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Review: 2011 B2B Forum in Boston

 

I’ve been going to Marketing Profs events for 3 years now, and they remain my favorite marketing-oriented conferences.  Even when I started writing articles for Marketing Profs 4 years ago, Ann stressed to me constantly to ‘give the readers a plan of action, something they can implement immediately’.  That really is the cornerstone of all content Marketing Profs’ creates, and the conferences are no different.  The sessions are designed so that you can take what you have learned back to your team in the office the next day and immediately get started improving your marketing efforts.

I wanted to share with you some of the things I learned from a few of the sessions I was able to attend:

Developing Enterprise Social Media Strategies led by David B Thomas and Mike Barlow

Some of the key points shared and discussed:

  • David talked about how at SAS they built a Marketing 2.0 council that gathered internal stakeholders and educated them on social media and new media tools.  David stressed that it is good to get legal and HR involved in the process, as legal is there to ‘identify risks and communicate them’.  Sam Fiorella added that his company has what it calls a Social Enablement Policy and that the policy spells out the ‘dos and donts’ of social media.
  • Social media needs to be spread throughout the organization, don’t leave it in the hands of the evangelists and proponents.  Mike added that you should build 3 quick stories that you can use to help sell social media to your organization or company.  It could be a success story that your company/org has had, or maybe something a competitor did that worked.  Or an opportunity lost.
  • One of the attendees (I apologize for not remembering who) said their company created a Social Media Marketing Cookbook, which took experiences of field marketers and then explained how social media could have helped them in this instances.  For example, dealing with customers directly, in a retail setting, etc.  How could social media have made their jobs easier?
  • Eloqua created a Social Media Playbook and encouraged others to ‘steal out Social Media Playbook’.  Good example of creating content that spreads.
  • David clarified that it took about a year and a half for the Social Media Council to gain some real internal traction at SAS, and that the biggest obstacle was ‘big company inertia’.  David said they overcame this by having a champion in the C-Suite and by ‘waiting it out’.  Persistence is key.
  • Help the C-Suite see the value of social media, show them what competitors are doing and show how they are gaining a competitive advantage.
  • Look at how each department is tracking engagement and measuring, then make the case for how social media could improve those engagement efforts.
  • Tim Washer had a wonderful point about experimentation.  He said executives will always ask for metrics and the ROI of social media, but that you should experiment.  Create content and promote it in different ways.  He said while he was at IBM, that they had workers create ‘This is where I work’ videos.  Tim added that workers were given ‘brand guidelines’, but also the freedom to otherwise be creative in creating their videos.  These were meant to be shared internally, but the best ones were taken and shared externally.  Fabulous example of using video to humanize a brand, and Tim led a session on that very topic.
  • A lot of B2B attendees mentioned having difficulty getting engineers involved in blogging.  Someone (I think it was Michael Brenner?) made the point to make sure that engineers understand that blogging gives them a way to connect directing with their customers on a one-to-one basis.

Next up was CK’s session on The Mobile Revolution and B2B.  What I love is that CK immediately grabbed the audience’s attention with a couple of OMG! stats:

  • 6.7 Billion people on earth, and there are 5 billion mobile subscriptions
  • 95% of text messages are read, and most within 5 mins

Here’s some other (action) points from her session:

  • Optimize your current website for mobile
  • Add a ‘mobile-friendly’ link at the top of every email you send
  • Make sure the online experience you are giving customers is optimized for mobile, and the content you create should be as well.
  • Think about how your customers are using mobile, think graphically, make sure mobile content maps to mobile needs
  • Conduct a full audit of all marketing programs and note how implementing a mobile aspect could increase efficiencies.  For example, at a trade show, have QR codes so attendees can get content and information without asking them to lug around papers they may throw away later.
  • Mobile doesn’t replace social media, it amplifies it’s effectiveness.  Think of all the sharing we do via social media, when we have a mobile device, we can do that on the go.

This is probably my favorite slide of the event, and it comes from the Beyond Blogs and White Papers session with Ann Handley, Pawan Deshpande, Joe Chernov and Becki Dilworth.  Here’s a few of the points they raised:

  • The ‘old way’ that companies spoke to customers was only when it had news to share, ie the Press Release
  • Ann made the point that ‘Your content is your sales staff’.
  • Becki told about how Bridgeline decided to sponsor a speaking tour for Ann across 9 cities.  She said the events had little to no promotion of Bridgeline, it was all about letting Ann create content that was beneficial to potential Bridgeline clients.  Becki said the Content Revolution Tour cost Bridgeline $150,000, but generated over 1,500 qualified leads for the software company.
  • Don’t repurpose or recycle existing content, re-imagine it.  The point is to look at how you can change existing content, such as taking a White Paper and making it into a podcast, or a video.  You could even take the FAQ on your website and expand some of those into individual blog posts.  For example, I created a lot of content during the B2B Forum.  I took a ton of pictures and live-tweeted the event as much as possible.  I then took the pictures and put them on Flickr, but now I am using them in my blog posts as well.  All those tweets I left resulted in my getting some new followers, but I also used them as a note-taking mechanism, and am now using them to help write this post.
  • Slideshare is a very under-utilized ‘social media outpost’.

 

And now…a word about Marketing Profs’ keynotes.

Marketing Profs is one of the few event organizers/planners that understand the purpose of a keynote session.  It is supposed to be amazing.  It is supposed to inspire you and make you look at the world differently.  Marketing Profs always has amazing keynotes, and the B2B Forum certainly did not disappoint.  If you are planning a conference, make sure you follow the Marketing Profs example here.  All their sessions are informative and valuable, but the keynotes are truly special.  As they should be.

Day One’s keynote was Guy Winch talking about How Your Unhappiest Customers Can (Paradoxically!) Help You Foster Fans.

Here are some of the key takeaways:

  • 95% of us will not complain when we have a bad customer experience, but we will in turn tell an average of 16 people about the bad experience!  And as Guy pointed out, as we keep retelling the story, we keep getting re-aggravated about the experience, and I am sure the telling of the story changes a bit after 16 times 😉  But that also helps cement our anger toward the brand.  The paradox here is that we voice our displeasure to everyone EXCEPT the people who could fix our problem.
  • In general, doctors aren’t sued due to mistakes they make, but because the patient thinks they don’t care about them.  Listening is key, but so is HEARING and showing empathy with what the customer is going through.
  • A sudden change in engagement levels is a hint that a customer may have a complaint that they aren’t telling you about.
  • Make it easy for your customers to complain to you, so they won’t complain to friends and other customers.  You WANT them to complain to YOU, because then you can do something about it.
  • To repair a damaged customer relationship, give an effective apology, open communication about the resolution process, and have a great follow-up to see if the customer is satisfied.
  • An effective apology must include an emotional validation. You have to communicate to the customer that you understand and sympathize with their point of view.  You should also match the emotional tone of your customer.  Your concern should reflect their level of distress.  And realize that validating feelings is NOT admitting fault!
  • To rebuild trust with a customer, first promise, then deliver.  Repeatedly.

 


Day Two Keynote: Nancy Duarte discussing Resonate: Presenting Ideas That Inspire Change

This session was going to show us how to create amazing presentations, so I was really looking forward to hearing Nancy, and she didn’t disappoint.  I thought she made one of the best points of the entire event when she said that took many speakers treat their presentations as if THEY are the hero.  The speaker is never the hero, it’s always the audience.  If you look at the above photo (any presentation with a Star Wars reference has to be amazing), the hero is Luke, who is the audience.  The speaker’s role is that of Yoda, or the mentor.  The speaker’s job is to move the audience to a better place via their presentation.

I have to apologize, because I didn’t take a lot of notes on this session, simply because Nancy had me mesmerized.  She did talk about the structure of an amazing presentation.  It alternates between What Is and What Could Be.  The idea is to re-enforce to the audience that the What Is is now, but if we change our mindset, or change our actions, or buy a product, that we could achieve What Could Be.  Here is a picture of the diagram:

She then pointed out how two different speeches followed this exact formula, she first looked at Steve Jobs’ iPhone announcement in 2007, and then Martin Luther King’s famous ‘I Have a Dream…’ speech.  Embedded here is her TEDx East talk where she covered both of these examples, so please do watch it:

 

All in all, this was another amazing Marketing Profs event.  You should definitely consider attending one of their events, they are a bit more expensive than other events, but you are getting what you pay for.  BTW if you’d like to read my review of the LIVE #Blogchat at B2B Forum click here.

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TNT’s Falling Skies is using Twitter, but what about a Twitter chat?

A couple of days ago on Twitter I noticed that TNT was promoting its account for the upcoming TV series Falling Skies.  The series has a Twitter account, but a report from Tweet Stats shows the account has less than 50 tweets and has NEVER left a reply on Twitter.  So basically, Falling Skies is using Twitter as a promotional channel for the show, and pushing out updates, interviews with stars, etc.

This is why I think Twitter Chats would be perfect for a television show.  Create a chat that brings together fans of a show, in order to generate interest.  And ironically, TNT has a history of using Twitter Chats to promote its shows, as they did with Saving Grace two years ago.   All they would have to do is have a fan run the chat, and go from there.  I did a quick Google search and found a fan that has already started a podcast for Falling Skies, so someone like this would be perfect to host a Twitter Chat for the same show.

This really seems more effective than promoted tweets or accounts because you are tapping into activities that fans are engaging in anyway.  Fans are going to be on Twitter talking about the show, an organized chat simply makes this process EASIER for the fans.  So by creating the chat you are not only building a channel to create buzz for Falling Skies, you are also making it easier for fans of the series to engage in EXISTING behavior.  That’s the key, you aren’t asking fans to do something that they weren’t already doing, and you are going to make it easier for them.

And when you consider that #Blogchat generates up to 5,000 tweets and a few million impressions in an hour, I don’t think it’s unreasonable to expect similar or even higher numbers from a #FallingSkiesChat.  I am sure TNT could organize this chat for far less than what they are paying Twitter for promoted tweets.  In fact, a show poster signed by the cast might be enough of an enticement to a fan of the series to moderate a chat on Twitter.

The point is, there are a ton of opportunities on Twitter for companies, especially media presences, to leverage Twitter chats to promote their offerings.  Don’t just view promoted tweets and accounts as your only options.  That’s very old-school ‘push’ mentality.   Have you seen any other examples of movies or television shows leveraging Twitter chats besides Saving Grace?  Which ones worked, in your opinion?

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Nettwerk CEO Terry McBride on Customer Co-Creation and Embracing Your Fans

I wanted to share this talk from Nettwerk CEO Terry McBride with you, as it has some pretty interesting branding and marketing takeaways that apply not just to the music industry. Pay close attention to Terry’s thought on how you can’t litigate or legislate customer behavior, but should instead understand it because that’s where the monetization opportunities lie. His example of how Spotify is decreasing peer-to-peer file sharing rates in Europe perfectly illustrates this point.

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The future of marketing is in FEWER conversations

Yes I actually said something smart in #IMCChat last night, and yes I am proud of it 😉  We had a fabulous discussion last night during #IMCChat about marketing and connecting with customers.  We were discussing how a brand’s marketing improves as it better understands the customer.  The better understanding comes from connecting, which leads to the brand speaking in a language that more closely resembles that of the customer.

And as that happens, the brand’s marketing becomes more effective, and more efficient.  Both the brand and the customer begin to understand the other a bit better, and at some point, that leads to trust.  Which helps move the customer to being an advocate for the brand.

To me, this is huge.  This is what brands should be aspiring to, to better understand their customers through connecting to them directly.  And this also explains why so many people are so excited about social media, because it gives brands online tools to do exactly that.  It’s not that the social media tools themselves are amazing, its the CONNECTIONS that the tools help facilitate.

But when you say ‘If you connect directly with your customers and better understand them, your marketing improves as does your number of advocates’, for a lot of marketers they don’t really ‘get’ why that’s a big deal.  It doesn’t blow their skirt up.

But if you tweak the metaphor and say ‘If your brand is a rockstar, by connecting with them directly and improving your marketing by better understanding them, you can have more of these….

…then the thought resonates more with marketers.  And if you could say that Marketing is the language a brand has to speak because it doesn’t understand the language of its customers, I think you could also say that rockstars have so many fans because they usually speak in the same voice as their fans.  That’s the true power of rockstars and the branding lesson for marketers: Rockstars have the same, or at least a very similar, conversation that their fans are having.  And this is because they are CONNECTED to their fans.  Not only are they connected, but for the most part rockstars seek out and thrive off connecting with their fans.

Now a few brands are able to do this as well.  Think of Harley-Davidson, for example.  Both the brand, and the customers are having the same conversation.  For HD, it’s not about purchasing a motorcycle, it’s about your lifestyle and how you use the motorcycle to connect with others around shared interests, and HD customers feel the same way.  In both cases the internal conversation the brand has about itself, and the external conversation the customers have about the brand, are closely aligned.  This is a big reason why Harley-Davidson has so many passionate advocates, and ironically, is viewed as being a Rockstar brand.

What are your thoughts on improving marketing?  Do you agree that by better connecting with customers that you’ll better understand them and move customers to become more like fans?  Does the Rockstar metaphor as it applies to branding and marketing work for you?

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Where Empire Avenue Succeeds (and Fails) As a Community Site

A little over a week ago I finally caved and joined the Empire Avenue bandwagon.  The site is similar to a stock market, in that the idea is that you ‘invest’ in others by buying and selling shares in them.  As is always the case, I am trying to look at each of the Shiny Objects that the social media fishbowl goes gaga over through the lens of ‘is there any real reason for most businesses to be here?’

In short, there’s not a lot of real business value to be had for the average company on EA.  It’s a game and distraction, no more, no less.  Sure, it’s possible to get some networking value there, but then again you can still get networking value on Identica if you want to bad enough.

But if you accept that EA is little more than a game and competition, it can be fun.  And it was for me.  After a day or so of wondering what in the hell I was supposed to be doing, I noticed that my EA ‘score’ was going up.  People were ‘investing’ in me constantly!  Soon I was at 20 points.  Then 30, then 35, 40, and 50!  I was gaining 5 or so points a day, and I saw that my ‘net wealth’ was up to a few hundred thousand Eaves (the EA ‘currency’).

Then on Saturday, something happened.  My EA score barely moved all day.  Few investments came in.  I shrugged it off, hey it’s just a bad day.  Then Sunday, the same thing.  What the hell was going on?!?  I wasn’t doing anything different (that I could tell), and yet suddenly it was as if someone turned off the faucet.  My score stopped going up, and no one wanted to invest in me anymore, it seemed.

Then yesterday, another flat day.  And that’s when it happened: I realized that Empire Avenue sucked.  Funny how when my score was going up several points every day (even though I never was sure why it was happening), I thought EA was awesome.  Then when my score flatlined, the site sucked and I needed to stop wasting my time on such a silly game.

There’s a really important lesson here if you want to emulate EA and create a competition-based community site.  You need to teach me how to win.  Throughout the last week, I was pretty much on my own in trying to figure out how to ‘win’ at EA, or even figuring out what ‘winning’ looked like.  I got little to no advice from the site, even through searching.  The best advice I got was from a few long-time EA members like @AdrielHampton.

But the bottom line is that my EA score started to suck, and I didn’t know why, so I assume then that Empire Avenue sucks!  (Because I am an irrational human being, remember? ;))

Here’s what should have happened:

1 – Empire Avenue should have made it painfully obvious to me on signup how to ‘win’ and what the object of the game was.

2 – EA should have helped me understand how specific activities are tied to my quest to ‘winning’ the game.  I was able to add my Twitter and YouTube and Facebook accounts to my EA account, but I’m not sure what impact it made.  My Facebook and YouTube scores are still stuck at 1, but I don’t know how to change that.  I should know, and EA should tell me.

3 – When my score started to plateau over the last few days, that should have triggered a way for EA to explain to me what I need to do to get my daily gain back up where it was.  I have no idea why my daily gains started flatlining, but EA should make sure that I do know.

4 – Interaction with other EA members should be a BIG part of ‘winning’.  Or maybe it is and EA never told me about it.

 

The bottom line is that for me, EA is a semi-fun distraction that I am losing interest in because I feel like I still haven’t crossed the Suck Threshold.  If you’ve tried out Empire Avenue, what do you think?  What am I doing wrong?

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Announcing my partnership with Content Marketing Institute

I’m very excited to announce that moving forward, I will be working with CMI (Content Marketing Institute) to help them provide content marketing strategy and editorial services to clients.  CMI Founder Joe Pulizzi and CMI’s “Strategist in Residence” Robert Rose have created a wonderful team of consultants that I have a great deal of respect for, including Lisa Petrilli, Jason Falls, Jay Baer, Dianna Huff and Ardath Albee, along with myself.

This team will be called upon to help CMI provide help to clients in three areas:

  1. Content Marketing Strategy – assisting an organization to discover the power of their content and how it can help to achieve marketing goals.
  2. CMIC’s Advisory Services; designed for clients that want to engage CMIC consultants for very specific, short-term engagements across the spectrum of content marketing.
  3. Editorial and Content Production services.  For those clients that need to source editorial or writing services, CMI works with its sister company Junta42 to help source the best content marketing agencies for enterprise clients.

If you would like to learn more about CMI’s consulting services, and how to hire us, please click here.

Even though I will have an ongoing working relationship with CMI, this will not change my status as an independent consultant.  I will still be providing consulting services to companies that need help creating and executing social media and customer engagement strategies.  In fact, I still have a limited amount of time available for the current quarter, so please email me if you’d to discuss how we could work together.

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The one blog post that got me over $22,000 in consulting business

I wanted to tell you about two blog posts I have written that both got very different results for me.  The first was a rant, and it was an engagement bonanza.  It currently has over 70 comments, got around 600 ReTweets, and on the day it was published, traffic to the blog was over 900% above normal.

The second post had far less fanfare.  It only had a handful of retweets, and even fewer comments.  Traffic barely moved on the blog the day it was published.

And yet that second post was the one that has so far led to over $22,000 in consulting projects for me.  The 1st post was ranty, and it was designed to get a discussion started.  And boy did it ever!  But it wasn’t written for potential clients.  It was great for engagement, but not for creating new business.  At the time I didn’t realize it, but when I was writing it I wanted engagement, but I didn’t think about whether or not that engagement would be with potential clients.

The second post came about far more innocently.  I was tinkering with Feedburner one night, and I discovered a feature that helped me better understand my blog’s traffic.  I decided to write up a post that contained this and a few other tips for helping bloggers better understand their traffic and subscribers, by using Feedburner.

The post was later found by an agency owner that was using Google to do research for a project, and she contacted me about joining them on a project, which I did.  I later worked with them on a second project, and I was also referred by that client to another client, and continue to work with both of them.  So that one post that was aimed at helping potential clients, got me real business, while the 1st ‘ranty’ post got a lot of people excited and a great discussion on my blog, it wasn’t aimed at potential clients, and so far hasn’t gotten me a penny in business.

I point these two examples out to encourage you to think carefully about who you are writing for.  It’s wonderful to get engagement and I always love and appreciate comments and RTs from readers.  But at the end of the day, you have to understand who it is you need to connect with.  I could write a ‘ranty’ post here every day, and possibly get more comments and traffic than I do now.

But would it get me any more business?  Probably not, because the clients that I want to connect with want to read posts that will help them better use social media and grow their businesses, not rants.

And to be fair, there’s nothing wrong with writing a ranty post every once in a while.  I’ve done it here before, and no doubt will again in the future.  But what I’ve learned is that engagement is great, as long as you are engaging with and writing for the ‘right’ people.

Who are you writing for?

 

UPDATE: Here’s a link to the ‘ranty’ post I wrote, and here’s a link to the Feedburner post.  Thanks to Kami for suggesting I add these.

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Rethinking how companies connect with influencers

One of the highlights of SXSW for me was getting to catch up with my friend Tom Martin.  Tom was also kind enough to interview me for his Talking With Tom series.  If you haven’t heard about this, Tom started going around the country interviewing marketers. thought leaders and influencers in the social media space with just his iPhone, and he posts the interviews on his Talking With Tom site.  A new interview each week.

A few weeks ago Tom was at an event recording interviews, when he talked to Emma and they decided to start sponsoring the site.  For Emma, it’s a great move, as they get to have their name associated with some of the biggest names in social media, for the entire year.  And for Tom it works as well, as Emma’s sponsorship money not only covers his travel to collect the remainder of the interviews, but he also gets compensated for his time as well.  A true win-win for the content creator, and the sponsor.

But here’s what really got my attention: Tom got sponsorship dollars for something that he was going to do anyway.  And instead of being obtrusive, the sponsorship from Emma helps facilitate the content creation.  This is very similar to one of the main reasons why I was in SXSW to begin with, because of the 1st ever Live #Blogchat.  1680PR and Dell stepped up to sponsor the event, but the event was something that SXSW attendees have been wanting to see.  Every time I have attended SXSW, one of the biggest complaints from attendees has been a lack of venues/events where we could all gather and have an actual conversation.  It’s ironic that SXSW brings together so many brilliant people each March, but there are so few events created for the express purpose of letting these smart people connect with each other and have wonderful conversations.  That’s exactly why I wanted to bring a Live #Blogchat to SXSW.  As with Emma’s sponsorship of Talking With Tom, 1680PR and Dell sponsored an event that was going to happen anyway, and facilitated the event, and made it better (In fact if you are considering sponsorship of your event or content creation efforts, absolutely contact 1680PR and Dell to see if there’s a match.  Both were fabulous to work with).

I think this also is a new and interesting spin on the idea of targeting influencers.  Many companies are using services such as Klout to identify influencers and offer them products and services in the hope that these influencers will then promote the brand to the people that they have influence over.  At best, this isn’t the most effective model.

But what if the influencer is also a content creator?  Then one way that influencer could monetize the content they create is by accepting sponsorship dollars.  The important distinction here is that the influencer becomes the gatekeeper and dictates which sponsors have access to his/her network, and on what terms.  I talked about this a bit in the interview Tom had with me, but in this model, the influencer can be selective in which companies they accept as sponsors and make sure that the sponsorship creates value for the network.  For example by accepting the Emma sponsorship, Tom now has the funds to attend more and better events, which means he can create better content for his network, and more of it.

In the end, the content creator, the sponsor, and Tom’s network that accesses the content all benefit.  I think this is a far better model than giving away toys to influencers in the hopes that they will pimp the toys to the network that they supposedly have influence over.  What do you think?  Is this sponsorship model something that you as a content creator could benefit from?  I think the key lies in making sure that the people you are creating the content for, benefit.  Normally there’s a clear benefit to the content creator, then the sponsor, but the ‘audience’ often gets the short end of the stick.  I applaud Tom for finding a win-win-win, and I would like to think that the Live #Blogchats work for everyone as well.

What do you think, would you rather companies target influencers directly, or have the influencers work with companies to the benefit of the people they have influence over?

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SXSW 2011 Review: Still the biggest, and still the best

“I’m not going this year.”

I heard that from several friends when I asked them about their SXSW plans for this year.  This, along with the reviews I heard from people that attended last year (which I missed), made me a bit worried about what my third SXSW experience would be like.

It was my best trip yet to SXSW, hands down.

The wonderful thing about SXSW is it’s the only place in the world that gives you access to such an amazing group of people.  I got to talk brand advocacy with Jackie Huba and Virginia Miracle.  I talked marketing to teens via social media with marketers from Nokia and Coca-Cola.  I watched as a few brilliant people organized an effort on the fly to raise tens of thousands of dollars for Japan quake victims.  There’s only one place on the planet where all this could happen, and it is in Austin, Texas in March.

The SXSW experience isn’t perfect, but as is such with much of life, it is what you make of it.  For example, one of the biggest complaints I have had (and heard from others), is that it doesn’t make sense to spend a couple of thousand dollars to go socialize for 3-4 days in Austin every year.  I was determined to get real business value and leads from SXSW this year.  So as soon as I had it finalized that I was attending, I started reaching out to companies/people that I wanted to connect with, as well as letting everyone know what my schedule would be.  It made a HUGE difference in my experience in Austin.  Hell I was talking business with a SXSW attendee in the Houston airport for my connecting flight TO Austin last Friday.  Better planning and being proactive about attempting to connect with people made all the difference.

The Sessions: I honestly only attended one actual session, Valeria Maltoni’s session on Influence, and I only caught a few minutes of it.  I did catch the Content Rules book reading with Ann Handley and C.C. Chapman, as well as David Merrman Scott’s book reading of Marketing Lessons From the Grateful Dead.  But I heard from many people that the sessions were surprisingly good this year.  I was happy to hear this, because the quality of the sessions had been woefully lacking in my 2 previous trips to SXSW.  Good to hear that wasn’t as big of an issue for 2011.

So the bottom line: Should you attend SXSW next year?

My advice is yes IF you properly plan.   Here’s what I would suggest you do if you want to attend SXSW:

1 – Buy your badge as soon as possible.  This will save you money, and you can always sell the badge to someone else later if you decide you can’t make it.

2 – Reserve a room in a hotel downtown.  A big reason why you want to buy your badge early is so you can also get your room booked.  Now a big reason why my SXSW experience was so much better this year was because I was able to get a room at the Hilton, which is literally across the street from the Convention Center where SXSWi is held.  But you don’t have to go with the Hilton, the Marriott and Hampton Inn downtown will all put you within 2-3 blocks of SXSW and most of the off-site events and parties you would want to attend.   I believe the Four Seasons is close by.  Yes, these hotels are a bit more expensive, but I think the convenience factor makes up for it.  Other than the cab ride to the airport, you should never pay more than $10 for a cab fare anywhere, even if you can’t find a buddy to catch a ride with.

3 – Decide exactly WHY you are going to SXSW, and plan accordingly.  Are you going to socialize?  Then make a list of the people that you absolutely have to meet/connect with, and start contacting them ASAP.  Also, figure out where the ‘hot-spots’ are for people hanging out (The Blogger’s Lounge is always a safe bet. Figure out where it is located and use it as your ‘home base’).

Are you going for business leads and networking?  Then same thing, make a list of the people/companies you have to connect with, and find a way to make that happen.  You want to do this planning because NO plan is safe at SXSW 😉  Schedules are constantly changing, I had meetings run over, I had other people cancel meetings, I had others wanting to schedule some on-site.  Everything is fluid with SXSW, so the sooner you can plan ahead and lock people down, the better.

4 – Let everyone know where you are and will be.  I’m not a big FourSquare user, but I was using it often at SXSW, simply to let others know where I was in case they were looking for me.  I was also doing the same thing, I actually avoided one party because I saw that only a couple of people that I knew were tweeting from there, while another event had more people I knew.  And also write a blog post sharing where you will be, I had several people contact me to meet after I wrote a post saying where I will be.

5 – See if you can get help covering travel costs. Going to SXSW *is* expensive.  Even if you book early, you will still pay $450 for your badge, plus $300 a night for hotel, and probably close to $500 for flight.  Add in food, cabs, and anything else you want to buy while in town, and you could easily hit $2,500+ for the cost of the trip.  If you work for a company, see if they can pay some/all of your costs for you to go to connect with others.  If you are an independent, see if you can go with a client and have them help defray your costs, in exchange for connecting them with others while there.  Or if you are a blogger, maybe a company would be willing to sponsor your trip?  The great thing about SXSW is that almost all of the ‘big names’ in the social media space are there.  And companies want to connect with these influencers.  If you are an influencer or can help your company/clients by connecting them to these people, there’s value in that for companies.

6 – If you are a content creator, take advantage of SXSW.  I really didn’t do a good job of this, other than taking a few dozen pictures.  As I’ve said before, you have unprecedented access to smartitude at SXSW, so take advantage of that to chat with people, interview them for posts, shoot a quick video with them, etc.

After having gone three times, from my own experiences and from the feedback I’ve gotten from others, I can tell that the time you invest in planning out your SXSW experience has a HUGE impact on it.  Yes, serendipity happens often in Austin (and it’s amazing), but you can’t make serendipity your plan.  If you want to connect with certain individuals, make that happen, the earlier the better.

Here’s a few more pics from SXSW, and tomorrow I will have a full review of the 1st ever LIVE #Blogchat!

 

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If you use FeedBurner for Email Subs then DON’T DO THIS!

If you’ve read here for any amount of time, you know that I am often breaking stuff and screwing up, and then you get to benefit from my dumbassery.  Last week, David Wood was kind enough to share with me this screenshot of how my emails from MackCollier.com look in his inbox:

EVERY day when the latest post from MackCollier.com arrived in David’s inbox, it showed up in the same format:

Sender: MackCollier.com     Subject: MackCollier.com

Seriously?  I was mortified when I saw this screenshot!  I assumed (first mistake) that Feedburner was making the title of my post as the email Subject, but that clearly wasn’t the case.  Apparently, Feedburner by default picks your site URL as the email subject.

Thankfully, it’s a dead simple change to make, and here’s how you can change your email subject so that it’s the title of your blog post:

1 – Log into your Feedburner account.

2 – Click the Publicize tab at the top (If you have multiple feeds being managed by Feedburner, you’ll want to login and then click the feed you want to change and THEN click the Publicize tab)

3 – Click Email Subscriptions on the left.

4 – Click Email Branding.

5 – In the Email/Subject Title: box, put this: ${latestItemTitle}

6 – Click Save.

Now for an example of how big this change can be, before I made this change, last Thursday’s blog post showed up in the inbox of email subscribers with the Subject: MackCollier.com.

After I made the above switch, it showed up as Subject: How is Twitter Impacting SEO and Search? Here’s the (Visual) Proof

Which email Subject do you think would get more opens?

This leads to another important point: Subscribe to your own feed.  I was already subscribed via RSS, but I should have subscribed to my own Email feed as well, so I could have seen how the emails were showing up for subscribers.

So hopefully that helps you, if you’ve been using Feedburner for a while, what do you like best about it?  What could be better?