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Digital Marketing Strategy, PR and Messaging

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Soulati Media On The Street With Shane Rhyne, Ackermann PR

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Thanks to Stephanie Wonderlin at Social Slam in her 10 impressive minutes of fame where she said that YouTube video got more attention from search engines than web pages or Vimeo.

That statement caused my mind to stray to my neglected YouTube channel and what wasn’t there — enough videos to be impressive. Stephanie changed my life right then and there; I resolved to fix my sheer laziness with snippets of <2 minute snips (another Stephanie tip) then and there at Social Slam.

New on the Soulati Media YouTube channel are 9 videos posted in Knoxville live from Social Slam. Within 10 minutes, I had product, I had launch, I had video all raw and in the moment on the street. Gotta love that takeaway; may I energize you to try the same?

Guest one is Shane Rhyne, director of digital with 30-year-old Ackermann PR in Knoxville. Shane wears a hat that distinguishes him in a crowd; sheesh, the guy is 6’4″ does he need to command any more attention?

So we bantered and got down to brass tacks — PR is all about integration and    Shane offers a tip for newbie PR professionals not yet engaging in social media to “just get started.” See what you think about Shane’s commanding presence on camera; I’d say he nailed it, wouldn’t you?

Thoughts After Social Slam 2012

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You missed the IRL event of the year in Knoxville last Friday. We got to see so many social media mavens and not so mavens, about 600, gathered in Knoxville for the second annual affair. Congratulations to the Knoxville Social Media Club and Mark W. Schaefer, founder of the event, for another amazing gig.

Thanks, too, for the swag bag although take a look in the photo above and see if you can spot the typo? How could that happen? LOL. Loved lunch, sponsored by Bush’s Baked Beans and cashed in already for my two free cans of veggie baked beans. Awesome swag.

The most incredible thing for we who paid more to sit in front of the stanchion and call ourselves VIP to hob knob with the A-lister faculty, breath, was the opportunity to press the flesh of the names we’ve only seen on streams. And we were closer to Mitch Joel’s cross-the-line innuendos prior to those in the back of the room.

I checked in on Facebook and tagged 25 others also present from my community alone! W00T!  After Stephanie Wonderlin presented for 10 minutes with 10 tips about video, I got the most awesome idea to use my iPhone 4S to do some spontaneous interviewing. And, thus, Soulati Media “On The Street” was born (although that branding is just announced and not yet on film!). I’ll be sharing eight video snippets from the movers and shakers who contributed to Social Slam 2012 in upcoming blog posts. Curious ahead of time? Hit my YouTube channel (link right over there) and sneak peek!

Some Thoughts

These are my nuts and bolts about the day, and I hope you add a few I may have missed:

  • Data. Analytics. I’d like to write a #ThatIsAll here, but feel the need to explain a bit further. We heard a fabulous presentation by Tom Webster with Edison Research who writes over at Brand Savant. His skills as a presenter are honed with humor, extremely relevant content and information that makes you cringe because your campaigns are not created with his company’s customized research to get the customized data and the customized analytics. Did I say customized?

I sat in a workshop about Social Search (I may be writing more on that soon as it’s a topic that warrants more explanation) that did nothing but upset me. The expertise flowing from Sean McGinnis, Sam Fiorella and their colleague was fast, high-level, confusing, and lacked a roadmap for me to follow. That is why I walked away from there unhappy; there is so much to learn and understand about social data that people in the room needed those basics. When your presenters are so above board with their expertise (like an airplane to a car) and the audience is still trying to buy a car, there’s a disconnect. Nothing against these gents who were wowsome; it’s just me who isn’t.

  • Integrated Campaigns. Gini Dietrich and Geoff Livingston wrote a book, Marketing In The Round, that just came out the day of  Social Slam. I was waiting for Gini to promote the book and let 600 people know how to buy it, but apparently, Social Slam planners allegedly didn’t allow its promotion? (Check the link over there to buy it now.) Why? Terribly remiss. Gini is one of the A-listers (she’ll deny it every time) in my circles; she is a leader in my community, and every person in the entire VIP section knows her. She was also the morning keynote presenter.  Buy her book; this is social media, people; let authors promote books with content social media professionals need to read.

Integrated marketing is still the answer. We can have data, we can have teams, but the silos need to come down and the campaigns need to be cohesive so we can share the success stories. Gini has something important to say; her content is relevant and required.

  • Presentation skills. You know how 3 p.m. is death time for any conference? I can vouch for that. There I was, absolutely doing the head bob, and I was saved and became a true believer — thank you Marcus Sheridan! This lion that roared rocked the house; he put the energy into the room that was so low people were sleeping. He walked the room, he boomed his voice, he threw the mic at people, “Love it, embrace it…what’s your name?” And he engaged IRL, in people’s faces with names on the spot and ad libs the likes of any LaLaLand actor. What Marcus said, for the life of me, I can’t remember; just speaking the truth; but, what I’ll remember was the most amazing presentation skills of anyone at the entire event. Way to go, Marcus! High marks.
  • Content Marketing. And, then came Mark W. Schaefer who was doomed after Marcus, but really not. Mark wrote his second book, Return On Influence, which he gave away to the conference — is this a pattern, Mark?  Mark’s presentation style was engaging and his content was loaded with storytelling about others and proof points about why he thinks brands need to pay closer attention to social influencers and how to find and use them.

Conclusion

I traveled with Deb Dobson of Vorys, a Columbus law firm. It was our first meeting, and turns out we trek the same circles on the Interwebz, thus our plan to drive 11 hours round trip. This gave us a lot of time to converse about so much; she’s a talker, you know…I’m sure I didn’t get a word in edgewise…! Heh, hi, Deb!

Deb, in her infinite wisdom as a business development, social marketing, IT and analytics geek, encapsulated the entire day for me as I was lamenting my lack of knowledge in a few areas of social. See if you feel better, too.

There are three types of social marketing experts:

1. The Data Driver — the numbers nerd who lives and breathes this stuff (guys like Tom and Sean and Sam and Deb, as above) and looks at blog traffic as boring as hell because there are so many more ways to skin the cat.

2. The Apps Man — the first leader, the early adopter and the one who jumps from new app to new app to be the first to test, like/hate and write about it. Can you say Mashable?

3. Content Marketer — here’s where I fall, and I’m so glad Deb helped me find my way home as I had gone astray after Social Slam. We in this category have an expertise that is so critical to the other two. Without messaging and creative content that brings number 1 and number 2 to life, there would be NO social anything. I execute content marketing strategy.

What were your takeaways from Social Slam 2012 or anything else I just tossed at you on a bright Monday?  Good to be home.

This Is Your Social Media Sharing Quiz

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I wasn’t going to blog today as I’m feeling extreme stress and inability to comprehend life and the pursuit of happiness.

Chalk it up to not having taxes done, select soccer, taekwando belt testing, yard work, client service, a newly combined blog and website with fabulous SEO and powerful inbound marketing, pulling my upper calf muscle (again) on the tennis court and burning the skin from an ice pack…sorry, just had to get that all off my chest.

Then I read , and he writes a wonderful  piece about Ragu and empathy; read it, you’ll like his creative bridge just as I did.

I’m getting to the point, promise. I went to share this down below in comments just like a good commenter should.  I hit “Share+” expecting it to be Google+. Instead, I got a litany of sites on which to share. I kept scrolling and scrolling to find the bottom and was astonished at the variety and my apparent lack of intelligence about mostly any of these.

Upon further inspection, I think we’ve got a list of world-wide shares, as I see some language I can’t understand and extensions in Russia, among others. For the purposes of today’s post (which I wasn’t going to write), I challenge anyone to dissect these below. Mind you , it took about 10 screen shots to capture these as I couldn’t enlarge the pop-up window (did you see that story on pop-up restaurants today in the Wall Street Journal?  Budding restaurateurs trying/testing cuisine concepts, ala Kosher foods, in lobbies of other businesses that close at night; neat marketing idea.

Are you familiar with even ¼ of these listed below? Have some fun, and now I’m going to go away and try to breathe.

P.S. If you scroll to the bottom and see this post script (I have no idea where it ends up with all these images), you know it took me longer to set up these darn jpg than to write the post, eh?

Have a great weekend, dear Friends!

How To Pimp A Blog Post

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Last week I was late posting this because the dog ate my homework. Actually, it was stuck on my iPad, and I had to retype because I knew it was killer content. I posted at 11 a.m. ET on Wednesday; always murder when hawking on Twitter because most are back in the throes of work.

What I quickly realized, as the post earned few comments or retweets, is the subject matter—highly specialized for professionals in public relations. To highlight, I wrote about GoPro, the media darling upstart wearable video camera company loved by extreme sports enthusiasts. My content was oriented to media relations for PR professionals interested in the elements they need for national media relations.

To promote this niche content pertaining to my profession, I had to pimp (aka push, promote, market) my post, and here’s how I did it:

>>Twitter. I scheduled about four tweets throughout the day, and invited a few close peeps to review. While they read for me and re-tweeted, comments were few. (As Erica Allison reminded me, don’t ever gauge the strength of a post on its comments, especially one oriented to a specialized topic.)

>>Triberr. I am a member of three tribes, and I’m always grateful when my tribe members retweet my blog posts. My post was tweeted by about 10 peeps to their networks. I’ve come to rely on the tribes to extend my content for me, and it all works together in correlation. Triberr is not a one-off social media strategy…it’s part and parcel of the overall strategy.

>>Buffer. I signed up for Buffer for the first time (after seeing many using it). Buffer scheduled my tweet at the most opportune time of the day when most are active in the stream. Very cool app…try this out.

>>Facebook Profile. My tweets to share the post were also sent over to Facebook at the same time. HootSuite is a wonderful platform with which to push content on multiple channels simultaneously.

>>Facebook Fan Page. I admit, my firm’s Facebook page is not frequently attended. I registered my blog with Networked Blogs which automatically posts my articles on my Facebook company page; however, this blog post warranted more of a push to folks in my community. I garnered a few likes from a few doing this.

>>Facebook Fan Page of GoPro. What did I have to lose? With 1.5 million likes in its community on Facebook, I shared my blog post on the GoPro wall. I congratulated them on all their publicity (in Inc. magazine) and shared my post. The result was a handful of likes on my post from the GoPro community.

>>Google+. As we’re all being required to engage more frequently with Google+ to influence search, you bet I shared my post there. I timed it for the morning before noon ET and then again in the afternoon. One was broadcast to all circles, and the other was in my PR and social media circles.

>>LinkedIn. I’ve not been engaging on LinkedIn as efficiently as I should. I posted my article on my own profile, and then I looked at the groups I was part of.  There were two public relations groups I knew would be interested in this content, so I posted. I also joined another group, Social Media Marketers, and shared there because the story of GoPro as a social brand is compelling to anyone playing in social media marketing.

>>Blog Comments. That day, as I didn’t need to manage my own community as much, I sought other blogs to read and place comments. Those blogs with a commenting system that showed my current blog post brought in new readers to my site. (This is one good reason why you comment on others’ blogs…to help other communities become acquainted with you and yours.)

RESULTS

Clicky. What an amazing analytics tool. I love this dashboard, and I’m fully aware Google Analytics has spiffed up its user friendliness. For someone as anti-analytics as I am, Clicky is a good starter dashboard to get me acclimated to reading stats.

In so doing, I saw that today, hits are up 214% on the GoPro blog post. When I went back seven days to see traffic, I noticed that every single tactic I made above garnered hits to the post. People were stopping in the day of the post, the day after and through the weekend. Clicky showed me how long people stayed, what blog post they arrived at, and whether they opened on a link.

As I said, I’m terrible peeking under the covers to see what the back end is doing on my blog. When I do, I’m always amazed at the extent of data available to help drive my content choices. While I’m never going to let analytics drive my writings, I realize now that having some knowledge at the core of this experience is never a bad thing.

What tales from the rear can you add to this mix? Heh.

2011 Social Media PR Woman Of The Year

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So, I’m a few days late with this post, but it’s gonna be a goody, and you’ll be happy you read along to the bottom; promise.

I sat across the table from Gini Dietrich in Chicago just before Christmas at the Southport Grocery (you can eat there, too, with blue-eyed waiters to flirt with), and the poor dear had all she could do to get out of her chair to jog down and keep our meeting.  (She’d been on the go for about three weeks in December speaking on a killer circuit while tweeting, blogging and FB’ing in sync with the jet engine reverberations.)

Then we hit the streets to find a bench to do Gini’s first guest video post (with moi, ahem) which we had to repeat and giggle through. It was after that that I knew Gini was a special someone I loved to be with (and so, too, does everyone else), and I wanted to gift her with a little something in return.

Gini Dietrich is the 2011 Social Media, PR Woman of the Year. (Normally, I’d stop there with a #RockHot and #ThatIsAll, but this time I’ll share why. Oooh, it feels good to blog again after two weeks off.)

>>No one keeps a schedule like she does, and no one has the pulse of PR and social media CONSISTENTLY.

>>She is a mentor to the young PR peeps up and coming, and she works hard to network and land everyone a job.

>>She’ll take time to listen to a business problem and offer solutions and tips to get you out of the trench.

>>She is the author of a new book with Geoff Livingston, called Marketing In The Round, set to publish in spring, and you can pre-order just as I did on Amazon by clicking the link here.

>>She is always accessible with banter, friendly commentary, snark, and giggles.

>>She caters to public relations and social media peeps with content oriented to tools, techniques, and training.

>>Her smile, personality, humor, and love for dogs and bikes know no boundaries, and her energy is ebullient and effervescent (oh, that’s so smarmy, but true!).

>>She gives gifts every Friday; read these posts here and here, for her popular Follow Friday series.

>>She is committed to the cause – changing the perception of public relations and encouraging practitioners to become more marketing-esque with knowledge of financials, business, analytics, and more.

>>She is the consummate social media leader for all things new including channels, gadgets, and tools. She throws the punches where they need to land, and stands tall to take the heat when it comes.

>>She is an A-lister, dammit, and she’ll deny this forcefully…but when her blog, Spin Sucks, sits in the top 35 spot on Ad Age Power 100 for months, and the peeps ahead of her are blogging communities, then why the heck can’t I call her an A-lister? I wonder if that’s a negative…? She’s a leader, and Spin Sucks Pro (her paid platform) is soon to launch for real; she’s taken content marketing to revenue-generation mode (something few have done successfully).

What other reasons besides these can anyone share? I’m sold; hope you are, too!

Love ya, Gin Blossom! I’m a proud twinster!