Stephanie Liu

Memecube: Get a Taste of the Super Optimized Conference Experience

By Stephanie Liu
July 3, 2012
Events,Games,Social Media,Technology,Twitter

This year I’ve been fortunate to attend a number of marketing and industry related conferences. And while the content tracks differ, the underlying struggle as an attendee has been fundamentally the same across the board: What do I do when there are two equally mind-blowing sessions going on at the same time?

Normally, I ask myself two key questions. Which session will I walk away feeling 10x smarter? And, what’s the likelihood that I’ll be able to apply what was presented when I come back to the office?

If I’m still struggling, I’ll quickly glance around to see which session is drawing in the biggest crowd — that’s usually a sign that the presenter is a definite must-see. At that point, I know I’m taking a chance and leaving it to Twitter and putting faith in the hashtag gods that someone in the other session will be tweeting every highlight. Sometimes it works out, sometimes it doesn’t.

Fortunately, when I attended Gamification Summit (GSummit) 2012 last month, I didn’t have to worry. The reason is because GSummit had partnered with Memecube, a robust Twitter client, to deliver a super optimized conference experience. Now, I’ve seen Tweets projected on a wall and have seen images get pulled into a feed but I have never seen anything like Memecube. And although Memecube went down a couple of times because of conference attendees and Fora.tv subscribers rushing to log on, I still thought the platform was impressive.

Memecube Features

It auto-populates speaker Twitter @handles and the conference hashtag. This makes it easy to tweet the event’s most memorable ideas, quotes and memes.
Enable attendees to tweet and retweet others from same platform.
View the conference schedule easily and check-in to let other attendees know where you are.
It can tie in gaming aspects where attendees can earn badges when one of their tweets is retweeted.
Since attendees had to tweet via the platform, I didn’t come across any hashtag spammers.
And lastly, ALL of the updates tweeted during a session are organized in one place!

In fact, if you want to check out how GSummit and Memecube turned out, you can still visit m.gsummit.com. While you’re there, check out my favorite session at the conference with CEO, Chamillionaire, “Direct to Fan Engagement” with CEO, Chamillionaire. I love what he and Big Door are doing at Chamillionaire.com. My only regret during his session was sitting in the back. I wish I was up close so I could be visible in the photo he took of the crowd and posted to Facebook.

Source: Facebook.com/Chamillionaire, June 2012

Taking Memecube to the Next Level

Overall, I think Memecube is cool and would recommend all event organizers to check it out. In the future what I’d like to see Memecube do is feature photos in tweets. I’ve seen it in other Twitter clients such as Minglestream and thought it was great having the ability to view photos of sessions taking place. I’d also love it if Memecube linked to the actual tweet so I can copy the embed code and paste a tweet in a future recap.

Twitter Charity Run 2012: Tweet – Give – Run

By Stephanie Liu
April 10, 2012
Events

Twitter Charity Run 2012 This year I’ll be participating in my first virtual charity run created by Jeff & Tamara the creators behind WeRRunners.com. The purpose of the event is to take the amount you would normally pay for a race registration ($30 – $150) and donate those funds to your support your favorite charity. The event takes place April 13th through April 15th and people all over the world will be participating.

The cause that I will be supporting and running on behalf of is called WomenHeart: The National Coalition for Women with Heart Disease. WomenHeart is the nation’s only patient centered organization serving the 42 million American women living with or at risk for heart disease – the leading cause of death in women. They are devoted to advancing women’s heart health through advocacy, community education, and the nation’s only patient support network for women living with heart disease.

In addition to donating funds to WomenHeart, I’m also earning donations for the organization by logging my miles at BeeWellforLife.com. For every mile that I log, Bumble Bee Foods will donate $.30 to help lead the fight against heart disease. For more information about BeeWellforLife and the charities they support, visit BeeWell for Life: How the Program Works. It’s the perfect opportunity to stay active while doing good for others.

Below are the details of the Twitter Charity Run 2012 event if you’d like to participate as well. If you’re in San Diego, please leave a comment below.

Twitter Charity Run 2012

When: April 13th through April 15th

Location: Everywhere! Check out the cities participating in Twitter Charity Run via Google Maps. I’m waiting for my location to pop-up so I can brag that I’m representing the West Coast.

How do I participate?

Register for Twitter Charity Run 2012 . When the event is over, the organizers will post another form for participants to share their race and charity results.
Entry Fee: Make a donation to the charity of your choice
Print your bib online
Help spread the word by promoting the event to your friends and family on your blog or social media channels. The hashtag for the event is #twittercharityrun.

Participants in the event are encourage to share their reason for joining the virtual race and send their photos to twittercharityrun@werrunners.com. WeRRunners will share as many stories they can on their site.

I hope you get to join me in this virtual event. You’ll be supporting your favorite cause and making a different in the world. If you have questions or need additional info contact WeRRunners at twittercharityrun@werrunners.com

10 Content Marketing Tips to Launch Your Business from Michael Stelzner

By Stephanie Liu
April 3, 2012
Events

Last week Social Media Club San Diego (SMCSD) hosted an event with Michael Stelzner, founder of Social Media Examiner and author of Launch: How to Quickly Propel Your Business Beyond the Competition. At the event, Stelzner shared his Elevation Principle — a blueprint on how to launch a businesses by developing a solid content strategy. He believes that if you focus your efforts around great content that provides value to your customers and eliminates marketing messages, your business could achieve stellar success.

I would have to say that of all the SMCSD events that I’ve attended, this event was one of my favorites. At the end of the presentation, I had already downloaded Launch and had a list of content ideas that I wanted to produce (stay tuned for a review of his new book). If you’re interested in learning more about Stelzner’s new book, you can download your first chapter of Launch today.

10 Content Marketing Tips to Launch Your Business

The Elevation Principle Formula: Great Content + other people – marketing messages = Growth
If you can solve people’s problems at no cost then many of them will wonder what you can do if they paid for your services.
Cage your marketing messages. Marketing if friction to your business – it slows down your growth.
There are three things people want: insight, access to great people, and recognition.
80% of your content should not have a marketing message tied to it. Just be willing to help with no strings attached.
Shine the spotlight on others such as outside experts and successful peers.
Primary Fuel: How-to articles, expert interviews, reviews, news stories, and case studies.
Nuclear Fuel: Report based surveys, white papers, top 10 contests, micro events (i.e. webinars, videos, podcasts).
95% of your Facebook Fans will never come back to your Facebook Fan Page. Fans will get your information via the news feed.
Social Media Examiner will be releasing the 2012 Social Media Marketing Industry Report on Tuesday, April 3, 2012.

Argyle Social: It’s a Showstopper

By Stephanie Liu
February 7, 2012
Social Media,Technology

It’s rare that I get the chance to review social media marketing software but because I had already written a POV for my co-workers, I decided it wouldn’t hurt to share my opinion here and get your feedback. It’s important to note that I currently don’t use Argyle Social and my opinions here are solely based off of the product demo I received earlier this month. If you’re a current Argyle Social customer, I’d love to hear your feedback on the platform and how it has impacted your social media marketing. With that said, let’s get started!

Argyle Social is a Game Changer

At first glance, Argyle Social is similar to other popular publishing platforms such as HootSuite and CoTweet. You can easily schedule posts on Facebook and Twitter, review engagement across platforms via a single dashboard including your competitors, and access reports all in one suite but there’s definitely more to it when you look under the hood. .

Tie Social Media Efforts to Conversions

The real beauty behind Argyle Social is its ability to track conversions as a result of social media efforts. What that means is if you published a Facebook status and a user engaged with that update (i.e. Liked the comment, shared it on their wall, left a comment, etc.) then three days later visited your company website and downloaded a white paper – Argyle Social can track that conversion and tie it back to your social media efforts.

How is that possible?

Simple – Argyle Social automatically adds a cookie to users that engage with content published on the platform and leverages pixels that can be added to any website property. There may be more to it but that’s pretty much the gist of the product demo I received.

How is this actionable?

That means you can sort your content into campaigns or “messaging” and see what type of content resonates most with your target audience. Analyze the engagement, assign values to conversions and report on ROI. In addition, if you respond to ad hoc tweets and include a link, you can track if people that saw that link took action and later visited your website.

Branded Custom Publisher

What’s also interesting about Argyle Social is that you can have a branded custom publisher. Instead of Facebook showing that your status update was posted 6 hours ago via HootSuite it can say, “posted 6 hours ago via YOURSITE.” That will then link to whichever site you want instead of the publisher’s site. Companies leveraging HootSuite to scale social media updates fail to realize that Facebook groups all HootSuite notifications in a newsfeed and collapses them. Facebook users then have to click on “Show more stories on HootSuite” to actually view an update. Keep in mind that the most recent update on HootSuite is displayed first. With a branded custom publisher, I would doubt you would run into that issue if the frequency of your updates are spread across evenly versus every hour on the hour.

Build Brand Awareness with a Custom URL Shortener

From a branding perspective, having a custom URL shortener that provides a link which is easily recognizable from you or your company is valuable and helps distinguish your brand. Instead of going to bit.ly to track how many links resulted in clicks, leverage this all in one platform.

Add Your Own Images

With posts you can also link to a specific image that will resonate more with your audience. This is helpful if the landing page you’ll be directing traffic to doesn’t have an image or worse, isn’t optimized with Facebook OpenGraph and as a result, ends up showing a default RSS icon.

Posting Schedule & Frequency

This feature lets you define the parameters for how frequent you want posts to be set live (i.e. post 14 times within this timeframe). Personally, I think Argyle Social replace the arbitrary times and have the posts go live when users are more likely to engage with content. Since the platform already reports on engagement with your target audience, it would make sense to tie in performance with this frequency feature.

Summary

The big take away I saw was that Argyle Social is most powerful in weaving social initiatives with targeted messaging campaigns and back up efforts with solid metrics that you and your company can define in a single user interface. This makes the workflow seamless and requires less time gathering reports from other platforms. Do keep in mind however that Argyle Social does not report on buzz mentions or have a word cloud. Other than that, if you were looking for a more robust publishing platform that can offer a whole lot more, I’d advise that you give Argyle Social a second and closer look.

Ad 2 San Diego Cause Marketing Night 2011 Event Recap

By Stephanie Liu
November 17, 2011
Events

Since 1947, Ad 2 has been a group of people passionate about helping others. From personal to professional growth, in bettering our communities, Ad 2 is a group of young, passionate, forward thinking and community leaders making a difference. As a national non-profit organization, we pride ourselves in being active and die hard advertising addicts blazing our way to a brighter tomorrow with style and good company.

For over 30 years, local Ad 2 chapters have produced comprehensive public service advertising and marketing campaigns for non-profit organizations in their communities. Each year local chapters select a new client in which they research the client’s needs and design a complete marketing plan. Once approved by their external stakeholders, Ad 2 executes the marketing plan which may include but is not limited to television, radio, print, outdoor and interactive advertising campaigns. Some deliverable include logo design, production of collateral materials and public relations initiatives.

These campaigns are not homework assignments. They are not theoretical. They are professionally executed by Ad 2 volunteers and the results make a real difference in local communities. Non-profit organizations that have worked with Ad 2 have acknowledged that the assistance received from their local Ad 2 chapter was key to their development and success. This year Ad 2 San Diego selected My Girlfriend’s Closet, a non-profit organization that provides gently used clothing, shoes and accessories to distribute to foster, homeless and disadvantaged teenage girls as their 2011-2012 Ad 2 San Diego Public Service campaign recipient.

To kick off their Public Service campaign, Ad 2 San Diego hosted their annual Cause Marketing Night at the FIDM San Diego campus located in the heart of downtown overlooking Petco Park. The venue was the perfect backdrop for over 20 canvases that were generously donated by San Diego’s hottest agencies and companies. The event also featured guest speaker Brian Hawkins, co-founder and Vice President of Catalyst Marketing who spoke to a room of over 30 attendees on how the cooperative efforts of a “for profit” business and non-profit organization can offer mutual benefits.

Below are a few key take aways from the event:

19 Companies and agencies in San Diego donated over 20 canvasses to the event.
Art auction raised over $3,000 to go towards the My Girlfriend’s Closest Public Service campaign.
Event attracted over 40 attendees.
And most importantly, ALL of the canvasses were auctioned off!

Ad 2 San Diego Cause Marketing Night and Charity Art Auction

By Stephanie Liu
November 16, 2011
Events

Ad 2 San Diego Cause Marketing Night
Cause Marketing Night 2011 is Ad 2 San Diego’s fundraising event for their public service client, My Girlfriend’s Closet. The event will be held at the FIDM San Diego campaus and feature a Canvas Art Auction and guest speaker Brian P. Hawkins, co-founder and Vice President of Catalyst Marketing, Inc.

Over 20 paintings by San Diego’s top agencies and companies have been generously donated and will be auctioned in the evening. Proceeds from the event will be used to help My Girlfriend’s Closet provide gently used clothing, shoes and accessories to distribute to foster, homeless and disadvantaged teenage girls.

Charity Art Auction Participants

Bailey Gardiner	Emota	Geary	Oster & Associates	The Creative Group
Covario	Fishtank	Greenhaus	Pybop	The Starmack Group
Cricket Communications	Fox Marketing	Hewlett Packard	San Diego Zoo	Treeline Interactive
Digitaria	Frank Rogozienski	MJD Interactive	Sitelab Interactive

Event Details

Who: Ad 2 San Diego with guest speaker, Brian P. Hawkins, co-founder and VP of Catalyst Marketing, Inc.

What: Cause Marketing Night and Charity Art Auction

When: Thursday, November 17, 2011, 6PM – 9PM

Where: FIDM San Diego Campus (map)

Why: Proceeds from the event will be used to help My Girlfriend’s Closet

Food: Enjoy a hand-crafted, local farm supporting cylinder of deliciousness – Chipotle BurritosHashtag: #ad2sdcause

Cost:

Ad 2/SD Ad Club/Students: $20
My Girfirend’s Closet: $20
Non Members Professionals: $25

Social Media Rule of Thirds to Grow Membership

By Stephanie Liu
October 18, 2011
Social Media

For the last three years, I’ve been a part of Ad 2 San Diego, a non-profit organization of advertising professionals ages 32 and younger. I’ve served as the Social Media Chair, the Director of Communications, and this year am currently serving as their Secretary of State.

My primary responsibilities are to design and execute the social media strategy to grow our membership which I am happy to report that we have been able to increase year over year. One of the many questions I get asked from other Ad 2 chapters is, “What should I talk about on my social media channels?” My suggestion — apply “The Social Media Rule of Thirds.”

The Social Media Rule of Thirds

Simply stated, one-third of your content should support your industry, one-third should be about your members, and one-third should be about your club. This rule is easy to remember as it is to apply.

Industry: One third of your content should support your industry.

Technology and business trends are constantly evolving which is why it’s important to stay abreast of industry trends. If you can help your audience put their best foot forward by sharing fresh new ideas to help them add value to their business, they are most likely to be a highly engaged fan.

The easiest way to help your audience stay informed is to share industry specific news, announcements, and events that your audience may find helpful or informative. If you’ve attended a recent conference or seminar, highlight the key take aways and if possible, share a link to the presentations.

Members: One third of your content should be about your members.

Your members are the foundation of your organization so engage in a dialogue with them. Show your members that you value their opinion by using social media to collaborate and drive future events with new ideas. Poll members on what topics they would like to learn more about and include that in your programming.

If you have board members and volunteers that help with your club’s operations, recognize their hard work. I have also seen club’s make announcements when any of their members receive a special award or promotion at work. Lastly, if your club has special membership discounts to industry specific conferences, be sure to share that as well.

Club: One third of your content should promote your club or organization and aim to generate revenue for your business.

Let your audience get to know your club’s mission and provide information on how people can get involved. Take the opportunity to promote upcoming events, highlight the benefits of becoming a member, and what your club has accomplished.

Ensure the long term success of your social media strategy

Most clubs and organizations bypass the first two rules and immediately jump into self-promotion. As a result, their Facebook page or Twitter account comes off as a hard sell and fans start to unlike the club’s page, hide posts and Twitter followers start to drop off.

In short, to ensure the long term success of your social media initiatives – apply the Social Media Rule of Thirds to your content strategy. If you’re already applying the Social Media Rule of Thirds, I’d love to hear what type of content you’re sharing and whether it was a hit or miss.

[Image Source: istockphoto]

Post to Multiple Twitter Accounts with CoTweet

By Stephanie Liu
October 9, 2011
Social Media,Technology

Matt was a web application created by the Carsonified team that I discovered in 2008 and shared how anyone use Matt to make managing multiple Twitter account more efficient. Since then, Matt has become a parked domain and the service no longer exists. Fortunately, there have been other social media dashboards that took managing Twitter on a whole new level such as CoTweet.

Today we will cover how CoTweet’s platform can help you manage multiple Twitter accounts and how you can get started with CoTweet today at no cost.

Managing Multiple Twitter Accounts with CoTweet Standard Edition

If you’re on a tight budget, CoTweet’s Standard Edition is something you should look into because it’s absolutely free. This edition is best suited for individuals and organizations that manage only a few Twitter accounts and is managed by a couple team members.

Below are a few noteworthy features that you can benefit from:

Multiple Account Users

Easily add up to five Twitter accounts through a single CoTweet login and post updates all in one interface. Feel free to invite colleagues to join your account to help manage your Twitter presence.

Tweet Scheduling

Prepare your updates ahead of time with this feature. Simply enter your update then choose the date and time you want the post to go live. The only caveat with this feature is that you don’t have the option to bulk upload status updates.

Multi-Account Posting

Have a message that can be posted to multiple accounts? No problem. You can select more than one Twitter account to publish your update.

Click Tracking

View how many people clicked on a link that you posted from the user interface. All urls are shortened with Bit.ly.

Monitor Keywords and Trends

Use CoTweet as a listening platform to monitor specific keywords and trends. I like to use this feature when following a hashtag for a conference.

On Duty Notifications

With CoTweet, you can delegate responsibility to someone else on your team. One an individual is assigned to be On Duty, he or she will receive email notifications when updates are sent to any of your Twitter handles.

Assignments

Sometimes you come across tweets that you don’t have the answer to but someone else on your team may be able to respond. When this happens, you can assign an update to a member on your team to follow up. According to CoTweet, “They’ll be notified via email and the updates will appear in their “Follow Up” queue.” Once a response has been delivered, you’ll receive an email containing their response along with the original update.

Conversation Threading

This feature makes it easy to see which updates have been responded and by whom on your team.

Archive Messages

If you like to keep a record of what updates you’ve received including ones that you’ve sent out, this feature will allow you to do just that.

Rich Profiles

Of all the features that come with CoTweet Standard, I’d have to say that this feature is the one that I use the most. When you click on any username in the user interface, CoTweet will display the conversation you’ve had with that particular person, highlight their most recent updates, and include their Twitter stats (i.e. number of follower/following). Last but not least, you can instantly follow or unfollow people from this convenient panel.

Get Started on CoTweet

Ready to make the jump to CoTweet? Sweet, follow these simple steps below and you’ll be a multi-tasking social pro.

Step 1: Go to http://cotweet.com/signup/.

Step 2: Introduce Yourself. Fill in your First and Last Name and then the company that you’re associated with. Leave this field blank if you’re not using CoTweet on behalf of your company and using it for personal use.

Step 3: Create your CoTweet login by entering a valid email address and entering a secure password.

Step 4a: Review the Terms and Conditions. By signing up you agree to CoTweet’s Terms & Conditions.

Step 4b: Then click on the “Create Your Account” button.

Mari Smith 10 Facebook Do’s and Don’ts Event Recap

By Stephanie Liu
September 16, 2011
Events

Last night Social Media Club San Diego (SMCSD) hosted a Facebook themed event with Mari Smith, renowned thought leader in the social media space and author of the new book, “The New Relationship Marketing.”

Dubbed by FastCompany.com as “The Pied Piper of the Online World,” Mari Smith shared 10 Facebook Do’s and Don’ts to a crowd at Prospect Bar and Grill as they listened, tweeted, and raised their hands in response to her engaging questions throughout the night.

Below are tips that Mari Smith shared in tweetable soundbytes.

10 Facebook Do’s and Don’ts

Do decide how you wish to you use your personal profile. Personal/Business/Combo? #FB
Do be familiar with FB’s privacy settings i.e. default sharing, tagging, auth apps, blocking, etc. #FB
Do create a FB fan page for your business. Add custom apps and take advantage of analytics. #FB
Do use additional analytics tools to improve your FB posts. Ex @crowdbooster @fangager @twentyfeet @socialbakers #FB
Do add the FB Like button and LIke Box to your website and blog. #FB
Don’t tag friends in photos or vids unless they are actually in it. #FB
Don’t send emails to multiple recipients as a way to get their attention. #FB
Don’t add friends to groups w/o their permission. Contact potential members privately to see if they would be interested. #FB
Don’t run a contest unless it complies with FB’s Promotion Guidelines. Must use a 3rd party app. #FB
Don’t overly automate content publication to your fan page. #FB

Source: http://www.marismith.com/10facebook/

In addition to Mari’s tips above, SMCSD Twitter followers joined in on the conversation and shared their own Facebook Do’s and Don’ts.

Below are a few Facebook Do’s and Don’ts from the SMCSD community. Do you have a few tips that you’d like to share? If so, feel free to leave a comment below.

About Mari Smith

Interested in learning more about Mari Smith or more about social media training? You’re in luck. Mari offers a variety of social media training programs and product offerings – from her ongoing social media support program to her Social Marketing Mastery Immersion program. Training sessions can be held at your location of choice in San Diego or delivered via web conferencing tools. For more information, visit http://www.marismith.com/coaching-consulting-services/.

Thank You to Our Sponsors

Thank you to Prospect Bar & Grill for letting us host the event at their location and taking advantage of their beautiful ocean view and to MOGL for sponsoring drink for new MOGL subscribers.