Happy New Year 2012 – 5 Keys to a HAPPY 2012
With this infographic wishing you a very happy 2012!
I Think You’re Cute – a Facebook Love Story
Yes, we struggle everyday with managing our personal versus professional presences online. It’s not like we need a separate avatar for each of our multiple personalities; rather we understand that separately segmented audiences require separately segmented conversations for relevance, culture, etc.
And yes, we struggle everyday with learning new concepts, ideas, technologies, and we have our own comfy place on the technology adoption curve.
Professionally I do a lot of work in Facebook as part of the role at my company. I create and manage advertisements for one, and I monitor conversations. I try to draw more eyeballs to posts and I “like” certain posts. Particularly the one below.
I Think You’re Cute
I was pleasantly surprised to see this post from Bill who happens to be my father, married to my mother for more than 50 count’em years. Without going into age details, Dad is not at his prime age for marathons. He’s got grandkids and a great grandkid. He’s not the prime age target for Facebook. He’s not a technical genius nor an early adopter.
So I was pleasantly surprised to find out that Bill IS a new facebooker, facilitated no doubt by the (mysterious) ipad thing that I gave to him.
And Dad definitely knows how to use new media (hmmm, maybe it’s all in the genes). Because the post that you see is not just any post from a teenager to a sweetheart, it’s the first post that Dad made on my Mom’s new Facebook wall.
Sure it’s every kid’s dream to know that their parents are crazy in love 50 years running, and I can’t even tell you how appreciative my siblings and I are every day of this blessing. But now this love story gets to be played out in social media, you know the same place where I’m “liking” technical virtualization storage platform videos, and promoting Cloud Storage for Dummies. It’s the ultimate contrast between personal and professional use. And yet it’s all part of a new and exciting opportunity of communicating things… things that have maybe even been around for a lot of years.
So the morale of this love story?
1) If you think you are too old for Facebook, you are not.
2) If you think you aren’t techie enough for this new media thing, well, you probably are.
3) If you are stressing on separating personal from professional Facebook personas, you can probably relax.
4) If you haven’t found the love stories in the products and services you promote, they are probably there waiting
5) Oh, and if you think there is no such thing as true love, well you’re probably wrong on that one.
Mom, Dad and Facebook, I think you’re all really cute
Look forward to your Facebook love stories!
12 Simple Actions for 12 Happy Months in 2010 – Happy Holidays!
The holidays are a great time for relaxing, thinking about friendships and accomplishments from the past year, and planning a new year of action! So this holiday “card”, is my gift to you: some good causes, some items for your action list, some new friends, and some topics for your blogs next year! Here is a link to a PDF version of the card for your download pleasure: xmascard2009_2010. You can also click on the photos to read the details then check out the list below to hyperlink to the goodies. Enjoy, and may all of your holiday wishes come true!
Here are the hyperlinks to help you check out and implement each of the actions!
EARTH
Check out this carbon calculator (UK)
HEALTH
Help prevent malaria by donating a mosquito net
This photo is one of the shots that you’ll find on the Unicef New Zealand Flickr Site:
And here’s where you can donate! Please go to the Unicef Under Cover Malaria Net Fundraising site and donate a net!
http://www.unicefundercover.org.nz/
ENERGY
For good exercise for a good cause check out Team in Training
http://www.teamintraining.org/,
For good eating check out the Slow Food organization
http://www.slowfood.com/http://www.slowfood.com/
LOYALTY
Check out the Malama Loyalty website and reflect on how you can inspire loyalty
ACTION
Act locally! This year I helped ATCAA http://infonettc.net/, a local community action organization increase their outreach and efficiency. Take action during the holidays, volunteer your time locally!
SUSTAINABILITY
Check out the Academy of Sciences San Francisco Sustainable Building
And get some tips for sustainable living
CONNECTION
Check out the blog by Siobhan Bulfin, who is changing the world of connections:
The photo pictured here is one I took this year inside of the Sydney Opera House. Come see us in Sydney in April 2010 for the Connect Now conference http://www.connectnow.net.au/ to learn how to find and promote your superheroes!
PROGRESS
Check out the video promo, Bringing Community to Broadband
PEACE
Check out The Reckoning Film
http://www.thereckoningfilm.com/.
Find out more and participate in the international justice debate on the website below:
EDUCATION
Here’s the site for a course that I teach at the Grenoble Graduate School of Business http://bit.ly/5QItj2
You can see the profiles of some of the amazing students here: http://bit.ly/8xk5D2.
Here is an educational website set up by one of the students:
FAMILY and CELEBRATION
Go out and hyperlink live with your loved ones to celebrate the holiday season and the arrival of 2010!
Wishing you a fantastic holiday season and a very happy new year!
Social Media Guidelines, hurry get yours today!
“Where no plan is laid, where the disposal of time is surrendered merely to the chance of incidence, chaos will soon reign” — Victor Hugo (1802 – 1885)
Before jumping into new channels such as social media, have a strategy! Here is a draft of mine. Send me yours!! I look forward to refining based on your feedback.
My Social Media Objectives
- Educate myself through listening tools
- Follow a strategic list of topics, people and communities as listed below
- Using a “reader”, review my selected follow list at least weekly
- Spend time weekly “surfing” or following my curiosity for innovation and ideas
- Educate others:
- Create and publish new content in my selected topic areas as least twice monthly
- Share information of interest in my chosen topic areas/keywords
- At least weekly, forward excellent content as appropriate
- Add commentary/opinions as applicable
- Inform appropriate network about events
- Inform current and potential professional collaborators and my network about my activities
- Connect others
- Forward introductions
- Act as a “glue” to network people and projects
- Number of incoming business opportunities through social networks
- Time spent (currently managed through Rescue Time)
- Qualitative connection quality reviewed monthly
- Qualitative review of commentary
- Future monitoring of social media analytics (currently reviewing tools TBD)
- Functional topics
- Discussions on performance marketing: customer-oriented marketing, social media, online marketing, performance marketing, analytical marketing
- Management consulting: leadership, reputation management
- Tools, emerging technologies, new media and techniques that help folks thrive
- Industry Focus
- Helping Non-profits, community developer, economic development entrepreneurship
- Developing and sharing best practices in sustainable business – organic farming/agriculture, local food, clean tech
- Small and local businesses
- High Tech, particularly software, services, Silicon Valley cool stuff
My Success Measures
- Number of incoming business opportunities through social networks
- Time spent (currently managed through Rescue Time)
- Qualitative connection quality reviewed monthly
- Qualitative review of commentary
- Future monitoring of social media analytics (currently reviewing tools TBD)
My Topic Areas
- Functional topics
- Performance marketing: discussions on customer-oriented marketing, social media, online marketing, performance measurement, analytical marketing
- Loyalty – mentor and inspire leaders to develop loyalty with communities and customers
- Management consulting – advise on leadership, reputation management
- Tools, emerging technologies, new media and techniques that help folks thrive
- Industry Focus
- Helping Non-profits, community developer, economic development entrepreneurship
- Developing and sharing best practices in sustainable business – organic farming/agriculture, local food, clean tech
- Small and local businesses
- High Tech, particularly software, services, Silicon Valley cool stuff
My Style and Culture Guidelines
- “Publish in social media as I would like to others to publish to me”
- No spam
- Respect time
- Respect confidentiality preferences and requests of others
- Promote others in a healthy ratio with promoting myself
- Allow others to comment in my content, particularly opinions on all sides of the debate. Take off topic or spam comments offline
- Selecting connections
- Facebook : personal friends and limited professional friends
- LinkedIn: personal and professional friends, connect to all except spammers (note also see my LinkedIn recommendation guidelines for more info on this)
- Twitter: connect to most, except bots/spammers, off topic
- Content creation writing style
- Informative
- Humorous
- Casual
- Organized
My Confidentiality/Privacy Values
I will not share:
Friend’s personal information without consent, my birthday, financial information
Information that is private to othersStrategy Evolution
This document is totally phase I. As part of my strategy I look forward to adapting this based on results from my success measures and comments from others who have implemented successful strategies
Inside the Entrepreneur – Enlightening Lessons December 11th at Columbia College
Many of my students first heard about an “elevator pitch” in a course I teach in Management Consulting. Yes, I have actually had the students practice their elevator pitch inside the elevator at the Grenoble Graduate School!
Folks at Columbia College do know how important an elevator pitch can be since they pitched and won a $7500 grant to support a lecture series called “Inside the Entrepreneur – Enlightening Lessons”
I’m honored to be presenting at this lecture series on December 11th with Greg Falken and Stuart Hince, two fantastic local entrepreneurs. We’ll be sharing some best practices and lessons learned in emerging technologies and social media in the local Sierra Foothills community. Check out the link below for more information and come on by to join us! It’s friendly, it’s fun and it’s free!
Tweet Others As You Would Like To Be Tweeted – My Social Media Strategy
I’m still buzzing from the outstanding speakers at #BizTechDay Oct 22/23.
First and foremost, a huge thanks to Amador-Tuolumne Community Action Agency who helped sponsor my attendance and Kristin from Malama Loyalty for sharing notes and ideas.
Here are 5 key takeaways that I would like to share:
My Social Media Strategy: Tweet others as you would like to be tweeted. Just to be clear, this was not heard from Craig Newmark at Craigslist since he quoted the golden rule more accurately as one of his final fireside chat remarks. But I misheard it and love it. This is, in essence my own social media strategy.
Peg your press communication to something relevant in the world. This idea is from Sue Kwon at CBS5. She is outstanding at creating a compelling story. Go out and read news headlines and know how your story relates to or solves key problems. Be sure to use relevant statistics in your communication. And when you are telling your story on video – be camera ready, have signage/logos, and look good…
Have your customers vying to tell your story. Your story is likely even more compelling coming right from the horses mouth (well, if horses are your customer). Nowadays “customers” can be fans, friends, followers and all the world’s folks that know and love your stuff. Capture the stories that your horses are happy to tell.
Know and love your metrics. Tim Ferriss suggested Anne Holland’s WhichTestWon.com — and as a lover of A/B testing, I love this concept. Go get your own. Know which tests are important to you and how the results will make your onsite endeavors more effective.
Make policy, not decisions. This is another Tim Ferris inspired tidbit. So many of the leaders I know aren’t comfortable delegating decisions or spend tons of time making decisions. Find the decisions that you are re-decisioning and create and communicate the policy around them. Then check your metrics to watch your reduction of time spent in decision-making.
The event website is here. Thanks to the organizers and speakers for the great wealth of knowledge you shared with us!
Blog Action Day, So Dirty
Growing Dirt
17 years ago I made a dirty investment, well, I made an investment in dirt. I bought a piece of land that was pretty much filled with horse poop, and that was a good thing. Since then, that piece of land shown above has continued to be filled with green compost, local horse and llama manure, neighborly turkey manure (though that won’t be repeated), experiemental biofuel, and a ton of vegetables and fruit that have fed families and restaurants in our community.
Today is blog action day — a day where climate change gets a deserved front and center stage in the blogosphere, which I hope is good news for the biosphere. What does climate change have to do with dirt? Everything. Healthy organically grown dirt in my front yard means sustainable healthy food, healthy people and a healthier planet. No petroleum needed to grow the food or transport it across the world, no pesticides needed to obliterate the pests. 
Take the dirt, add local sunshine and water, share seeds with the hood, grow diverse open pollinated heirlooms and my front yard becomes a small and meaningful part of the blog action day solution.
Oh, and did I mention just how good our front yard dirt grown produce tastes? (yeah Jean you are going to be doing the testimonial for those chile rellenos!)
In addition to all the great things you will be doing to support the global climate, please spend a bit of time getting dirty.
What’s your 2.0 brand strategy? Devour or Devotion?
The topic of today’s Silicon Valley Brand Forum was “Bloggers and Tweeters are Devouring my Brand”, though I wonder if the title could alternatively been “How do I get Bloggers and Tweeters devoted to a brand?”…. more on that later.
But first a big thanks to Kevin Heany for putting this and the many years of Brand Forums together! You have a rocknroll great memory Kevin.
Jeremiah Owyang from Altimeter Group, author of the hot Web Strategy blog was the keynote speaker for the forum. He spoke so briefly, but he could have captivated my interest all day! He presented 3 simple yet smart ideas: 1) your website is irrelevant, 2) real time is not fast enough and 3) customers don’t care what department you are in. If you assume for a moment that all three of these are true for your company, what tactics would you use to empower your brand? Would you say something like: seek relevance and link it on your site, prepare a listening strategy and centralize customer touchpoints into a single (positive) experience? Right on.
The host for the forum was Electronic Arts (EA). What a fun place to work! Gotta love the Starbucks in their lobby and the fun games you can play while enjoying your beverage. Check out the photo from Jeremiah Owyang’s photostream:
But to find the venue the day before, I did my usual type-into-Google-maps thing and to my surprise, the company rating results that popped up next to the map for EA were certainly not as wonderful as their lobby. EA was rated with 1 lowly star and the comments about the company I saw certainly weren’t stunning.
If anyone needed help from getting their brand devoured by bloggers and tweeters, I figured EA was on the list. So I was extra curious to see their presentation. And I was extra impressed. Jaap Tuinman, EA’s online marketing and community development manager really gets this stuff. And EA is a good business case for learning from failures, #EAFAIL to be exact. That is the hash tag where users comment on EA’s failures. EA really does pay attention to user comments as almost 4 million of you already know from watching the Tiger Woods walk on water video.
I got quite a kick out of Cisco’s Jeanette Gibson who told the “Cisco Fatty” story. It’s a story about a woman got exposed when she tweeted her disinterest in a Cisco job that came with a “fat” paycheck. The issue quickly got out of hand for Cisco, and the woman, especially when someone created a YouTube video, which went viral. The issue than reached crisis level when the Oprah show called to get Cisco on air (Cisco rejected the Oprah offer though I wouldn’t have…) There are tons of examples of people broadcasting things that they shouldn’t or that they regret, but this one has some excellent lessons learned. Sure, don’t broadcast things you regret, but a more important morale: the more that a company like Cisco proactively develops a strategy and pays attention to online conversations, the better they can prepare, react and adapt in times of crisis.
So what were some of the essential takeaways from the Brand Forum? Well some may believe that squeaky wheels in the web 2.0 world can devour a brand. Some may believe that brand managers should be responsible for controlling a brand. Believe it or not. In this open and connected online world, it’s more evident than ever that brand is made of the perceptions and experiences in the minds of the CONSUMERS. The role of branding particularly in this online world is to provide a clear platform, content and an experience for bloggers, tweeters, employees and consumers to engage in and enthusiastically advocate. Goodbye Devour, Hello Devotion!
Is Your Business Social Media Ready? Take the Quiz!
For the following statements, select True or False.
- Real stories from your customers have more impact than your crafted marketing messages
- Your business self-promotion is losing its effectiveness
- Relevant marketing content is getting more attention than linguistically perfect content
- Your influencers have a more powerful voice than your communication agency
- You believe that well earned customer loyalty is more valuable than price discounted loyalty
- Your online networks are gaining share of voice
- You trust your customers to communicate about you
- You have an online place to engage with your fans
- You feel that listening is at least equally important as talking
- You are able to measure the above to determine if they are true or false
If you answered most of the questions as True, you are truly social media ready.
If you answered all of the questions as True, talk to me! Let me know how you do it!
Social Media Unplugged
Can you unplug from social media? Take the challenge, here’s what I found out.
Many people tell me that they don’t want to plug in to social media. Some feel it’s a waste of time, not important, information overload, etc. So I decided to unplug, for a month and see what I would find missing in my life. I checked out of Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter for several weeks, and then left all e-communication behind for a week in the wilderness.
I figured that the things that I missed would help me understand the benefits of the various technologies I had been using. It also happened that the last week of my experiment, I was in the Ansel Adams Wilderness in the Eastern Sierra. Mono and Inyo Counties seriously lack broadband, similar to the Central Sierra counties I work with to help adopt high speed internet and associated technologies. Many of the residents in the area couldn’t have acceptable access to social networking, even if they did understand its benefits. So my experiment would help understand what many of these residents are missing, and advocate on their behalf.
Here are my top observations:
Access to critical information – We heard from a passing hiker that a bear had recently attacked a tent (while people were sleeping in it) at Thousand Island Lakes. Given that we were planning to camp there the next day or so, I kinda wanted more information on this subject. In the connected world, I could have typed in a few search keywords, downloaded conditions from various websites, emailed a friend to find out more, etc. But I was limited to just asking hikers that happened to pass us if they knew more. Most didn’t.
There was also wildfire activity in the area. I knew this because a passing hiker happened to have been evacuated from the fire area. The forest service was posting information about this online, but I had no access to it in my unconnected state.
My conclusion is that the traditional face to face information channel works, especially since most hikers were willing to stop for a while and exchange information. But the online channels would be much faster and more reliable sources of critical information.
General knowledge of what’s going on in the world. I missed news highlights. But I didn’t miss the latest in the Michael Jackson autopsy, or Sarah Palin’s retirement.
At one point, my watch broke and I wanted to know the time. I figured that I could use the sun as an approximation so of course I wanted to search various sites and forums on telling time using the sun. I also was curious about the names of some of the wildflowers and some of the star constellations. All of this information would have been readily available online for me. Sure, I may be able to get by without a lot of the general knowledge, but I sorely missed the immediate quench of my curiosity.
Updates from my friends and colleagues. Except for those who I was hiking with, I had no news. OK, I certainly didn’t miss knowing every event my friends attended or who was dating or breaking up. I was curious about a friend who had applied for a new dream job and another who had a big decision to take. But most of the update information I peruse in social networks is nice to have, not critical.
Professional opportunities. My social networks are a huge source of professional information and opportunity. Yeah, those of you that are reading this know who you are and you rock!! I missed knowing that a colleague won a big grant (information that was posted online with reader comments). I didn’t have access to shared documents on a group share account, I couldn’t download instructions for completing an upcoming project. Clearly for me, access to these connected technologies is essential for my professional success, no way around it.
So there you have it. I survived bears and fires, but literally lost track of time and probably fell behind professionally. So how about you? What would you lose if you unplugged for a while, and would you miss it? Take the unplugged challenge and let me know!
Social Technologies for Progressive Change – N2Y4 Conference
Go ahead and raise your hand! Yep just raise it. Repeat regularly. Repeat when asked to volunteer. Cause you never know where it could lead you. And that’s a good thing.
I raised my hand digitally when I saw this announcement http://tinyurl.com/o95dsy. A good thing. Because I am now the project champion for ITCentral which you’ll hear more about from me in a bit. I am honored to help champion ITCentral at Net Squared’s Mobile Challenge conference next week. WOW, this is going to be an astounding exchange of ideas, particularly for using innovations in mobile technology for social change. The conference brings together all types of people playing at the intersection of technology and progressive change. What an impressive group of attendees! Just imagine the possibilities that they will create for global community engagement. That’s a really good thing!
And you can participate from the safety of your home (or mobile telephone), just click here for more conference info or click on the widget below to follow along.
For now, check out all of the innovative projects out there, especially the 15 featured projects selected into the competition by community vote – I promise you’ll be impressed. Which of the projects will you raise your hand for?
Can You Endorse Me? Social Reviews Part II
I recently asked a group of about 35 students in class if I should recommend every one of them in LinkedIn. Their answers were as beautifully diverse as the students themselves. But the answer wasn’t yes. In general they felt that if I endorsed every student it would dilute the value of my recommendations. So should I endorse just the students who ask? Or just the students who got the best grades? Or just the ones looking for jobs? Ah, these are some of the tricky questions that we need to answer for ourselves when sending and receiving recommendations in social networks.
Contributing to recommendations is a great way to learn about social review processes, so I would like to encourage them as much as possible. So I came up with a process for the students which may help.
1) Recommendations are two-way. Before giving a recommendation I ask that the student gives a recommendation to somebody else first. It reinforces the learning and the beauty of contribution.
2) Recommendations should be focused on the person’s value add. It’s less interesting to read a recommendation that says a person is generally a great contributor or team player, and more interesting when a recommendation focuses on things that stand out. So I generally ask the students to reflect on what they feel are their key value-adds for their academic or professional interests.
If a student makes it through these challenges, then it’s highly likely that they have learned the value of the process and merit a recommendation.
Do you endorse everyone who asks?
My Vacuum Sucks – The Art of Social Reviews
Opinions are good, right? Or should this read, opinions are good as long as you don’t share negative ones with anyone else publicly? Social network platforms are changing the way I look at opinions.
I learned my first social review lessons at a party when I was 16 years old. That was, well let’s say a few years ago, but I’m still reminded of it. I had developed a little thesis that you can share negative yet honest opinions in a positive, helpful spirit, and true friends will appreciate your viewpoint. I was wrong. So much for scientific research, my first null hypothesis was clearly rejected, followed by several days eating my lunch alone. (Note: at least all was not lost since I just recently re-connected via Facebook to the old troop including the host of that famous “Sweet 16” party). I quickly defaulted to “if you don’t have anything nice to say don’t say it”.
Now that online platforms exist for all types of publicly identified ratings, rankings, comments and reviews, there’s a lot more art in the process – with aesthetic expressions and creative levels of participation, emotion and trust in the communication palette.
I’m a fan of social rating, ranking, user reviews, consumer reviews, etc. I consume and contribute. I am generally more motivated to share and contribute when my opinions are extreme – either I love something or there are problems with it. And I’m one of those naïve individuals who actually believe that real people’s comments are mostly real.
Which brings me to my vacuum cleaner. My current one was designed poorly (notice in the picture that the wand and handle aren’t attached… you can bet that I commented on that problem!) I want one that sucks. I don’t care too much about the type of vacuum cleaner; I care more about getting my floor clean. And weird but true, I care even more about not purchasing a bad product (ah, those who have visited my floor may already know this). I don’t want to waste shipping, packing, material resources, or money on a poor product. So I’ll spend at least 4 times the cost of the vacuum in the online social platform world, searching for a good product, reading reviews and in some cases even discussing the product with a stranger (yes a stranger, which would be different from a close person I know and trust). I can use online tools to do all of this quickly and easily.
Listen up here fellow marketers, I like this system and if for some reason I feel that you are abusing it trying to spam, amplify, or falsely promote stuff, I’m not going to… eat lunch with you.
Are the results I get from social reviews better than those I would get by listening to TV commercials, reading mail-order catalogs and asking the salesperson at the local store?
Resounding YES.
And the process is getting better and better. More people are participating, platforms are getting more sophisticated, and consumers are getting better at public reviewing. The balance between words painted by product experts and the tapestry of words from users is shifting in the right direction.
So here are some ideas I’d like to add to the social review artists palette:
1) thank those who give useful feedback since they are risking friend loss
2) be genuine when reviewing, big points for factual
3) be sensitive to the people and things behind the review (yes my dear Sweet 16 friends I did learn something)
4) be graceful when others express negative comments, especially those that are truly given in a spirit of improvement
Comments? What’s your style for expressing opinions publicly?
Kiwi Reflections
I’ve returned today back to (virtual) reality after an astounding MarketingNow Conference April 15/16 2009 in Wellington New Zealand (and a bit of a holiday with family at the Great Barrier Reef) Since it’s been several days since I’ve been online (yep, thankfully no internet access at the Great Barrier Reef) I’ve had a chance to reflect on some of the key points that have stayed with me since the event.
This wasn’t a social media conference about social media. It was about business success using new rules of marketing, no rules of marketing, superpowers, niche influencers, techniques for discoverability and by following dreams. Here are some of the details of my reflections:
1) Listen to the real, genuine and nice in your customers and befriend it. Right, sounds so basic, so simple that it can’t possibly be a takeaway, but how often do we openly listen to the voice of our customers, clients, critics, family, etc., and then promote it?
David Meerman Scott and Chris Brogan are two of the greats in the field and great mentors for me in real, genuine and nice. They exude it. Their presentations on the first day of the event were mostly about real, genuine and nice people who created magic by stimulating real, genuine and nice conversations. Surprising enough, innovation, humor, expertise, excitement, outrageous and good causes all hang out in the real, genuine and nice. No scripting, coercion, pushing, censuring or filtering of information, just real, genuine and nice.
2) Provide a platform for the conversation. Where do you encourage people to comment, participate, interact? Where do you tell your story or engage a debate? My session on the second day of the conference was about indulging the superpowers (ideas, stories, brand, reputation) and divulging the superheroes (communities). We had 4 adventures in a 90 minute workshop: 1) determine the keywords used to describe a superpower, 2) get involved in the conversation, 3) spread the superpower virally, 4) promote the superheroes.
You can get more info from the presentation slide deck. http://www.slideshare.net/secret/7RBwlmwYWg4CvP
To develop the conversation I used a technique inspired by Allen Gunn (Gunner) from Aspiration to provide a platform for debate. Basically I presented a statement which was controversial and had people agree or disagree with this statement by voting physically – they lined up in the front of the room if they strongly agreed or in the back of the room if they strongly disagreed.
This picture of the conversation is from Simon Young’s summary of the Marketing Now event at http://ijump.co.nz/category/blog/. Note that Simon also live tweeted 2 full days of the event, wow! Definitely invite Simon to your next event as he has a fantastic ability to create the being there feeling through social media. During the event I used a technique to empower the conversation virally. The “virus” I used was actually a clear very dilute borax solution (a type of washing powder). Out of the 100 participants only about 4 people actually had a virus to propagate. The rest had just plain water. We exchanged a “virus” by engaging in conversations, connecting and then mixing our cups together. The virus then spread through this cup sharing process. At the end of the adventure, we used pH strips to see how far the virus propagated. Kirsten Smith and Nancy Jennings inspired me to create this technique which was adapted from a school exercise where children learn about contagious diseases. The platform really helped all the participants discuss, engage, debate, network and have a bit of fun, all while enhancing their unique superpower!
3) Identify and measure influencers. Some may argue that social network influencers are hard to measure or identify but Stephen Johnson has convinced me otherwise. Stephen is the true definition of creative genius and he’s got a lot of stuff figured out. Among tons of inspiring business cases, Stephen presented Orion, an innovative platform which allows insight into how social networks evolve and influence grows (as in almost real time!). It’s a platform that could be used in so many wonderful ways, including building involvement in causes (including eco causes) and managing crises. Stephen understands and articulates groundswell better than anyone else I’ve met and is soooooo interesting to talk to regarding just about anything to do with innovation in social media.
4) Become more visible and discoverable at home. Your home may be a website, blog, twitter page, profile, etc. Become visible wherever you choose to call home. Jim Stewart from StewArtMedia (not to be confused with James Stewart our dear Marketing Now videographer) is an expert in doing just that! In workshops he facilitates he shows attendees how to build and optimize a page and watch how it jumps in ranking. At the event he gave all kinds of tips and techniques for developing presence organically. Since I used to be the account director for Adobe search, I particularly appreciated his comments on Adobe and dominance of the “click here” phrase. Jim’s presentation was simple and insightful and I highly recommend checking out his site and his webcasts!!
5) Follow your own emerging dreams! OK, I saved the best for last. Siobhan Bulfin is my superhero in this area! The Marketing Now conference she created brought together some outstanding people and inspired Kiwi businesses in exciting new ways! Siobhan started with a few searches in Google and YouTube. She selected topics which were interesting and inspiring to her and found people, communities and ideas. She attended some workshops to get to know some of the experts in the field and boost her own expertise and then went out and developed a strong voice in the New Zealand business community. She has now taken her dream to the next level and has developed a New Zealand Social Media network on Ning! And it’s not going to stop there! Stay tuned for more events and exciting innovations from this wonder woman!
Yep, all in all a fantastically successful event and I look forward to the next one… reserve a place in your agenda for Auckland in October…
