About Guest Author: Amanda DiSilvestro is a writer on topics such as voip phone systems and telemarketing to small businesses and entrepreneurs for Resource Nation.

From smartphones and tablets to social media and comment forums, people have learned to chat in every way possible. People love to stay connected and stay busy, so chatting during downtime seems to be the perfect solution. For this reason, chatting is becoming more and more high tech. So what does this mean for your business?

This means that your business should be utilizing live chat on its website. Consider some of the benefits live chat can have for your company:

Why Customers and Companies Love Live Chat

1. Save Money – The actual live chat software is very inexpensive, and your company can save by allowing employees to do more things at once. In other words, employees can chat to several different customers all at once as opposed to one at a time on the phone. And trust, having ten chat windows open for most future generations is a cinch. Employees will also likely prefer this method because they will feel extra busy.

2. Customer Convenience – Many customers want to buy online, but they often have questions that are better answered in the store. Live chat brings together the best of both world, and I think you will find that customers will embrace live chat for this exact reason. They will be able to get the answers they want when they want them without having to wait on a traditional business phone system for someone to help.

3. Competition – Although chatting online is second nature to many consumers, offering live chat is a fairly new idea in the business world. In other words, you will have a lot of customers interested to use your new service without the competition.

4. Increase Revenue and Customer Satisfaction – There is often a lot of back and forth that happens when someone is making a purchase. If they are making the purchase online, they very well might consider a few questions that lead them to turn away from the product or service. Had someone been there answering their questions right away, they may have made a different decision. According to a study reported in Forbes magazine, Wells Fargo used online chat and found that their customer satisfaction scores significantly increased.

5. Efficiency – One of the reasons live chat is so convenient and can help save a company money is because everything gets done faster. Employees will be able to talk with concerned customers faster and customers will be able to get their questions answered faster; thus increasing the overall time spent on a sale. This will allow your company to be more efficient with its time.

If you think that live chat is right for your company, consider trying a few different software first before making a decision. Most software does offer a free trial, so have your employees try it out and see what they think. It’s important that any employee utilizing free chat is trained in the program as well as how to talk with customers via live chat. For more information on software, visit Top Ten Reviews.

Photo Credit: vietave.com

About the author: Alia Haley is a blogger by profession. She loves writing on technology and luxury.
Beside this she is fond of games. She recently bought a Gaming Mouse for herself. These days she is
busy in writing an article on Suzuki Motorcycles.

There was a murmur heard in the Microsoft camp a couple of weeks before about the social networking project being carried out by the company. Later these things embarked at a place called Socl.com with a name Tulalip. The fact of the matter is that Tulalip happens to be a website which allows you everything right from getting any information to sharing it unlike you see in any social networking site. With passing time, more information has emerged out now in public making things clear. Microsoft has embarked with a project called Socl and dropping the Tulalip. This place will allow you to search for information and clubbing things with a complicated blend. Microsoft has tested the applications with limited users in a group along with a number of features as discussed under:
The UI or User Interface: On the face of it, people can call it somewhere a Facebook; however, it is still too early to trust this notion completely. This can only be said when Microsoft will eventually launch the social networking website. However, at the moment you can consider having the same design of three columns as seen on Facebook. These include the updates coming in the middle section, information at the right side and the navigations links on the left side. However, the difference comes with the input area which is placed at the top side area where you can you can update about your statuses just beside the question asking to do so. However, you can choose for a standard format rather treading this path.

The Tags: The Socl is taking a different route to this path and not just replicating things from FB. At Socl you get the choice of using tags with some specific subject trying from anybody’s status or search the query; thereby you can get result of anything having this searched tag. It is still unclear how it will work while you can use your RSS feeds or just try Google as well for you. This feature is still under the phase of testing, we can have a clear idea after it comes out.

The Videos: Having the presence of high end HTML5, Socl works out without any hassle or issue even when you will see the video being used at the right side. In this way the users can therefore do two things together, watching the videos from YouTube and put comments through the chat box window.

The Social Element: As you see how Google is using the social element in its search results since they think that it can pull out information which is unique from the users using their friends. With Socl you can expect similar thing in this direction, though we need to wait and watch this thing.

Knowing the fact that the Microsoft social networking site –Socl is under test, it’s a tough task to understand it completely at this juncture. People though feel that the company will bring something different rather than mere replicating things from Facebook or any other social media site. To survive indeed you need to be different, by just being a copy cat it will make things tough for the Socl to combat the giants of Social media.

Alia Haley is a blogger by profession. She loves writing on technology, health and parenting. Beside this she is fond of eating. Recently an article on Nokia Lumia 800 attracted her attention. These days she is busy in writing an article on Racing Games For Kids.

Have you ever come across deals like discount on purchase for a copy of a tweet or for liking a Facebook profile of a company? What could happen if you like Dell’s Facebook profile to Dell in reality? What is there for Coke to encourage Facebook profile? These are at the end of the day only intangible and binary signals confined within servers and networks. And answer is web 2.0 or interactive capabilities of today’s World Wide Web. User generated content is becoming tools for marketing in both B2C and B2B segments.

But who and why should spend?
All most anybody willing to draw public attention can spend – Barrack Obama did it in presidential election and Ford do it for their cars. Social media allows companies, organizations to spread brand awareness and increase customer engagement.
Companies spend millions of dollars on market research activities every year. But social network sites and forums provide endless opportunity to interact with customers and to understand their psyche at fractional cost. Besides, you can earn commitment if engage the customer around the branding activity. Reviews and remarks generated by customers work as marketing content for other left out prospects and customers.

Budgeting
But even a deep pocket corporate also needs to budget its spending. And despite so many cost efficient benefits it’s not easy to budget social media optimization. Part reason is lack of effective parameters that link money spent to money earned directly and the other part is slow action of optimization initiatives.
Other than budgeting, another common problem with SMO is how to distribute the allocated fund. Too much stress on campaign eats up fund for customer engagement process. This results in less than expected return on investments.
For these reasons, often companies drag their feet when budgeting for social media marketing. Even most willing marketing officers often suffer from over-budgeting or under-budgeting. To avoid such problem you can try few useful tips to streamline your social media initiative.

Separate budgeting
Make separate budget for different activities like, campaign, customer engagement, customer care etc. And don’t let one activity to eat up fund allocated for other activities.

Activity planning
We all know social media is a very fast changing medium. But for proper budgeting and fund use you must have a plan for future optimization strategy for near future. This would help you to allocate fund properly.

Introspection first
What worked for Ford may not yield for you. Try to understand your customers, prospects and brand reach. Every brand has its niche and it is important to understand that before you plan your strategy.

No magic
Social networking sites don’t give you any magic wand. It is absolutely legitimate if you find social media not much promising for you. You can restrict yourself within digital marketing only.

Wise parameters
Be wise when deciding on what test parameters to use to check effectiveness of your media effort. Try to rely less on paid media and stress more on earned media. Millions of followers won’t earn you dollar if they don’t shell out money to buy your product. Try to build and nurture even a small base of engaged followers.

CMOs must understand time is the most valuable input to skim optimum benefit from the social media marketing. And how much time you can afford would be major determinant of your budget. How much to spend is not important in SMO; what is most important is how long you can afford to spend. So, be careful to spend evenly across a long time horizon for better brand engagement and sales conversions.

Kimberly Dillon @prettylittleceo is the founder of House of Mikko, @houseofmikko,where she manages Marketing and Product Strategy. She founded the company to address the challenges that women, specifically women of color face at the beauty counter. She has been featured in TechCrunch and ReadWriteWeb, named by Huffington Post as one of 25 Female Tech Founders to watch, and is a member of Women 2.0.
She started her career as an IT Consultant with Accenture and has over 8 years of marketing experience in the digital and consumer space, including a stint at Procter & Gamble. She has 2 undergraduate degrees from the University of Pittsburgh and an MBA from the University of Michigan. A lover of all things beauty, she won’t leave home with out eyeliner. Ever.

About TEDx?
In the spirit of ideas worth spreading, TEDx is a program of local, self-organized events that bring people together to share a TED-like experience. At a TEDx event, TEDTalks video and live speakers combine to spark deep discussion and connection in a small group. These local, self-organized events are branded TEDx, where x = independently organized TED event. The TED Conference provides general guidance for the TEDx program, but individual TEDx events are self-organized. (Subject to certain rules and regulations.)
At our TEDxBayArea events, TEDTalks videos and live speakers combine to spark deep discussion and connections in a small group setting.

Paul works in the marketing department for CliqStudios, a cabinet manufacturer that sells white kitchen cabinets and more factory-direct, and is a blogger and Apple fanatic.

We all know of Google’s dubbed “Facebook killer” called Google+ that has, in fact, failed to kill Facebook. We also know that the success of Google+ is also highly debated. Sure, it sports over 40 million users, but only a fraction of those users actually remain active. In contrast, as of last September, Facebook has over 800 million active users worldwide.
So, what went wrong for Google+?

From the outset of its beta, the primary selling point of the service was its almost too simple way of organizing your friends into Circles so you can share specifically and privately with only certain people. Circles was meant to be a means of one-upping Facebook’s lackluster and underused Lists feature.

However, Circles is by no means perfect, and the way it’s intended to be used is somewhat laborious. Using Circles is a manual process and requires you to drag and drop your friends in a variety of friend categories that you’ve created.

The problem is that friendships aren’t one or the other, and are constantly changing. Google+ can’t keep up with your life outside of your interactions on Google+, and thus requires you to continually evaluate your friendships and manually change them on the service.
If you think about it, most people wouldn’t bother spending the time to organize their friends into super specific categories, let alone keeping the Circles organized and up to date. This, basically, then renders Circles useless.

Shortly after Google+’s release, Facebook announced Smart Lists, a feature capable of automatically grouping some of your friends. For example, it creates Smart Lists for people you are related to, places you work, and for where you are currently living.
What’s more, and what is the most important part of Smart Lists in terms of updating relationship and organizing friends on a social network, is its ability to dynamically update. If a work friend leaves for a new job, he is automatically removed from that List once he updates his employment. Facebook is showing that developing better ways to categorize your friends without you having to think about it is important for its users.

Therefore, rather than Google+ requiring its users to manually update their Circles, Google should start to give Circles some artificial intelligence capable of evaluating and updating for you. While there’s not a way that I’m aware of for Google to know every detail of your life, there must be a way to analyze your behavior and interactions across the site to do this. I don’t know what that is, but I’ll leave it to the developers to figure out.

What do you think about Google+’s Circles? Do you use them? Do you constantly update them? Please share your opinion.

Entrepreneurs what are your most used online tools?

The JESS3 latest grid illustrates the role content plays in helping brands meet business objectives and buyers reach their individual goals. An added value of v2 is its outline for measuring content marketing success.

The original grid was recognized for giving insights into content marketing. But v2 goes even further: explaining the connection between content type and distribution channels, matching content to the buyer’s stage in the purchase process, equipping marketers with Key Performance Indicators for each type of content, and delivering it all in an easily digestible grid.

This past Saturday Scotty returned from Idol headquarters to provide his Garner hometown fans with a concert. During his return Scotty signed a lot of autographs, put in a few miniutes at his old job at Lowes Food and gave a lot of hugs to screaming fans young and old. There even was a short but packed Scotty / Garner, NC parade. It was suppose to rain Saturday so I was staying in but decided to watch some of the Scotty mania on TV and check to see if any of my friends were tweeting from the event. Yes, Scotty’s concert was broadcasted live on WRAL and from Twitter I saw that @isellmoney and @lisasullivan were in attendance… I think. Also on twitter were a few Scotty McCreery hashtags to follow such as #Scottystock, #goscotty and #garnerNC. During “Scottystock” aka the live concert Scotty McCreery was surprised by country music star Josh Turner. Over all it was a great day for Scotty McCreery, American Idol and Garner, NC.

While watching Scotty’s success going from a small hometown grocery store cashier to now national superstar it reminds me of how … wait for it… yes. It reminds me how some businesses can succeed in using social media. After a business/brand has use social media to gain new customers, get more followers/fans if that’s their goal or increase sales numbers how does a business manage the success? I’m glad you asked. Here are 10 ways you can manage your social media success like Scotty McCreery.

1. Be Humble

Scotty thanked everyone for voting him in to being one of the final three American Idol 2011 contestants.

2. Stick to what you’re good at

Scotty, did try a few songs outside of his natural element but he knows what he’s good at and doesn’t stray to far from it. After you find a winning formula build off of it but don’t forget what lead you to your success.

3. Act surprised when you meet the rock stars

I not 100% sold if Scotty knew Josh Turner was coming on stage or not but when you meet an experience veteran it’s good to show a little respect and try to think about way you can work together unless they call you a clown.

4. Thank Everyone

Scotty knows that without his fans he wouldn’t have made it to the final three. The same for your social media success. Every now and then you need to just say thanks to your blog readers, Facebook fans/likes, twitter followers and/or friends who share your content.

5. Give “free” Hugs

Everyone loves a good hug. We’ll almost everyone. Regardless you may not be able to give your social media supporters a free hug but you may have a group discount or a free product to over them for supporting you. Information is also considered valuable. Continue to provide good valuable content that lead to your success.

6. Work the media

When you have the media’s attention let them have full access. Let the media help you tell your story but always remember everyone is watching so be on your best behavior.

photo via Idol chatter

7. It’s ok to cry

Showing a little emotion shows that you’re human and helps builds relationships.

8. Be awesome all the time

It’s hard but the phrase is called “being on” after you become successful everyone except the “haters” think you’re awesome. Always remember that. From that point on… be awesome all the time or at least do you best faking it.


photo via Idol chatter

9. Live up to the hype

After you have some social media success the expectations bar has been lifted and the world is waiting to see what will you do next. I’m not sure how Scotty is going to preform this week but he has a lot of hype to live up to and I wish him well. Also think about this in terms of the Old Spice commercials, they were cool and funny at first but now I’m ready for something new.

10. Use the right tools

Scotty is active on Twitter sharing his experiences with his followers around the world. I think he is actually sending the tweets. I’m not sure if he’s using Facebook or other platforms but for him right now Twitter helps him share his story in real time and hopes help him win American Idol.

11. Keep it simple

K.I.S.S.

Scotty from one NC guy to another good luck. You know you’re already a winner.

How do you manage your social media success?

via Social Media for B2B Marketing Infographic | Ecreative Internet Marketing.

The next web has a post called How to monitor social media mentions in five minutes a day. In the post they include five tools and it’s a five step process and says you can get the job done in five minutes. The tools the next web suggest that you use are listed below. Head over to the post to read the rest.

The social media tools

• Addictomatic – a multi-platform buzz dashboard
• Social Mention – a slightly more sophisticated multi-platform buzz dashboard
• Samepoint - another dashboard that includes some additional platforms the others don’t offer
• Twazzup – a real-time news dashboard (with a bias towards Twitter)
• BackTweets – a tool which tells you who has been sharing your content on Twitter
• Blogpulse – a tool that searches blog posts for specific mentions
• Google (weekly + in date order) – this will take you to the advanced search box but we’ll make this even more useful during the next phase

via How to monitor social media mentions in five minutes a day – TNW Lifehacks.

 

What social media tools do you use and how much time do you spend each day managing social media?

Women who read blogs routinely trust implicitly the advice and recommendations they receive, especially if it is from a blogger that they follow on a regular basis. We find this is true in every study conducted over the past four years and the effect never diminishes. In this year’s Social Media study, 88% of the active blog readers in the total U.S. general population trust the information they get from familiar blogs. Asked why they have this level of trust, nearly half (48%) say it’s because they had made purchases in the past based on blog recommendations and were satisfied with the results. Over 50% of the active blog readers in the general U.S. online population have made a purchase based on a blog recommendation. That number jumps to 80% in the BlogHer network community. The top categories where BlogHer users turn to Blogs for reviews include Food/Beverage (67%), Clothing/Shoes (67%) Movies (62%), and Cosmetics (59%). In the general online population, the #1 vertical for Blog reviews is Consumer Electronics.

via BlogHer.

Does the BlogHer research align with how you are using social media and mobile apps?

via Inspired Magazine.

SocialTimes is reporting that News Corp is selling MySpace for $480 million less than they paid for it back in 2005. What a difference six years make.

Struggling social networking site MySpace is looking for a new owner and hopes to have one by this week’s end. According to The Wall Street Journal, News Corp is seeking $100 million for MySpace, much less than what they paid. The sale is projected to draw bids from several investment firms and companies who may try to buy parts of MySpace or the whole social network.

News. Corp paid $580 million for MySpace back in 2005. While the purchase appeared to be a solid investment at the time, Facebook grew to become the chosen social networking destination. MySpace users left and joined Facebook.

via News Corp is Selling MySpace for $100 Million – SocialTimes.com.

Do you think we’ll see another popular social network drop off like MySpace did in the near future?

In yet another attempt to measure social media ROI, ForeSee developed their “Social Media Value Benchmark,” which ranks web visitors based on how the customer came to the site, how much they spent, how they felt about the experience and whether they’re likely to return.

ForeSee’s initial results, after surveying nearly 300,000 consumers, is that people who were influenced by social media spend more and are more satisfied and loyal customers than those who aren’t influenced by social media.

 

 

Interesting report, a few thoughts I have about it are:

1. 300,000 survey results are not an accurate enough number when you have over 1,9 Billion internet users world wild. Also to put the  300,000 number in prospective, it has been reported that 300,000 people join twitter everyday.

2.  Regardless of the number, I could see some part of the results being accurate with so many companies marketing their Facebook.com url or twitter profile vs a companies businessname.com url.

Basically if you’re not seeing an increase in web site visits/traffic from using social media, you’re doing it wrong especially if that’s your goal.

Finally, a few post about the lack of diversity in social media and web/tech entrepreneurship outside of the “black channel” are starting  to pop-up around the interwebs. Maybe 2011 is “our” year or the year we’ll not only see more minority own startups launch but get funded, covered by major tech blogs and receive the same respect as other social media and web/tech entrepreneurs. Hey… I can dream right? Before I post a few links of the recent blog post about the lack of diversity problem, lets look back on a some articles I think really started to highlight the problem. Most are from BlackWeb 2.0 where my friend and colleague Angle Benton and team have been covering the minority web tech space since 2007. The post that really has been an eye opener is the Venture Capital Human Capital Report in which BlackWeb 2.0 highlights that African Americans Only 1% of Internet Start-up Founders as you can see in the chart at the top of this post.

Other articles from around the web about the lack of diversity in the social media and tech entrepreneurship space pre 2011 are:

• Innovation Crisis in Black America, Pt. 1
• Innovation Crisis in Black America Pt. 2: Where are Black Entrepreneurs and Angels?
• 23% of Black Web 2.0 Start-ups Operating with Revenue, Surpass National Average
• Why technology, startup, entrepreneur, social media conference organizers cannot fix the lack diversity problem at their events.
• BlackWeb2.0 Startup Entrepreneurs – Highly Educated, Operating with Revenue and Mostly Unfunded
• Surprise! Silicon Valley Doesn’t Employ Minorities
• Race and Technology: Are There Renowned Internet Startups With Black Founders?

Fast forward to late 2010 and early 2011 the conversation about the lack of diversity in social media and tech entrepreneurship is heating up and others are starting to take notice. Also note the previous post were discussed a lot during SXSW 2011 and a few of us decided to launch our own startup (gokit) during SXSW as you can read here on Black Enterprise as a result. You see, the links above are primarily from minority own or affiliate sites with the exception for one or two. In the past few weeks there have been Quora questions and other post by non minorities noticing the lack of diversity in the social media space and highlighting minorities entrepreneurs. Here are a few:

• Women of Color in Tech: How Can We Encourage Them?
• Blinded by the White: Social Media and Diversity
• U.S. Prisons Now Hold More Black Men Than Slavery Ever Did (unrelated but just sad)
• Women of Color in Tech: How Can We Encourage Them?
• Quora: Are there any Black owned mobile app Startups, that Robert Scoble and other pro bloggers have done interviews on?
• Quora: Who are some notable black founders, entrepreneurs, and executives in Silicon Valley?
• Startup America needs to look more like America | Where are the Startups of Color?

Now What?

So now what? The conversations are heating up, we know there is a problem, few are making it or at least trying. How can myself and others help solve the problem?  I have a few ideas along with some of the notes and comments from the TechCrunch post about women of color. Here are some suggestions

• provide mentorship—and a lot of encouragement. via Vivek Wadhwa
• volunteer time/resources/money to the community you come from via Travell Perkins (TC comments)
• Stop complaining about the lack of diversity in the tech and web space and just do something about it.
• Network and attend various events outside of your confront zone.
• If you have an idea about launching a startup but not all the resources and skills, don’t let that hold you back. Partner and launch.
• Read various resources on launching a startup: a few are: http://thestartupfoundry.com http://www.startuplessonslearned.com and Dave McClure’s presentations on slideshare http://www.slideshare.net/dmc500hats (google and Quora are your friends)
• Join local groups on startups/entrepreneurship (use plancast and/or meetup.com
• If you’re a startup working with an accelerator or mentor help others get to where you’re at… pay it forward and don’t be selfish
• Read sites and join local groups focusing on minorities in the web tech space such as:
  http://blackweb20.com
  http://www.blackfounders.com/
  http://groups.google.com/group/minorities-in-startups
  http://www.meetup.com/blacksintech/
  http://btechweekend.com/
  http://whereareblacksintechnology.blogspot.com/
  http://28daysofdiversity.com
  http://www.bloggingwhilebrown.com/
  http://www.blackweblogawards.com/
  Building while brown facebook groups http://plancast.com/p/49ef/building-brown (ask to join)
  http://blogalicious.com
  http://diversityintech.com (coming soon)

Also note, I’m working with a team planning an accelerator based in the Bay Area this summer around minorities startups. For more information on the project email me if you would like to get involved.

Your turn!

What can you do and/or what are some suggestions how to solve the diversity problem in the social media and web/tech entrepreneurship space?

via

Want more to learn more about SEO and Social Media see, An infographic guide to getting started with SEO

What are your favorite social networks / social media sites of 2011 so far?

If you have a job in social media does your day look like this?

Super Bowl 45 is today between the Green Bay Packers vs the Pittsburgh Steelers and the NFL along with various brands have all gone social media crazy this year. For Super Bowl 45 we have everything from pre released Super Bowl commercials trying to go “viral” such as my personal favorite the VW’s “The Force” Super Bowl Ad to anti super bowl marketing such as the Network Solutions GoGranny campaign. Visa even has a social media, twitter, measuring dashboard where you can tweet from at superbowl.com.

Not to be left out of the social media conversations and Super Bowl hype foursquare has partnered with the NFL.com to reward foursquare users who check into the actual Super Bowl game in Texas with a special badge. For everyone else watching the big game, you can shout “Go Steelers” or “Go Packers” with your foursquare check-in to unlock a Steelers or Packers team badge. The foursquare Super Bowl Sunday promotion is the startups first global venue and something I believe is the beginning of a pivot for foursquare as they could join other media check in apps to allow foursquare users to check into TV shows, movies along with offering group discounts to compete with Groupon and living social. It’s something I mentioned yesterday during an interview with News14. You can watch the News14 interview here: Foursquare offers ‘Super’ deals for football fans.

But what if you’re not using foursquare? There now four applications that allow you to check into any TV show or movie. Three of the apps I reviewed previously in a post called 3 Ways to check-in to your favorite TV show or movie which mentioned Miso, GetGlue, ScreenTribe and now there’s a forth one called IntoNow.

IntoNow tagline reads “Connect with your friends around the shows you love” and the iPhone app acts like a Shazam but for TV shows. I really like the simplicity and interface of IntoNow. It’s a much watch startup.

What is your favorite media/tv check-in app?

It started with a tweet about peeing. I’m not sure if @TCATAndy was the first one to tweet it but after a little research it seems so because it has been retweeted over 100+ times and now some social media practitioners are are calling it the peeing social media definition. As if you needed an visual to go with the tweet mind jumpers has created the “Social Media Definition by Peeing [infographic]”

You can tell me about your pee in the comments below.

Using the PostRank extension for Google Reader to filter the social media rss Quora topic feed, here are the top 29 social media questions answered on Quora in the last seven days.

1. Why does Google fail at social media?

2. For my website, should I chose AddThis, ShareThis or Twitter’s and Facebook’s specific sharing tools?

3. What is a community manager?

4. What are examples of successful “green” social media campaigns?

5. On Quora, why has the quality of the Social Media Marketing topic declined so extraordinarily, so quickly?

6. How do I export the ‘like’ list of a Facebook company/brand/fanpage?

7. What are the biggest mistakes one can make in managing a social media account?

8. What are the issues of scaling Twitter for customer service?

9. What are some ways schools are using social media tools to make the classroom more effective?

10. How relevant is the Klout score?

11. What are the best PR and social media blogs to follow?

12. What is social targeting?

13. What are the biggest legal concerns with using social media?

14. How different is Social Media Strategist from a Digital PR Consultant?

15. Is keeping a locked account in Twitter a good practice?

16. Is it a good practice to duplicate content in Twitter and LinkedIn?

17. What are some recommendations for good social media and/or digital marketing conferences to attend in 2011?

18. What are good ways to become more influential on Twitter using Quora?

19. How can one prove to a more traditional marketer that social media is essential for a food truck’s success?

20. Which universities are effectively using social media?

21. How could the functionality of Facebook Groups be improved ?

22. What if in the future a “Social Scoring” system like Klout or PeerIndex, would determine, just like credit reports do, your job hiring, promotions, life, etc?

23. Is there a social media website to complain about a customer service from an online company?

24. What is a “social object” in social media context?

25. Why might someone want to follow 1,000+ people on Twitter?

26. What are the best practices or interesting case studies about social media for non profit organizations?

27. Why should an established private community switch from a mailing list like Yahoo groups to a microblogging tool such as Socialcast or Yammer?

28. What should Google do to completely overhaul its social strategy?

29. Do I really need Quora in addition to Facebook and Twitter?

Bonus
What is a Social Media Guru ?
How many Social Media Gurus does it take to screw in a lightbulb?

If you didn’t see your social media question listed you can follow all of the social media topics on Quora here: http://www.quora.com/Social-Media

To say that Quora the questions and answers site is off to a good year is an understatement. Launched in June 2009 in private beta Quora has seen a massive growth in page views and user registration with many speculating how and why. Some give credit to Robert Scoble and the Scoble affect. Others to MG and the TechCrunch gang for consistently referencing Quora in blog post. All makes me wonder who has shares into Quora but that’s another post.

Regardless if you think Quora is valuable or not, bloggers, social media enthusiast, main stream media and brands are flocking to Quora trying to get a jump on what could be the next big thing. The keyword here is “could be” especially since Quora is not the only questions and answers startup to gain some traction and when you think about Quora is really one big message board/forum with new social integration.

If you’re new to Quora, wondering if you should invest time into Quora and/or wondering what’s all the hype about here’s my questions and answers guide to Quora.

What is my Quora history?

I signed up for Quora shortly after it was lunched in June 2009 via a beta invite from Jolie O’Dell (Thanks Jolie)

How to get the best value of out Quora?

If you’re on Quora, I would suggest not to follow everyone who follows you and only follow topics and people that relate to your industry profession or topics you’re really interested in. Quora is not twitter!

What type of questions should you ask on Quora?

Any type of question you want! For instance my last question was “What are some good tips for first time fathers?” but if you want to be considered as an industry expert on certain topics it’s a common practice to ask, follow and answer questions on those topics.

What are the ways you can look smart and as a thought leader on Quora?

Write the best answers and get people to vote up your answers. Simple.

What are some simple getting started Quora tips?

1. Have an updated Quora bio and profile picture.
2. Decide how you’re going to use Quora as tool for personal or professional reasons
3. Create a list of topics that you would like to follow
4. Search for topics and people on Quora you want to follow.
5. Understand how Quora notifications work when you follow topics
6. You can ask a question and recommend people to answer the question
7. Decide if you want to connect your twitter, Facebook, WordPress.com and/or tumblr accounts to Quora
8. Start following a few topics/people and ask your first question.

How do I search for topics and people on Quora?

You search for topics and people in Quora via the same box where you ask question.

How can brands use Quora?

Currently Quora does not allow branded profiles although you may find a few but brands can use Quora as customer service channel.

Example: The Comcast topic on Quora.

What is a bad example of how not to use Quora?

Read: How Not To Be Influential? Quora Spam On Mechanical Turk

Was Quora better when it was in private beta?

Some would say yes, especially since all the new users have joined. Quora’s goal is to provide quality answers from smart people, not to create another Twitter where users try to get a lot of followers and just look smart to say he look how cool I am by answering questions on Quora.

What should you be doing instead of answering questions on Quora?

1. Email
2. Blogging
3. measuring
4. looking for leads
5. customer service
6. Exercising
7. Reading

Can I use Quora without answering questions?

Yes, by creating an account and following topics in general or by RSS Feeds.

When is it Quora day on Twitter?

I had tweeted a month ago and told Jason Keath @Jakrose it was Friday.
David Armano tweeted last week “I declare Tuesday to be “Quora Tuesdays”. David has more Klout than I do, so I guess David wins.

What is it called when you answer questions on Quora?

“Quora-ing” I made that up for this post. #joke

Do you have to be on Quora?

No and hear’s a great twitter quote from @ConversationAge

What does Quora remind you of?

A big online community forum.

What is an example of a really good Quora Answer?

See, Patrick O’Keefe aka @iFroggy. Answer to the question What are some tips for moderating a panel?

What is a good example of a Quora Question starting a debate/discussion.

See, Jason Keath @Jakrose question: Who are the best female speakers on the topic of social media?

How can I game Quora to look smart?

After you have answered a question on Quora DM your Twitter friends or email them asking them to vote up your answer so it shows up at the top. Read: Is the upvote bias towards more popular answerers a threat to quality on Quora? (It’s happening already but not recommended)

Who are the Quora experts?

No one, please don’t even go there.

Is there such thing as a Quora Ninja?

Yes, Robert Scoble, Sorry Robert. I look up to Robert a lot but Scoble will answer a Quora question with a link to his website or twitter list that may or may not even answer the question faster than a pubhubsubbub feed update. (geek joke). Only Robert can get away with that, = Quora Ninja.

What is the one Quora question/post you should read?

Welcome to Quora. Do Yourself a Favor & Slow Down by Lucretia M Pruitt

Is Quora like Twitter?

Yes, there are some similar features but very different at the same time. Don’t treat Quora like Twitter.

Is Quora like LinkedIn Answers?

Yes, but a different community at this time depending on who/what topics you are following.

Is it ok to leave links to your blog post in Quora?

Yes, but I don’t recommend it all the time. Only if your blog post answers the question or adds value to it.

Is there a Quora button for your website or blog?

Yes, see the Unofficial Quora button

Is there a Quora Google Chrome extension?

Yes, see the Quora Google Chrome extension

Is there a Quora Firefox plugin/extension?

Yes, see QuoraFox

Is there a way to embed Quora topics on your blog/ website?

1. Copy and paste (duh)
2. Quora topics have RSS feeds. Note I said topics and not actual questions:
a. Subscribe to the topics RSS feed
b. emebed feed into a RSS widget or subscribe to the topic RSS feed in a google reader folder
c. copy the widget code and embed or embed the google reader folder into blog/website
Example:

Is Quora the next big thing?

Maybe, NO ONE KNOWS, if they say they do then have them answer the following questions on Quora and email you back when they have completed.
Is Quora the next big thing after Twitter?
What will be the next big thing in social media (besides Quora)?
What are the next big things?
Will Quora be the next big thing?

What are some other blog post to learn more about Quora?

How Quora Works
Everyone’s talking about Quora
API of the Week: Quora Extension API
Ultimate Guide to using Quora for SEO Ranking on Google
How Small Businesses Can Use Quora
Can Quora drive traffic?
Frequently Asked Questions About Quora
How is Quora Able to Auto-Like Posts on Facebook?
How Quora could get interesting
6 ways journalists can use Quora as a tool for reporting, sharing ideas
Why Consumers Love Q&A Sites
How do you hyperlocalise Quora?
An SEO’s Introduction to Quora, a New Social Site
All the Quora post on TechCrunch: http://techcrunch.com/tag/quora/
All the Quora post on Mashable: http://mashable.com/tag/quora/
All the Quora post on RWW: http://www.readwriteweb.com/tag/quora

Is there a dedicated blog all about Quora?

Yes, it’s called Quora Town

Is there a mock site about unanswered questions on Quora?

Yes, it’s called Cwora.

What are other question and answer sites like Quora?

http://stackoverflow.com
http://yoomoot.com
http://www.chacha.com
http://www.mahalo.com
http://answers.onstartups.com
http://news.ycombinator.com

What WordPress themes can you use to create your own Quora / questions and answers site?

AskIt WordPress Theme
Answers WordPress Theme
Instant Q&A WordPress Theme
Themeflicks WordPress Theme

What to be cautious about using Quora?

Bubble talk! The tech/social media bubble telling you why and how you should use Quora.

Is Wayne Sutton on Quora?
Yes at: http://www.quora.com/Wayne-Sutton

Why my Quora profile url is Wayne-Sutton and not WayneSutton?
Because I created my Quora profile with Facebook when Quora was still in private beta and Quora won’t change it.

Source: Quora.

Any questions?

As we progress into 2011 let’s try to not only to make the social media needle move but create conversations and strategies around campaigns that build relationships with influencers that can be champions to your brand by curating content to their social graph while influencing others online. Got it? With that being said here are 27 ½ ways how to become a social media expert rockstar ninja in 2011.

1. Make a list of how much Whuffie you have. If you don’t know what Whuffie is, then you just lost your ninja skills.

2. Email and/or tweet to Peter Shankman about how much klout you have and that you should be on his party list for next year.

3. Have a twitter debate with Olivier Blanchard aka @thebrandbuilder about Social Media ROI and that no one can prove the ROI of social media.

4. Start a video blog reviewing every social media/twitter book.

5. Get a job at the DachisGroup

6. Attend SXSW collect three new foursquare badges, join two whrrl societies, win a free Taco with Gowalla and take a picture of yourself with every social media rock star you see and blog about meeting them.

7. Have a Klout score widget on your blog.

8. Read Kristina Halvorson Content strategy book then host a webinar on content strategy

9. Host a webinar about how to get more connections on Linkedin.

10. Use dlvr.it or twitterfeed to have your Twitter account auto tweet every Mashable post.

11. Use only the free tools for social media measuring/monitoring.

12. Put social media rockstar in your twitter bio. That makes you a ninja.

13. Attend 3 conferences and have at least 10 guest post on other social media blogs by February 14 or no valentine’s day badge for you.

14. Create your own iPhone app that just feeds your blog post and twitter feed.

15. Publish an ebook about how to get more followers and likes on Facebook then call it the social media evolution revolution.

16. Take a picture with Pete Cashmore, king of social media.

17. Leave 100 comments on Chrisbrogan.com

18. Have a Klout score of at least 10

19. Reply back to @cnmoody on Twitter with a #TWSS hashtag. If you don’t know what #TWSS stands for Google it.

20. Qualify for Chris Kieff 9 Point Social Media Expert Evaluation (good luck)

21. When speaking about social media don’t call it social media but call it social intelligence business relationship brand monitoring solutions. Anything but social media marketing.

22. Create infographics about social media

23. Leave a comment on The Anti Social Media Blog about why he should use social media…. ( I dare you)

24. Start your own social media networking group on meetup.com then turn it into a conference with the same name and charge a $599.00 attendances fee

25. Start your own paid email newsletter using tinyletter.com or letter.ly on social media email marketing 101

26. You must own an iPhone or an Android powered smartphone … period!

27. Have updated profiles on the following sites: about.me, qwerly.com, threewords.me , endor.se and facto.me. If you don’t, you will never succeed in personal branding.

.5 Have a debate on Quora about who are the real social media experts.

Bonus:You must live in New York, California, Boston, or Austin, TX and earn the “guru” badge on foursquare.

Good luck and one more thing. This post was to go live before 2011 and…. #joke

Have a great 2011!

You can’t leave a comment on this blog post until you have done all 27 ½ items.

[Source: Cisco]

From the Cisco post

The moral of the story? If you are using social media for business,
Your updates, uploads and tweets will need to really stand out to be heard and seen.
Your tags need to be intuitive to web users. You need to tag your content using THEIR language to help them quickly discover and locate it.
Keeping an eye on what people are saying about you is a must. Information on the web spreads faster and to more people than ever before.
Credits: Many thanks to Dennis Mancini (@snapini) of Cisco for the cool visual.

I don’t know how you could but if you missed any of the social media news of 2010 the team at MindJumpers created The Year of Social Media 2010 [infographic].

via MindJumpers

From the infographic was your favorite social media story of 2010?

About Postling grom Crunchbase:

Postling is a tool that helps small businesses face the daunting task of social media marketing. Brought to you by the founders of Etsy.com, Postling lets users publish content simultaneously to the major social media platforms, including blogs, Twitter, and Facebook. In addition, users can read and respond to comments left by readers.

You can learn more about social media trends in my monthly email newsletter.

To help you with content marketing the Jess3 team has created the content marketing infographic for a visualization of what tools are available.



Tip:eloqua

Do you have a content strategy or a content marketing strategy for your company or blog?

The guys at Flowtown created a funny but great infographic called the Evolution of The Blogger.

Flowtown – Social Media Marketing Application

What type of blogger are you?

After seeing a tweet from @JessicaRMurray I decided to read the post by Todd Van Hoosear on the Social Media Club website which makes some goods points about the Digital Death campaign. Here’s an excerpt:

These celebrities overestimated the value of a day’s worth of twitter. But more than that, they overestimated the impact their absence would have on their audience, which seems to be rather small. The conversation moves on, whether you’re in it or not.

Todd is right, going “dead” or silent using Twitter and Facebook to help raise money or awareness was not a good idea in my opinion. I wouldn’t put the blame on the celebrities overestimating the value of using Twitter or Facebook though, but maybe the organizer or their PR firm or agency who came up with the idea. I’m sure they figured that with over 10 million Twitter followers and Facebook friends combined they would raised one million dollars on December 1 and it would make for a good press/PR story but now it may be an even bigger story that it may take a week for some of the world’s most popular celebrities to raise one million dollars for World AIDS day. Also it’s not like the Digital Death campaign didn’t recieve a lot of press/media coverage. Just do a Google Blog search and you’ll see that when the campaign started everyone was blogging about it, from tech blogs, major media outlets and various social media sites. But I hope this is a lesson or a reminder. It’s something social media 101, unless you’re having an I’m addicted to Twitter and Facebook day, if you want to use Twitter and Facebook as a way to help raise money for a good cause it’s all about “engagement, outreach, relationships, and content message. But if you’re silent or “dead” how are the celebrities going to use their social media presence to help raise money? Yes, I know their’s more to social media outside of Twitter and Facebook and I have not looked to see if the celebrities are posting videos, writing blog post, sending email newsletters or using their other media outlets to help raise money but the focus around the Digital Death campaign is they are not using Twitter and Facebook.

As I write this blog post thinking about what I would have done differently, I’m thinking two ways. One being to have a 24 hour celebrity web-a-thon giving each celebrity and hour to perform or live Q & A reaching out to their fans for donations. I know it’s old school but it works. The other would be something using a location-based or web-based platform and matching check-ins to donations. For example I’m using the One True Fan bar on this site and they could have encourage people to check into the http://buylife.org/ site and share with their social graph and tie a donations to check-ins.

Not to criticized without doing my little part. For World AIDS Day, I changed my avatar on Twitter and Facebook to the World AIDS Day badge and sent out a few tweets with information how to help. For a previous World AIDS day, I went and got an AIDS test and posted photos on flickr. Regardless, hats off Keep a Child Alive for the idea, and working with various celebrities for a great cause.

About Digital Death campaign

Starting December 1 – World AIDS Day – the world’s most followed celebrity Tweeters are sacrificing their digital lives to help save millions of real lives affected by HIV/AIDS in Africa and India.
That means no more Twitter or Facebook updates from any of them. No more knowing where they are, what they had for dinner, or what interesting things are happening in their lives. From here on out, they’re dead. Kaput. Finished.
But they don’t have to die in vain. And they don’t have to stay dead for long. Just watch their Last Tweet and Testaments, and buy their lives back.
Every single dollar helps Keep a Child Alive fight this terrible disease. And when $1,000,000 is reached, everyone will be back online and tweeting in no time.

You can donate and bring back your favorite celebrity along with supporting World AIDS Day here: http://buylife.org/

What would you have done differently using celebrities for World Aids Day instead of the Digital Death campaign?

One of the most commonly asked questions in the Internet marketing industry has to do with return on investment. Some internet marketing services can be harder to track than others. While some forms (such as PPC) are easy to track in terms of clicks, costs, and revenue, other forms are more like traditional advertising where you’re taking the time to build a brand and online presence to create sales tomorrow.

Using our handy chart below, you can see all the various forms of return on your internet marketing. While all internet marketing services positively affect each of these aspects, we have highlighted only those with the largest impact.

Are you a social media villain?

Almost exactly one year ago today Kanye West went from one of the most admired hiphop artist and somewhat well liked to one of the most hated music artist of all time in one 15 second mistake. Mr. West drunk or not, caught up in the moment or not, influence by a Amber Rose or not, taking up for his little sister Beyonce or not will forever be linked to the MTV Awards and Taylor Swift. His “imma let you finish” became an instant internet meme and affected Kanye’s music sales, plans for a clothing line and future concert tours. Right after Kanye West made the mistake of interrupting Taylor Swift I wrote blog post titled MTV’s biggest dot: Could you fix Kanye West’s personal brand problem? were I list 7 suggestions.

Now we’re hours away from the one year anniversary of Kanye’s mistake at the MTV Video Music Awards in 2009 and Kanye is schedule to preform this year during the 2010 awards. Some have said they’re tired of Kanye West and just want to move on but with Kanye’s recent use of “social media” from Twitter, Ustream and even on website I believe we’re going to see a lot more of Kanye in the next few days. Let’s take a look at how Kanye West uses social media, along with other offline events to “almost” restore his brand.

1. Kanye West preforms at Facebook HQ

2. Kanye West joins Twitter and share his life after the 2009 MTV Video Music Awards and apologize to Taylor Swift. See a more detailed blog about Kanye’s tweets here via Techcrunch.

3. Kanye gives away free music via his website but you must enter your email address to download. (email marketing). He tweets the new song every Friday.

4. Kanye launches Ustream.TV channel (http://www.ustream.tv/KanyeWest) and talks with fans about his upcoming album.

5. The Kanye West blog: http://kanyewest.com/blog/
A few weeks ago Kanye was using his blog to list free music and show fan made videos. Now it’s under construction. I’m thinking we’ll see a new Kanye West blog launched tonight or tomorrow after the MTV Video Music awards.

6. Kanye West Power song used for the theme music of the Facebook Movie trailer called the Social Network.

7. Kanye West releases still motion Power video on Youtube and now has over 9,901,604 views.

Questions:

For those of you who follow me on twitter know I’m a “vampire” fan if you can ever be such a thing and I have this made up term I use when staying up late at night working on projects between 10:00 P.M. and 2:00 A.M. It’s called #vampiremode. Last year I created a slideshare presentation called How “vampires use social media” just for fun comparing the “lifestyle” or for a better word, behavior of vampires and to social media. With the release of the vampires suck movie and the awesome ultimate vampire inforgraphic, I thought it would be a good idea to re-post it. Take a look below at the How Vampires Use Social Media presentation, the Who Is the Ultimate Vampire? InfoGraphic and the movie trailer for Vampires Suck.

How Vampires Use Social Media Presentation

InfoGraphic: Who Is the Ultimate Vampire?

Via: Yahoo Movies

Vampires Suck Movie Trailer

Are Vampires no longer cool? Did you go see the Vampire Suck movie over the weekend or planning to see it?

Jay Dolan, founder, editor, and blogger for The Anti-Social Media

I want you to know a secret: I love social media. When I started The Anti-Social Media, @TheAntiMedia, I choose the name to be different and controversial, not because I have a deep-seated hatred of the social web. I figured the strong title would grab people’s attention and draw them in. It worked. Then Wayne Sutton asked me this question:

Does the world really need an Anti-Social Media?

My little angry blogging bubble popped. Do we need someone to stop and say “This is wrong. Do it this way.” or “This website sucks. Use this one instead.” and even “Do your connections matter?”

I got back from my first vacation since I started my The Anti-Social Media blog, and I can firmly say yes, the world needs an anti-social media.

For all the good that comes from social media, there is an insane amount of crap produced. It’s like owning a car. As awesome as it is to drive around wherever you need to, you still are producing a ton of pollutants by driving it around.

Social media boils down to two things: Information and Entertainment. Amuse or enlighten. If you’re not doing that and being relevant to those who connect with you, what’s the point?

There is so much stuff out there to read and absorb, someone needs to be there to say, “Get your act together.” and “Stop saying, ‘Good Morning!’ every time you get on Twitter before 8 am.” We can use this technology for so much more than the next big marketing campaign or complaining about the terrible barista at Starbucks. We should be better than that.

The world needs an Anti-Social Media if only to make us step away for a moment, so when we look back we can see with much more clarity. There needs to be someone who makes us value each connection rather than jut build a larger and larger number.

On a web that constantly becomes more connected, I’m glad to be the voice of dissent that makes each connection worthwhile. If having my few friends who matter to me makes me anti-social, then I don’t want to know how your 1,000 friends make you social.

Connect with only people who matter to you. Make your content matter. Make sure you inform or entertain. Your numbers may not be as high, and you may seem like a weirdo on your social networks, but being anti-social to the masses will make the handful of connections you keep much more worthwhile.

The question I have for some is why do you want to speak at social media or tech conferences? To show everyone how smart you are? To help build your speaking resume? To get paid for sharing your knowledge? Regardless of what reason you may want to speak at a social media or technology conference, it’s not as easy as some may think. Here’s a list of 12 challenges for social media / technology conference speakers

1. New unique content
The last thing someone wants to hear after paying to hear you speak is a bunch of case studies that you have read from your favorite social media guide that the rest of the world is reading. When speaking at conference be prepared to come with new unique content or at least be entertaining enough so attendees can say they enjoyed your presentation.

2. Peer pressure / expectations
Don’t let the conference organizers over hype you or your presentation. When your times to give your talk the expectations may be to high and the audience is expecting you to wow them with social media case studies and shiny tools that most have heard before.

3. Adding value
This should be goal for every speaker or panelist who would like to speak at a social media conference or any event. Ask yourself how are you adding value to the conference.

4. Real-time critics and feedback
When speaking at social media conferences 9 out 10 times you can guarantee there’s a hashtag or twitter steam flowing somewhere in the background. If you’re sucking or crashing, expect a few angry/mean tweets to show-up in real-time. If you have the opportunity to see the stream during your talk, my advice is get through your presentation as fast as you can, jump to Q&A and write a blog post about what happen afterwards. Also you can try to either send a direct message or public reply to your critics. Most are fine with just a one way bashing but if you approach them some will go as far as deleting tweets or just apologizing.

5. Being always on
It doesn’t matter if you’re sick or had a recent death in the family. iIf you’re speaker at conferences and built a brand for yourself people will approach you and expect you to be same bubble of social media joy you are online. For example, I’m still upset about how I treated a Sony exec who approached me at SXSW 2010 while I was tired as heck. Not from drinking because I don’t drink but just tired. I was headed to the bloggers lounge and she walked over to me and said hello. I wasn’t mean or anything but was a little down. I don’t think she was too happy with my reactions and since then I have yet to hear from here even after reaching out a few times. If you’re reading this… I’m sorry.

6. Your quotes last forever
Be careful what you tweet is a motto of mine but when speaking at conferences be careful what you say. Audience attendees are trigger happy with their laptops and smart-phones ready to tweet a quote from your session. If you say the wrong thing it could be game over and stored in Google and quoted in recap blog post for life.

7. Getting paid for your knowledge
With so many people talking about social media today you’ll think everyone is an expert. The truth is there are no real experts, some just have more experience than others. Regardless you’ll find tons of people who are willing to speak for free at social media conference therefore set your price but be willing to negotiate.

8. Budgeting
You’re now getting paid to speak at a social media conference, your travel and hotel stay is covered. But don’t forget about food, taxi, parties and other miscellaneous charges. Especially if you travel to Las Vegas where everything cost almost as twice as much than any other location.

9. Preparation for the target audience
Make sure you ask the right questions to the conference organizer such as, who is the target audience for the event / session. Most will tell you marketers and agencies but that’s like saying everyone who’s trying to make money using twitter and facebook. If you have the opportunity, reach out to the local community for more information about the attendees if your speaking at an conference in a new city or ask the organizers for a list of companies represented from the registration list so you can be prepare your presentation for the right audience.

10. Winging it
Winging it is a term used by speakers when they wait to the last minute to prep for a talk or they’re speaking off the top of their heads. It’s something I think a few are proud to say afterwards, especially if they did nailed their talk. I’ve seen both professional speakers and newbies attempt to “wing it” but it’s not recommended. You audience deserves better if they come to hear you speak.

11. Dress code
You can almost guarantee that if you’re speaking at a social media conference someone is going to take your picture. With that being said the last thing you want is a ton of flickr photos tagged of you at various events with the same outfit on. Pull out the credit card and start shopping for your social media conference wardrobe.

So, do you still want to be a social media conference speaker?

If you’re currently a speaker what are some of the challenges that you have faced over the years?

Prior to the event David and I used @GoogleWave to collaborate on the agenda to make sure we provide value to the session. We really wanted to give the kids action items, along with showing examples of how they can use social media tools for career development / advancement.

As I prepared my presentation I didn’t want to give the general this is how to use social media media examples or case studies being the audience were kids and knowing how the session could go a few ways. It could be interactive and fun or boring or just blah. Therefore I decided to go with the somewhat fun / interesting approach and show a few opportunities I have been lucky enough to participate in that past few years due to what some would call my brand, social media/ online footprint which includes my blog here, @twitter accounts, @facebook and @linkedin profiles. Many you can see on the right sidebar.

While giving the presentation I looked at the eyes of some of the kids. Some where impressed, others were like just finish already and I think a few found it very interesting some of the places I’ve been and opportunities I’ve had because of my online presence. It also was a time of self reflection and a time of gratitude knowing that without any of my blog readers, @twitter followers, @facebook fans/likes or people who have shared any content I’ve published a lot of those opportunities may never happened. With that being said I want to say Thank you! Also a big thanks to SAS and David for for opportunity to speak.

To read a review about the SAS session see: My Summer at SAS: Social media essentials for students and new grads by @stacemiiister

Also read: The Two Most Important Words in Social Media by @JayDolan

Flickr Thank You photo by: bandita I’m not sure who is Marisa is but I thought it was a nice photo.

Have a great day!

Well fast forward two days and LeBron James has officially joined Twitter as @KingJames thanks to his friend Chris Paul who tweets as @oneandonlycp3. I was a little surprised and was hopefully thinking that @KingJames would tweet his decision just so I could say I called it but but LeBron being the business man that he is, decided to call his friends at @ESPN to host a special show on Thursday to announce if he is going to re-sign with the Cleveland @cavs or another team such as the Chicago Bulls @chicagobulls or New York Knicks @thenyknicks or the NJ Nets @netsbasketball. I’m guessing it has to be either @netsbasketball or @thenyknicks because I don’t think LeBron would have a special event if he was just going to re-sign with the @cavs. But the entire @cavs organization has gone @twitter crazy with @CavalierGirls and @CavsScreamTeam accounts, so you never know.

Although LeBron has decided not to tweet his decision, @ajv over at vaynermedia.com thinks it would be cool if LeBron followed the team on twitter to make his announcement. I’m sure @Garyvee and team would love it if @kingjames joined @netsbasketball being that @netsbasketball is a client of @vaynermedia.

One tweet that LeBron did send to his followers was to visit his website ( http://lebronjames.com ) for updates, which is something I did suggest. Although using @Twitter for making announcements sounds great and it’s a big deal for @Twitter to have @KingJames tweeting at this time in his career. LeBron decided that he could use his brand and ESPN to make his decision and raise money for the Boys and Girls Clubs of America.

Now my question is, even though working with ESPN and their sponsors may have been the easiest way to accomplish this for camp LeBron, couldn’t they have used social media to host a one hour decision show too? Think about it, a live video show with guest and kids from his camp, have people to call or text to raise money and at the end of the show LeBron would make his announcement. Also we could see LeBron actually tweeting from the live show. Just a thought….

What are your thoughts on the LeBron decision TV show idea vs him using social media to make his announcement? Are you ready for him to pick just a team already?

We’re half-way through 2010 and Social Media continues to be much discussed topic among marketing agencies, tech blogs and consultants. As I look at my twitter stream and RSS feeds I see people discusing social media now that a year or two ago were saying Twitter was a fad , thought Facebook was just for kids and the thought of using an analytics platform to measure their efforts was un heard of. Fast forward to now and many are having conversations about ROI, blogging and retweeting every single post from the popular social media blogs online. Welcome to social media….

Yes was not the best day I’ve had in my life nor was it the worse but it wasn’t one I wanted to write home to mom about either. It started off well, I was in a good mood. I responded to some emails, did some client work, wrote a blog post about my awesome NC friends who are making moves in Social Media. Then I had lunch at Golden Corral @GC_Cary with @TriOut sales manager Gregg Morris @greggvm as it was the last day for their 1/2 off check-in special. After that I had another meeting and a few places to attend.

Oh yeah, yesterday was Social Media Day, June 30 and I was planning to attend the Raleigh Social Media Day event. It was being planned by Niki Staehle @marketing_grrl. I was one of the first to sign-up to say I wanted to attend and somewhere along the line the Raleigh Social Media day event went from being a social like a lot of the other Social Media Day events to an event with presentations and was moved to Lillington, NC at ampbell University Lundy-Fetterman @campbelledu, about an 45 minute drive from Raleigh. Nevertheless I’m was planning to attend and speak to talk about location-based marketing. I was looking forward to the meetup as I’ve never been to Lillington or Campbell University before.

After I wrapped up my daytime plans, I came home to prep a little for the Social Media Day presentation. But then things started to go down hill from there. A major headache came, I wasn’t feeling well, my energy level went form an 8 to a 4. On top of that team @TriOut confirmed we were going to launch our TriOut For business platform today. I sat down for a short break and said I can do this. But after the break, I was still feeling like crap and decided to send @marketing_grrl a Facebook message saying I couldn’t attend around 5:00 P.M. The meetup started at 8:00 P.M.

It really upset me to send the message and if anyone who knows me, especially in the Raleigh, Durham, Chapel Hill area knows that I have no problem driving to a meetup whether it’s an hour away or not. I have even attended two meetups in one night before. Regardless, I didn’t attend this one or any of the other Social Media Day events. To Niki great job planning the event, from the looks of it, it was one of the most attended Social Media Day meetups in NC. I extremely apologize for not attending but the way I was feeling along with other projects, I’m not sure how well I would have done at presenting and if I would have attended, I would have did my presentation and left right afterwards.

Later in the evening before calling it a night, I checked @Twitter and read two tweets about me not attending. One was from @redmetlabox and the other from @sengland. I’m not sure if I’ve met the @redmetalbox before but I think I’ve met @sengland at a recent WordCamp. Regardless one tweet was about me not attending and having a question prepared to ask. The other was saying they were disappointed and I let them down big time. To the both of you, again I’m sorry. As I stated earlier, yesterday wasn’t the best day in the world. Maybe to many #vampiremode nights. Regardless I did not want to back out of the Social Media day event and, I was asked to attend a few more events and didn’t attend those either. If I could make it up to you both I would or just let me know.

I’m not sure what the over all expectations of the event were or how the conversations went that evening about me not attending. Regardless, it was Social Media Day so I hope everyone focused on Social Media. Either way if Campbell University would like to have an event or host a meetup to discuss Social Media, I’ll make up for it, just let me know.

To Niki Staehle @marketing_grrl great job planning the Raleigh Social Media Day meetup. I hate letting people down and not attending the meetup. Sorry that I am human.

Being that it’s social media day and the last day of June, I thought it would be a good time to update my list of 14 Social Media Professionals to watch in 2010 from the Triangle, NC that wrote back in January. From the list of social media pros, a few have made some big changes since January, some are still crushing it and there are a few additions to the list.

Here’s the updated list of social media professionals in the Triangle Area who I believe are ones to watch in 2010 at the half way mark.

UPDATE: This list is NOT ranked in any order by their social media activity, it’s just a numbered list.

1. David Thomas
Title: Social Media Manager for SAS
Twitter: @DavidBThomas
Website: http://blogs.sas.com/socialmedia/
6 month Update: Still crushing it at SAS and helped SAS launch their Social Media Analytics platform in April.

2. Nathan Gilliatt
Title: Principal, Social Target and organizer of AnalyticsCamp
Twitter: @gilliatt
Website: http://net-savvy.com/executive/
6 month Update: Still crushing it!

3. Ginny Skalski
Title: Social Media Specialist for Cree
Twitter: @ginnyskal
Website: http://ginnyskal.com/
6 month Update: Still crushing it and doing some awesome adventures in the Triangle, check out TheFarmersMarketProject.com.

4. Morgan Siem
Title: Social Media Strategist at Media Two Interactive
Twitter: @morgansiem
Website: http://www.mediatwopointoh.com/
6 month Update: Still crushing it!

5. Adam Covati
Title: CoFounder of Argyle Social and Founder of http://idek.net
Twitter: @Covati
Website: http://adamcovati.com/
6 month Update: Launched Argyle Social a social media marketing platform that helps marketers link social media efforts (blogging, Twittering, Facebooking, etc.) to business outcomes.

6. Angela Connor
Title: Author of ’18 Rules of Community Engagement.’ Online community manager and strategist at WRAL
Twitter: @communitygirl
Website: http://blog.angelaconnor.com
6 month Update: Has a new job as the Social Media Manager at @Capstrat

7. Catherine Mears
Title: Social Media Specialist at AICPA
Twitter: @catmears
Website: http://www.linkedin.com/in/catherinemears
6 month Update: Still crushing it!

8. Dan London
Title: Director of Online Marketing @ ShareFile.com
Twitter: @Danlondon
Website: http://www.dan-london.com
6 month Update: Still crushing it!

9. Phil Buckley
Title: Support Developer at McClatchy Interactive
Twitter: @1918
Website: http://www.1918.com/
6 month Update: Has a new job as the Search Marketing Manager at Sinclair Institite

10. Karlie Justus
Title: PR/ Social Media Officer with N.C. State Fair & NC Dept. of Agriculture.
Twitter: @KarlieJ
Website: http://www.karliejustus.com/
6 month Update: Launched new blog, guest post on Socialmediab2b.com and now works as Associate Account Executive at Howard, Merrell and Partners.

11. Olalah Njenga
Title: Marketing Strategist at the YellowWood Group
Twitter: @Olalah
Website: http://www.yellowwoodgroup.com
6 month Update: Wrote a book called: 37 What Were They Thinking Moments In Marketing [not an affiliate link but it should be]

12. Gregory NG
Title: VP Creative Director at Brooks Bell Interactive.
Twitter: @gregoryng
Website: http://www.followgreg.com/
6 month Update: [ Still being awesome and his online video show Freezerburns recently joined the Hungry Nation network.

13. Brian McDonald
Title: Vice President of Marketing & Social Media at SignalShare
Twitter: @bmcd67
Website: http://zen-marketing.blogspot.com
6 month Update: Still crushing it!

14. Andy Beal
Title: Founder of Trackur.com, author of Radically Transparent, editor of MarketingPilgrim.com
Twitter: @Andybeal
Website: http://www.andybeal.com
6 month Update: Relaunched Trackur with a new look and new features as a white-Labeled social Media monitoring dashboard. I’m still expecting Trackur to be purchased by the end of 2010.

15. Chris Moody
Title: Social Marketing Manager at Bandwidth.com
Twitter: @cnmoody
Website: http://www.chris-moody.com
6 month Update: Still crushing it!

New half way point additions:
16. Lisa Sullivan
Title: Copywriter & Social Media Specialist at Media Two Interactive.
Twitter: @LisaSullivan
Website: http://www.mediatwopointoh.com/

17. Cara Rousseau
Title: Director, Partnership Initiatives, The Research Triangle Park
Twitter: @CaraRousseau
Website: http://www.thertpblog.org

18. Jeffrey L. Cohen
Title: Social Media Marketing Manager at Howard, Merrell & Partners
Twitter: @jeffreylcohen
Website: http://jeffreylcohen.com
*Partner/friend was on the first list but in the friends mentions section

19. Ryan Boyles
Title: Community Manager at IBM
Twitter: @therab
Website: http://flavors.me/rab
*Partner/friend was on the first list but in the friends mentions section.

20. Jason Peck
Title: Social media manager at @eWayDirect.
Twitter: @JasonPeck
Website: http://www.jasonfpeck.com/
*Jason should have been on the list the first time but I knew he was moving so I left him off but he’s a NC alum and doing great work with eWayDirect.

21. Kipp Bodnar
Title: Inbound Marketing Manager at @HubSpot
Twitter: @kbodnar32
Website: http://socialmediab2b.com/
*As many of you know Kipp is one my good friends and partners. He recently took a job at @HubSpot and said goodbye to NC but we still claim him anyway.

22. James Wong
Title: Communications Manager at iContact
Webiste:http://www.NauticalUrge.com
*Late addition but should have been on the first list. James knows email marketing and more.

Bonus!
Jay Dolan
Title: Jay Dolan is founder, editor, and blogger for The Anti-Social Media.
Twitter: @jaydolan
Website: http://theantisocialmedia.com
*If you’re tired of social media… read this blog*

Ignite Social Media and MMI Public Relations are two companies that I didn’t mention in the first post that offer social media services in the Triangle Area. Both have a great staff and if you’re looking for more social media professional both of the companies have hired smart.

Please note, I do know all of the individuals on the list and this not a buddy list or a list by the numbers of their twitter followers or etc. It’s a list of professionals from various companies in the Triangle who I believe will have an impact locally and nationally in the social media space. If you’re on the list, don’t let me down.

As for me, at the beginning of the year I gave the agency world a try and since then I’ve left to pursue my entrepreneur dreams and now working the location-based startup @TriOut, an augmented reality company that I’ll share more about later, along with speaking engagements and offering consulting services.

It’s been a great 2010 so far and let’s hope the next six months will be awesome for everyone and more.

What are your thoughts on the list and/or who did I leave off and why? Who do you think will be on or off the list by the end of 2010?

Photo: Social Media Participation Chart by Oversocialized

Although the mall apparently had been open all night for people to start lining up at the Apple store’s front doors, I arrived at Crabtree bright and early at 5:00am, thinking that the mall wouldn’t open until 5:30am. To my surprise, we found two separate lines forming, one for those with iPhones reserved and another for those without a reservation. There were only about 50 people in the reservation line by the time we arrived at 5am, but unfortunately we found ourselves behind at least 150 others without reservations.

The lines already forming on either side of the Apple store at 5:00am

As early as it was, people were generally in good spirits and playing nice. Some were still sleeping from the overnight camp while others took the time to catch up on their laptops or iPads even though the reception and WiFi service was pretty slow. One person even brought his guitar and played it in the beach chair he brought. Everyone slowly started making friends with their neighbors in line knowing that they may be in it for the long haul.

Around 6:15am a few Apple employees brought out 10 dozen or so Dunkin Donuts to feed the early morning crowd. A good sign of things to come!

Anticipation grew as 7:00am neared. A few minutes before 7am, employees took down the black curtain that prevented us from getting a sneak peak into the preparation for all the madness that was about to ensue and the crowd cheered for the first time.

You can see how fast the donuts went!

Immediately after the curtain fell (at 7:00am on the dot), 20 or so Apple employees came rushing out of the service door, running, screaming, and high-fiving everyone in line. We were all surprised, but it seemed like a great way to get the started!

Minutes later the doors finally opened at Apple and they started letting in about 10 people from the reservation line for every 1 person in the regular line. Needless to say, the reservation line moved pretty quickly for the first few hours while us in the regular line sat in the same place (only moving perhaps a foot an hour) for those first few hours.

The beginning of the non-reservation line...not moving

But around 11am we at the middle/back of the non-reservation line started heering loud mysterious cheers from the front of our line. Ended up they were just cheering every time someone from our line got to enter the Apple store, approximately every 10-15 minutes. It was pretty motivating, to say the least. After being there for 6+ hours I think Apple realized they needed to keep us customers still in line motivated as well. They started going down the line handing out packs of pretzels and Ritz crackers, bottles of water, and then all sorts of candy just as if it were Halloween.

Apple employees handing out snacks

Not only that, but just around lunch time, Subway staff came around passing out mini ham & turkey subs! Lunch? Really? Amazing. Then more candy. Then more water. Followed by Lindt chocolate passing out those little chocolates to anyone who wanted some. In the late afternoon Bare Essentials even passed out free makeup samples to all the girls. This line wasn’t actually half bad, huh?

Subway ladies passing out free lunch!

The line was moving about 5 minutes per person in line. I calculated I wouldn’t get into the store until 4:00pm at the earliest, but I stayed optimistic that perhaps it would start moving more quickly. By 3:00 I could start feeling the finish line as there were only 40-50 people ahead of me to go. We stayed energized by our new friends that we had just gotten to know over the past 10 hours. It was as if we’d known these people for months. We were never bored, but still eager to get through the line and back to our lives.

Here we could see the end of the line ahead...

But then something amazing happened. A young man approached us in line asking how long we’d been waiting here in line (this was typical as all the regular mall-goers had been asking all day what we were

Robin Patterson (a.k.a. God for the day) of Best Buy mobile

waiting in line for). When we told him since 5am, he told us that he worked over at Best Buy mobile and had a reservation for one of the 16GB iPhones cancel and he was offering it to me. Pure luck? An act of God? Either way, I left my place in line and followed “God” to his Best Buy mobile store and promptly paid for, activated, accessorized, and left the store with my new iPhone 4 in hand.

Upon leaving the mall I walked past my new friends who were still waiting in line and showed off my new gear.

They probably waited in line for another hour. Sorry Apple, you treated me really really well for those 11 hours, but in the end Best Buy mobile man saved the day!

I told the guy who would be buying  my old phone that I would call him when I was out of the Apple store.  ”What time do you think that will be”, he asked.  I wanted to be CONSERVATIVE, so I replied, “about 9:00am.  I’m getting there at 6:45, so i can’t imagine it will take that long.”  I’m a first-class fool.

6:30am   I put my 5-year-old in the car and told her she was going with me to “pick-up my new iPhone” at the mall.  I figured she would get fidgety in the store, but we wouldn’t be there that long.  At one point, while driving to Crabtree Valley Mall in Raleigh, NC, my daughter asked, “Mommy, what is wrong?”  I told her I was anxious and had a lot to do today.  ”I just want to get in, get out, and get you to the pool with your aunt,” I said.  A few minutes later, we pulled into the mall parking lot and I looked at all the cars.  I think I said out loud, “Elin, these cars must be mall employees and the people who walk the mall when it’s too hot outside.  Surely, they can’t all be here for the new iPhone.”  Again, first-class fool.

We park and head in.  I can’t begin to articulate how I felt the first time I got a look at the crowd.  The line.  The masses.  I’ve been at Crabtree Valley Mall on Black Friday and I don’t think I’ve ever seen that many people on one floor.  I’ve been to Disney World and I’ve never seen a line that long.  I took and deep breath, tried to remain cool, and walked around the people with sleeping bags and lawn chairs.  I kept walking.  I walked some more, turned 4 corners, went down a hallway and into the food court.  I saw the end of the line and like a first-class fool, I decided to stand in it.

But then things really started looking up.  I was NOT a fool.  I had reserved my iPhone and I was in the correct line.  Clearly, there were only 200 people in this line.  Whew!  My goal of 9:00am was totally do-able.  Smile on face, cocky swagger kicking in.

8:40 am   After a visit from my husband with Starbucks in one hand and muffin the other, I was feeling pretty refreshed.  My daughter was chill and I spotted two other moms who had brought their kids.  I wasn’t the worst mom on the planet…just 3rd or 4th.  It was going a little slower than I thought, but I knew there were only 150 people in front of me MAX and the line seemed to be moving.

9:30am  I turned the corner and saw the store!  I was in!  Maybe 75 people in front of me.  I was golden.

9:31am  A lovely mall security officer came over and said, “we are going to move this line.  We need to get the food court cleared for lunch.”  There were 400 people behind me at this point, so this made sense.  We were herded like techy-nerd cattle and put into a line down the hallway.  This is when my day was officially over.  I realized the line I was in, which had put me close to the entrance of the store, actually wrapped around the perimeter of the mall.  There were 700 people IN FRONT of me.  Good-bye, day.

10:00am  My 5-year-old was a little antsy, so I called Aunt Bonnie to give her some relief. ” PLEASE come and pick her up and take her to the pool!”

10:30am  Aunt Bonnie arrives and my daughter informs me she would like to stay.  She wants to see what’s behind those glass doors.  No way is she missing out.  This is actually the most compelling part of the day.  The excitement in the mall was energizing.  These 2000 people were all pumped.  We were surrounded by strangers but we all had something in common.  The converstation for the last 3 hours was high def camera, retina screens, mult-tasking and apps.  It was a mall full of people, some who had been since 10pm the night before, some who were just hanging with friends.  But we were wired from the thrill of the hunt because we were all early-adapters.  My daughter had picked up on this energy, and she wasn’t leaving.

11:00am  Did I mention energy?  I introduced my daughter to suicide drills, which she executed beautifully in front of Bath and Body Works.

11:30am  Food!  Apple paid for a truck load of subs.

12:30pm  My iPhone 3GS is dead.  This is the worse possible thing that could have happened.  No more tweeting.  No more facebook.  This day was going downhill fast.

12:30pm – 1:59pm  This was not pretty.  It was still exciting and the energy was great, but I was starting to smell and my neighbors were realizing I skipped my usual hygiene routine this morning (remember, I was going to be home by 9…I would bathe then).  We were all hungry and thirsty.  We weren’t talking as much.  The guys at the Brookstone store were laughing at us.  Actually, everyone  not involved in this insanity were laughing.  They walked by the nerds behind the rope lines and pointed.  ”No way” and “idiots” was overheard many times.  I was starting to agree.

2:00pm  I’m the next in line to enter the store.  I’m feeling good.  The lighted apple icon above me was almost a symbol of success.  The finish line.  At this point, it’s not about the phone, it’s about finishing this marathon.

2:05pm  I’m in the store.  I can’t believe it.  My sister (Aunt Bonnie) is documenting on her iPhone.  The employees were calm, the store was comfortable, the police officers out front didn’t arrest my sister for photographing an Apple store.  But most importantly, I had my new iPhone.  I did not have a shower, and that was the next thing on my list.  I know my line mates were thinking the same thing (about me, not them).

2:45pm  Home.  Synced.  My daughter starving.  My voicemail going nuts.  I don’t care.  I stood in line for 7 hours to get a phone I could have ordered and had shipped to my house by mid-July.  But I’m a first-class fool.  A first-class fool with a sweet iPhone.

Here are a few of the social media channels from the Mustang 1000 Lap Challenge event.

https://www.mustang1000lapchallenge.com
https://twitter.com/FordRacing
http://www.facebook.com/fordmustang
http://www.facebook.com/OfficialFordRacing
http://www.youtube.com/user/FordRacingInsideOval
http://Twitter.com/fordmustang

Jean Sexton @injeanius

The goal of the blogger outreach was to increase exposure to new audiences through the use of social media and build relationships with those invited as the Biltmore estate looks as using new tools and online technology to increase visitation and over all sales. During our visit we had a full schedule and had the opportunity to stay in the Inn on Biltmore hotel that was open in 2001. Outside of the Biltmore House tour itself some of the other scheduled plans for the bloggers were:
Blogger group dinner at Cedric’s (one of their newly open restaurants)
Biltmore House (audio tour) & Gardens
Biltmore House “Friends & Family” Specialty Tour w/Museum Services
Biltmore House Rooftop Specialty Tour for spouse/family members
Dinner at the Bistro restaurant
Land Rover Driving Experience Adventure
Lunch at the Corner Kitchen in Biltmore Village

The overall experience at the Biltmore Estate was wonderful, full of learning, history, walking, relaxation and lots of great food, especially the desserts. I learned a lot about George Vanderbilt who is the mastermind behind the famous Biltmore House, along with his vision for the house as a get away from the fast city life and how the Biltmore Estate continues to be a thriving business today. I won’t go into too much detail as I encourage you to plan a trip to Biltmore Estate if you have the opportunity. Tip, if you visit the house make sure you go on the audio tour as you’ll learn a lot more.

After one of the dinners, I had a chance to talk with Kathleen Mosher, Director of Communications of the Biltmore Estate about how they could use social media with their existing marketing efforts. We discussed the some of the challenges and opportunities the Biltmore has, as the world continues to move to become more digital/gadget friendly but yet socially connected online. Here are some of the “nuggets” from the conversation.

Some of the Challenges and Opportunities of the Biltmore House using social media/new technology for marketing:

• The Biltmore House goal is to get people to drive and visit the Biltmore house along with promote and sell their other services.
• You can not take pictures or videos inside the house
• Connect and build a relationship with the hundreds of visitors they have each day
• Find a way to tell more about the history and experience of the Biltmore House online without feeling as though you could lose sales.
• Training hundreds of employees if you implement more digital interactions and tools
• Measuring/tracking content from visitors online
• Implementing an offline social marketing plan to build a relationship with visitors online for pre and post engagement
• Find a way to connect with visitors while they’re on the property such as twitter followers and/or Facebook fans/likes, flickr friends, etc
• Encourage more user generated content and feature it on Biltmore more online properties
• Create self guided mobile tours via mobile applications and/or QR/Bar-codes

After leaving the Biltmore Estate, we had the opportunity to meet Sherida Buchanan @Foodtopia at the Corner Kitchen @CornerKitchen for lunch. During lunch we were treated to some of the best pork chops and chocolate I’ve ever tasted and learned about the http://www.brewscruise.com/in Asheville (#idontdrink). We were also told about how awesome Asheville is and how they support one another by purchasing food from local vendors.

Regardless of what happens next or the results from the Biltmore blogger outreach I believe they’re on the right track and I’m excited to see what they do next online and offline. To Jean, the entire staff from the communications department to the tour guides, thank you for an awesome experience.

FYI I took over 100 photos during the three day venture and you can see them below via flickr.

The Biltmore Company
828-225-6709
www.biltmore.com
www.facebook.com/biltmore
www.twitter.com/BiltmoreEstate
The Biltmore House on TriOut

*Disclosure: “Biltmore invited me as their guest. My travel, admission and other expenses will be covered.”

How would you like to see the Biltmore Estate use social media?

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Location:Walnut St,Cary,United States

• There are 3 @TriOut business cards on the wall at Cafe Helios.
• One of the cards has a Stickybits barcode sticker on it.
• Scan it with either the Stickybits iPhone or Android app (I think red laser  app works too).
• After you scan it, look at the comments.
• There will be instructions on it for you win a free coffee or espresso or anything up to $3.00 at Cafe Helios.

You can download the Stickybits iPhone app or Andriod app here: [iPhone ] [Andriod]

Note: Stickybits or Cafe Helios or TriOut are NOT sponsoring this contest. It’s just something I wanted to TriOut

Good luck and let me know your thoughts about Stickybits and the idea in the comments.

“Businesses have begun to recognize the value of these location-based games, because users are broadcasting information about the businesses to all of their online friends. When users check in on Foursquare, they have the option to send that information to: 1) their Foursquare friends, 2) their Facebook friends, 3) their Twitter friends or 4) all of the above. That in itself is a goldmine for businesses.”

There are now 11 awesome comments to the post along with a few TriOut mentions, match that with the fact we’re working with a few agencies and businesses looking to take advantage of location based marketing, along with a tweet reminder from Morgan, I decided to leave a comment addressing a few topics discussed. Below are my thoughts on the comments and Morgan’s post on “Rewarding Foursquare Mayors Nationwide”

The challenges of training employees for check-in promotions
Morgan awesome post and you know I understand about the challenges of starting a location promotion for businesses. I meet Timothy Frommer, Starbucks Online Category Manger a few weeks ago at the SAS Global Forum and asked him about the very issues of training employees on national marketing campaigns. His answer? It’s tough but it starts from the corporate head then down to the retail stores with a lot of training. Here’s a link to the video where Tim was on the Social media round-table with apparel retailer panel at the SAS Global Forum.

With that being said Morgan I think Starbucks biggest advantages are taking risk, hiring smart, planning, training well and being able to upgrade their POS software and/or having a good one for workers to understand and use.

What happened to the text message/SMS location-based marketing?
Dan: Thanks for the plug, I was a little surprised by the questions in Charlotte at Search Exchange from my location-based marketing measuring the check-ins talk. I feel as thought the location industry in terms of marketing will be different than others because of how many services there are now and launching every day along with the privacy concerns. You mentioned the capability of receiving a SMS when walking by stores and that no business has taken that approach. Well get ready the because it’s back, so be careful when you’re “checking out” and they ask for your phone number. I think timing was off and technology wasn’t ready a few years ago but a company called Placecast is now offering the service with a few national brands called “Shop Alerts”. It uses your mobile phone GPS or cell tower to alert you when you’re near a brand’s location and can send you an instant SMS promotion. All opt-in of course… Dan can I have your phone number please?

Should employees check-in on the job?
Lisa: Good suggestions and you’re right depending on the location/job and if a company is has a check-in promotion they should advise there employees not to check-in. Maybe we’ll start seeing a no-check rule add to companies social media policy soon. But I think it will be a case by case situation for now and most location-based platforms have not configured or created a “mark user profile employee” option or a GPS at work during this time don’t count my check-in option but it’s something to think about. Yes, the Triangle, NC community is just awesome and very check-in “Geo” aware.

Why should the Mayor have all the fun? I thought every customer was important…
Jay, Phil & Brian: When TriOut works with businesses/agencies, we usually don’t suggest a “mayor” or (key-holder for TriOut) promotion. Although those have there value we believe every customer who checks in at a location is important and should/could be rewarded for doing so. I’m aware of the changing algorithm for the other platforms but still I hear people say, “I’ll never be the mayor” and what’s the value of checking in all the time. People want instant gratification for checking in. Checking in is work, it’s opt-in and a check-in is “almost” like clicking on a Facebook like button but with more meaning. A check-in can say to a business I’m here and I like your venue but then comes the interaction part when a business can reward any user for checking in. Also businesses must monitor check-ins for customer support to keep those users returning, posting positive content about the business regardless if they’re the mayor or not. Should only the mayor get rewarded for doing so? I don’t think so.

A business might have a mayor with a influence of 10 people and the customer who visits a location once every two weeks who has an influence of 1000. I know most business would like to know who has the higher influence when they check-in but with location-bases marketing its safer and smarter to focus on providing good customer service to any user who checks in at your location not just the frequent visitor.

Measuring the ROI of a location-based marketing/check-ins for users and businesses.
Bobby & Morgan: Thanks for the TriOut plug: If you think the conversation about the ROI of social media is a mess wait until more conversations on the ROI of a location-based marketing/promotions or check-ins start to heat up. Also I’m guessing there’s some data/user agreement for the Starbucks promotion because there has to has to be a way to measure the success or failure of their location check-in special. That’s where our TriOut For Businesses (TFB) check-in analytics dashboard comes into play. We want to provide a way for business to see the value in having a location-based promotion and help business offer value to their customers for checking in. That way it’s a win for both the business and the customer. Right now I feel as though some businesses are trying to do push guess marketing in the location industry without having the right conversations about measuring a location-based promotion. Our goal with TriOut is to have those conversations. It has been great to work with both Morgan (Media Two) and Bobby (MMI Public Relations) on their clients efforts to make sure they’re current check-in promotions are a success. Fingers crosses!

Is it about the LBS platforms or how can businesses engage better with their customers among many opportunities of location based marketing?
We’re just getting started with location-based marketing and Facebook, Google and more are launching something new every day. I don’t believe one location platform/social network is going to be the end all solution especially for small niche business but it will be more about how businesses can take advantage of location-based marketing across the board with their existing marketing efforts using various platforms learning more about their current customers to offer target location based check in specials.

My 2cents. If you’re wondering who Jay @jaydolan , Lisa @lisasullivan , Phil @1918 , Brain @bmcd67 , Bobby @bobbymcdonald . are read the blog post that lead to the comment that lead to this blog post here: Rewarding Foursquare Mayors Nationwide by Morgan.

What are you thoughts on the location based industry and how can businesses provide more value to customers using location based services?

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http://www.flickr.com/photos/deanmeyers/ / CC BY 2.0

As some of you may know we launched a location based services startup called TriOut in Febarury 2010. Looking back from my years of attending and planning startup weekend events using social media tools to launch a startup of any kind can be great for marketing, planning, customer support and more.

Although TriOut is three months old, Lawrence Ingraham @LawPower (TriOut Founder) started working on TriOut in October of 2009. Fast forward three months later, even though we still have a long way to go I wanted to look back at how we used social media tools to launch and manage TriOut at it’s current state.

External Communication:
Phonebooth (Started with Google Voice, then switch to Phonebooth)

Project Management Documentation:

• Google Wave
• Google Docs

Internal Communication:

• Twitter
• Google Wave
• Gmail
• Skype
• SMS

Billing:

• Paypal

Customer Support:

• Get Satisfaction: http://getsatisfaction.com/triout
• Twitter

Email Marketing:

• Google Spreadsheet Sign-up Form
• Blue Sky Factory

Blogging:

• WordPress: http://tri-out.com/blog/
• Disqus Comment platform

File Transfer and storage:

• DropBox
• GoogleWave

Widgets:

• Custom Built http://trioutnc.com/u/widgets.php

Brand Awareness/Marketing

• Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/user/TriOutapp
• Vimeo: http://vimeo.com/triout
• Facebook Fanpage: http://www.facebook.com/TriOutapp
• Google Buzz: http://www.google.com/profiles/trioutapp (new)
• Twitter Accounts: TriOut & TriOut4Biz (New)
• Flick: http://www.flickr.com/photos/triout

Measuring/Monitoring

• Pre-launch (beta sign-up form)
• New user registration (custom)
• Google Analytics
• Tweets: RowFeeder & Searchtastic
• Google Alerts
• Check-ins: Custom Built
• iPhone app intsalls/downloads – Apple
• Mobile Web check-ins – Custom

To Implement:
Highrise for CRM (customer relationship management)
Social Media Measuring platform: Either or both: Trackur and Argyle Social (supporting local NC startups!)

Results:
While I can’t get into how many users we have at the moment here’s some traffic and measurable items from October 2009 to now.

• @TriOut twitter account: 610 followers, listed 77 times
• Facebook Fanpage: 259 fans/likes
• Blog Subscribers:
• Users to date: N/A
• October 2009 35 Beta testers
• February 2010: 200 Beta Testers
• May 2010: Reaching a landmark

Google Analytics chart Visitors Overview from February launch to May 12:

Compete.com unique visitors chart from February to March

* Disclaimer: Phonebooth is a client and I’m a partner with TriOut.

As TriOut continues to grow we’re going to keep a close eye on what works in terms of marketing, communications and productivity.
What online tools do you use to manage your startup or business?

Do you think social media is a fad? Do you just hate the words “Social Media” ? Are you having conversations about should I start a blog or have a Facebook fan page or a have Twitter account? Are you tired of hearing about Social Media? If you see another tweet about social media you’re going to scream? Are you ready to be the next great social media consultant? Are you having trouble proving the ROI in social media? Do you want to show brands how to tweet?  If you answered yes to at least one of the questions above, then you need to watch Erik Qualman author of Socialnomics version two of the Social Media Revolution video on Youtube. Missed it? Looking for some good data for your clients? Take a look at the video below.

From the YouTube description:

Social Media Revolution 2 is a refresh of the original video with new and updated social media & mobile statistics that are hard to ignore. Based on the book Socialnomics by Erik Qualman.

A few stats from the video:

• There are over 200,000,000 Blogs
• Only 18% of traditional TV campaigns generate a positive ROI
• 60 millions status updates happen on Facebook daily
• The ROI of social media is that your business will still exist in 5 years

See the entire list of stats here: Social Media Revolution 2 (Refresh)

Just in case your new to social media and you didn’t see the original Social Media Revolution video, take a look.

So….. Do you think social media is a fad?

*Disclaimer: To my knowledge no tweets or status updates were harmed while recording the video and Erik did not send me any direct messages to blog about his book or videos.

It was reported earlier that Facebook started sending some businesses window decals to Facebook fan page administrators to place in a viewable area. Ironically a few weeks ago someone from a restaurant downtown Raleigh had walked into the office asking where he could have some made. I’m not sure if he received one of the Facebook fan page window decals being the letter stated it was only  being mailed to a few selected businesses.

Today I was able to read  the letters but this one wasn’t sent to a  business but to a local university. It’s good to see Facebook not only sending window decals to businesses but to colleges too being that’s where they started at. The letter included most of the same information sent to business including a $25 in credits for a Facebook Ad. The letter also had this message from their Director of Product Marketing;

“Our mission at Facebook is to help people share and make the world more open and connected. To that end, you are welcome to share your Coupon Code with up to one friend or colleague. Thank You for using Facebook pages to connect with your customers!”

If you’re thinking, doesn’t this sound familiar? Then yes, both Google and Yelp have mailed out window decals / stickers for businesses to display. Also now Foursquare provides businesses with window decals to show mayor specials and promote check-ins. Google has even mailed out Google Adwords coupons on Valentines day. Here’s what the Google and Yelp window decals look like.
Google:

Yelp:

Now the real question. With Facebook receiving a little “I’m closing my account” due to privacy backlash along with Yelp, Foursquare and Google mailing out window decals too, will you stick it if you receive one?  Let me know why or why not in the comments.

Last week we met with MMI Public relations to discuss location-based marketing opportunities for their client Golden Corral Cary, NC. We discussed and demoed TriOut for business and ways for Golden Corral to use social media and other location-based services to make sure they reach their target audience and participation goals. Today MMI announced Golden Corral’s check-in contest and kick off event. Here are the details.

Event:
Want to eat for free? The first 50 people to RSVP will eat for free! RSVP here -> http://gccroundup.eventbrite.com/
Join Golden Corral at the Cary location on May 12 from 6pm – 8pm for some Foursquare, TriOut and Gowalla fun!

Check-in Contest:

• The promotion runs from May 12 – June 16, 2010.
• Please show your phone’s “check in” screen from any of the location based apps at the register to be eligible for a free meal and to be entered into the iPad drawing.
• The Foursquare mayor is eligible to receive one free buffet and drink per day. If the mayor chooses not to dine that day, the free meal is forfeited for the day (no roll over minutes).
• The 16GB Wi-Fi iPad winner will be selected at the end of the promotion period (week of July 12).

You can find Golden Corral Cary social media profiles here:
Twitter: @GC_Cary
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/GoldenCorralCary

We’re excited to be working with MMI and Golden Corral, Cary and looking forward to seeing everyone at the event.

• Announced Contest on Facebook to bring awareness to fan page
• Setup event registration using eventbrite to archive participates
• Tweet contest linking to Facebook page, again bringing awareness to page
• Didn’t limit location-based contest to one service to reach a wider range of users
• Created a branded unique twitter hashtag for the contest. #GCCary
• Being that it’s a location-based contest did market research to reach target audience

What are your thoughts on the contest and would you have done anything different to launch it?

*Disclaimer: I’m a partner in TriOut where I service as the  business development and marketing strategist.

Sent from my iPhone
Blog: http://socialwayne.com
Twitter: @WayneSutton
Ph: 919-816-220

Posted via email from WayneSutton.net

Today we’re pleased to announced that we have integrated both Twitter’s Anywhere and Facebook’s “Like” button on the TriOutNC.com website. To use Twitter’s Anywhere services just go a user’s profile page or a location page that has a Twitter account. Then hover your mouse over the Twitter name and a Hovercard will pop-up allowing you to follow the Twitter Name if you’re already logged into Twitter. See the examples below:

To see how the Facebook Like button works just visit any location page such as the 3Cups TriOut Page and you’ll see Facebook Like button in the details box. If your already logged into Facebook and click on the “Like” button it will show your Facebook profile icon saying you liked the location and it will also show on your Facebook wall that you “liked” the location. Examples below:

Also we added our email newsletter subscription sign-up form to the footer of the website. Previously it was only available on the blog sidebar. Now you can sign-up anywhere on the website, something I recommend you do as we have a few major announcements that we’re going to make soon.

Another update was to bring more awareness of our new mobile website m.TriOutNC.com and our presence in Apple’s iTunes app store. Therefore we added banners above the leadeboard section of the website.

Lastly we added another location where you can sign into or create your TriOut account. For example if you do a search for “coffee” in the results you see on right the following box below.

That’s it for now and we hope you like the updates. Between the changes above along with the implementation of TriOut being included into Check.In, founder/developer Lawrence Ingraham has been very busy.

Let us know what you think about the updates and thanks for the support!

*Disclaimer: I’m a partner in TriOut where I serve as the business development/marketing strategist.

Have you added either the Facebook Like button or Twitter’s Anywhere hovercard to your website?

If you have been anywhere near the internet the last few days I’m sure you have heard the story about Apple’s lost iPhone. I’m not going to go into details about it because it has already been well document all over the social web but you can read more about it here via Gizmodo “How Apple Lost the Next iPhone” But in short Gray Powell, a North Carolina State University 2006 graduate went out for drinks on his birthday and lost the next generation iPhone and the rest is pretty much been capitalized by blogosphere and Grays future with Apple is unknown at this point.

photo via Gizmodo

Today I saw a sad update on the case of the lost next generation iPhone on cnet.com were they interviewed Gray’s father saying that Gray is “devastated” and I can only image what he’s going through. Gray has the dream job that many people would die for, to work at Apple and not only work for Apple but to work in the department that test the next generation iPhones. Now with “social media” and blogs doing almost anything for traffic paying $5,000 for a lost or stolen next generation iPhone, Gray Powell name will be marked in the social web history books as the guy who went out to drink on his birthday, lost/forgot his iPhone and caused a PR media social web nightmare for Apple and an entire case study on blogs and journalism will come out of it.

So what’s next for Gray? At this point I think only Steve Jobs, Apple’s HR department and Gray knows as the world waits to see what will become of his job status with Apple. Some have said it was a simple mistake and some think for sure Gray will be fired. Regardless of what happens here are 6 ways I think Apple can fix Gray Powell’s personal brand/PR problem and look awesome by doing so.

1. Use Gray Powell in a new iPhone commercial showcasing MobileMe remote wipe/find features
2. Bring Gray Powell on stage to announce the next generation iPhone in June (rumor)
3. Record a video Q&A with Steve Jobs, Gray and the iPhone team discussing the entire situation and use that to opportunity to announce the date for the next iPhone event.
4. There’s an official Apple iTunes twitter account called @iTunesTrailers and at one time I thought @appleinc would become Apple’s official Twitter account but nothing happen. Now would be good time for Apple to enter the “social media” space and allow Gray to be that guy who manages it to talk about the life/culture of Apple. This would not only be for Twitter and Facebook but for blogs as well. Not that Apple needs any social media/marketing help but in this case I believe some sort of crisis management plan would have been a better way of handling the entire situation.
5. Let the media/bloggers have Gray Powell for interviews…hmmm
6. Send out a press releases about the entire situation and how Apple plans to prevent things like this happening again.

One or none of the suggested ideas may happen but regardless I wish Gray Powell well and I hope he has a bright future ahead of him at Apple.

*Disclaimer: I live in NC and have friends/partners who work at NC State and Apple but I have had zero contact with Gray or any of his friends or family members regarding the situation.

What would you like to see happen with the case of the missing iPhone and between Gray and Apple?

David B. Thomas @davidbthomas on Twitter who’s SAS’s social media manager is the M.C. has started discussing how the launch of the Social Media Analytics product went in Seattle, WA during SAS’s Global Forum event last week. He states there were over 3353 total tweets from 836 individuals.

Here are few photos from the event.

*Disclaimer: My company worked with SAS to plan the local event.

– Post From My iPhone

The “check in” doesn’t have to be a no-value, self promoting act. It can actually help you find places to go and people to meet. TriOut is based in the Triangle area of North Carolina; Raleigh, Durham, Chapel Hill. We’re more than just a location based service, we’re a service to our community.

We treat every user check in as a positive vote for the location you’re checking into. You wouldn’t keep going back to a place you don’t like, right? If you do, you know full well you’d give it a bad review, like the DMV or a horrible automotive shop.

Using this information, we developed a “popularity” index for locations based on the number of people who have visited, how often they visit, and what they rate the place. We can determine which restaurants in Raleigh are the most popular, which museums in Durham you should check out, etc. This is much more accurate than a simple “5 star rating” you get from other sites.

What makes this system even more valuable is when you’re looking for new places to explore. We have a “Places You’ll Probably Love” section in our search results. What this does is takes all the locations your friends have been to, calculates how popular they are with your friends, then returns places which you haven’t been in to, in order of popularity. My wife and I have used this just about every weekend to find new restaurants to try out, and the beauty is, there’s always something new to try.

We like to call it “organizing the word of mouth.” Your friends are out there going to some great places, eating at some great restaurants. Unless you catch them say it on Twitter, or have a conversation with them about it, you’ll never know. Because they check in at locations, and add photos and reviews of places they visit, we can share their impression of the location without you having to ask.

I’d say the “check in” is the most valuable technology that has popped up in the last year. Just as Twitter has become a system for communication, checking in will eventually become the way we get recommendations and find places to go. All it takes now is for more companies and developers to realize the power of it.

Guest post by Lawrence Ingraham from April 4th, 2010 on http://tri-out.com/blog

Written by: Lawrence Ingraham

Lawrence Ingraham, Founder/Lead Developer for TriOut. Follow Lawrence on Twitter. You can reach Lawrence via email at law@tri-out.com

Disclaimer: I’m a partner with TriOut a location-based startup in NC where I serve as the Business development/marketing strategist.

Posted via email from WayneSutton.net

Posted via email from WayneSutton.net

We have a serious offer for you that involves one of our most visible assets – our front windows. As you can see from the images on our website, we’ve taken a few creative liberties with them. Now it is your turn.

Here is our offer:

The four street-level windows of our prime Fayetteville Street location in downtown Raleigh are ready and waiting for your custom design to stop pedestrians in their tracks. To win our little contest, let our edgy FRAGMENT style cut through your window design, and the winner will see their vision realized within a $250 budget.

In return for your diligence, hard work and sacrifice:

You get the opportunity to have your design executed with the help of the ridiculously clever FRAGMENT team. Furthermore, you can build your portfolio, get name recognition and earn some serious street cred. (And we all know that goes a long way.)
Oh, did we mention that the winner gets a new Apple iPad? Yeah, that’s right, a real incentive to dust off your thinking cap.

So, you may ask…Who is eligible?

Our contest is open to everyone with a creative bone in their body. Students, freelance designers, art folks, the Triangle community at-large. Describe yourself. Okay, you’re eligible (as long as you are at least 18 years old).

However, you MUST do the following to get in on this sweet offer:

• Convey FRAGMENT style in a unique and original way, even if you submit multiple entries. This is a biggie.

• Submit your design(s) online by April 6, 2010 through our specially-designed entry form.

• Run wild with the rules. This is your opportunity to create a custom window display for all of downtown Raleigh to enjoy!

• Adhere to all official rules and regulations. If you think of any other jargon we forgot, please adhere to that too.

So, you may also ask…How can I submit my stuff?

You can submit your contest entry online by filling out our snazzy form, complete with your design description, and by uploading your window design mock up.

To simplify the design process, we’ve created a nifty FRAGMENT window template that you download here.

Yes, we are serious about our windows. Now, show us what you can do. All contest entries must be submitted by April 6, 2010 at 11:59 p.m. EST . You’re running out of time.

We’re at Mystic Nails Salon & Spa @mysticnailspa on twitter and the
place is amazing. It smells great and the staff are awesome! They are
really nice and asking questions about #chevysxsw contest.

Of course we asked them if they were using social media and they have
a Facebook page here:
http://www.facebook.com/pages/DIberville-MS/MYSTIC-NAILS-SALON-SPA/123315231625#!/pages/DIberville-MS/MYSTIC-NAILS-SALON-SPA/123315231625
and a Twitter account here: http://www.twitter.com/mysticnailspa

They have only a few Twitter followers and I’m not sure of their
content strategy but if you need a pedicure or manicure and are in
D’Iberville, Mississippi stop by. Oh, for a bonus they have some great
massage chairs while they serve you.

Thanks Chevrolet! http://www.twitter.com/CHEVROLET

Go team NC!

Sent from my iPhone

Web: http://Wayne-Sutton.com
@WayneSutton

Posted via email from WayneSutton.net

But little did I know I would see Mr. Steve Jobs himself walking the red carpet. Yes, the CEO of Apple walked right in front of me with a guest trying to go unnoticed on the red carpet and he almost pulled it off too. I was using one of the Kodak’s cameras to zoom in and I saw what looked liked the back of his head. Then it hit me, OMG that’s Steve Jobs! Immediately I started screaming trying to get his attention and he glanced at me out of the corner of his eye with an aww you spotted me look. Also there was security guard behind him who had a similar smirk on his face who looked at me with a yes, that’s Steve Jobs look on his face.

So before I knew it, while everyone else was yelling at Quentin Tarantino and Lenny Kravitz who was right behind Mr. Jobs I was screaming, “it’s Steve Jobs!” When I say, I was screaming, Steve Jobs I mean literally screaming. Two other red carpet friends who I just met earlier on Sunday both gave me a look and one of them said. “Why are you screaming about Steve Jobs when Quentin Tarantino is standing right there? ”

My first answer was, you know he’s the CEO of Apple right. They’re response was, yes and somewhere between seeing and screaming “It’s Steve Jobs” I snapped a far off photo of him on the red carpet with my iPhone. Then realizing that the picture may be too far off I tried to take a close up picture of Mr. Jobs with one of the Kodak cameras but it was too late. Steve Jobs vanished on the red carpet sneaking past main stream media and all of the entertainment reporters unnoticed. So I emailed the picture to my posterous site which crossed posted here on SocialWayne.com but tweeted the Posterous link.

Daniel & Carrie from the bleachers.

From there after calming down and thinking, wow I just saw Steve Jobs in real life, I was still trying to convince my red carpet bleachers friends how big of a deal it was that we just saw Steve Jobs. They brushed it off and everyone continued to take photos of other celebrities walking the red carpet. After a few minutes I checked my Twitter stream and saw that @TUAW had retweeted me, then the story was on CNet.com in which they called Apple’s PR to confirm that Steve Jobs attended the Oscars. Next I received an email from Peter Kafka senior editor of AllthingsD.com asking if he could use my photo and if I had any more information to add to the story he was working on. Soon after that, I received a few tweets that the photo was on Mashable and Apple had released a new iPad commercial during the Oscars. The rest is what you can say is history from retweets, to more blog post to even being listed on Techmeme as a source. I’ve been trying to get on Techmeme for years!

I’m not going to go into why  Steve Jobs was at the Oscars or about the iPad but even if it was for a brief second, I can say I saw Steve Jobs in real life at the Oscars and I owe it all to Kodak. Thanks Tom and Jennifer @KodakCB.

As for the media/blog frenzy here are a few of the blog post about Steve Jobs walking on the red carpet for the Oscars 2010.

1. Cnet: Steve Jobs spotted at the Oscars; iPad ad runs
2. CnnMoney.com: Steve Jobs’ big night at the Oscars
3. All Things Digital: “OMG It’s Steve Jobs! I’m the Only One Yelling at Him!”
4. Huffingtonpost.com: Steve Jobs’ Oscar Cameo: PICTURES Of Tux-Wearing Apple CEO On The Red Carpet
5. Venture Beat: Steve Jobs attends Academy Awards, Apple runs iPad commercial during the Oscars
6. Good Morning Silicon Valley: Jobs and iPad make Oscar cameos
7. theappleblog.com: Apple at the Oscars
8. Mashable: First iPad Commercial Airs During the Oscars [VIDEO]
9. Steve Jobs spotted at the Oscars; iPad ad runs
10. Thanks to Pixar, Steve Jobs Makes an Appearance at 2010 Oscars
11. The Oscars Featuring Steve Jobs and iPad Commercials
12. Market Recap: Nasdaq Composite Rises to a New 52-Week High
13. Steve Jobs Takes iPad Promotion to the Oscars
14. Apple’s iPad invasion: First stop, Hollywood
15. Steve Jobs hits the Oscars

As for the photo that started it all, here it is with one more blurry head shot of Mr. Steve Jobs.

If you had a chance to interview Steve Jobs what would you ask him?

Posted via email from WayneSutton.net

Posted via email from WayneSutton.net

Articles Trending Map (PDF link)

The highest mention day was February 5, 2010

Week 4: TweetReach

Week 3: TweetReach

via : http://tweetreach.com/

Week 2: TweetReach

via : http://tweetreach.com/

Week 1: TweetReach

Other 28 Days of Diversity Projects launched:
28 Days of Diversity in Design
28 days of black nonprofit leaders

Links to 28 Days of Diversity or about Diversity in February.

Also a special thanks to Angela Benton from BlackWeb 2.0 for cross posting the series and everyone who retweeted the post. As for what’s next? There’s been talk about a 365 Days of Diversity and more.

What would you like to see next?