Our discussion started on Twitter after I sent Doug an article I read in the daily email from www.eMarketer.com called Social Media Comes up Short for Agency Prospecting.

Doug has a good point that using social media to sell tangibles (computers and books) is easier than selling intangibles like consulting and profession business services (legal and accounting). The part that we discussed on Twitter but not mentioned in the article is that although a company can’t “sell” services from social media platforms, it sure helps on the marketing side with credibility, interaction, community and support. In other words, companies that offer a service can still benefit hugely from a strong presence on social media platforms like Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook and YouTube. The strength comes from the marketing side not direct sales.

Great article, Doug. Keep them coming.

9 a.m. – 4:30 p.m.
Roderick Mah Centre for Continuous Learning

Mount Royal University’s Continuing Education and Extension is hosting a one day forum and trade show on social media marketing featuring a variety of dynamic speakers from the forefront of this growing phenomenon.

Social media is here to stay and is an increasingly important factor in marketing and communication strategies for growing businesses.

Hear first-hand the pitfalls and payoffs of using social media for your growing business. Gain insight through real-life case studies and examples from people working in the trenches of social media.

Get practical advice and be inspired about the possibilities of using social media for your thriving business.

The forum is specifically designed for small- to mid-sized business owners and anyone charged with marketing, brand or customer loyalty programs for their organization.
communicatto’s Doug Lacombe is the master of ceremonies and will be sure to keep you entertained.

Some other speakers are:

• Scott Stratten – Social Currency
• Ernest Barbaric – The Ripple Effect
• Richard Einarson and Stephen Carter – Marketing a Mayor
• Karen Richards – Marketing a University
• Greg Hounslow – Owners Online
• Eric Weaver – Be Seen, Be Found, Be Engaging

Location

Roderick Mah Centre for Continuous Learning
Mount Royal University
4825 Mount Royal Gate SW
Calgary, AB  T3E 6K6

Cost

Lunch and refreshments are included.

Regular rate: $299+GST (as of May 26, 2011)

To register and more information, click here!

Doug wrote and excellent summary of the session in his regular column with The Star Phoenix.

A quick quote in Doug’s own voice, “This week I had the privilege of helping put on a social media seminar for First Nations communicators. Representatives from the Siksika Nation and the Piikani Nation, both in Alberta, were in attendance at our Social Media Strategy for First Nations “Quickinar.” Jeff Nelson, my partner in producing Quickinars, and I received much help in producing this seminar from Wayne Courchene, a social media success story in his own right.”

Doug also mentioned our collaborator, Wayne Courchene. We would not have been able to host this event without Wayne’s effort, guidence and connections. We are grateful. Wayne writes a blog of his own at: Iskote.

In Doug’s article he quotes some of the case studies that we reviewed including:

• AFN Chief Shawn Atleo and his blog at nationalchief.blogspot.com
• Excellent videos by various students encouraging others to vote: http://firstnationhelp.com/
• The Alberta Saskatchewan First Nations Metis Nations page on Facebook with over 14,000 Likes
• Two tourism sites developed around First Nations culture: Wanuskewin Heritage Park in Saskatchewan and Head Smashed in Buffalo Jump in Alberta (great video on this site)
• A Facebook page created by Nechi Training, Research & Health Promotions Institute
• Self-described Urban Native Girl Lisa Charleyboy has a fabulous blog that was “born out of a love for writing, fashion, film, beauty, pop culture and all things Indigenous.” Lisacharleyboy.com

But don’t let me steal Doug’s thunder, have a look at the article which was also published on Social Media Today.

As mentioned in a previous post, Article: Liberal leadership social media monitor: No runaway successes, Gillian is following the Liberal leadership race in BC. The BC Liberals will choose new leader on February 26th.

The main question of the article is wondering if the use of social media will have an impact on the various candidate’s campaigns.

I’m not involved in politics very much but something tells me that the situation in BC is different. On one hand Naheed Nenshi was aiming for the mayor’s chair in a race open and visible to the general public.  What he needed was lots of people voting for him and one way to do that is create buzz and chatter on social networks. For him it worked well.

In contrast, the audience (voters) of the BC Liberal leadership race is restricted to party members. This is a finite audience, who may not want the debate to be open to the public arena. As a result, one might question the value of using social media as a communication channel to engage and influence voters.

There may be another way, however, to use social media to help move the goal posts (my compliments to Reuters for the photo). In addition to courting existing Liberal party members, a leadership candidate could set an objective to increase new memberships with the implicit understanding that these new members would vote for them. According to my local contacts this is in fact the strategy used by Alberta Liberal leader, David Swann who won leadership in December 2008.

If recruiting new members is one of the objectives then I would say using social network may work, quite well in fact. With this in mind, the channels may include:

• A website that encourages sharing on social media channels
• An email sign-up option with regular updates sent by email
• A YouTube channel with videos on the candidate’s background and policies
• A Facebook page that has a inviting Welcome tab and a call to action
• A campaign on Twitter to reach out to those who are active on Twitter and interested in the Liberal party
• A blog with regular updates on topics that are relevant to potential new members
• A discussion on LinkedIn on the leadership race (this assumes that the candidate has over 500 local connections; otherwise there aren’t enough people to hold a discussion)
• Potentially, an iPhone app that gives regular updates to those who are interested

In other words, if a leadership candidate is serious then they should open up the avenues to share, communicate, discuss, debate and interact. If the objective is to increase membership sales, then using social media will help!

That’s my 2 cents worth. Thanks Gillian for the quote.

7. LinkedIn

I mentioned in the previous post that the Events feature on LinkedIn is useless. The alternative of sending individual messages is better but a pain in the ass. Essentially, what you need to do is compose a message and send it to all your connections to whom the event would be interesting. I’m using the free version of LinkedIn. This means that I am limited to sending a message by 50 connections in one message. If I only had 50 connections this would be easy but I have nearly 700 connections just in Calgary. That means nearly 15 separate emails. And to make things really frustrating, LinkedIn won’t let you use the select all feature if there are over 50 in the same alphabetical section. In other words if you have 52 connections under the C’s then you have to click 50 times, sent that email and then go back into the C’s and select the last 2. As I said, a pain in the ass.

So instead of keeping things simple on LinkedIn, you have to follow these steps:

• Compose a message
• In the To field, be sure to select the city you are targeting
• Then select the contacts you want to send the message to
• If there are over 50 in one alphabetical section, you have to manually select contacts
• Then send the message
• To send to the next group, start with the latest message in the that you have in the Sent folder
• Click Forward to send this message to a new group
• Drop the FW: and the date part that is automatically added
• Then pick the connections for your next group
• Eventually, you’ll get to the bottom of your list

I did get one complaint from a person on LinkedIn. He commented on the fact that I sent out the email and included his name in the visible part of the list. My first thought was, “”get off LinkedIn if you don’t want people to contact you.” But I calmed down after my knee jerk reaction. In fact, he had a good point. When you draft a message in LinkedIn you should un-select the default so that the people reading your message can’t see who you have sent the email too. See image below – be sure to click off the check mark.

8. Facebook

I thought I would take the same approach with Facebook. I even went so far as to separate all my friends into 2 groups: Personal Friends and Business Friends. But then I decided not to send out messages to anyone. I still might. I just need to think about this and figure out what to say.

Using Social Media to Market Events – Part 1

• Company’s can’t stop their employees from talking about them via Social media outlets. They can though, put a plan and policy in place to deal with it.
• Treat the Social web the same way you would treat a product. I don’t entirely agree with this. What about companies that don’t have products? We would have a tough time convincing the oil change place down the street to pay attention to what their employees about them on Facebook. However for larger companies, I would agree.
• Are you hiring the right people? Are you hiring people that will represent you online? I suppose this is something that company’s need to consider now. This is an interesting shift in perspective that has taken place in the last few years.

Obviously, we are going to use social media platforms and techniques as a way to market the seminars. That makes sense to me and I should have kept my mouth shut. Instead, I put my foot in my mouth. I made the mistake of mentioning to Doug that I would jot down a list of what I’m doing.

Here’s the problem. Social media takes effort and time. Then on top of that I have now obligated myself to record what I’m doing. It’s like doing everything twice. Once again, I’m convinced that I’m not too smart. Oh well, here goes.

1. Eventbrite.com

The first thing we did was decide on a platform to manage the events. We looked at cvent mainly because they hosted a fantastic lunch in the Fall. But they wanted to lock us into a 2 year contract and Doug and I aren’t ready for that, yet. In addition, we had used Eventbrite for the workshop on November 29th and we liked it. It has a lot of features that we needed:

• Unique URLs for each event – http://quickinar-tweet-like-a-pro.eventbrite.com/
• Unique URL for a list of all events – http://quickinars.eventbrite.com/
• Ability to add multiple pricing options
• Ability to add discount codes
• Ability to save draft events and ability to publish an event, then switch back to draft
• Link to our account on PayPal so that it is easy for participants to purchase
• Include address and map of event location
• Some links to Social Media like Twitter and Facebook

Eventbrite has it all, so that is what we chose to go with. The one downside is that Eventbrite seems to be expensive. We are paying 2.9% on every ticket. Seems steep to me.

2. LinkedIn

Next I added all the seminars to LinkedIn under More / Events / Add an Event. My opinion, so far, is that this is totally useless. My guess is that there are millions of other events posted on LinkedIn and ours are just lost.

My next step will be to identify mavens (as popularized by Malcolm Gladwell in The Tipping Point) who I’m connected to on LinkedIn and let them know about Quickinars. I have over 900 connections so I should be able to find a few mavens.

The issue I have is that when I’m sending the mavens a message I’ll probably use the link on Eventbrite not the “event” on LinkedIn. As I said, posting events on LinkedIn seems to be useless.

3. Blog Post

Yesterday, I created a post on our blog. See Quickinars – Short Business Seminars for Calgarians. We have quite a few subscribers to our blog so they will receive an email update.

4. Twitter

A quick summary of our blog posts are posted on Twitter via www.dlvr.it.

Dlvr.it is very slick and free.

A friend of mine, Sharon McIntyre, noticed that I had double entries on LinkedIn. I checked LinkedIn under Settings (hard to find) and noticed that my account was already linked to my Twitter account. And I had setup Dlvr.it to send summaries from our blog to my Twitter status. I tried explaining to Sharon that “double impressions” are a good thing but she didn’t buy it. So I deleted the link on Dlvr.it. Problem solved – I hope.

So I have a question. On Twitter it is easy to see a list of all your Tweets. But on LinkedIn where is the list of status updates?

Oh, I found a link but it is hard to find. Click on the “More” link under the “Share an update” field.

But you’re not done yet. Now you have to click on “See all of Jeff’s Activity”. Sometimes I’m convinced that LinkedIn is managed by idiots.

5. eNewsletter

Technically, eNewsletters are not really “social media”. However, emails and eNewsletters are not dead yet. So we decided to send an eNewsletter to Anduro’s list of subscribers. We use ConstantContact which creates a shortened URL of the eNewsletter. You can view it here: http://conta.cc/hEqNYC. So far the response has been very positive. We are encouraged.

6. Quickinars Website

Doug has started developing the website. You can see a draft version here: www.quickinars.com. We are also working on having a logo developed. More on this later.

That is as far as I’ve gotten so far. I’ll write another post in a few days.

Using Social Media to Market Events – Part 2

In the article Gillian Shaw analyzes various online stats for 5 candidates in the BC Liberal Leadership vote on February 26, 2011. Her concluding comment is that so far, “There’s no Obama in this group” and I agree. Too early to tell.

Later in the article she links to the social media data that we collected with respect to the Calgary mayoral campaign that ended on October 18th, 2010 – Naheed Nenshi won the crown. See: Social Media Analysis for 2010 Calgary Mayor Candidates.

One of the “secrets” that I have learned about Nenshi’s campaign is that the team focused on political keeners. Guess what? This group are avid users of social media. So the objective was to build a strong presence on Twitter, Facebook and YouTube during the first 4 months of the 6 month campaign. Nenshi did all his own Tweets and added 510 followers between May 25 and August 30th. His main competitor, Ric McIver, added 284 followers. The third primary contender, Barb Higgins, started early in August and added 664 followers in one month – impressive.

But the real push from the Nenshi team was from September 1st to October 18th. During this short period they switched tactics and focused their resources on building a presence (brand) through traditional channels including lawn signs, coverage in newspapers and TV and attending lots and lots of events. The campaign team didn’t hold back on social media efforts. Instead social media supported traditional marketing by quickly communicating on events with avid social media followers. The result is that during the last 7 weeks Nenshi added 2,932 Twitter followers compared to 468 by McIver and 1,006 by Higgins.

I agree with Gillian Shaw’s analysis that Twitter followers are fickle, at best. To me a better bellweather of success is Facebook Fans (or Likes). Between May 25 and August 30th, Nenshi added 1,206 fans, McIver added 97 and Higgins went from zero to 628. Again the real story is during the last 7 weeks. Nenshi added 10,291 fans (665% increase), McIver added 2,614 fans (155%) and Higgins jumped up 1,139 fans (181%).

Earlier I mentioned that Nenshi attended “lots and lots of events.” A surprising number of those events were to high schools – an audience that isn’t old enough to vote. So why focus on a non-voting audience? The answer isn’t obvious until you hear it. Sure teenagers can’t vote but they know how to communicate and communicate quickly. Their word of mouth power is extremely volatile.  If they love something every friend on Facebook knows about it. And they have the time and energy to be interested – even in politics. Believe it or not teenagers also talk to parents – face to face over the occasional dinner. Politics is a great arena for them to either differentiate themselves from their parents or even influence their parents.

Here’s a scenario that I imagine was happening all over Calgary:

Daniel (my teenage son): “Who are you voting for?”

Me: “I’m not sure yet. I like Wayne Stewart because he has great integrity but no one seems to be interested in him. I think Ric McIver will win but he is too conservative to me. Barb Higgins lacks substance. I like Nenshi but I can’t see how he can win – he’s too young.”

Daniel: I like Nenshi. He’s cool. If I was voting I would vote for him.

In the end, I voted for Nenshi. Not because he was “cool” (although I think he is) but because he has a great smile (meaning he loves what he is doing), policies that I agreed with (I learned about these on YouTube and Policies), and a strong presence in the market (meaning he is a leader and can influence city counselors and city bureaucrats).

As a result, we had an objective (do the video) but this was one of those situations where we had no time, no media room, dysfunctional equipment, and no one to shoot the video.  Being 2 resourceful guys we improvised. We met at Mount Royal University, snagged a classroom, set up our cameras on a tripod, hammered out a script (very loose) and shot the video. Here is what we came up with. Enjoy.

The article was written on October 25th, titled, “Put social media to work for you” by Rick Spence.

Here is an interesting statement from the article, “(By election day, Nenshi also had more Facebook friends than Toronto’s three front-running mayoral candidates combined.)” This is Spence’s calculations not mine.

Have a look at the article and let me know what you think.