Is Social Media Tipping In Atlanta?

01/29/2007

Is Atlanta becoming the social media mecca of the Southeast or is it just a  coincidence that within the next few weeks there are four events that focus on blogs, podcasts and consumer generated media? If you know of any others please let me know. Oh, and Peter Flaschner, the creative divo behind the design of the Diva Marketing Blog skin, recently told me that he's receving more than a few inquires for blog creative projects from Hot' lanta  .. which I must tell you is not living up to it's  "hot" name today - brr!

Sidebar: Checkout the excellent free ebook from The Blog Studio - A Guide To Business Blogging. Bloggy disclaimer - Diva Marketing is listed as a resource.

Aima_logo AiMA (Atlanta Interactive Marketing Association)
Date/Time: Jan 31, 2007 6:30p-9:p
Online Registration Deadline: Today! Jan 29th
Digital Disruption

Executives from Tivo and Cox Media discuss how they are allowing the "2.0 Consumer" to be in control of some of their advertising experience and the early indications of success.

Social Media Club
Date/Time: Jan 29, 2007 6:00p-8:30p
First Atlanta Meeting
Social Media Club is being organized for the purpose of sharing best practices, establishing ethics and standards, and promoting media literacy around the emerging area of Social Media.
The roundtable will dig into what Social Media really is, review some of the activities at the other Clubs, discuss goals for 2007, in addition to covering other topics suggested by the Atlanta participants.

SoCon07
Date/Time: Feb 9 (dinner); Feb 10 (event) 8:30a-3:30p
A free unconference that will explore affordable, easy-to-use online tools of Web 2.0 and the opportunities that they are creating.
Note: Over 250 registered .. registration is closed. Awesome!

Podcamp AtlantaPodcampatllarge
Date/Time: March 16 (7p-9p) March 17 (9a ->?) March 18 (Morning -?)
A free 2-day unconference experience dedicated to the sharing of information around new / social media (audio and video podcasting, blogging, more).

I'm excited to see Atlanta on the social media track but please do keep in mind that as spiffy and cool as the new marketing technology may be .. without a strategy that supports your master marketing plan, a business/marketing blog, podcast, vlog is just a "me too play toy." You might appear cool at your next cocktail or Superbowl party but what is it doing to help move your brand or develop those important relationships?

Diva Charlene Li and her Forrester Research team have developed a few ideas on how to incorporate ROI. Smart ideas that will serve to reinforce the positioning that, we have been working hard to promote, .. social media is a credible marketing strategy. I particularly like how Forrester has tied metrics to value.

Forrester_roi_benefits_1








Sidebar
: If you enjoy the Forrester concept you may be interested in the following ROI ideas, from a post I wrote for Darren Rowse when I was guest blogging at probogger last summer - Blogs Must Earn Their Keep. As with any marketing strategy, for metrics or accountability to be meaningful, as a component of your social media strategy, they must tie back to the goals and objects of your initiative.

Social Media Accountability Metric Suggestions

Website/Blog

  • Search rankings
  • Visitor hits*
  • Page views
  • Trackbacks *
  • In bound links - general*
  • In bound links - “high ranked” blogs/sites*
  • Comments* such as customer feedback/new ideas

Conversions

  • Newsletters subscriptions
  • Sales
  • Leads
  • White paper/other down loads

Buzz

  • Speaking engagements
  • Podcasts, vlogs and other interviews
  • Media mentions/quotes
  • Mentions and links on other blogs/websites

Intangibles

  • Customers’ emotional involvement with the brand
  • Increase in brand loyalty
  • Providing customers with the opportunity to talk with people within a company and ensuring that customers are heard, responded to and respected by those people who are assuming the role of the public “voice” of their company

*May be measured by unique or total posts

Sidebar: Shameless plug. A successful social media/blog strategy is more than a well-written post .. and it should never be a me too play toy.  If you need help crafting a social media strategy or a sherpa to navigate the blogoshere a Diva Marketing approach might be the way to go!

For Your Download Library

05/02/2005

Who wins the marketing game in the 21st decade? The diva or divo who can quickly put their fingers or curser on the right information at the right time. Here's a couple of excellent reports and PPT presentations to add to your favs.

Rick Bruner, DoubleClick and Business Blog Consulting, emailed me last week that his report  -
The Decade in Online Advertising is avalable FREE. The report goes from history to trends. One for your download library.

AiMA, Atlanta Interactive Marketing Association, has added several new PowerPoint presentations to their website from past events. Also FREE. Be sure to take a look at "Return to Sender: Are Your Emails Being Delivered?" and Interactive Branding and Beyond: Real Tactics and Techniques Used By Today's Top Marketers." Great cases from Yahoo!, Coke and Univsion Moble with CIngular. Note: all can be find on this page.


Free Live Learning

04/11/2005

School_desk Internet-based live radio programs and telconferences are great resources to keep up to date on the latest and greatest in your industry. The big bonus - you can ask those questions that are keeping you up at night and receive a response on-the-spot.

From the speaker's viewpoint, it's a great strategy to reinforce thought leadership positioning from the comfort of your office...or living room... or even pool side (if no one hears the spashes or the clink of those umbrella drinks!).

Want to know how to play in the Google Sandbox or find out what Google's fresh link filter is all about?  Tune into Search Engine Radio and listen to one of the smart guys of search - Wayne Hurlbert, Blog Business World, puts "...complex SEO theories into plain English, so we can all understand them."
Date: April 12th
Time: 12 noon Eastern
Where: Search Engine Radio   

Paul Chaney, the southern gentleman of blogs, Radiant Marketing, is the kick-off guest for a new teleconference series on blogs called Conversations With Experts.
Date: April 13, 2005
Time: 8:30p Eastern
Place:  Conversations With Experts

By the way, Wayne gets around ... join him on April 27th at Conversations With Experts.

More Live Learning
Easy Bake Weblogs
AMA Webcasts

Free Biz Stuff On The Web

08/16/2004

In my online travels I often come across great Free Biz Stuff. Some are eBooks, some are ASP programs and others are video clips. Stuff that you want to share...here's the start of an on-going resource.

Posted August 2, 2004

>Wizard Academy Press - brief video clips and eBooks including book reviews and marketing strategies.

>Tom Peter's Re-imagine Scorecard - tool to help access business strategies.

>Mandarin Design - free (or "beer budget") tools to support blogs.

>Snag IT from TechSmith - screen capture utility that captures, edits, and organizes website content.

>The Fallacy of Chasing Cool from Plan B - eBook - make sure you read "Confessions of a Recovering Trend Scout, The Cool Hunter" by Mark Lewman at the end of the article.

>The Power and Politics of Blogs by by Daniel Drezner and Henry Farrell - wonderful piece of research on blogs although concentrating on political blogs has some good data on blogs in-general.

>Testfy! How Remarkable Organizations Are Creating Customer Evangelists by Ben McConnell and Jackie Hubel - features 18 profiles of organizations and their success with customer evangelism.

>Books A Million - chapters of new and to-be published books delivered twice a week to your inbox.

>800 CEO Reads Book Excerpts - excerpts of books via a blog, with of course an RSS feed!

Posted August 16, 2004

><Skype - Free internet telephoney. Download the software, plug in a microphone and your good to go. According to my cousin Jim the sound is great.

<>Free trade publications. Found the link via our friends at Small Business Trends

<>The Cluetrain Manifesto An eBook by Christopher Locke, Rick Levine, Doc Searls, and David Weinberger on how the Internet is changing business communication and customer expectations.