Ideas and Strategies on Applied Social Media, Marketing and Business Development
This is the second part of an interview I had at the end of 2010 with Brian Stokoe who is the social media program manager for Caterpillar Inc. Stokoe shared some of his insights through submitted questions and a recorded interview that will also be posted. [Read more...]
Are you an event manager or promoter looking to use new tools to more effectively get the word out on your next event? The Social Media Club of Madison recently played host to Chris Brogan who, in the social media channel at least, is a guru and
thought leader. We had several components of the total event to promote and looked to social media channels and tools to do the promotion and word of mouth extension. I had a vested interest in making this work both as a social media consultant and personally because Chris Brogan is my go to thought leader and has provide significant guidance for me on the path to being a trust agent.
For the benefit of anyone thinking of some type of social media campaign integrated with traditional efforts, I thought I would relate the activities that the Social Media Club Board Members, the Madison social media community, and a few individuals did to promote this event. Over all we engaged the community, shared user generated content, and created dialogue. We had a relatively short period of time to work with – just 6 weeks. I would certainly recommend more planning and more time to promote such an event. More time would also allow the media distribution across various channels move a little more than it did. That being said, we accomplished a lot in the time we had-using primarily social media tools and word of mouth.
Chris Brogan was brought to Madison by American Family Insurance to present an internal social media related training. The date was slightly in flux from last October, as to when American Family would be able to have Chris Brogan speak. Part of their contract negotiated a separate presentation to the public. The decision was made to offer this program to Accelerate Madison, as one of the leading technology focused professional groups in Madison, to promote. Accelerate Madison in turn coordinated activities with the Social Media Club of Madison who planned and executed the free Brogan After Dark After Party (with Chris Brogan) in attendance.
Some time in the first week of May, with a finalized date confirmed, the first contacts were made between Accelerate Madison and the leadership team of the Social Media Club of Madison. The SMC, which usually has Skype conference calls before events, quickly scheduled a face to face board meeting on May 15th to finalize the action plan for promoting the Chris Brogan Event. We implemented BaseCamp to provide a better resource for managing this project and the future events the club intends to sponsor. The main Social Media Club site also provides access to PBworks for consolidating notes, information, calendars etc and its has an RSS feed to allow updates to get to the right individuals.
1. Branding – make sure #MadisonSMC is mentioned in tweets and is used else where on events
2. WEB SITE (May 25)– the SMC site was updated for the event and two people committed to blog and post each week prior to the event.
3. Sponsors – if expecting 300 attendees, we needed 10-20 SWAG sponsors or limit bags
4. Event Calendars (By June 1)- IMBY, YourHomeTownbiz, Isthmus, InBusiness, Accelerate Madison Website, AmericanTowns, Personal websites, Plancast, EventBrite, Facebook, LinkedIn, Personal but public calendars
5. Social updates on sites (ongoing) – LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Youtube, Slideshare (select the ones that are most appropriate to your audience.
6. Social Media Press Release (2 weeks out) – Pitchengine
7. Blogs – Social Media Club, Examiner.com, WISocialMedia, MadisonSMC. If necessary to capture buzz and community after your event, consider creating an event blog (ie Ning or similar site)
8. Groups/Pages: LinkedIn group posting, Facebook pages
8. Involve third party stakeholders – standup at your professional business meetings and mention the event. Winning the support of other groups and community organizations can mean the difference between success and failure as they have valuable tools in the form of newsletters, e-mail lists and Web sites that can help carry messages further. For example, Disney Institute promotes their local events with non profits trade and professional associations and Chamber of Commerce groups to get the word out quickly to business owners.
9. Materials – Determined what materials would be needed to help spread event messages. List included: key messages for internal use, program, FAQs, newsletter, membership info, Web site copy for stakeholders, and media materials such as press releases
10. Call TV station NBC 15 for interview
Chris Brogan Presenting at Accelerate Madison/Social Media Club of Madison Event
KICKOFF – An event can be an easy way to generate news coverage and buzz. A press conference to officially announce the campaign could make an impact. We got a press release out on Pitchengine. We secured a news interview on Channel 15 the week prior to the event.
LOCATION & TIMING – The press conference on June 21 was a little last minute as we did not get final authorization until late on Friday before the event. Due to the speaking program that Chris Brogan was contracted for, the time slot of 3PM did not allow for TV stations to attend, nor did it allow for newspapers to get any details for stories for morning papers.
SPEAKERS & GUESTS – Accelerate Madison personally called key journalists and representatives in the Madison and greater Dane county area about the press conference.
LOGISTICS – Needs such as A/V, seating, parking and catering need to be determined well in advance. This was well handled by American Family who did a wonderful job with the food preparations prior to the event.
MEDIA RELATIONS – To ensure media attention throughout the campaign, we solicited attendance at event, and on-site, interview and photo opportunities.
BEST UNEXPECTED EVENT – Getting Oscar Mayer/Kraft Foods to arrange for a couple of Wienermobile Hotdoggers to take Chris Brogan to the
Chris Brogan goes first class to airport in Wienermobile compliments of Oscar Mayer
airport instead of a car.
MEASUREMENT – After all the hard work of planning and executing the campaign, we took stock of results to determine success:
Chart showing view build up on Madison SMC blog/website for Chris Brogan Event
I am not sure we used our member network as well as we could have. By breaking up the board members into groups focused on event setup and logistics, event promotion, member outreach, and followup, I think we could have used our members of both Accelerate Madison and Social Media Club more effectively. One thing I have found when I have been asked to buzz an event is that when I am given a list of 10 things to do, with concrete suggestions on places, wording to use and with deadlines to meet, I do at least half of what is suggested – maybe in my own way, but I do it. Just asking to help out a bit is like asking someone to write a recommendation for you. It usually happens quicker if you write a suggested framework first and let them (your recommender) edit the document.
I also don’t think we effectively used Twitter. Next time I would define a stronger plan, created scheduled tweets to drive conversations mixed with promotion for the event.
You can see by the views of the website, the blog postings did generate traffic. Next time I might do more outreach to members who have blogs and encourage them to post and link back at some frequency that they are comfortable with and one that would compliment the efforts of the main “home” blog.
There are certainly mistakes we made, but definitely a learning experience. What have you done to promote an event using social media? Please share your success stories and ideas in the comments.
By Jay Yarow and Kamelia Angelova | May 27, 2010, 4:17 PM
“A video on YouTube gets 50% of its views in the first 6 days it is on the site, according to data from analytics firm TubeMogul. After 20 days, a YouTube video has had 75% of its total views.That’s a really short life span for YouTube videos, and it’s probably getting shorter. In 2008, it took 14 days for a video to get 50% of its views and 44 days to get 75% of its views.Why? In the last two years, YouTube has improved its user interface, which helps videos get seen early on. Also, the world has gotten more adept at embedding and sharing videos in real-time via Twitter and Facebook. And there’s probably more video to choose from.”
via CHART OF THE DAY: The Half-Life Of A YouTube Video Is 6 Days.
In My Opinion -Wendy’s note. The article is looking at statistics provided thru TubeMogul one of the major share sites for video syndication. I can see that hot breaking news would clearly fall under this category. I think that with more long lived videos such as “How to’s”, guides, training, and testimonial videos the same statistics don’t apply. They didn’t qualify the type of video in the data. It might be interesting to see statistics on the most long lived videos…
SMB Madison February Meeting
Covers Video
In February and March 2010 Social Media Breakfast Madison is covering Do It Yourself and Professional Video topics. Brandyn Olson of Requisite Video provided the presentation for February and Sandy Kallio provided reporting duties.
Other points to consider
His example: Client’s goal was 10 new members in three months. Video by Requisite Video had 100 views, obviously focused on the right audience because 13 converted memberships to the customer in the first month.
If you’re on FaceBook have you built an audience so they’re ready and willing to receive your video message?
What do they need to see, hear, feel? Consider your Web page a 24-hour channel. If there’s no video, nothing’s on.
Brandyn Olson talked about Requisite Video’s FaceBook fan page being more active than his Web site. He also shared his strategy to spread content over FaceBook and YouTube vs. pages hidden behind pages on the company Web site.
At the meeting we had a High Definition and regular Flip video, a camera and tripod on display as examples. In most cases, HD is not crucial. For clients who shoot their own video but want a more professional look, Requisite video will re-edit and post it for them.
Other products to consider are the Kodak Xi8 which has an external mic, or the Sony Bloggie which is HD and allows you to take 5MP stills. The external mic picup is an important feature for interviews.
If it’s a great story, they’re willing to sit, listen, watch longer. Tips to improve quality:
Until the technology is greatly improved tagging, meta descriptions and file titles on video are the only way anyone can find your information. Don’t forget this step.
The search engines can see that its a video, but unless you tag and describe the contents, its an unknown. Pay attention to how you tag, and where you post. All of the social sites allow you to tag and add a description which is critical. this is also a good reason to transcribe your video for text-based post. Phonetic searching is coming, but Brandyn sounds less hopeful since he tried “Sauk Prairie Bald Eagles” and got “George Washington Cape.”
Brandyn talked about YouTube as the hosting platform and that he used to be concerned about traffic loss from his site when the video would end and other video options would pop up for viewers.
He created his own YouTube channel and has two categories for his videos posted there: testimonial videos and promotional videos.
It is suggested that paying attention to how you title the videos, using a video interview of Midwest Airlines staff as an example of how one could capitalize on that name.
Brandyn talked about the benefits of posting on YouTube: free to start, optimized – the most active place for video.
Brandyn and others talked about archiving video and labeling drives so can find what he needs later. He keeps a list via Google docs but it’s not searchable by key word. Al Falaschi of Widen ( a Madison-based company specializing in digital asset management) said he uses Final Cut Server asset management as a software tool.
Brandyn showed how his company created four videos for a martial arts business, with the first piece short and very upbeat – and with an embedded play list with the other three. Viewers could watch all four or pick what they wanted to see without scrolling down a page.
When NOT to do it yourself.
Our March Social Media Breakfast Madison on Tuesday, March 30th at Talula Restaurant (802 Atlas Avenue Madison WI), will cover video from the point of view of having others do it for you. Final speakers to be determined.
Please share your video experience and stories in the comments.
“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.
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.
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
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
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.
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.
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.
Consider professional help for these opportunities to make a great first impression.
Please share your video experience and stories in the comments.
