Archive for August, 2009

Wow! What a cast of great guests we have had on Social Media Edge (thanks to @MikeMueller for putting this together on our show Facebook Page) We have learned so much from these people and there are some very knowledgeable Social Media experts in this list!

Shel Israel, Rebecca Bollwitt, Tara Hunt, Danny Brown, Brian Carter, Chicke Fitzgerald, Wally Charnoff, Erika Napoletano, Cathy Browne, Julie Roads, Brad Nix, Matt Fagioli, Erin Hurry, Steve McGranahan, James Shiner, Rick Abbott, Irene Koehler, Nik Nik, Cyberhomes, Andrew Stone, Steve Rosenbaum, Guy Hagin, Ed Bisquera, Tamara Dorris, How about you?

See Them All on Flickr

Have you been curious about what social media can mean for your own business?

Are you interested in learning from a group of experts who have the experience to guide you along the way long-term?

Does a chance to meet some real-world social media leaders, authors and speakers appeal to you?

RESERVATIONS CLICK HERE

This conference is meant for you and other business owners who are curious about social media but haven’t quite made the leap, or maybe you have and want to get better at using social media to improve your business.

Consider this:

• The Association of National Advertisers completed a recent study ? 2/3 or marketers now use social media. Primary channels: Facebook (74%), Youtube (65%), Twitter (63%), and LinkedIn (60%)

• Google and YouTube are the number one and number two search engines respectively.

• Brands like Coca-Cola, Comcast, Dell, IBM and many others are embracing social media to communicate to their audience on a daily basis.

• Almost 60% of Americans interact with companies on a social media Web site, and 25% interact more than once per week, 2008 Cone Business in Social Media Study says

Chris Brogan will be a key presenter talking about his new book ‘Trust Agents‘ he co-wrote with Julien Smith. Chris Brogan is President of New Marketing Labs, a new media marketing agency, and home of the Inbound Marketing Summit conferences and Inbound Marketing Bootcamp educational events. He works with large and mid-sized companies to improve online business communications like marketing and PR through the use of social software, community platforms, and other emerging web and mobile technologies.

This conference aims to teach attendees more about social media and how to leverage its power to build your company, product, brand, service, etc. You’ll have an opportunity to ask your burning questions of the speaker panel and get real answers.

#rememberwhen “Snow Leopard” was a trending topic on Twitter? Well, both were on Sunday afternoon on August 30, 2009. In fact when I checked Snow Leopard was receiving about 35 mentions every minute and #rememberwhen was receiving well over 150. You may at first ask, “so what’s the big deal, it’s just Twitter right?”

Right, that’s the big deal.

Let’s do just a quick bit of math and not necessarily based on actual numbers but just very conservative numbers. Let’s say there are only 10 tweets per hour using your trending topic (#freehamburgers for example). If each person who tweets using #freehamburgers and a link back to your MicRonnie’s website to get their free hamburger coupon (with the purchase of a large Coke and fries even) and each of those ten people have only five, just five readers online that’s sixty people who know about your offer, right? Yes, the ten original and fifty new. Then let’s say only one-third of the people who see it retweet it … that’s 15 new people who also have only five followers online for the retweet so it goes out 75 the next minute. Then only one-third of those retweet so that’s another twenty-five who each have only five followers online meaning it is seen by 125 people of whom one-third retweet.

Do the math. In three hours it is being retweeted only twenty-five times and being view one-hundred-thirteen times per hour. Forward ahead and in ten hours it is being retweeted 894 time and being seen by 4470 people. By the end of the day, just a twenty-four hour period and the number of tweets is up to 1,140,700 and the number of views ….? 5,703,852. Acutally that will not happen because of the law of diminishing return but you get the idea.

Chances are your business could not handle the volume. Remember the Oprah Winfrey and Kentucky Fried Chicken deal? Did anyone ever get sued over that? But I digress. If you run a small restaurant would it be worth it to you to have just a few thousand people in your area know you have free food?

We can do it. It can be done with a simple, powerful and effective plan. But don’t try this at home …. we’re professionals. Over 1000 events nationwide with over 1,200,000 people in attendance put together in less than two months good enough for you?

What if you just need a few dozen people to stay at your Bed and Breakfast. That, too, can be accomplished with relative swiftness and very little expense and almost no effort on your part.

Tune in every Tuesday at Noon eastern to Social Media Edge Radio.

Snow Leopard Proves No Threat to Windows 7

Tony Bradley of PC World Magazine makes his statements an plain, “After all of the hype in the media regarding the Snow Leopard frenzy, Friday’s official release seemed lacking. Not to say Snow Leopard is a dud. By all accounts it puts some zip into lagging Mac OS X systems, but it offers little else to impact the day-to-day experience of most Mac OS X users.”

Another point made by Bradley in section 2 of his article is a little more stinging when he writes, “Snow Leopard has a significant number of feature enhancements and updates, but with the exception of the built-in support for Microsoft Exchange none of them is really blazing new territory. In fact, contrary to surpassing Windows 7, many of the features seem to just catch Mac OS X up to the capabilities of Windows Vista.”

Read it all here …

DJ AM (Adam Goldstein) was found dead this morning in his apartment. You may remember Goldstein as boyfriend of Nicole Richey and the 36 year old survivor of a fiery plane crash that took the life of four. Goldstein and Blink-182 drummer Travis Barker were injured but survived. Investigators are allegedly hinting at a drug overdose as cause of death.

UPDATED August 30: A Goldstein representative issued this statement: “Adam “DJ AM” Goldstein was found deceased this afternoon in his New York City apartment. The circumstances surrounding his death are unclear. Out of respect for his family and loved ones, please respect their privacy at this time.”

It is still believed this was an “accidental” drug overdose because it was allegedly reported there were drugs found in the apartment. It may be of special concern to note that Goldstein and his girlfriend Hayley Wood had broken up the prior week.

Look, I’m not the greatest speller on the planet but I’m thinking if I am getting or giving a tattoo with like 20 letters or less in it I’m going to check, check and re-check. Obviously the guy who did it wasn’t afraid of the guy he did it to. Can you imagine? The funny thing is that ink is at least several months old – it’s not a new tattoo!

Come to think of it this is even worse than misspelling a word in a 140 character Tweet!

A funny thing happened on the way to cyberspace. Small companies found the ability to touch the world and large companies found the ability to touch the individual. United broke a guitar and 5 million people watched the video on YouTube. A complaining tenant in Chicago got sued by what appears to be a trigger happy Horizon Realty (only the parties know the real story).

Something else happened, too: Faery Tales. Yes, you write them – we all do – and they are about us. If not about ourselves then about our companies or our clients. I suppose Faery Tales is a little harsh and we should call them Whitewashed Historical Remakes. They haven’t stopped, either. They are still coming on every day and they include massive re-writes of history, directives, perspectives, and objectives. In fact you could easily say this is the most fluidly dynamic society in the history of the known universe.

The speed of light, or nearly so, at which information today circles the globe or anywhere a satellite signal can beam has an impacting effect on society and the businesses therein at large. Simply put a franchisor can make a global correction based on a single event at a single franchise location within hours, if not minutes, of the occurance of the event!

Just think, a shop owner in London discovers a mixture of flavorings in their iced drink and it sells volumes within hours because Jessica had one with breakfast and Twittered about is to Jane who Facebooked it and Alex was there by 8:30AM with his iPhone uploading a video to TwitVid and by 10:00 AM London time the ingredients had to be replenished.? Meanwhile a shop owner in Boston picked up the chatter by monitoring her TweetAlerts contacted the London shop owner via Facebook and prepared an email to be sent to all of her registered customers announcing the new discovery and offering them that very morning where the new Breezazzle (it now has a name it got on FriendFeed) sells over 100 orders. By 6PM there is a YouTube channel dedicated to Breezazzle using the logo someone Farked and by 9PM Pacific time there is a Breezazzle t-shirt available on Cafe Press.

Of course that scenario is for the perfect storm but it can happen. Remember the flight landing on the Hudson by America’s hero Sully Sullenberger? What about Neda the Iranian martyr for liberty? How about pre-Twitter (BT) when the Starbucks free iced coffee coupon got a little viral?

Not only can businesses re-invent themselves every day by being transparent and by monitoring their social equity but also each individual has that same opportunity. Think about it – small businesses can reach the world and global businesses can reach you. How? With a simple plan simply executed.

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1- Who was Captain of the Mayflower when it made its famous voyage to “the new world” in September 1620? Nobody! But http://twitter.com/Dr_Rose did offer Christoper Columbus. Close! Christopher Jones was the answer. His wife, oddly enough, was Sarah Twitt. I kid you not.

2- This Beatles album released on 26 September 1969 was the final album recorded by the Beatles and will be re-released on 09/09/09 http://twitter.com/basilsblog was the winner.

3- This famous 1960′s television show starring Bob Denver was filmed first in Moloaa Bay, Hawaii. http://twitter.com/basilsblog and http://twitter.com/IndiscreetTweet in that order.

4- The famous fictional spy character, James Bond 007, prefers a martini. Does he like them stirred or shaken? http://twitter.com/basilsblog and http://twitter.com/cyndit in that order

5- The largest planet in our solar system named after Zeus is commonly called what? http://twitter.com/basilsblog and http://twitter.com/Morticia626

6- The largest non-polar desert in the world covering 3.5 million square miles located in Africa is named what? http://twitter.com/basilsblog

7- What material, one we use every day, is made of powdered limestone sand and sodium carbonate? http://twitter.com/basilsblog

8- This North American marsupial plays dead to avoid being attacked by predators. @cyndit @Morticia626 @Linny_Buck @basilsblog correct and in the reverse order!

9- A member of the Lepidoptera family would be a …? @basilsblog @Morticia626 right!

I don’t think I am. Maybe you are and I would love to hear your reasons. Whether you are really excited about it or just think it’s a good idea we would all like to know. I mean I suppose it’s possible to have some sort of twitter existance and never actually visit Twitter but what, really, is the point?

So you update your tweets from Facebook and you update your Facebook from Twitter … what about the 8500 followers you have on Twitter who don’t have Facebook? I don’t know, maybe I’m missing the point. If I am and you know what I’m missing … COMMENT

Read about Facebook’s New Twitter Feature here.

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It is coming – prepare for the moment. Actually it won’t even be a moment but only a second. Where will you be? What will you be doing? The time will be 9 minutes and 9 seconds past 9 AM on the 9th day of September 2009. Is that Eastern, Pacific or GMT? I really am not certain which one matters. The bottom line it 09:09:09 09/09/09 will be here in less than 3 weeks!