Splash’s Boot Camps for CEO’s: The Audience is Listening
View the boot camp schedule.
We’re not above blowing our own horns just a little here at Splash Media, so we wanted to share some responses we received to our latest round of Dallas-area Social Media for CEO’s Boot Camps, which happened the week of Aug. 23rd. But there is a method to our self-promotional madness: these responses indicate a growing desire on the part of many executives to learn more about the new media tools that are transforming all aspects of communications, including marketing and media relations.
Here’s what a few had to say:
“Super professional, super informative! Something I would consider for the very near future.”
“Good content, well presented – a topic that is quickly changing the media landscape, regardless of whether some businesses are ready to adopt and adapt.”
“The presenter was excellent – kept my co-workers who don’t handle social media interested. The content and presentation of the slides were up to date and visually pleasing.
“Value clearly presented. Call to action clear and compelling. I am not a decision-maker but may have the opportunity to be an influencer.”
An attendee whose company is already engaging in social media practices thought Splash principal Paul Slack’s presentation was “quick and concise” considering the amount of information covered and added that “we (the executive’s company) do believe we need to dedicate more resources to this initiative.”
A personal note: I attended the Dallas Galleria presentation on August 26th. Before I joined Splash Media, I spent two years covering the social media space as a freelance journalist for the E-Commerce Times, TechNewsWorld and KING5/Northwest Cable News; that’s in addition to my 13-plus years of technology reporting for CNBC, CNN/Headline News and CBS MarketWatch. I can say that the information in Paul’s presentation is indeed up-to-date, which is no mean feat considering how fast things move in this space. (Pundits use to talk about “internet time” in the late 90s; they may start throwing around the phrase “social media time” in their commentary soon.) The data Paul presents is also easy to digest for any executives still intimidated by technology/social media, and Paul’s presentation is pleasingly hype-free.
As you can see from our home page, new Boot Camp dates have been added for Dallas, Houston and Austin, and we continue to expand our reach outside Texas; we’re in Oklahoma this week and will head to Denver soon. We encourage you to check them out; a Splash Media Boot Camp may be your company’s first step towards a new future of customer engagement.
- Renay San Miguel
Oklahoma City, Here We Come!
Guess which one is Paul's!
Tulsa, you’ve been great to us! Thanks so much for your friendliness and hospitality. But now it’s time to move on to Oklahoma City 
By the way, can you guess which one is Paul’s luggage? He might be brilliant when it comes to talking about social media, but when it comes to packing for a 2 day trip, clearly he needs a little bit of help.
And don’t worry, if you missed us this time around, we’ll probably come back your way. Keep an eye on our schedule here.
Apple’s Ping for iTunes Sings From The Social Media Songbook
Apple announces Ping for iTunes 10.
Apple is already one of the top enablers for all the social media magic that happens in the world. How many times do you – or someone you know – update a Facebook status from your Mac? Tweet about an interesting news item from your shiny new iPad? Upload an iPhone 4 photo to Flickr? The company’s easy-to-use software and stylish products combine with the instant ability to share with friends and family – not to mention business colleagues or potential clients – to help drive social media’s mainstream acceptance in both the home and the office.
Now, after seeing Facebook and Twitter gain such momentum, Apple and Steve Jobs have decided not only to join those social media, but perhaps beat them at their own game.
This week Apple launched Ping, a music-oriented social network built in to iTunes 10. Users can engage in Twitter-like following of their favorite artists (Ms. Pop Culture Flavor of the Year, Lady Gaga, is used as an example in the Apple.com demonstration) and those artists can share pictures, information and what they’re listening to with their fans. Users can also set up their own Facebook-style profiles and gain followers who can keep up with their latest downloads, read their reviews and comment on everything that’s posted.
It’s another brilliant use of the technology from Apple, considering that there’s already lots of commenting and recommendation going on in iTunes. But most of it currently happens in each individual song or album’s page, and it’s usually the iTunes software that makes the recommendations to users. Now all of that is turned over to the iTunes community, which at last count was some 160 million accounts strong, making it the largest music retailer in the world.
Any business that watches its clients and customers carry around MacBookPros, iPhones and iPads needs to heed the musical lesson here: social media won’t be going away anytime soon. Just like Lady Gaga can now hear from her fans on iTunes, and she can talk directly to them as well, many businesses can open up the social media songbook and engage their audience in discussions. Those conversations can help increase sales, make existing products better, increase a company’s public profile, repair online reputations.
Apple realized that millions of users were talking about music with or without iTunes. Steve Jobs decided it was better to join the chorus. His thought may have been this: social media don’t mean a thing if it ain’t got that Ping.
- Renay San Miguel
Tales From the Developer’s Side at Open Camp 2010
An overall comparison of Drupal, Joomla, and WordPress.
In the world of Open Camp, there were the Big Bad 3: Drupal, Joomla, WordPress. Well, maybe 4 if you could count the .NET track they had thrown in at the last minute, which was odd if you ask me. If I could personify each, here’s how they would go.
Drupal is the big, burly brother. He goes out there, wins football trophies and gives wedgies and noogies to anyone within an arms reach. Even though he’s powerful, he’s not as easy to understand.
WordPress on the other hand is the youngest of the bunch. He picks up things easily, is ultra smart, and already comes equipped with everything you could ever need: band-aids, Neosporin, grizzly bear repellant. You name it, he’s got it.
Take Your Blog from “Blah” to “Blam!”: Lessons from OpenCa.mp
OpenCa.mp Dallas
Is your blog content uninspired? No blogger is immune to the occasional writer’s block, so when it plagues your posts, follow these pointers from OpenCa.mp – an annual open source media and blogger conference – which our team attended Aug. 28 and 29 in Addison, Texas.
In addition to offering lively discussions on the future of new media, the conference lineup was packed with top-notch talent and a wealth of information on improving your blog. Here are our top 3 takeaways on how to engage your readers with great content:
What Facebook Places Means for Small Businesses
Facebook made a huge splash last week with the official announcement of Places, the social networking site’s stab at a mobile location-based feature similar to Foursquare and Gowalla.
While the feature is still being rolled out to everyone, the potentially huge significance for small businesses is hard to miss.
What makes Places so important is not so much the functionality (which appears to be largely lifted from existing players), but rather the fact that it’s being launched by Facebook. With over 500 million users, who are automatically opted in to the new feature, it may well be Facebook that pushes geolocation into the mainstream.
Word of Mouth and Paid Advertising For Your Business
If your business has a real-world location customers can visit, Facebook Places is another channel for word of mouth promotion, and a very powerful one at that. Every time a customer checks in to your establishment, they’re automatically telling all of their friends about it. On Facebook, people’s networks tend to be bigger than on geolocation services that only took off in the last year or so. Assuming their feedback is positive, this is free, word-of-mouth advertising, often with a sizable, largely local reach.
For companies who are willing to spend a few dollars for added exposure, Places is built directly into Facebook’s social advertising platform, much like Pages. For those who haven’t scheduled an ad campaign on Facebook, it’s very easy to buy pay-per-click ads targeted to users by gender, age, interests, marital status and most importantly in this case, geography. The text and images on the ad are fully customizable, and the headline can either link to your Place, Page or company’s website.
How to Get Started
If your business already has a Place set up, simply search for it via Facebook’s standard search box to pull it up. Once there, you’ll find a link in the lower left asking “Is this your business?” Click that to submit your claim of ownership, and Facebook will follow up via telephone to verify.
If your business is not yet on Places, you can set it up using the Facebook app on your iPhone, Android or Blackberry. Simply launch Places, click the “Check In” button and then click “Add” or “+” button to add a new location.
Have you given Facebook Places a try yet? Leave your thoughts in the comments.
Coffee & Donuts Staff Meeting #1
The staff enjoying coffee and donuts Friday morning.
Good afternoon! It’s been an exciting week here at Splash Media. This morning was the first of many Friday morning staff meetings. It was also the first time everyone was able to gather together in the same place as a company. We went around the room and introduced ourselves first and spoke a little bit about how long we’ve been here and what we do. Paul almost forgot where he was and started his boot camp introduction Then the Boot Camp team recapped the events of the last couple weeks and shared some great feedback they’d received from one of the attendees. It was a great meeting overall that helped some of us “back-of-the-house” people see what’s been going on at the “front of the house.”
If You Want Followers on Twitter, Don’t Do Anything On This List
So you’ve attended one of our boot camps. You’re all excited and hot to trot about starting your own social media endeavors so you run back to your office and start your company’s first Twitter account.
Tips for new Twitter users.
Now what?
Obviously one of the first things you’ll want to do is get followers (everyone needs an audience, of course). So if you want followers, here are a few things you shouldn’t do:
Use the Default Twitter Icon
If you want to increase your followers, NEVER use the default Twitter icon. It’s one of the many things spammers fail to tend to. So what should you use as a Twitter icon? If its your company account, use your company logo, but definitely resize it so it’s still visually distinct. And if you can include your company name in your icon, that’s great too, just as long as it provides some kind of meaningful identification.
Follow Anyone and Everyone You Can Find on Twitter, Regardless of Relevancy
Following a lot of people at once without a tweet history is the quickest way to be ignored, blocked, or even reported as spam. You want to build your followers slowly, and with purpose. Follow a few people in your industry, and then follow fewer people who might be interested in what you have to say. Do a little bit of both every day or every other day, while being sure to update your account with relevant tweets. Your tweet history will say a lot about you and your company and, although it’s not the only criteria, determine whether or not they will follow you back.
Fail to Write a 160 Character Bio
Use the bio in Twitter, folks. It doesn’t take that long to summarize your offering in 160 characters or less. In fact, I would recommend doing this and setting a custom Twitter icon before even creating a custom background in Twitter. Most people are savvy enough that they’re using third-party software like HootSuite or TweetDeck to maintain their Twitter account, so not everyone is going to have the luxury of seeing your actual Twitter page. And if all your personality shows in your custom Twitter background, but not in your icon or bio, users might bypass you.
Turn Into White Noise
This is the other thing I’ve been seeing on Twitter a lot: people that either do nothing but retweet other posts, or post the same boring things about their industry or their business. If I wanted to listen to a robot, I would chat with some of the instant messenger bots out there. People don’t want the same message over and over again, they want to see your human side. They want to get to know you so show it in your writing.
Ultimately the most important thing you can do in your social media campaign is to make connections. Get to know your audience and let them get to know you. Turn yourself into a trusted resource and it’ll come back to you in a good way.
Splash Media Announces New Dates for CEO Social Media Boot Camp
Splash Media’s free 90 minute Boot Camp on Social Media designed specifically for CEO’s, business owners, and high level executives has experienced such high demand that new dates and times have been added to the Dallas schedule. Read more
Why Splash Media and WebDex Media Joined Forces
When I was just out of high school, I saw the movie Nothing in Common with Tom Hanks and Jackie Gleason where Hanks plays an advertising executive. I remember thinking then how cool it would be to be in advertising. In 2000, after more than 14 years in marketing and sales, I got my wish and started WebDex Media Group.
On July 1st, WebDex Media Group merged with Splash Media.
However, the world had changed a lot since that 1986 film release and if I was going to help companies promote their businesses it would be in the online world. My passion in 2000 and today is to help businesses leverage a new media that is continually evolving and tap in to near endless amounts of opportunity. When WebDex opened its doors, Facebook, YouTube, even pay per click didn’t exist. In some ways it was much harder back then to extract value from the Web because there were fewer people and fewer opportunities. Today, it’s more about noise reduction and focusing on those areas that drive value as efficiently as possible.
In the past two years I have seen more change in online marketing than in the previous ten. Social media is on fire, people are watching the Internet (like television) just as much as they are reading it. Because of this significant change in the landscape, I knew that WebDex would have to partner with some really solid companies if we were going to continue to move the needle for our clients. Splash Media is by far the most impressive video production company around, with several Emmys and hundreds of Tellys under their belt, a $5.5M state-of-the-art studio, and a production team that is first rate. Chris Kraft, the original founder of Splash, and I started talking two years ago about partnering. During our talks we discovered that we were kindred spirits in our desire to help companies grow, our work ethic, and our faith.
