Conference Buddies

Keynote Panel: Twittering with the Stars
Moderator: Edith Yeung, BizTechDay
Panelist: Kevin Rose, Founder, digg.com, Pounce, We Follow. 1.1 million followers
Panelist: Porter Gale, VP of Marketing, Virgin America Airlines
Panelist: Tim Ferriss, Author, 4-Hour Workweek, Angel Investor to tech startups. 60,000 followers

Edith: How are you using Twitter?

Tim: I use Twitter for chronicling interesting things that are happening, but not suitable for my blog. I post useful links, and get polling for feedback from people.
Porter: We use it to engage with our fans. Nick is our primary Twitter updater. We are the first airline with full-fleet wifi access. Twitter is a good way to connect, address service issues, quick recovery, marketing, PR, and guest services.
Kevin: I was on a Virgin flight, since I noticed the live streaming available, (called U-Stream), I tweeted about it, and got a lot of attention. In 5 minutes, I got 1200 viewers, people who were watching me eat a sandwich. I also use Twitter for announcements. I don’t like the big corporation feel, so use it to humanize your company, tweets about your screw-ups, too.

Edith: How about a not-so-good Twitter story?

Tim: Because it’s instantaneous, deleting a tweet doesn’t make it gone. Re-tweeting preserves it. I had a guy who wrote a scathing tweet, but deleted 10 minutes later. It was too late because it already got re-tweeted a bunch of times. Don’t drunk-tweet. Don’t be a traffic bigot, read Kevin Kelly’s essay: 1000 True Fans. Have a die-hard group of fans instead of just bulk numbers.
Porter: Gear your tweets towards people who will like your product. We offer wifi and outlets in your seat, people love that, we are at the forefront of this. People will re-tweet about how cool it is to be on a plane, livestreaming & tweeting, having people watch you eat that sandwich.
Kevin: One girl on staff sent a sexually-explicit tweet by accident, but we just owned up to it and said, oh well, we eff’ed up. Sometimes you just have to roll with it. We tried to get our entire fan base of our podcast on Twitter, we want to capture everyone who likes our products.
Tim: Try su.pr through StumbleUpon. You can submit links through Twitter and Facebook, track click-thrus, & display your most popular blog posts. I found that the best days for me to post a blog is Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturday mornings.

Edith: How do you track performance?

Porter: We are not doing this for ROI, it is more about us engaging with our fans. They find our tweets valuable, like offering free in-flight wifi for the month of November, or polls about what kind of drinks should be offered on your flight.

Edith: How often do you re-tweet?

Kevin: Randomly. Depends on if I find something I like to re-tweet
Porter: I have a story about the re-tweet – a woman who just graduated from medical school was on a Virgin flight and she tweeted about how excited she was about her graduation and how cool it was to be tweeting on a plane. She got re-tweeted, and someone commented that someone on that flight with her should buy her a drink. The tweet came through to someone on the flight, so that person bought her a drink.
Tim: Try Tweet-to-Beat, a non-profit that donors chose to give schools that need supplies. I tweeted that out, and said that for every new follower I get from re-tweeting this, I’ll donate $3 to that school, and raised $20,000.
Porter: We are also working with Virgin Unite to raise money for 100 Smiles, a charity for cleft palates.

Edith: How often do you tweet?

Kevin: Whenever the mood strikes
Porter: Personally, 2-3 times a day. For work, I check on it a lot, but Nick does most of the tweeting
Tim: once every two days. Try getting Firefox’s Auto Paginate. It really helps a lot.

Questions from audience:

1) When you tweet promos, do you check ROI?

Porter: It’s not scientific, we like fan referrals, people who are already flying us.

2) How do you manage multiple personas?

Tim: First, ensure that you don’t feel compelled to check it often. Limit your frequency, schedule your tweets.
Porter: Conversation is happening regardless of your input, don’t try to do everything. Start smart and slow.
Kevin: Increase your followers, find like-minded people

3) If you can only use one social media tool, what would it be?

Tim: blogging
Porter: Twitter
Kevin: Can’t pick just one

4) What is your best call to action?

Kevin: Tweet polls. I did this one time asking people, What is the seven best people in tech? I listed six of them and left the seventh one blank for my followers to fill in. The response was phenomenal.
Porter: Google (?)
Tim: Add a picture. For CTR, it’s very effective. Everyone wants to see the “sexy pic” of something. Also ask questions. Try whichtestone.com for A/B testing.
Kevin: Do livestreams. Have fun with it.
Tim: Spend 80% on content on your blog and 20% on marketing. Having no blog is better than having a mediocre blog.

Edith: What is the one takeaway?

Tim: Have a measurable output or have fun. Otherwise, don’t do it.
Porter: Be authentic, be real.
Kevin: Don’t be corporate. Relax, be human.

State of the Medical Blogosphere

Speakers: Kerri Morrone Sparling: www.sixuntilme.com
Kevin Pho: www.kevinmd.com
Nicholas Genes: www.medgadget.com, www.blogborygmi.com
Kim McAllister: www.emergiblog.com
10/15/2009, 9:45am – 10:45am

Evolution of the Medical Blogosphere

• 60% of patients use the internet as their first source of information
• Doctors need to get on board to connect with their patients, answer questions about medical news and new medical info
• Patients are blogging about their experiences as a way to find other people like them
• People are leaving the Blogosphere due to privacy and employer issues
• Issues with patient privacy when doctors blog, new parameters as to what doctors can and cannot share emerged
• Social media presence is essential for all doctors stay relevant and credible
• Patient blogging can help other patients with managing their diseases (shared experiences, what to expect, medication reactions doctors didn’t mention but many people experience, how to administer your meds in the least painful way)
• Social and mainstream media will someday merge into one entity
• Very few people read medical blogs, blogging is a way to get into mainstream publications
• FTC is looking at blogging and full disclosure, bloggers must share whether they are being compensated for writing their blog
• If you are only on Facebook or Twitter, you might not be connecting with your audience. Being on different social networks allow you to connect with people who might be interested in you but does not participate in all the social networks
• Being a patient blogger allows you to connect with other people who have the same condition as you do

Questions & Answers

How can medical companies blog without violating FTC and FDA regulations and still get the word out on their products?
Independent bloggers have more freedom to say what they feel without worrying about that. They can link to the medical devices pages, or the companies can get the blogger to link to them

How Twits Lay Golden Eggs:
The Art of Social Engagement for Business

Speakers: Nicole Nicolay, “Nic Nic“, author: Twitter for Real Estate Twits
Jodee Rich, @wing dude, peoplebrowser.com/wingdude
Chris Brogan, President, New Marketing Labs
Nick Halstead, @nickhalstead, Tweet Meme
Laura Fitton, @pistachio, author: Twitter for Dummies
10/17/2009, 4:15 – 5:15pm

Key Twitter Tips and Advice:

• Put a link to your site on Twitter, put your Twitter on your site so people know that your Twitter account is authentic (one forty.com)
• Look to see what your competitors are doing, see who is following them. Research keywords in Twitter, see who comes up.
• Always follow people back, or they’ll get mad at you
• Listen, learn, care, serve.
• Google: Grow Bigger Ears. Use search.twitter.com
• Use seesmic.com or TweetDeck to manage your account
• If you keep seeing the same question to you more than once, don’t keep tweeting the answer, post the answer on your website under your FAQ
• Where to find good content if you don’t have any? Do searches for tweets that contain links. Rank them by influences. See what those tweets are saying, use the Twitter Advanced Search. Play around to see what you can find
• Don’t think in terms of Google searches, do research on conversational things
• Planning Tweets, is it a good idea? Chris Brogan – this is no place for robot behavior, be human
• TweetMeme: Counts unique retweets, if content is good, it will go viral. Tweetmeme analytics gives you stats
• If there is an ad in your tweet, people are less likely to retweet you
• Using Twitter as a Customer Service channel: It’s not “turn it on and it runs”. Think ahead on how it’s going to work, the size of your company, ability to process the requests, use DM to make it a public message, will your response help more than just that one person?

Questions & Answers:

1) The follow back: should you always?
No

2) How do you communicate with people outside your niche? Find out what they are doing?
Ask them about themselves, people like to talk about themselves.

3) How can brands scale their customer service to everyone?
Companies need to invest their money on customer service, the public should demand that and expect great service

4) Managing customer expectations, how can you answer their concern when you might not have the time?
Respond privately, I’ll address you soon, as opposed to trying to solve their issue immediately. (If Zappos can do it, so can you)

10 Ways to Build Your Audience
Speaker: Nicole Simon, Social Media Mentor & Consultant, @nicolesimon
10/17/2009, 12:45 to 1:15pm

Four different types of visitors:

• Subscribers, (people who already love you)
• Search engine traffic, (they don’t know you)
• Life stream (people come for specific reasons, people pointed others to it)
• Social bookmarking (people who find you interesting)

Other traffic:

• People who want to contact you (journalists)
• People who want to offer you something (other bloggers)
• People who want information from you

Big Questions:

• What do each of these segments want from you and your site? They are all different!
• What do you have to do to help them get what they want?
• What makes me happy?
• What helps me to get what I want?
• What can I do to make me happy?

Learn and Transfer:

• Switch mindset
• Start thinking, “what can I get out of it”
• Know what you don’t know
• Build a support group
• Use examples from BlogWorld sessions, look through the classes offered, try to guess what would be discussed
• Get inspired: learn from others and take notes

1. Think Professional Media:

• If you write like you are advertising something, no one would read it
• Use an editorial calendar: have a plan that helps you to prepare content
• Can you do partnerships? Do you have something to offer them?

2. Cover the Basics:

• Is your blog in the search engines?
• Use a sitemap, use Webmaster tools

3. Work Like a Professional

• Use tools of the trade
• Research and use what works for you
• Buy books and information to learn in the shortest amount of time

4. Think Work Flow & Procedures

• Make a list of things you need to work through without thinking
• What can be outsourced?
• How much time does it take?
• Can you optimize?
• Which tools work for me? Not all tools work for everyone

The Conversation Prism

• theconversationprism.org, get the rough idea of what others are doing
• Engage with your audience, be where your audience are

5. Think Stumble Upon:

• If I see something for the first time, why should I give you a thumbs up or tweet about you?
• Use other pages to gather what you like when you stumble them yourself
• If people come to your article on StumbleUpon, what do they see? What would they know about your blog? Exponential potential for growth.

6. Think Twitter:

• Think in titles which are re-tweetable
• 120 is the new 140. Stop at 120 so people can retweet you without having to edit it
• Can I easily see your twitter name?
• What is your content about?
• Will others have a reason to point to your blog?
• Think landing page, see what people link to so you know what people are interested in
• Think research, networking, and what other people click on

7. Think Offline:

• Look at people next to you & around you, how can you connect with them?
• Point to offline material

8. Think Newsletter:

• What can you provide to newsletter authors?
• What content do you deliver in exchange for visibility and feedback?
• How can I contact you?
• What are you best articles?
• Search for your niche

9. Think Facebook:

• Doesn’t work for everyone
• Think of it as another professional tool
• Know how to use the Fan Page and how it can connect to the rest of your blog or site
• Put HTML pages and images into it
• FBML pages

10. Stop Thinking A-Listers:

• Like “Dancing with the Stars”, they are not A-Listers, but the show is successful
• Learn mechanisms, they teach you the steps, but you need to learn the music
• Trust in yourself: learn & evolve

Bonus: Pay It Forward

• Get in the habit retweets, relink, & Bookmarks
• Forward interesting information to others
• Honor others who make your life easier
• Give feedback & state what you like and missed
• If I make others happy, they will make me happy
• Think of one person you can send information from BlogWorld, if you can explain it, then you understand it
• Give freely from your heart and not brag about it

Facebook & Twitter Fortunes: How To Strategically Grow Your Business Using the Top Two Online Social Networks

Panelist(s): Mari Smith
@marismith

Facebook:

Facebook Mission: To help the world connect & communicate more effectively.

For social media, it is important to know the difference between a Facebook personal page and a Facebook fan page. Facebook personal pages have a limit of 5000 friends but fan pages do not have such a limitation. Fan pages are also fully indexed by Google. Personal pages do not have any requirements to get a shortened vanity Facebook URL. However, fan pages require at least 25 fans (initially it was 1000, then 100) in order to register for one.

Twitter

When it comes to Twitter, who you follow is as important as who follows you. One rule of thumb to go by is, follow people that have “passion”. Also, it is important to always thank people who retweet your content.

Social Media and What It’s About

It’s about people who are looking for connections. It’s not what you say, it’s the intent of what you say. An important aspect for companies is to remember is to let people be heard, seen, engaged (like Zappos, Comcast, and Virgin).

Changing Interactions

Social media has altered the way companies interact with customers and the community.

1. From : Controlling Our Image” to “being Ourselves”

Personal and Professional lines are blurring

2. From “Hard to Reach” to “Available Everywhere”

300M active members

Facebook = 2nd most trafficked website in the world
70% of FB users are ouside us
Average age of more than 35
50% more active on mobile

90% of social media is about showing up. Make content available to your fans and your fans will do all the rest.

Social Media Barriers

Even though social media has grown signficantly, there are still some barriers for marketing. Mainly, there is a lack of an easy method to measure ROI (from Marking Sherpa).If you can’t measure your Social Media results, you don’ have a proven strategy.

Mari’s Four-Part Formula

Quality NETWORK
High influencial in your industry
+
Quality CONTENT
Relevant, frequency, and focus
+
Consistency

Social Media Success Stories – BlogWorld Expo 2009

Speakers:

Samantha Gammell (Oscar Mayer / Kraft), Justin Levy (Caminito Argentinean Steakhose), Brian Wiegand, Frank Eliason

This session explores Social Media case studies and success stories

Frank Eliason
Comcast Cares

• Twitter handle: @comcastcares
• Passionate not about products, passionate about customers
• Passion is important
• Look at Zappos, passionate about company culture, employees, brand, and passionate about customers!  or Gary V being passionate about wine.
• Tie results to purchases
• One Tweet Resolution = resolve problems quickly

Facebook = great place  to meet with people you already know

Facebook = not a great place to meet people you don’t already know (compared to Twitter)

Samantha Gammell
Oscar Mayer / Kraft

• Better engage consumers and expand customer interaction
• Weingermobile has been around for 22 years
• Using HotDoggerBlog.com as a microsite to engage customers
• 20,000 visitors a month
• 2600 followers on twitter (@HotDogger / @Wienermobile)
• Good traffic to their YouTube page too
• Great sentiment, people love the WeinerMobile!

Justin Levy
Caminito Argentinean Steakhouse

• Partner in a Steakhouse in Boston
• Initially losing 10% to 20% a month
• Justin’s Chef/partner spent 80% on marketing budget on small town newspaper
• Targeted Google = Up 20% in profits (actually up 40% to overcome 20% loss)
• Targeted Google SEO = Up 20% in profits

Brian Wiegand

JellyFish.com

• 18 months only, 100% social media, no paid advertising, sold to Microsoft

Alice.com

• Launched 15 weeks ago
• Sell Toilet Paper and everyday essentials online (You wouldn’t think but there is a lot of energy around these products, but there is!)
• Prices are the same as Walmart
• Always free shipping, combined with a Netflix feel
• Gather Social Data: i.e. She’s a great mother, what type of diapers she uses; She’s beautiful what type of make up does she uses
• Reach out to Mommy Bloggers

Panel Q&A:

• Be the first, the leader of an industry
• Comcast, Dell, Cirque = great examples
• Social Media = Humanize your brand
• Don’t just create corporate policies, but also provide tools, rules and methods for your employees to deal with Social Media
• My job isn’t to build Twitter – My job is to meet customers where they already are
• Go to where your community is already are

If you could do over:

Brian Wiegand:

Hire a little better, who already understand social media (more experience and knowledge – not everyone is a fit, don’t force it.)

Samantha Gammell:

Make sure you have the resources and people.  If you start, you can’t stop.  Make sure you have the time and money to staff it.

Justin Levy:

Wished we used Twitter, like KojiBBQ, tweet events, locations, drive customers

Frank  Eliason:

Frank’s only statement was to ask everyone to use  the #beatcancer hastag 6pm today to support the cause.
[Note: as a result of all the organizers, speakers, attendees and supporters of BlogWorld Expo, the hash tag #beatcancer not only raised money but also helped make this initiative reach a world record at #bwe09 for largest social media push in in a 24 hour period!]