glad to be able to offer my support & suggestions for weathering the storm.

Most recently I saw a post on SocialMediaToday criticizing Gary Vaynerchuk’s PR blogger campaign to promote his book, Crush It. I received the same email & agree that there was one sentence that won’t motivate me to engage:

On your side, anything you do with him is going to get an influx of readers to your blog due to his massive and loyal following.

I was interested in participating in promoting Gary’s book because:

• as a past librarian, books are amazing
• we were invited to suggest how we wanted to share the book with our community/network (allowing creativity)

I didn’t know Gary & so his personal brand wasn’t a motivation (hence that last sentence didn’t resonate with me).

What are the ramifications: At the time I put my opinion on the post, 600 people had viewed the post. I see that 2000 have now. I understand John Cass’ intention to use examples to teach others but at what expense to Gary’s brand? We agreed that we get bad pitches every day but this one came from a social media superstar.

The conversation was taken up on Shel Holtz & Neville Hobson’s live interview on Friday. Gary apologized & said that he realizes that some things could have been done differently.

My take aways:

• I disagree that an effective blogger campaign requires reading each person’s blog to find what motivates them. It’s not scalable. (Gary was trying to grow his community – the email just didn’t describe his book to connect with the audience)
• scaling a brand & connecting with potential new audiences on a personal level is difficult. How can one connect & build relationships?
• empowering others to help you with your work has its risks. They need to understand the space because even though this email was signed by someone else, it still represented Gary’s brand.

Gary graciously expressed his apologies many times in the interview. He did say that of the 500 emails, he had a 50% response rate which is really good. What success rate do professional agencies have?

I look forward to seeing Gary’s book (and the other nine! He signed an unprecedented 10 book deal). You can read John Cass’ follow up is here & I respect his opinions. John’s intent was to use it as a learning experience. After commenting on the post Gary sent me a personal note & we are now connected. He works 19 hrs a day & I am guilty of that too. We need to support each other as we’re all going to make mistakes. Let’s speak up for what we believe in & not be too hard on each other. What will happen when you stumble?

Photo credit: gicol/Flickr

Alistair started his presentation with – Community gardening is going to change. It’s about capitalism. Companies are concerned with the bottom line & everything needs to be measured. He wasn’t hard on community managers at all. His challenge was simply: We need to take it to the next level for it to be taken seriously in the Enterprise.

I totally agree & echoed the importance of measurement at my session on the day before. His presentation took it to the next level with a focus on measurement and is aligned with the book that he’s co-authored with Sean Powers, Complete Web Monitoring.

Measurement & reporting are key to building value around the community/social media role. The only way to grow the position is to provide concrete data supporting how it’s contributing to the goals of the organization. And in most cases that’s to increase revenue.

The Big Quandary – I can’t measure social media, right?

Everything is measureable now. Web analytics are mainstream and provide the statistics related to your site. Now conversations online can also be gathered, measured & analyzed in a number of ways. There are many free tools as well as professional ones. I work with Techrigy SM2 & we offer a Freemium version so you can get a feel for aggregating the conversations. (Many use it for their consulting businesses).

Alistair took it one step further. He shared ideas that make it easier for your web analytics software (Google Analytics in particular & it’s free) to track your ‘campaigns’. I’ve also been helping my Techrigy customers do likewise so they can maximize their measurement capabilities.

Why is this so important?

1.  Show Value – Quantitative data is the proof in the pudding. Every other department has reporting requirements, so this isn’t any different.

2. Grow your role – The only way that you’re going to get more resources (ie: time & people) is by providing concrete numbers on your progress.

3. Increased budget – Budgets are only provided to those that can justify them.

5. Expand the benefit to the company across more departments. We already know that there are huge benefits to talking with the customers across the touchpoints of the organization. The only way that more people will be empowered to work directly with the customers is by proving the value of that with numbers.

6. Job security – If you’re providing excellent service your organization will sense that. But how will they know what impact you’re having?

I look forward to reading their book! I predict that it will be a key read for anyone in a social media role.

Check out Alistair’s slide deck from his presentation.

What are you measuring? Is it showing the value of your role?