Tracking the success of your social media efforts |Social Media Breakfast Madison

If you are interested in keeping up with tracking and measuring your efforts on social media you need to determine what success looks like judged by your business goals. After that, you determine what you will measure to prove it.

Have no have no clue on how to get started?  Then attend the next 2-3 months of Social Media Breakfast Madison where we will talk about tracking metrics, case studies and tools.

On April 21, 2010 at 7:30 am
Speaker: Jim Carlson – TMA+Peritus, Director of Internet Strategies

Jim has been involved in the digital world of bytes, code and pixels for over 18 years and is a member of the University of Wisconsin Business Technology Consortium. He is an expert in Search Engine Optimization, Search Engine Management and Social Media Optimization. Prior to joining TMA+Peritus, Jim held various positions with Footlocker.com and played integral roles in the e-commerce Web sites for Footlocker, Champs Sports, ESPN, the National Football League, the National Basketball Association and the United States Olympic Committee.

Jim will highlight his presentation with a case study of the social community for Lion Connects.  Lion is a business to business company providing supplies and equipment to first responders and emergency personnel. The website and social media efforts for this new community (4 weeks old) have been tracked from the beginning. Jim Carlson, SEO and Social Media Optimization Guru, will share with us what they are measuring and why along with strategy behind the community.

TMA+Peritus will be drawing two company names of attendees to do a web audit for free of your interactive space.

As always, we look forward to your attendance at this free event.  Please do your part to help promote this event by:

1. Add to your social networking site status
2. Tweet the event at least twice each day
3. Blog about the event
4. Blog about your own social media tracking efforts.
5. Email your friends, colleagues, and family
6. Bring someone to enjoy coffee with
Please RSVP on the LinkedIn Event or join our group Social Media Breakfast – Madison!

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The Art of Filming an Interview | Top One Report | In My Opinion

Image representing YouTube as depicted in Crun...
Image via CrunchBase

“First and foremost, interviews are connected to credibility. We have been trained to think that if a person is interviewed about something, then they must have a special insight into the topic about which they’re being asked. In other words, if you’re worthy of an interview, you must know what you’re talking about. And do you realize that you can interview yourself? It’s quite common to see an interview on the nightly news that only shows the interviewee, and never the person asking the questions. Sometimes you don’t even hear the questions being asked. So instead of looking right at the camera, look off to the side and pretend to be answering someone’s questions. See how that could be good for selling something?”

via The Art of Filming an Interview | Top One Report.

In my opinion

If you are thinking about doing video interviews of yourself or your clients, this is a must read article.  I myself have been doing interviews of Wisconsin businesses who are using social media using my Flip Video camera.  My intent was to find more examples of business using social media and try to document the answers to the very questions being asked of me.

Breakfast and Video

The Social Media Breakfast Madison just had a great presentation by Requisite Video on video guidelines.  We talked about how to make choices when it comes to video.   Sandy Kallio one of the attendees was nice enough to provide a good recap of the event and I have added embellishments so please check out that post here: Do It Yourself Video | Requisite Video Speaks at SMB Madison

FaceBook Fan Page Ideas

Brandyn Olson , Requisite Video talked about Requisite Video’s  Facebook fan page being more active than his Website during the recent Social Media Breakfast Madison.  He also shared his strategy to spread content over Facebook and YouTube vs. pages hidden behind pages on the company Web site.

There is a strategy of posting video to different social sites.  There is a different appreciation of the narrative that should be placed in the specific social site context.  That strategy for posting to Twitter vs. LinkedIn vs. FaceBook vs. YouTube can really help the link follow and interest by your followers.

Wendy Soucie Consulting Facebook Fan Page - Youtube tab

Wendy Soucie Consulting Facebook Fan Page - Youtube tab

Some people don’t believe that FaceBook is the best place to upload your video. The more common approach is to upload to YouTube and link to FaceBook.  It means that you friends and Fans cannot easily find those videos again from the video page.  If you are posting your videos solely to FaceBook page, you should watch your Insights and track the activity.

In testing out this premise,  I found out that you can create a tabbed page with a third party YouTube plug-in.  It seems to be working OK so far on the Wendy Soucie Consulting FaceBook page.

How to measure the impact of video

The way to get new business is through networking and social media interaction. It’s up to you to decide what success looks like and begin to track the key factors that might drive new leads and revenue. Make sure that each video has a call to action at the beginning, middle and end.

  • Track total ecosystem numbers in all social spaces
  • Ask fans questions about video
  • Track comments
  • Track links and embeds
  • Track favorites
  • Track subscriptions
  • Track views
  • Track action by using landing pages for each social site on your “home”
  • Track marketing actions with track able phone numbers.

Through YouTube, you can see how long people are watching before they leave – meaning they might miss the call to action at the end.  This might clue you in to shorten up your videos and insert a call to action in the middle of the clip.

Consider having a script for the interview, to stay on message which can really help you be more organized.

When NOT to do it yourself.

  • When you’re not sure what results you want
  • When you’re not sure what your message is,
  • When your goals are not achievable with the tools and resources you have
  • When you’re branding yourself or your company.
  • When your time is worth more than the cost to hire a professional

Consider professional help for these opportunities to make a great first impression.

Please share your video experience and stories in the comments.

 

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Blogs, websites and integration | Social Media Breakfast Madison

Are you anxious to start a blog but are not sure which site -  such as WordPress, Typepad, or blogger  – you should use?  Maybe you have business strategies that call for social media integration to your current corporate website but want to understand the best way to do it?

On November 17, 2009, the group Social Media Breakfast – Madison will be having a meetup with two very different individuals who hope to achieve the same goal.

Social Media Breakfast - Madison Meetup

Social Media Breakfast - Madison Meetup

Get you up to speed on social media integration and blogs.

As hosts, Marivic Valencia and I are fortunate to have for speakers  Preston Austin and Jeremy Falls.

What do you want to learn about blogs?

Preston hails from Madison and is one of the creators of  In My Backyard. in my backyard is a directory social site that brings freelancers and entrepreneurs together. One cool feature after you complete your profile is that it automatically posts your profile to Twitter.

Preston will be covering WordPress Blogs – How to build them right.

Preston is passionate about far reaching change in how we communicate. His strong and continuing focus remains creating tools that extend human capabilities for transparently easy creation and collaborative, richly interactive use of diverse media to communicate, teach, and explain.  He enables teams to build “stuff” to communicate, collaborate, teach, learn, and play.  His current focus is transaction cost deflation, commons strategy, and imby.info.  His Google bio reads:

I’m passionate about far reaching change in how we communicate. I seek to tap into the largely unrealized power of emerging technologies to bring that about. There is much to be done.

My interests evolve, but a strong and continuing focus remains creating tools that extend human capabilities for transparently easy creation and collaborative, richly interactive use of diverse media to communicate, teach, and explain.

I work to build teams and connect with others similarly engaged in this work. Where possible I try to extend and strengthen collaborative models for harnessing individual, small team, and small business innovators’ energy and drive in this process as I believe strongly in the efficiency and effectiveness of small groups in creating value.

Tweet Stream:

Preston's recent tweet stream

Preston's recent tweet stream

Integration of social media tools and websites

Jeremy Fall – The Undev – www.theundev.com is our other featured speaker for the morning.  Learn some best practice strategies for integration of social media onto existing websites.  Plan ahead for a new website so that you will be ready to use social media such as blogs with it.  Bring your questions and see what you can take back to work with you.

Jeremy is a problem solved and can be found fixing less than ideal situation that other less experienced programmers leave behind.  He is also Co-Owner and Developer of Conference Hubs (business conferencing and voicemail services), and Co-Owner and Developer of AudioBoard (a FaceBook application that allows people to post Audio Messages to your Feed). He’s what many would call a serial entrepreneurialist. He blogs at The Undev.

jeremyfacebook

If you happen to look up Jeremy on Facebook, try out his new Audio Message for his facebook feed.  This is an application that lets you leave a phone message that posts to your facebook wall.  Very useful.

And did I mention we have a coffee and bagel sponsor. Don’t miss this one. The date is November 17, 2009 at 8:00 AM.  Hence the coffee!

The location is Talula’s at 802 Atlas Ave Madison WI 53714.

Please register and  RSVP on the Linkedin Event – Social Media Breakfast so we have some idea of attendance.

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Madison Social Media Breakfast|Profiles and Copyright

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The Next Madison Social Media Breakfast will be held on October 2, 2009, at the University of Phoenix Campus on the Far Eastside.  The topic for the meeting will be Social Media Profiles – Why these are so important and copyright laws.

The speakers will be Wendy Soucie, covering profile building, Elizabeth Russell, covering copyright, creative commons and image use on the internet etc, and last but not least is Amy Lynn Schereck, Photographer who will be talking about head shots for use on social media and what works (or doesn’t) to convey the right perception.

Madison Social Media Breakfast is a LinkedIn group that meets for breakfast (hence the title) and discusses various topics around social media, strategy, tools, best practices, and even case studies.  Recently there are two new managers, Marivic Valencia of Valencia PR and Wendy Soucie, Wendy Soucie Consulting.  They will be taking turns organizing speakers and adjusting locations as the demand and topic requires.  If anyone has good recommendations for a steady location, that would appreciate our breakfast business as well as have a good room for us to use, please add your comments and contact info for me to followup with.

Typically its been in a a coffee shop some where in Madison WI, and more often than not close to the downtown area. However for this meeting we have adjusted the venue due to pent up demand and a few coffee shops being scared of me telling them I thought 20 or more people might descend on them at 7:30 am.  The venue is the University of Phoenix Campus at 2310 Crossroads Dr, Madison, WI  53718.

I would suggest everyone bring their own coffee to this event as no guarantees on breakfast goods just yet.

The speakers for this event:

Wendy Soucie

Wendy Soucie provides clients with strategic counsel and plan development to use and measure social media in the marketing mix. She trains clients to use social media tools through the use of webinars, group presentations and private one-on-one training customized for companies throughout Wisconsin.  She has over 30 years experience in business development, sales, marketing, customer support for the B2B market area with special focus in the manufacturing sector, technical products/services and professional services.

Wendy is a founding member and certified Social Media Consultant from the Social Media Academy, completing Social Media Business Strategy and Leadership.  She was recetly named a Black Diamond Consultant by Social Media Academy.   Soucie holds her Bachelor of Science degree in engineering from the University of Rhode Island, Kingston, Rhode Island.

Elizabeth Russell

Elizabeth T Russell is not a music teacher. She came darn close, but ended up becoming a lawyer. Suitably armed with an undergraduate degree in bassoon, she earned her law degree from New York’s Pace University School of Law, where she served as a member of the Pace Law Review. She is admitted to practice law in the states of New York, Connecticut and Wisconsin.

Following her public service, Elizabeth explored the field of arts administration. She held positions with the Albany Symphony Orchestra in Albany, NY; the Madison Repertory Theatre in Madison, WI; and Opera for the Young, a professional opera touring company. She returned to law in 2000 and opened Russell Law, providing quality representation for emerging artists and creative businesses.

Ms. Russell is the Chair of the Sports and Entertainment Law section of the State Bar of Wisconsin. She is a member of the Intellectual Property and the Entertainment, Arts and Sports Law sections of the New York State Bar Association. She currently serves on the executive board of directors of the Middleton (WI) Chamber of Commerce and on the board of the Middleton Community Fund.

Elizabeth wrote the curriculum and taught Copyright Management at Madison Media Institute in Madison, WI, and is a frequent lecturer on legal issues in the arts.

She is remarkably fluent in plain English.

Amy Lyn Schereck

When you work with Amy Lynn Schereck, not only will you come away with an amazing set of photographs, you will be surprised at how enjoyable the experience is!

Amy’s casual, approachable style makes clients feel at ease. That’s because she listens to you to help bring your vision to life. Whether it’s a commercial shoot, and event or a wedding, Amy excels at bringing out the personality in her subjects and capturing a unique perspective.

Though she’s originally from the midwest, Amy spent 22 years living in California. At age 11, she bought her first camera at a yard sale for a whopping 50 cents. Photography remained a hobby until she returned to Wisconsin in 2001. With great encouragement from her grandmother, she enrolled in the Commercial Photography program at Madison Area Technical College. During her last semester, Amy interned at Madison Magazine and her love for editorial photography began. In 2004, she graduated Dean’s List and started her career as a professional photographer.

An avid traveler, Amy has journeyed around the globe – Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Canada, Mexico, Jamaica, France, Switzerland, Germany, and even Liechtenstein! In January 2009, she made her first trip to the white sandy beaches of Punta Cana, Dominican Republic, to photograph a wedding.

She is the photographer for the upcoming book, Bean Appetit (Andrews McMeel Publishing), due on store shelves in Fall 2009.

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