David Sauter of Envano, Inc. presented today’s Facebook bsession. David is President/CEO of Envano, Inc and brings tremendous vision and proven expertise in strategic Interactive Marketing solutions to their partner clients that mesh with their overall business goals. Their services are developed with three target solutions in mind that translate into a complete service offering for interactive marketing. Envano is a unique blend of people with marketing savvy, technology intelligence, and creative design expertise at the forefront of interactive marketing. They focus on advancing the customer relationship by engaging the audience; not just get their attention! The result? A captive experience effectively aligning brands and customers.

Nice connection from David: Social media is building community

Marketing spending trends by MarketingSherpa. Social media is on top for adding dollars, as well as e-marketing.

Best social media usage: influencing brand reputation and awareness is at top.

Why do we want to be in social media? That’s where the PEOPLE are. Can’t look at is as where the money is—eventually we hope to of course, but not the point of it.

A potential hesitation: We can’t control the message. On the contrary, you can control MORE if you in fact are there! You can monitor, react and…….. engage! If you aren’t involved, the message will be there anyway. Why miss out on those opportunities to respond to the issues/discussions? What a way to enhance your brand.

One thing you can count on in Social Media…Change. Ta dah!

From David’s perspective: Social media will be MESSY, get over it. I think this is the biggest turn off for those who walk away too early. Another word I could use is overwhelming.

Facebook Nation:
• 250 mil active worldwide users
• 90.8 million in US alone

Powerful brand – Harley
• 223K plus fans on FB
• Very active in Engagement: where it’s at if I haven’t said that enough
• Focus on extending their fan base

How do you grow your fan base? You don’t have to necessarily have a lot of fans to be successful. My note: it’s the quality of your targets not the quantity of those on your site. You want to be able to focus on those in your relevant space. Dana King of Envano added:  gauge your success on the engagement and involvement.

Connecting corp site to outposts:
• If you’re on a social media site, promote it on your website! Make it as easy as possible for people to find you. Start conversations in multiple avenues and feed them into other areas to integrate communications.
• Fan box: allows you to embed a mini Facebook app into the site. This allows you to not have to bring people to the social media site, but drives them to the outpost (ie website)

Events: allows you to bring fans together. This page includes info on the event and allows fans to interactively respond to attendance interest and send posts.

Social Media Advertising: Can target who will see your ad down to the fine detail. This allows you to then target your ad creative/content. You can then track those targeted ads through click-thru’s.

Facebookers tend to tell the truth more often. Maybe because most of their connections are those they know well.

Blasting marketing messaging to your fans all of the time will cause them to unfan you! It’s ok to do on occasion but you need to provide content that means something to them personally.

How to get started?
• Become a facebooker
• Decide if you want a partner to help you
• Create a fan page, get the name right the first time
• Promote the page, some advertising—giveaways work. Encourages new fans and gets them to talk/engage
• Link from site
• Grow your fans—create dialogue with customers and fans
• Prime the pump/get them posting and sharing

If you want to be found in FB, put the phrases in your title name to what you want to be found under.

To create a fan page, use an individual’s fan page to be an administrator, don’t create a profile for the company.

Paul Trout of Shift Worldwide covered today’s LinkedIn breakout session. Paul is CEO of Shift Worldwide who is an accomplished speaker, writer and trainer on topics of business development, leadership, marketing and client service. Paul is transforming how business is done by using his extraordinary talent in ideation and a passion for solving the ‘unsolvable’ problem. He understands the trends, issues and hot buttons of the market today and predicts the future for what’s to come. Paul has been in the services industry for twenty years, having worked or consulted for firms specializing in legal, consulting, accounting, information systems, financial, public relations, marketing, advertising, publishing and education and training services.

Paul started off by reiterating that social media is all about the relationships (not the Benjamin’s – that’s my contribution)

Some basics to consider for Linked In:
• Build social capital—the measurement of the value of your business network. Mission is to build trust and reciprocity.
• Focus on closed network—family or high school click. This group has a lot of trust and reciprocity but not a lot of info sharing.
• Connect Networks—bringing someone from one part of your network to someone in another network to bring value and help in their success.

Now a fun fact: 43 million members on Linked In! In one month jumped from 37 to 43. A new member joins every second.

Why LinkedIn works:
• You can extend your identity to generate memory.
• Link to people that you trust, know and can verify your value.
• Build awareness for you and what your value is—LinkedIn is a great tool to do that.
• Companies don’t make decisions, people do—build those relationships with the people. LinkedIn helps facilitate that.

When LinkedIn doesn’t work:
• There is little context for use. You have to invest time to learn it yourself.
• When you only use it when you need it. Build it before you need it.
• When you approach it as “help me” vs. “help you”.
• Timidity in linking beyond first degree.

Common “Me” Uses:
• Job/career focus: Recruiting or search.
• Marketing/business development/sales—how much easier can it be to connect with someone than when you have almost every detail about them at your fingertips?
• Knowledge absorption—fantastic tool in learning anything you care to dream up.

Valuable “Them” Uses:
• Connecting Networks
• Update comments
• Knowledge dissemination—position yourself as an expert
• Make recommendations
• I’d add another and that is participation in groups—provide valuable, relevant content to your groups and you will be noticed.

A quick step in stepping up your LinkedIn experience: Don’t be all business all the time. Be personal. Learn, share, rebrand. Then implement targeted relationship building. For me, it’s been most fun infusing a lot of personality into my social media engagements.

A cool note: Build relationships OUTSIDE of social media. Be focused on those live connections. That has been my BEST social media experience. Add that to being personal, and there is no way you can’t create strong relationships.

The purpose of LinkedIn: To be found!

Growing your network base:
• Search to connect with others.
• Search avenues:
o Name specific, email addresses, Other’s networks, school/work networks, groups.
• Make “invite to connect” personal – another step in building relationships!
• Don’t ignore your 2nd and 3rd degrees. That is a huge pot of potential in growing relationships, sales potential, recognition, followers, etc.

Now, a tool I LOVE, Job Search!
• Brings up results on jobs posted in LinkedIn or on the net via SimplyHired
• Each job displays who is a connection in your network that works there. A huge power in getting closer to the decision maker. That person could become your advocate in getting you into the organization and getting your information in front of the right person. Applying for a job over the web is a waste of time! As a job seeker, I can vouch for that.

A side note, don’t forget to be “them” focused–you must, must be of value to them and can’t just expect a one way street. Relationships are not based on one-sided focuses.

Other search tools include people search and company search. The company search displays all of those who are currently and previously employed by them. That could be the most valuable information you could ever ask for in developing targeted relationships or getting yourself in the door.

As a Marketer, participation in Q&A’s shows your value, expertise and credibility—helping you become recognized and top of mind. This could also engage those in your network and ultimately grow your network and relevancy.

Groups: allows you to keep up to date on discussions/events/news. This also allows you to share content and engage with others with similar interests.

Business Development: Search, then connect: knowledge absorption. When you connect begin providing value and relevancy to the connections.

Connecting Networks: Have a reason!

Update Comments: similar to FB and Twitter. Develop personal insights. Not a promotion tool.

Recommendations: Powerful because they develop trust and a bond.

That’s all folks!

Todd Lohenry of e1evation, llc is covering today’s Blogging session. Todd Lohenry is a business development and technology professional with 25 years experience in marketing, sales and technology. E1evation, llc helps small-medium businesses develop the strategy and structure they need to succeed in the marketplace. Todd is an entrepreneur, marketing and sales expert, technologist, journalist, speaker, instructor and political consultant. Todd has developed a global reputation in the high-tech, financial, and aviation sectors.

Todd started out by asking how many have not blogged before. Many raised their hands so he made us newbies all comfortable in knowing we aren’t alone in this overwhelming environment!

A great thing about blogging is that anyone can blog, the bad thing? Anyone can blog!

The reason I came to this session and what I’m excited to learn about: How to change from being a thinker to a thought leader.

Growing blog traffic:
• Publish content and connect it to all the relevant social media channels

Todd mentions some of the pitfalls: He increased traffic 30 fold and in May lost 80% of traffic due to a technology issue. Wordpress plug-in crashed IE every time they went to site. This brings up a great take away: test on all search engines because there are many ways to get there!

Blogging can be done in 5 easy steps, that is comforting!
• Express yourself
• Edit
• Emphasize - take advantage of the many tools available to share and contribute content (see below on a few)
• Elevate - use tools such as Google, Ask and Yahoo that automatically checks for blog updates. You can use tools such as Hootsuite for Twitter that will automatically post those updates.
• Execute! - do this over and over every day. Use the process continuously.

5 E’s, now I can probably remember that, or at least that they all started with E.

Doing blogging is easy and free, but you have to put in the time and energy. Invest in individual tools not all.

Why a blogsite?
Inexpensive, easy to update, dynamic, create dialogue with customers, humanize brand

Blog is a public demonstration of your thought leadership. One of my barriers right now is getting my thoughts out on what is relevant and important to me. This is going to be an exciting tool for me to do that!

Which platform is best?
Consider Wordpress, 32% of all those developing tools use some form of wordpress plugin’s. Wordpress.com is a great place to start and practice. Graduate to a hosted site when you’ve gotten enough experience. This is interesting because I hadn’t gotten that through my experience in social media so I’m absolutely going to take this path. Biggest difference between Blogger and Wordpress- Blogger is just a blogging engine. What does that mean in Simple Sara terms? Blogger ONLY does blogs. Wordpress has much more functionality and flexbility.

Why is WordPress best?
• Plugin functionality- Over 4,000!
• Theme functionality: can easily activate different look and feel themes
• Auto-ping functionality: easy for other people to refer to their content and use in their website. Ah hah! Increasing your inbound links-which helps SEO and Google rankings!
• Trackback
• Overall feeling of simplicity
• SEO ready

Over 28,000 Wordpress blogs created every day! I better be one of those very soon.

Be sure to express yourself. I love doing that!
• Instructional
• Informational
• Reviews
• Lists
• Interviews
• Case studies
• Contrast two options
• Debate
• Link post
• And so much more….

How do you begin? Get a Wordpress site, post some thoughts and ask friends/family what they think about what you’ve written and how you’ve done before launching to the world.

How can you get great content? Google Reader of course! This is an amazing tool to organize and centralize your feeds. Make news come to you, as it should be of course. If you spent your time searching out the millions of pieces of information out there, your boss would have some words because nothing would get done! You can see if your blog has been shared via Google Reader. AND, you can set up your social media accounts to automatically share and send links of interest.  Wow, had no idea. I’ll keep that in mind when I get my blog going.

Must haves on transforming from just being a thinker: Be intelligent, consume news, get a lot of ideas, and beg, borrow or steal content to share on your blog-this all helps in becoming a thought leader. Of course original, well thought out, relevant and intelligent original posts are a must as well!

Shareaholic: allows you easily transfer site links/info and post into your blog. This grows your relevant content and topics of interest that you can comment on to share with readers. This shows others your “smartness and thought leadership”, which drives return visitors.

ScribeFire: I have to admit my weakness here. So much was going on and I missed what this is so here is the official definition from their website: ScribeFire is an extension for the Mozilla Firefox Web Browser that integrates with your browser to let you easily post to your blog: you can drag and drop formatted text from pages you are browsing, take notes, and post to your blog.

Zermanta plugin for WordPress - it will suggest links for your site and make suggestions for other sites, links, articles and tags. Simple point & click enrichment of your blog posts.

By using these three tools, you are building an entire editorial team of other reporters and leveraging their content to build your brand.

Facebook note: Social RSS allows you to get applications to import content on other social media sites into your fan page.

Hear from Todd himself on his thoughts on blogging for those of you who couldn’t make it.

“What is the most powerful weapon in the world?” Well according to the Wall Street Journal, it’s the camera! They are everywhere…phones, computers, etc., but its all on how you use them. They don’t need words to describe what is happening, and that is why video can be so powerful. Take this Philippines McDonald’s commercial.

Delivering your Message in a Segmented World

Know your Goals! What is your primary objective? What are your unique assets and your core competencies? What is the conversation you want to generate?

Know your Audience! Who are your primary and secondary targets? What is the current conversation? What is the best media to reach your audience? Where is your target audience going for information? To really accomplish your objective, you have to ‘narrowcast,’ or tailor your message to each specific group.

Know what Results you Want! What information are you sending out? When is your information being released? What message will put your audience to action? Remember,every time you send out any information, you are representing a brand.

Plan your Video! Personalize it. Don’t fake it. Think about the video from all angles and what you will all need to make the video happen. Think about how long you want it, and try to keep it short. Know how your camera works before you start the shoot. Have audio by using microphones, it will sound much better. It worked for the “Jazz Signer.”

Side note: My computer is going to run out of battery life, and I am not near an outlet. The only option is to sit on the floor again because I only brought my short power cord. Maybe I should consider this whole ‘planning ahead thing.’ And this coming from the guy who was an hour late this morning and was going to show up to this event tomorrow.

The session is wrapping up here. A few questions remain about music copyright and Youtube ranking. Looks like there needs to be some further research on how to get your video highly ranked. Through a quick Google search, check out this blog post on Youtube ranking.

If you need some suggestions for video editing software, check out Vegas Movie Studio, Avid FreeDV,  and iMovie ‘09. Thanks for the suggestions via Twitter @rosslarocco and @tommytrc.

We started out the session by helping people setup their Twitter accounts. I’m glad that I am not the only one who can never read the messed up word phrase when you sign up for a new account! Just about everyone is all set up now, so there will be a whole new group of Northeast Wisconsin Tweeps to start following. I’ll try to grab some of their @twitterhandles by the end of the session.

On a related topic, a question from the crowd… “How do we find our audience that we are looking for on Twitter?” @macdesign13 suggested using Twellow and Search.Twitter, but also reminded the everyone that one needs to ‘promote’ your own Twitter handle if you are reaching out to one large targeted audience, like the students of St. Norbert College.

We’ve moved on to a little bit of a random tangent including how to RT, what hashtags are, explaining #smrockgb, and a few of the related Twitter programs like Tweet Deck and HootSuite. Another good question from a young lady from the back row… “who makes the hashtag and how do they become the known hashtag?” The answer: Go to hashtags.org to find what hashtags are being used for a particular event or topic. Anyone can make a hashtag, just make sure there isn’t one already and just start tweeting it! Like #kiariscool.

Random side note: my legs have fallen asleep, and have started to do that pin needle tingle thing.

New topic: 140 characters, or ’short attention span theater.’ Explaining how to get your message out in a short phrase by including links and getting to the point of things. “It’s like a text message, but not really.” There are no Twitter specific short codes, but some Twitter language you should know. Check out this Mashable post.

ALRIGHT! It’s time for everyone to get tweeting! Here are some tweetbies and Twitter veterans who you can checkout and to start following:

@bobbiann1953, @advanceincubato, @StruesRxBay, @michelleschlies, @bigelowCO, @optivision, @oplan, @kvandenhouten, @wfrv5, @coinopgames, @colcantwell, @fratellosresturant, and @aloftgb

My first conference blog! I had some computer barriers for awhile so if you have anything to add PLEASE do as I know I’ve miss some things!

Presenters:

Jeff Gahnz - Nicolet National Bank, @nicoletbank

Dana VanDen Heuvel, MarketingSavant, His blog, @danavan

Jeff Gahnz, Vice President of Marketing and Public Relations of Nicolet National Bank, and Dana VanDen Heuvel, President of MarketingSavant, are co-presenting today’s Selling Social Media to your CEO breakout workshop.

Nicolet National is dedicated to fostering the continued growth of Green Bay and the surrounding communities through a diverse array of products and services. Nicolet National’s staff of experienced commercial and retail bankers is committed to understanding the financial needs of their client’s business. By offering competitive solutions in commercial lending, private banking and retail banking, Nicolet National is devoted to helping businesses and individuals achieve their financial goals.

Dana VanDen Heuvel is an award-winning marketing blogger, author of the American Marketing Association’s Marketech ‘08 Guide to Marketing Technology and Guide to Social Network marketing trends and best practices and speaks at over 50 events each year on these and other marketing topics at industry and private client events.

Dana kicks off the meeting introducing each other and asks us on how to make this session a success. What are your challenges on getting over the hump on social media in your organization? What are your roadblocks?

Jeff at Nicolet National Bank started the CEO conversation with his personal experience.

• Started out in traditional advertising
• Through that medium they were talking AT people and spending too much money doing that
• Relationship is one of their first words in their mission statement and cannot build relationships without conversation
• Turned talking at people around to talking to people–a lot more cost effective than continuing to talk at them

It was then asked, what are objections you will face in your organization about forming relationships through social media.

• They will say something bad about us. Dana said “what do you think they are saying right now anyway?” Jeff’s response was, would you rather have them tell you, or tell thousands of others without you knowing?
• You can’t erase or delete those comments. People will find out and the need for transparency is key in credibility
• You start to tune in and understand on what’s being said so you can effectively respond
• People start to trust that they can come to you with issues and that you’ll positively resolve them
• Some brands are being so bold to ask what is wrong with their brand so they can make it better and better help their customers

Age is not a limitation in social media. It’s a huge misnomer that the older population is not out there. You may not get the interaction that you might with a younger audience, but if you have information that you want them to know, it’s still very beneficial to get it out there.

You’re missing the relationship aspect in social media when your organization has the old school/traditional thinking of Marketing.

ROI: Relationship is apparent and significant: Socially engaged companies are more financially successful. We’re talking deep engagement, not merely having a presence. You can get just as close to your target via social media. Because the dollars are low, and even though it is not easy to measure through one channel, why wouldn’t you do it when you can engage much more effectively. I think that because you may not be able to measure hard results right away, the long term affects in building engagement is much more powerful, and WILL result in much greater brand loyalty and profits.

You have to be honest and say that you can’t necessarily fully measure one post/social media piece to one single result many times. You don’t brand to connect that one element to one result. You have to look at the overall goals and define what exactly you want to measure from a high level.

How do you find your audience? Jeff from Nicolet answered this.

• We initially assumed we knew where they were. We found only3-5% were on the social media channels and learned that our assumptions were possibly not right
• We gathered feedback from customers on where they are and how they learned about promotions/information
• Feel your way around these channels
• Build network by putting something of value out there — I think this can be done by putting yourself out there to through finding relevant connections, RSS feeds, leaders in industry, growing your awareness through contributing relevant, good content, LISTENING, setting geographic boundaries, setting searches through Twitter, Google, etc. to find those speaking to keywords
• Exchange of information

If your company is hard set on financials/numbers, how do you sell social media when you don’t have the ability to show results?

• Start with STRATEGY!
• Show examples on those who have had success

How do you find your social media outlets for your industry?

• Ask customer’s on how they want to connect
• Determine which outlets are most relevant to your industry–where your target is
• Bring something relevant to your customers on what you’ve  learned in a meaningful way. Relate to it and show how you can add value to that topic.
• [My thoughts would be to determine what level of commitment you want to make, learn what channels your audience is in and develop a plan to integrate the  appropriate channels together]
• Blog is the most public and easiest to find. A great way to display content and be useful
• Biggest thing is to COMMIT to it! Do not start something if you won’t follow through

On social media policy:

• What are people’s responsibilities
• Accommodating and accounting for different roles. ie: listenting, customer service issue response–make sure you have a plan in place to cover it
• Make sure people understand what to say and how to deliver company reputation/brand
• External rules of engagement: define boundaries for external conversation
• Key is education
• If nay-sayers see a process, they made be open to idea
• Process for watch, address, monitor

8:25 am: We’re all eagerly awaiting this exciting day’s events to begin, with a surely enlightening and humorous kick-off by @tommytrc. @Danavan, President of MarketingSavant will be leading the event. Follow here today for updates and recaps of various workshops and everything in between!

8:30 am: @tommytrc starts us off by getting us all in our seats–and who wouldn’t listen to him! He begins his heartfelt message on how he is going to show his personal story to get us passionate about social media. We had the opportunity to watch @wfrv5 ’s news clip on Baby Drew’s birth broadcasted live via Twitter! Even in that moment he is such a witty guy. A lot of laugh’s in the room of course. Tommy visually shows us how his story organically travels the world, how amazing and powerful that the tools of social media can be. Tommy’s tools for engaging in Twitter:

• Connect to audience
• Ask questions that invite discussionBe transparent - so very important in being real and personal
• Be yourself
• Know your followers and importantly, keep in touch with them.
  
• Engaging is a two way street.Highlight content generated by followers–Retweet, Retweet, Retweet!
• Conversation is key! Again, speaking at people will not gain effective social media results
  

Notes on Twitter conversation:

• People may not respond immediately
• People cannot see your facial expression

The power of Twitter: The Hudson River crash hit Twitter BEFORE any other medium!

So, how do you start?

• Connect with audience
• Invite discussion
• Be yourself
• Know your audience
• Spread the wealth

Awesome job Tommy, you always get us motivated!

Get a taste of @tommytrc’s intro

If you look at a blog as education and serving your customers (current and future), you have the right mindset. To steal a line from Dana, “Think altruism before capitalism.”

Jeff - Nicolet Bank Marketing Guy

I was pretty nervous to enter into the Social Media world as a tactic supporting our overall strategy.  It would have been much easier to stick to the way things had already been done.  So, I’ve felt the same feelings that you may be now.  My advice to you is to take the risk.  More good can happen than bad.

Look at the risks as opportunities.  If someone says something bad about your company, at least they care enough to voice their thoughts.  Look at that as an opportunity to learn and grow rather than go into crisis-management mode.  Be humble, listen well and invite the person into the conversation, either in person or on a blog, Twitter, whatever.  You will be surprised at how few companies actually listen and how that can be turned into a competitive advantage.

If I can help talk you through any of the obstacles or issues, comment back.  Or call Nicolet Bank and ask for the marketing guy.  I’ll be happy to help.

Thanks for coming to the program.  Hope that it was helpful.

Jeff Gahnz - Marketing guy - Nicolet Bank