socialmediamagicuniversity.com

I love seminars–when they’re good.

The Social Media Marketing seminar given by SkillPath is not only good, it’s immediately useful. As in use-these-ideas-in-the-next-48-hours.

Plus it’s in my field, I could mix and match the “track” sessions, it was on a Friday…how could it miss?

Convince your company to send you to one of these seminars. The conversation alone from the other attendees makes it well worth the price.

In the meantime, here are a few takeaways:

• Get free tools to make your life easier.

• Socialmention – For brand/product sentiment & analysis.
• GoogleAlerts – Monitor your company with keywords. I have them sent to my corporate account.
• Addictomatic – Aggregates mentions on social media platforms in grid form
• Mentionmapp – Put in your Twitter handle and bring up connections for key influencers and more. Pretty cool-looking interactive map.
• Friend or Follow – Who’s not following you on Twitter? Who aren’t you following? Great for inducing paranoia, but also to make sure the CEO is really following the corporate account.
• Backtype—Has been acquired by Twitter. It looks like they’re not letting new users sign up. You can get a snapshot of information if you aren’t signed up, but not a lot.
• Twilert – Twitter application. Get alerts when your brand/product is mentioned.

• 90% of us trust recommendations from people we know.

• 70% of us trust recommendations from people we don’t know.

• Only 1% of people respond to Facebook posts and blogs. Yikes.

• Your Facebook Page’s Welcome tab doesn’t have to redirect to the Wall when someone hits “Like.” Oreo’s doesn’t.

• Tell your CEO to link his blog and presentations in his LinkedIn profile.

• Nothing beats a video testimonial for that “human touch.”

• You lose control over 93% of the message through words on the screen (missing tone and body language). I assure you my tone right now is in the informative spectrum.

• Before you upload pictures, name them—guineapigs.jpg, not img011.jpg. Put a caption on your pictures too. This all will help with SEO.

• Don’t have an editorial calendar yet? Get one. Try The Loud Few for an Excel template.

• Watch this Socialnomics video: