Social Media Marketing Seminar - Blog Reader Invite

Sean Oakley, Team CM's resident Social Media guru, and the Advertising Association of Baltimore, have teamed-up to present the third installment in the Interactive Essentials series -“Social Media - Taking Part in the Conversation”

In this Lunch-n-Learn Session, you’ll learn the fundamentals of social media marketing, from identifying agency clients ripe for social media, to launching their first campaign and reporting the results to the Executive Board. After the program, enjoy lunch with your peers and presenters while participating in an open forum question and answer session.

Before we go out the masses, we want to offer seats to this event to our blog readers first. We're doing three sessions, each with only 12 seats, so space is very limited. The prior two seminars in the series sold out quickly, so act now if you're interested.

Here are the basics:

Dates
Tuesday, November 25, 2008
Tuesday, December 2, 2008
Tuesday, December 9, 2008

Time
11:00 AM – 12:30 PM  Presentation
12:30 PM – 1:00 PM  Lunch, Q&A

Location
Congruent Media World HQ
Chesapeake Conference Room
Baltimore, MD

Seating
12 Account Executives from local agencies (limit 2 per agency)

Registration Fee
$40 AAB members / $60 non-members
Includes lunch from Di Pasquale's (they rock!) in Highlandtown, Est. 1914

Registration
Call (410) 534-6800 or email Sean@CongruentMedia.com

Click [Download] below for a rough PDF flier with an overview and agenda. It's not pretty (yet), but l wanted to get this posted quickly as seats are already filling-up.

We hope to see you there!

BudURL: URL Shortening plus Real-Time Tracking

BudURL sticks out from the URL shortening crowd by adding some interesting tracking tools.Just like it's popular competitor TinyURL, BudURL allows you to easily shorten long URLs, enabling the use of links within confined posting spaces. 

Turn:

http://www.congruentmedia.com/pub/eNewsletter-Campaigns-and-HTML-Email 

into:

http://budurl.com/yn14

 
This is invaluable when message space is at a premium on microblogging sites like Twitter, which only allows 140 characters per post. But there are lots of services like this out there and if merely judging by space, BudURL certainly doesn't offer the shortest URL. 
 
What sets BudURL apart is the real-time tracking the service offers. After you've posted a shortened URL, you can view each time your link is clicked, the site where your link was viewed and the IP address of the person clicking your link. (I don't know if I like this last part...) All of this can be seen in real-time from your auto-refreshing dashboard:
 
 
This is a really cool tool to add to your tracking arsenal. On my first test with Twitter, I quickly saw a number of referals from aggregation sites that were reposting my link. I could literally watch, in real time, as my link played leapfrog across the internet. 
 
Of course it's also useful for just seeing the volume of clicks your link is getting, which can tell you about your audience, and how much of their attention you have.
 
It's certainly not a surefire analytics tool, nor should social media ever be tracked merely in numbers. But it's useful for seeing how far your microblogging reaches, and it fulfills it's core service of allowing you to link to long URLs. Of course, it works outside of the microblogging world too. 
 
Signup was a breeze, and it's free. Definitely something worth checking out

 

Technorati Report: Blogs are Talking About You

Technorati began releasing it's annual State of the Blogsphere report this week. They're releasing each of the five sections over five days, the first two sections having already been posted. 

Already there are some interesting statistics on the evolving demograhic and influence of bloggers. For example, according to the report:

  • 42% of US bloggers are 18-34 years old, 58% are 35+
  • 51% of US bloggers have household incomes greater than $75,000
  • 74% of US bloggers are college graduates

Not exactly the demographic of social media users that the stereotype often portrays. As social media as a whole, and particularly blogs, becomes more and more mainstream, their influence over consumers grows. The report gave insight into this as well:

  • 4 out of 5 bloggers post brand or product reviews
  • 37% post them frequently
  • 1 in 3 bloggers have been approached by companies to be brand advocates

Some marketers are obviously already engaging bloggers because of the blogosphere's influence. But before even engaging, the best question to ask is: What blogs are talking about your company? And how many consumers are listening?

 

 

TonchiDot/Sekai Camera (Real World Tagging)

Check out this presentation video from TechCrunch 50 on the Sekai Camera  .

Its an iPhone app (prototype for the moment) that tags “the real world”. For example, if you are at a certain spot (say the corner of Pratt and Charles Streets), you can point your iPhone at a restaurant which will show a tag with a link to the menu. Still don't know what I mean? Its kind of like the glasses Rowdy Roddy Piper wore in “They Live”, but instead of seeing aliens you’re seeing information balloons and tags.

Or you can see tags specifically from your friends eg-“You gotta try the burgers here”. If you point at a subway station sign you can see the subway schedule. It works by finding your location (presumably using the iPhones GPS), then uses image recognition to find and display the tags (which can be visual or audio).

Imagine visiting a historic spot or museum, holding up your iPhone and getting visual and audio information on the area/artwork you’re looking at. Or possibly going to another country (say, Japan) holding up your iPhone to the street corner you’re at and having everything your looking at translated- or at least recommendations (in English) for tourist spots/restaurants/etc. You would think spots could potentially become jumbled with tags which is why they have series of filters so you can just see certain types of tags.

In addition to general information and tags from friends, it can be used by companies for the next generation of Mobile Marketing. Greenbean 2.0 perhaps? The Sekai Camera is still in the prototype stage but could be an extremely cool app once its released. Its just another example of people finding creative ways to use the features available in the iPhone.

Sci-Fi Channel using Twitter?

While watching Sci-Fi channel tonight, I saw this shocking message scroll across the bottom of the screen: "Sign up for Twitter and Follow Sarah at www.Twitter.com/_s_a_r_a_h_" 

There are two main thoughts I'd like to share, but first let's fill in some pieces for those unfamiliar with Twitter or Eureka.

Twitter is a social media service that letsusers share what they are doing in 140 character text updates. Think Instant Messaging with all your contacts at once. Users "follow" other users, and will then receive all of those users updates. (A.K.A. 'Tweets') Twitter has gained an incredible amount of popularity over the past year, but Sci-Fi channel? 

Eureka is a Sci-Fi channel show set in a top-secret town inhabited by the brightest scientists and thinkers, whose skills come in handy when making the community futuristic. One of the minor characters is Sarah, a super computer who runs one of the main characters' house: cooking, cleaning and carrying on thoughtful conversations. This is the character represented at www.Twitter.com/_s_a_r_a_h_

This is the first time I've ever seen a Twitter site advertised in commericals. Sci-Fi's "follow Sarah on Twitter" message reminded me of the many advertisements you see today encouraging viewers to text "madlib" to '456321" for mobile updates. Twitter's not text messaging though.

My two thoughts:

1. While I knew that Twitter had gained lots of users, I had no idea it was big enough to be on the radar screen for the Sci-Fi Channel. After seeing McDonald's Big Mac Myspace page advertised on their commercials, it's apparent large companies are integrating TV ads and social media campaigns. We're all used to seeing landing pages on advertisements, will we soon be used to seeing social media "landing pages" instead?

2. I checked out the Sarah Twitter account. I half expected to see a bunch of random Tweets, but instead saw lots of conversational replies. This means "Sarah" was talking with fans, not just spamming out messages. I usually hate fictional social media accounts, but in this case, giving a fictional tv character a voice on Twitter works. (Particularly since Sarah is artificial intelligence) Instead of making a Twitter site for the most popular character, Sci-Fi channel put thought into it and chose a character that made more sense. Kudos to Sci-Fi for this, and for using Twitter to have actual conversations with fans. (Instead of simply spamming!)

What are your thoughts on how Sci-Fi is using Twitter? Leave a comment below!

 

 

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