Archive for the ‘events’ Category

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Win A Ticket To The Art Of Marketing Conference

10.01.27

We’re heading into conference season again soon, with a whole slew of events including Social Media Week (next week), PodCamp Toronto (Feb 20-21), SXSW Interactive (March 12-16) all coming up in the next six weeks or so.

One event that’s caught my attention several times is the upcoming Art of Marketing Conference in Toronto on March 2 at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre. With a great lineup of six bestselling authors, there’s something for anyone working in a communications role at this event:

The good folks at The Art of Productions, who are organizing this event, have offered me the chance to attend this event. What’s more, they’re also giving me one more ticket to offer to a lucky reader of this site.

I’ve seen a few other contests for tickets to this event, so I’ll change the format up a little and give some love to other blogs. For a chance to win the ticket, just leave a comment on this post and include a link to a recent blog post you recommend other people read, and say why you think it’s worth checking out. It doesn’t matter whose site it is; just make it a good one!

I’ll pick a winner on Feb 8, so make sure you enter before then (and make sure you include a real email address when you submit your comment or I won’t be able to contact you!).

Note: This contest is now closed. Congratulations to Tamara Gruber on winning the ticket!

For those who’d rather be sure of getting their ticket, readers of this site can use promo code SK23 to get their ticket at $50 off, for just $349.

In the meantime, check out the video for the event:

Posted in: events, miscellaneous

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What’s Your Motivation In Social Media?

09.09.21

“Why are you here?”

This was the question that social media potty mouth smart guy and best-selling author Julien Smith asked in a thought-provoking session at PodCamp Montreal this weekend.

Julien Smith and Tara Hunt at PodCamp MontreakJulien gave us three options:

  • You
  • Them
  • The Game

You

If you’re into social media for you, you’re in it to better yourself. Perhaps that’s through gaining attention, building your network or developing your skills. Either way, you’re in it primarily for yourself.

Them

If you’re into social media for “them,” you’re in it for the community. You do it to help others; for a feeling of belonging. Perhaps that leads to personal benefit down the road, but right now that’s not the objective.

The Game

If you’re in it for “the game” (not meant in a negative sense), you recognize that there’s a system at play. You’re likely coming at this from a business perspective and trying to figure out how that system works so you can work within it as best you can.

Julien’s thought was that if you focus on one of these three motives and become an expert at one, you will be more successful than if you spread between the three.

My take

I struggled when it came to my turn to answer the question:

  • I constantly look to better myself, whether it’s floating thoughts for your input here, exploring new avenues at work or attending conferences like PodCamp, where I meet new people and learn from the conversations. I find it incredibly frustrating if I finish a day feeling that I haven’t achieved that.
  • I find helping others extremely satisfying. I enjoy speaking at conferences because I enjoy seeing lightbulbs go off in peoples’ heads. I wrote my ebook on communications planning because I wanted to help people do this difficult task the right way (in my opinion, anyway). One of the most satisfying parts of my job is helping other people to understand social media a little better.
  • I make my living from social media. I came into this career out of a strong interest and enthusiasm for social media’s potential, but the bottom line is it now pays my bills. I can’t help but be motivated by that to an extent.

Julien acknowledged that in reality you’re unlikely to just relate to one of the three motivations. Meanwhile, I overheard numerous discussions where people posited that ultimately everyone is motivated by themselves – whether it’s personal success, the network and self-fulfillment benefits of helping others, or the business motivation of doing succeeding in “the game.” Tamsen McMahon also suggested that if you want to help others, you need to improve yourself first.

Why are you here?

I agree with all of those ideas to an extent but for myself, I think personal improvement has always been, and continues to be, my primary motivator in everything I do.

I put 110% into everything. Sometimes that leads to me burning out on hobbies, but if I don’t go at things with that level of intensity I lose interest. The one thing that I haven’t burned out on so far is self-improvement. That doesn’t mean it’s only about me – I love the sense of community and, as I said, I enjoy helping people – but I think if I improve myself I’m able to help others better and to better in my job (“the game”).

Does that make sense? What about you? What drives your interest in social media?

(Thank you to all the PodCamp Montreal organizers – Sylvain Grand’Maison, Julien Smith, Mitch Joel, Bob Goyetche, Jean-François Blais, Laurent LaSalle, Laurent Maisonnave, Caroline Fontaine, Mélanie Millette, Harold Boeck and Michelle Sullivan- for another successful event this weekend. I know from PodCamp Toronto that it’s a lot of work; you did a great job.)

Posted in: events, podcamp, podcampmtl, social media

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Where Will You Be This Year?

09.03.17

I’m no A-list jet-setter, but I’m speaking at a several events over the next couple of months.

In case you’re in the area, I’ll be speaking at the following events:

 

I’m also attending the Mesh Conference in April and Podcasters Across Borders in June.

If you’re able to attend any of these events, please say hi!

I haven’t thought much past the next few weeks in terms of events. Where will you be this year?

What are your “must attend” events this year?

(Image credit: Keith Burtis)

Posted in: events, miscellaneous

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National Post Covers PodCamp Toronto

09.02.28

Reporters from the mainstream media like the Globe and Mail and the CBC, like Mathew Ingram and Angela Misri, aren’t just attending PodCamps now; they’re covering it them, too.

PodCamp Last Saturday, during the first day of PodCamp Toronto 2009, I took some time out and spoke with David Lipson, a reporter for the National Post.

Today the Post published the piece, entitled “Out from behind the laptop.”

As a PodCamp organizer and as an attendee, it’s amazingly gratifying to see the event getting mainstream attention, even if it forces me to remember the demonically-possessed projector screen in my first presentation:

Inside one of the classrooms, Fleet’s PowerPoint presentation on social media analysis began to deteriorate when a projector went haywire. Someone in the audience yelled out: “There is chalk and a board!” The room erupted into laughter at the thought of using the primitive writing device on a pristine board that probably hasn’t had a nail screech across it in years. After a couple of minutes of stalling, Fleet finally asked: “Can someone get on Twitter and get a tech guy over here?”

Sigh.

Posted in: events, podcamp, podcamptoronto2009

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Key Points From FacebookCamp Toronto 5

09.02.25

Over the last couple of years, Facebook has developed from an interesting, promising social network startup to a true powerhouse. Interest in the site has grown exponentially and every move it makes is closely scrutinized. Given this, I was excited to attend FacebookCamp Toronto 5 on February 24.

First up on the night was Facebook representative Matt Wyndowe. His presentation focused on an update on Facebook’s overall status, then a quick overview of the benefits of Facebook Connect.

Facebook Stats

  • Facebook’s rate of growth is increasing exponentially;
  • 175 million people logged-in to Facebook in the last 30 days;
  • The average Facebook user has 120 friends; in Canada that is higher – 150-200;
  • One in two Canadians are now on Facebook;
  • Half of those Canadians are on Facebook every day;
  • Canadian users average 2.7 visits per user per day;
  • 70 per cent of Torontonians using the Internet are on Facebook

Facebook Connect

  • Facebook Connect, according to Matt, has three key benefits:
    • Sharing identity/login with one click;
    • “Social filtering”;
    • Rapid, widespread distribution of content.
  • Instead of the time consuming process of creating new accounts on sites, users can sign-in to Facebook Connect-enabled sites by connecting with their Facebook accounts. 
  • Users’ profiles will then be populated with their personal information and, where applicable, their Facebook friends and their key public activity can be shown to the new user. This prevents the frustrating process of building a new profile and network on each site.
  • Users’ activities on websites can be pushed back to Facebook and displayed in their news feeds. In the example given, a clear opt-out was offered for this.
  • Stories that are published on news feeds get an average of 1-3 clicks per story, and are also commented-on (which spreads the content further).

Facebook Connect Results

  • In three months since its launch, 6,000 sites adopted Facebook Connect;
  • On average, registrations to websites using Facebook Connect rose by 20-100 per cent. Sites such as Gawker and Valleywag saw increases of 45 per cent;
  • People registered using Facebook Connect create 15-60 per cent more content;
  • Each story published to Facebook is seen by 30-40 people, and receives 1-3 clicks back to the site.

Whopper Sacrifice – Notes from a Case Study

Widely covered back in early 2009, Whopper Sacrifice encouraged Facebook users to “sacrifice” ten Facebook “friends” in exchange for a free Whopper sandwich. A few key points from the case study presented, which I found fascinating:

  • Unlike many initiatives, the Whopper Sacrifice micro-site drove traffic to the Facebook application rather than the other way around.
  • 60,000 people installed the Facebook application in the first ten days before it was shut down.
  • There is no way to delete friends through the Facebook API; the developers had to find a way to seamlessly take people outside the app and back  into Facebook in order to delete friends.
  • Facebook users sacrificed 233,906 friends in ten days. Burger King issued 24,000 coupons for free Whoppers.
  • The application was truly viral – each new user brought in 1.96 others, so it quickly spiralled.
  • According to Roy Pereira, the presenter (who I also spoke to after the event), Facebook asked the developers to remove the functionality that alerted users that their friends had deleted them. 
  • Just 10 days after its launch, Burger Kind shut down the application. Facebook did not shut down the application. The developers made that call as they had almost reached their maximum number of free Whopper coupons.
  • The shut-down page encouraged visitors to send an “angry burger” (see image above) to people who had “sacrificed” them. This was a straight digital marketing ploy – there was no Facebook application for this.
  •  The mainstream media attention around the app created an exponential cycle that drove attention. Pereira credits mainstream attention for the success of the application.
  • After I requested clarification after the session, Pereira confirmed there was no PR budget for the initiative, and no ad buy. The maintream media coverage was generated by the application and controversy.
  • Witty text copy is important (e.g. “XYZ likes you but likes Whoppers more”). The team experimented with different copy and discovered that, down even to the Facebook news feed level, wording changes mattered.

Those are my key points from FacebookCamp Toronto 5. There were two other speakers, but those were less relevant for me.

Were you there? Does this match what you thought of the sessions?

Posted in: facebook, facebookcamp

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PodCamp Toronto 2009 – Bigger, Better?

09.02.23

I’m at the end of an exhausting but wonderful weekend. PodCamp Toronto 2009 was held over the last two days and, as an organizer, it was an immensely rewarding experience.

I’ll have posts on various topics from this year’s event throughout the week, so I’ll keep this post brief. 

First, a few interesting points about PodCamp Toronto this year:

  • More than double the size of PodCamp Toronto 2008 – between 500 and 600 people this year (over 500 confirmed)
  • Top trending topic on Twitter on both days; pretty much all day Saturday (see below)
  • Hundreds of photos posted on Flickr already
  • For a short time, PodCamp Toronto was “bigger than Jesus” (hat tip to Bob Goyetche and Mark Blevis) at one point this weekend

My Presentations

I gave two presentations this weekend. One was planned in advance – thinking about and doing social media measurement takes up a good chunk of my time nowadays, so it made sense to talk about it and I signed-up to present on that several months ago.

My second session was a little more impromptu – I woke up on Sunday morning and decided I felt like presenting again, so I signed-up to host a session on the ethics of social media PR. Happily, both sessions were well-attended and well-received.  The slides for each are embedded below.

PodCamp Toronto – Measuring Social Media
The Ethics Of Social Media PR View more presentations from Dave Fleet.

I’ll have more thoughts, and a couple of interviews, from PodCamp Toronto over the next few days. 

For now, if you went to PodCamp this weekend, what did you think? What was good/bad/indifferent?

Posted in: ethics, measurement, podcamp, podcamptoronto2009, public relations, social media

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The Ethics of Ghost-Writing in Social Media

08.11.13

ethics_session Last night I co-hosted a session on social media ethics with Michael O’Connor Clarke at the Talk Is Cheap 2 conference in Toronto.

Ethics is always guaranteed to generate discussion, as much of it comes down to where you draw your own personal line in the sand. To my delight we had a standing room-only crowd, and we got into some interesting discussions around the ethics involved in engaging using social media (slides are at the end of this post).

One of the more interesting discussions arose around the ethics of ghost writing online.

Ghost writing?

In case you’re not familiar with the terms, “ghost” writing in general refers to (usually professional) writers creating content and then attributing it to someone else.

Note: there’s a difference between ghost blogging, astroturfing (bad) and character blogs like Captain Morgan (dodgy execution – in fact they seem to have packed the blog itself in now – but ok ethically).

Undisclosed ghost blogging is unethical

Undisclosed ghost blogging, while tempered somewhat by the intention behind it, is unethical in my opinion.

Unlike ghost-written speeches, where the spokesperson lends their name and approval to the writing by actually saying the words, ghost-written blogs can be published without the named person ever seeing them. Think, for example, of Kanye West’s blog, which kept publishing posts even after he was arrested this year. The result: brand damage.

When you’re online and especially when using social media tools, I think the expectation is that when you see someone’s name on something then it’s actually that person. That’s the point of “social media,” right? It’s social. If I’m not building a relationship with the person I think I am, there’s something very wrong with that. What’s more, when it becomes apparent that you aren’t who you’re pretending to be, you lose all of the trust you’ve built up with me.

One participant asked why, if ghost blogging is bad, is ghost micro-blogging ok? Twitter accounts like Barack Obama and Stephen Harper aren’t written by those individuals (unless Harper likes to write in the third person), but the participant thought people seemed to think it was ok.

My response: it’s not ok.

I don’t think either of these accounts is ethically sound. Neither are the many accounts like them, whether political or non-political. The staffers are pretending to be someone they’re not. They aren’t ‘hurting’ anyone per se, but they are misleading them.

Disclose

The key point for me is simple: disclose what’s going on. Be transparent.

I’m not completely naive. I don’t expect every politician, most of whom are probably cynical about these tools, to use them personally. I’d love it if they did, but I’m ok with other people writing on their behalf. They just need to disclose that fact.

If these accounts, or the many similar ones to them, simply inserted a quick “Written on behalf of PM Harper by [name]” I’d be absolutely fine with it.

If your CEO doesn’t have time to blog, don’t offer to write it for him and pretend he did it. Either be open and have a disclaimer from him that acknowledges “I don’t write these posts, but I do read them and I stand behind them” or just have a company blog. Then again, consider whether blogging is the right forum for you.

Isn’t it obvious?

One argument that I heard last night is that no-one really believes it’s Obama on the other end of the account anyway.

On Twitter, that might be true as it’s still largely early adopters on here. They’re savvy about this kind of thing. However, I don’t think that excuses it. What’s more, if you consider ‘older’ social media platforms such as blogs, you’re not dealing with people who live and breathe this stuff – you’re dealing with people who are much more likely to take things at face value.

As I said earlier, much of this topic is personal. What do you think? Is ghost blogging unethical to you? Is ghost micro-blogging different?

Slides – The Ethics Of Social Media PR

(Image credit: George Saratlic via TwitPic)

Posted in: ethics, events, social media

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PodCamp Toronto 2009 is a Go!

08.10.05

PodCamp Toronto 2009 is now officially scheduled for February 21 and 22, 2009.

What’s PodCamp Toronto?

PodCamp Toronto is an unconference on podcasting and social media.

Unconference? Huh?

An unconference is a free, community-driven event where anyone can sign up to present. Amateurs, pros, newbies and veterans are all welcome!

Where is it?

As with last year, we’re holding the event will occur at the Rogers Communications Centre at Ryerson University.

Last year’s event was a huge success with over 400 registrants and a great turn-out. If you’re at all interested in social media, I strongly encourage you to sign up on the wiki (did I mention it’s free?).

How do I get involved?

Sign up! Register, present, volunteer. PodCamp is as good as you make it.

Who’s organizing it?

I’m happy to once again join Jay Moonah, Tommy Vallier, Sean McGaughey, Rob Lee, Connie Crosby and Eden Spodek on the PodCamp Toronto organizing team.

See you there!

Posted in: events, podcamp, podcamptoronto2009

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Think: Strategy

08.09.24

It’s all too easy, especially in the world of public relations and social media where there’s a shiny new tool every week, to lose sight of the big picture and focus in on tactics.

David Usher and Mitch Joel: ask "why" not "what"When someone asks you for ideas about something, where do you start? Do you instantly get the creative juices flowing and start throwing out ideas for creative events and approaches? Or do you stop and look at the big picture first?

Last weekend I had the pleasure of attending PodCamp Montreal. One thing I noticed upon reflecting on the conference was a subtle shift in the topics of some key sessions, away from tactics and towards strategy.

Mitch Joel and David Usher, for example, drew on the ideas of Seth Godin and Clay Shirkey to talk about the need to move away from tactical thinking about what you’re doing and towards strategic thinking about why you’re doing those things. Julien Smith talked about focusing on the big picture; about seeing the forest instead of the trees. Mike Kujawski, meanwhile, spoke about the strategic approach needed to introduce social media into communications practices in the public sector.

Similarly, as I was sitting in a brainstorming meeting the yesterday surrounded by great creative ideas, I had to stop, take a step back and ask, “what’s our overarching strategy here?” It wasn’t only after I’d asked myself (and others) that question that I was able to get my head around the issue.

Next time you find yourself reacting to a question with tactics, stop and think: Am I missing the bigger picture here?

Related articles:

Posted in: podcampmtl, strategy

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My Podcamp Montreal Dashboard

08.09.19

I’ve had a couple of conversations at work recently about using iGoogle to pull feeds together. To test the waters, I’ve created an iGoogle dashboard for my time at Podcamp Montreal this weekend so I can stay on top of things.

The dashboard includes:

Here’s a screenshot:

PodCamp Montreal Dashboard

I’ve also created a custom Google Map of the key locations for the weekend,
but I haven’t figured out a way to put that on the page yet. I have a couple of
other ideas for things to include, too – other peoples’ Podcamp Montreal
bookmarks, for example.

What else would you include on your dashboard?

(Hat tip to Christopher S. Penn for the initial inspiration)

Posted in: events, podcamp, podcampmtl, tools

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