Social Media Conference at FDMA

Hi Guys,

It was a good FDMA Good conference today, but a little bit of information over load. I am going to do my best to put down my notes here and hopefully will be useful to you. I wrote my tail off, there were so much information it was hard for me to keep.

As I walked in there was about 1/2 hour of networking and talked to interesting guy about the business and he suggest a few things to me.

1. To expand my presence on the internet I might want to be an affiliate and look for affiliate software to accomplish this: Need to do a google search for the software.
2. He said to change content, even just a sentence. Google loves this and the spider will come back often to check your page. I need to change my index page at least 1X a month.
   

First Speaker: Understanding Social Media, Social Networking, and Social Marketing presented by Peter Leshaw

Social Profiles

1. Blogsport, Wordpress, twitter
2. Youtube, Flickr - Make sure to tag your videos and photos properly
   
3. Digg (where to write a comment about an article and add a vote about it. It helps the article get noticed), Delicious (saves your books on their website)
   
4. Facebook, Linkedin

Peter mention about Location based Social Networking. He uses with his iphone when he travels to find people on facebook who are near where he is. Like he is in Miami and he is able to communicate with the local people using the GPS portion of the iphone.

Buzz about Blogs

1. Search Engine Favor site that are frequently updated like blogs
2. Blogs are easy to format and use
3. Blogs allow comments
4. RSS

Using Reader to Read RSS - Yahoo and Google have readers

What Peter does when writing a post:

• 50% Writes about the key word he is trying to convey
• 25% about the product he is trying to sell
• 25% about buy the product
• Does not use more than 250 words

Social Profiles
When setting up your social profile....

• Brand your profile, is about you or your company. Try to keep it the same.
• Customize your profile
• Describe yourself - your chance to be on soapbox, interests, other thing
• Provide images, videos, links, etc
• Share your content with others

Reputation Management

• Tracking social profiles for mention on you or your company. Use google alerts for this.
• Look for positive and negative reviews and prepare what to say. See case where Domino Pizza. What do you say or do. Guys video Tape theme. Very Negative
  

Some Tools for Twitter
Tweet Beep, Blog Pulse, search.twitter.com, back tweets ( I tried to look at these and its greek to me - Maybe someone can try and explain)

Some other tools for Social Media
UserName Check ( Very cool ), Ice Rocket,

Off subject, but he mentions - A tool he used Poll Daddy (Free Polling on Site),

Peter Leshaw : An Internet Marketer's Blog

2nd Speaker: Who has the time for Twitter by Jeff Yaniga: Pitney Bowes

What is Twitter

1. Twitter is One Way Mirror
2. Twitter is like being at a networking event - handing out cards on steroids
3. You are looking for good partners - not everyone out there
4. You speak your mind - your own soap box within 140 characters
5. A place to sell your stuff
6. Everything is searchable on twitter

Navigation Twitter

1. Sign Up today if you haven't
2. One Line Bio of yourself - important
3. Your URL/ Signup Name important choice
4. Location
5. Create a back ground or Custom Background - Need to ask Johnnie Hawaiian how he did his background

Follow Others on Twitter - and Why do you follow others

1. You need to look other sites to see what kind of comments they are making.
2. You can unfollow anyone - You will know if someone is spammer and you can unfollow them
3. If you follow someone, the more you follow will get people to follow you.

He used this term, "ReTweet" a lot and I am not exactly sure what that means. ( Can anyone explain)

You can put any URL in a Tweet message. You may need to shorten a URL and you can use, tinyurl.com - It will shorten any URL to 25 characters.

Within your twitter dashboard, you can have many Twitter Account. So you can have 1 personal and another for your business, all under the same dashboard.

Direct - Company uses twitter as a public relation tool. For example, if you were at Starbucks and sent a tweet saying, "I am at starbuck" and starbuck and send a tweet back.
Indirect - Employees Post as Individual

Be prepared for good and bad tweets about you (especially companies)

Example of growth - Starbucks had 30, 270 followers Jan 09, today has 181, 776 followers.

He talked about Hash Tags a lot. I am having a hard time understand, but here is great description of what it is. < Hash Tags >

Monitor your reputation on Twitter
Search the web - Google alerts

Read your Tweet Feeds daily

3rd Speaker: Marketing Fusion
New Way of Business

1. Two Way Dialog with Customers now
2. Now it is conversational vs Broadcasting a message
3. Goal - Create a longterm value and loyalty
4. Sell by Servicing

Matrix Fusion
Holistic (Parts of the Business)- web - Social Media

Loader the Business Message the more consumers turn off

What Customers Want

• Control Frequency of your business message
• Surprise and Delight your customers
• Listen to your customers and Respond
• You will get deeper trust over time

Email is the center of communication with all the technologies

• Mobile
• Social Media
• Online Connector
• Push / Pull messages - Twitter

Email is the link
The inbox has morphed as the center

• Computer
• Social Media
• Mobile

Not Wider but Deeper with Customer

• Mine Customer
• Upsell
• Use analysis as way to earn creditbilty
• Cross Sell

Tool she talked about - What people are talk about you on Social Network - Radian6

Find out what social items your customers are using, facebook, twitter and start promoting your social networks to them. Ask them, in surveys or emails.

4th Speaker: Facebook

Why be on it: Growing 100 million user and growing
If you are using your name as a brand, your facebook page may show up really high google.

5 Keys for Success

• Have a Strategy - Listen to others
• Use Personals
• Select Friends carefully
• Be Active Regularly
• Always add value to your site
• Be consistant, authentic, and congruent

Daily Activity

• Update Status
• Big Clients
• Update your profile
• Feedback
• News feed - read them
• comment on photos
• watch conversation
• video comments
• 90% accept friends
• acknowledge birthdays ( a really good idea - create birthday gift page on your website for your friend to go to - )

Key elements of Good Profile
1. Have a Picture of yourself
2. Real Name
3. Profile description important
4. Unique landing page
5. Right click your name to address for your facebook URL of yours
6. Change your tabs to ones you need to use >> Add Friend Feed Tab
7. Add Videos
8. Add Links
9. Add Application to your site

Making a New Friends
1. Don't take any friends without a face
2. Put your Facebook or Twitter URL on your email signature
3. Put a Face Badge on you site or blog - Wordpress has a widget

Profile Page Vs Fan Page

1. Once you get 5000 friends you can get a fan page
2. Build your personal brand
3. Fan Page can be a Biz Page

Page Vs Groups

• Pages and Group has a discussion group
• Page let Application in and not groups
• Page has stats, not groups

Here is important Ratio with Facebook and Twitter
-If you have Large amount of Friends:
7 content messages vs 1 self promotion
-Small amount of Friends
15 content messages vs 1 self promotion

I hope this notes are use ful for you guys !!!
God Bless,
John
Swim with the Dolphins in Miami

How Twitter and Facebook Now Compete with Google

A great article about how Social newtorks are now becoming a resource for information rather than Google. Here is the article from Mark Cuban .

"Last year I wrote a blog post entitled “If the news is important it will find me”. The point was that we all live in so many social networks, that someone will send us an update if something in the world happens that we would be interested in. Back then I was guessing. A year later I have data.

For the 1st time ever, more people are finding my blog from Twitter and Facebook referrals than via Google. The total number of people coming to my blog is increasing. The percentage of people who find it via Google is declining. Significantly.

Thats huge. Why ? Because of the behavior implications for users, and because of the business implications for Twitter, Facebook and Google.

What if I decide to follow someone on twitter or facebook who is a guru on the types of cars Im interested in buying ? Could I not just query them and get a response and referral to a site that gives me the information Im looking for ? ie,

Anyone know a great source for information on Ford f150 trucks ? Need to buy one

@mcuban follow the @greatdealsotrucksguy

Anyone else like this guy

@mcuban I used it. Great source.

@greatdealsontrucksguy – any suggestions on where to get a used ford f150 in Dallas ? @mcuban – Try this site. xyz.com They know their stuff. Or the response could be. @mcuban whats your price point ? Or it could just be a generic response. In either event, my actions are going to be influenced. I followed this “person” for a reason. In this case

The best example of this is #follow fridays on Twitter. Where users recommend people to follow. Users being influenced by users. A far different experience than the Google search experience. Its also where Twitters anonymity will benefit it as users are able to interact with privacy. Something you really cant do on FB. On FB if you have a friend who knows about trucks. You just email them with a question. Maybe you put it out there to your network. But chances are that network is limited in numbers. Those limits are not in place for twitter.

From a business perspective, Im sure Im not alone in getting more referrals from Twitter than Google Search. Thats money in the bank for Twitter and FB for commercial accounts. There is no reason why a big or small company, say Charmim selling toilet paper, cant set up a twitter account and do whatever marketing they can to build the largest number of followers possible. From there, Twitter could charge them on a cost per referral click originating from their followers. As long as they cost per click is lower than competing options, why wouldn’t they do it ?

Things change. We are seeing a change in our referral logs right now. That could translate into systemic change in user behavior and business opportunity""

this brings up a whole new paradigm for us internet marketers. How do we become the "go-to" resource for potential clients when we are not connected to them via a Social Network? This could be an all night discussion!

Shall we chat about it?
Thoughts to ponder,

Curtis Copeland Professional Photographer for South Florida and Internationally