Two years ago I “attended” the first Social Media Success Summit, a virtual event with “experts” from around the world on social media marketing. To be honest, I didn’t have high expectations; I was already being inundated with invitations for real world and virtual social media marketing events, and most were pretty weak on any compelling content. However, my friend Denise Wakeman

was involved, and she said it was worth my time. She had never led me astray before, so took a chance.

It was well worth it. Besides Denise, there was a host of great presenters who went well past how to setup a Facebook page.

This year marks the 3rd annual Social Media Success Summit, put on by the same people who put on the Facebook Success Summit and the recent Blogging Success Summit, where I had an opportunity to present. In short: these people know how to put on a content-rich event by marketers, for marketers.

As I scanned through this year’s lineup of sessions, here were a few I found most intriguing:

• Finding and Engaging Your Target Audience With Social Media by Brian Solis, author of Engage: The Complete Guide to Building, Cultivating and Measuring Success in the Social Web
• Facebook News Feed Optimization: How to Dramatically Increase Your Visibility and Engagement by Mari Smith, co-author of the book Facebook Marketing: An Hour a Day.
• How to Create On-the-Fly Videos to Enhance Your Social Media Content by Steve Garfield, author of Get Seen: Online Video Secrets to Building Your Business.
• Making Smart Decisions With Social Analytics by Kelly Feller of Intel’s Social Media Center of Excellence.
• How to Hug Your Calculator: The 6-Step Process for Measuring Social Media by Jay Baer, co-author of The NOW Revolution.

Those were just a few that resonated with me; you should check the full list for sessions on blogging, LinkedIn, Twitter and more.

As with all the other Success Summits, you can attend the sessions live or download them for later viewing or listening.

The full summit, which includes 22 experts and 20 sessions runs throughout the month of May and costs $597. That’s a pretty amazing deal for 20 hours of content from some of the most recognizable names in social media today. What’s even better is that for a short time, the early bird tickets are available for just $297!

I consider myself pretty knowledgeable with social media, but the last two Success Summits were still worth my time and money…I expect you’ll find the same. Don’t miss out on the great savings…book your space for the Social Media Success Summit now!

Rich Brooks
Returning Attendee

A lot of people are wondering how to determine social media ROI these days.

A lot of other people are trying to determine what ROI stands for.

I won’t hold you in suspense any longer: return on investment. In other words, is the time you’re spending on social media worth it? After all, if you’re using social media to grow your business or non-profit, shouldn’t you be getting out more than you put into it?

In this month’s flyte log, our nearly-award winning email newsletter, we take a look at how small businesses and non-profits can plan a successful social media campaign, and how to measure it.

Be sure to pick up your copy of Social Media ROI: 5 Steps to Social Media Success before they’re all gone.

Rich Brooks
I’ll have a Rob ROI, please.

Today is National Form Awareness Day and the government is requesting that you check your Web site forms.

OK, I just made that up.

However, it makes sense to regularly check the forms on your Web site. Why?

1. When someone completes a form on your site they're often taken to what's called a landing page. This page isn't part of your regular navigation, nor is it a page you see every day. Often, it contains information that's no longer relevant or even completely wrong. By filling out your own forms you'll see what your prospects see.
2. Depending on the type of form you have set up on your site, visitors may also receive an autoresponder email. Again, you don't see these emails, but they're delivered to your prospects' email inboxes with your name on it. Do you even remember what your autoresponder says?
3. Occasionally, for no good reason, a form can "go off the tracks." Maybe there was a database error, maybe you ran out of room on the server, maybe it was a random bug. Unfortunately, these problems don't always fix themselves. If you find that you've stopped getting contact form emails you should test the form immediately and let your Web developer know if you find a problem.

Also, if you are receiving a lot of junk through your contact form it's probably time to upgrade to a form that does a better job filtering out that junk. If you have any questions on that please let us know.

Rich Brooks
Web Designer

 
I don't know what alternative to "cheese!" I asked the girls to say, but I promise it will never happen again.

Happy Halloween!

Rich Brooks
In Costume

Speakers: Jason Falls, Lee LeFever, Patrick O’Keefe, Darren Rowse

Got a late start as I was updating my tweeter handle to @therichbrooks

Rowse: Follow leaders then replicate their success/behavior. Learn the culture, find key people w/the culture.

O’Keefe: Understand the norms of behavior.
Falls: It’s not about selling your wares.
Rowse: it’s also about letting other people introduce and connect you.
Falls: Push stuff that’s not your own. Makes you more credible.

Property rights:
LeFever: Use creative commons to explain how you want people to share your content. Most people want to do the right things, but don’t always knows. Ambiguity is bad, being clear is good.
Copyright doesn’t induce sharing, but creative commons does.
Falls: You may need to have communications w/Legal. It may seem like their job is to say “no,”, but really it’s to reduce risk. (So they often do say no.) Good legal will work with you to find a way to say yes, but you need to coach them through the norms of social media.

LeFever: If someone’s using your IP the wrong way, assume the best so you get off on the right foot. (Don’t start w/a cease and desist.)

Rowse: You can turn those people into your best evangelists.

They all suggest that you associate with the right people. “Look around at your five closest friends and that’s who you are.” Will Smith.

Avoid companies that promise you # of followers or integrate your products into forums and message boards.

Don’t be too afraid of soc med; just take off the sales & marketing hat. You can use soc med to become an expert and increase your credibility.

Speakers Included:

Mario Sundar (LinkedIn), Lionel Menchaca (Dell direct2dell.dell.com), Tom Hoehn (Kodak 1000words.kodak.com), Carolyn Abram (Facebook, blog.facebook.com), Nicki Dugan (Yahoo, yodel.yahoo.com).

1. Status: It’s a relationship & it’s complicated
Michael Dell was the impetus behind blog. Find people talking about Dell and engaging them. Started off w/50% against Dell.
Lots of education. Not just rehashing press releases or what’s on Dell.com.
Need to “humanize the brand” – Tom  Hoehn. Putting a face on the “faceless corporation.”

2. Tell Honest, Current Stories
Dugan: Originally an uphill battle to get people to talk like humans on the blog. She came up w/writer’s guidelines. Write from the users’ perspective. Don’t write “our users,” write “you.” Put some of yourself in it. No jargon, use natural language. How you email your mom.
Be interesting and relevant – Hoehn.

3. Know your limits.
Dugan: She had to realize that there were things she couldn’t control from a legal standpoint. She had caused Yahoo to do an SEC filing. Lawyers hackles get up: more work, can’t control the conversation, etc. She wrote up some comment guidelines. Legal said they’d review every post to start, but they developed a sense of trust after a while. Entering a proxy battle is a completely different situation, though.
Menchaca: to start up he got on a conference call w/9 lawyers from Dell. They said every post had to go through legal. “We can’t have a blog if it’s not written in a personal way.” Legal was realistic and only pushed back on safety issues. A series of posts on a recall went through legal.
Abram: Find out your limits before hand. What is legal worried about? Deal w/those issues up front.

4. Make lemonade.
Abram: Talked about a change to FB that showed more info about self and friends and a blog post that was taken the wrong way. You need to strike the right tone. You also need to fix what’s wrong (new privacy tools.)
Dugan: Yahoo TV redesign pissed off users. Lots of negative comments, but it led to a better product.
Menchaca: Don’t post your first couple post w/no outbound links. When Dell was called on this he created a post w/outbound links…he’s listening.
Blogs can be social juditzu – paraphrased by Mario Sundar.

5. One size doesn’t fit all.
Abrams: Chose not to allow comments. Just didn’t have the bandwidth to follow up.
Hoehn – love comments. The value of negative comments far outweighs any individual comments.

6. Learn as you go.
Better to ask forgiveness than permission. You can test everything. Learn. Go. Learn. Go. – Hoehn
Never be afraid to change your direction. – Abram
Be real – dugan. If your blog is just a repurposed PR people won’t come back.

7. It’s not just words. (The future of corporate blogs.)
Dugan – Posts w/video are most popular. Includes flickr stream.
Abram – mini feeds, mash ups. Multi-things in one stream. (pictures, words, video)
Hoehn – photos! (Kodak.)
Menchaca – Tried to serve video w/a proprietary system (from Dell). Finally switch to YouTube. Leverage existing community. Dell missed this going into blogging. YouTube is important from Global standpoint.

Q&A:
Dugan – it’s hard to track roi. There are some metrics, (incoming links, etc.) What are your goals, and are you achieving them?