Thanks everybody that braved the morning’s #memsnow.
(Metaphorically) it was great to meet around the Expedition fire (while it was snowing) fresh with tales from the wild. It was great to share the time with everybody along with two new folks: Liz Jostes (our speaker) and Bryan Burnett of O.R. Nurses, Inc.
It was great to hear what’s happening with the CA’s StartupMemphis site. Check it out and don’t miss Dowd’s Cloud! Thanks James!
Awesome discussion about the many ways to use DropBox, and other great utilities out there like HeyTell and (my favorite) ShowMeWhatsWrong.com (Thanks Bryan!).
Liz did an outstanding job walking us through Klout. Not only did she share the scoring, and some of the controversy about Klout, but she also shared a side by side comparison of her own experience. Check it out: Klout’s not for everbody, and not for Liz (anymore). Here’s her Klout (BarCamp Memphis version) presentation on SlideShare. Great work Liz!
You may have noticed that Memphis’ professional organizations have an established routine of increased activity as the summer winds-down. This year is no exception.
Monday[9/5] Holiday – Labor Day Tuesday[9/6] Tech Coffee Wednesday[9/7] Social Expedition Breakfast Thursday[9/8] Friday[9/9] Saturday[9/10] MidSouth TechCorner
Calendars Consulted (you should bookmark these): MidSouth Tech Corner
This is a hub of a few meetups of many different kinds, and is itself a very interesting meetup on Saturday afternoons.
LaunchMemphis Calendar
Contemporary entrepreneurship got it’s kickstart with grassroots of LaunchMemphis. This calendar features LaunchMemphis and associated events.
Have a calendar that should be shared here? Let us know.
Thank you so much to everyone who presented at our May Show & Tell Breakfast! We’ve definitely got some neat new tools to try out, and here’s the quick recap, in case you missed it!
Works like Twitter for events. You have a feed that shows you not only events from your connections, but also events based on your location and interests.
Subscribe to individual feeds; see where your friends are going and which events they are attending.
Can import Meetup.com info.
Can auto-create an event on your Outlook Calendar.
BEST PART: Allows event planners to reach a wider base, consisting not just of their existing social connections, but also those who’ve specified particular interests.
Then suddenly we looked at our watches and it was May! No idea how that happened, but we definitely owe y’all these GREAT interviews Dave recorded while he was at South by Southwest in March. But first, a few service announcements…
As most of you in the Memphis area are MORE than well aware, the weather has just been dreadful. Between the tornados and the rain and the flooding, it’s hard to know what to expect next. Goodness knows the Weather Channel can’t always be counted on, so we’re crowd-sourcing the weather! If you’re on Twitter, follow the hashtag #MemStorm, and/or @MemStorm to get the realtime updates from the most reliable weathermen out there – the people actually in the weather. Post your own weather updates, too! If you’re not on Twitter, just go to Memstorm.com (mobile-optimized site). Most of all, stay safe!
On the topic of mobile devices and how they can keep you informed – come to MobileCamp on Saturday! All the final details are falling into place, so check out MobileCampMemphis.com for all the latest updates and to get your tickets!
Now, on to the interviews! First up we’ve got fellow SXSW attendee, Anastasia Wiley, who’ll give us a briefing on FOMO, or “Fear of Missing Out.” Then Dave Bisceglia’s will tell us all about a new mobile game called TapCity. And we gotta say, it sounds awesome. It’s a social, augmented-reality city building game! So take Foursquare, Layar, and Age of Empires, throw ‘em in a blender and BAM. TapCity. Sadly for Android users, it’s only available on Apple devices right now, but they promise to have an Android version soon!
Next up is Aaron Banister, one of the founders of Locaii, who will tell us why you should choose this location-based service over any others. Then, Dave runs friend-of-the-show Elizabeth Cawein, from the Memphis Music Foundation, who will remind us (as if we needed reminding) just how awesome Memphis music is. Even the people in Austin think so.
Lastly, don’t forget about the Social Expedition Breakfast tomorrow, May 4th. RSVP here and bring something to Show and Tell!
Download the podcast here, listen with the player below, or click the iTunes logo to subscribe.
Another successful breakfast brought to us by Beth Wilson of Mahaffey Tent and Party Rentals! Beth had just returned from the Search Engine Strategies conference held in New York. The key highlights of what she learned in 5 days, she managed to condense into one hour and share via a presentation followed by a wonderful group discussion.
The highlights of Beth’s presentation were:
How to use the social realm to optimize a public relations strategy. In today’s PR, the media is search and social savvy, and many are collecting story ideas and sources from Facebook, Twitter, etc.
How to cultivate an environment on Facebook and Twitter that engages conversation.
The Amazon.com philosophy: “Don’t spend on advertising; put those funds into service.”
“Listen Before You Measure’ is the new ‘Think Before You Speak.’”
This morning’s breakfast was overwhelming, in the most awesome way, to say the least. Topics covered? Collaborative consumption, neuromarketing, and QR codes (we can’t get enough) – yes, all of them. Why go to SxSW when you can come to Social Expedition Breakfast? These topics are climbing the hype curve, so we’ve got a recap of resources that you can continue to check out. That said, we hope you like lists:
Why it’s important: Advances in multiple technologies is enabling neuromarketing. As the marketing industry wakes-up to its benefits, the demand for more neuromarketing will drive additional innovation and data. It will become part of the marketing vernacular. Consumers and businesspeople alike will need to understand these concepts and how they might also make effective use to connect to their best-fit customers & clients.
Collaborative Consumption:
“Access is better than ownership.” Definition: Traditional sharing, lending, trading, renting and swapping reinvented through network technologies. Opposite of Hyper Consumption
Why it’s important: The aggregation of stuff that spends most of it’s “owned” life unused is a waste of money and trashes the environment far more aggressively than when shared. Did you know that an average power drill is only used for 8 minutes during it’s owned lifetime?
QR Codes:
Definition: A specific matrix barcode (or two-dimensional code), readable by dedicated QR barcode readers and camera phones. The code consists of black modules arranged in a square pattern on a white background. The information encoded can be text, URL or other data.
Resources:
- ScanLife.com - 2DBarcodeStrategy.com - Jagtag.com - BeQRious.com
Why it’s important: QR codes narrow the gap between the physical display world and online down to a click. In essence no further than one website is from another.
Best QR Code Practices: - Don’t just throw it out there.
- Keep it simple
- URL shorteners (bit.ly, goo.gl)
- Codes should link to relevant, mobile optimized content
- Use analytics to gage effectiveness, refine approach and justify further implementation
- Video compression: mpeg4 (best for phones) .mp4
We’ve given this start-up a lot of attention in recent weeks, but rightfully so. Our February Breakfast guest was Aaron Prather, CEO of stiQRd and QR Code know-it-all. When we last spoke to him for our Social Expedition podcast, his team was preparing for 48 Hour Launch. If you missed the podcast, StiQRd is a location-based check-in service (like Foursquare or Gowalla), but it’s unique characteristic is in the program’s marriage of QR codes and GPS location. Fresh, and sleep-deprived, from the LaunchMemphis weekend, he spoke to us this morning about their latest developments and educated us more thoroughly about the virtual loyalty program that is expected to be out of beta test and in an app store near you by April. But don’t miss out on the fun until then – you can apply to be a tester now. stiQRd has been received with a resounding “awesome!” and will have at least ten venues on board by the end of the month (they’re basically already there). Become a fan, follow them on Twitter, and sign-up for beta testing. Still not convinced? Since launching their social platforms last week, they’ve collected 82 Facebook fans and 123 Twitter followers. Their website has collected 551 unique site visitors with 989 unique page views. Support this start-up, and your tech community!
There was a lot of interest in WordPress at the breakfast, but we had our favorite WordPress-er Beth Sanders there to educate us when we broke out into roundtable discussion. If you haven’t checked out her monthly MeetUp, please do so. In fact, they’re meeting this Thursday night (Feb. 3) at 6:00PM at Republic Coffee. (Psst… if you check in there on foursquare, you can get a free cup of their coffee of the day). Free coffee and knowledge? I dare you to pass it up.
If you couldn’t make it, make sure to put the following events on your calendar. And, please, come next time – we love your smiling faces!
MobileCampMemphis: May 7, EmergeMemphis – Start planning your presentations now!
IgniteMemphis 2: As soon as we have this date nailed down, we’ll let you know. Just know that it’s soon, and it’s awesome, so you should come. Presenters will have exactly 5 minutes to impart a little information about just about anything. You can check out Ignite Memphis 1 footage at ignitememphis.com.
It’s our yearly Show and Tell Breakfast! Every once in a while, we like to open up the floor to our Expeditioners to wax eloquent on any social subject that strikes their fancy! This time, we were treated to an array of tools in the “Web 2.5″ space (as one of our Expeditioners said in his presentation), from apps to social searches.
First off, a huge thank you to everyone who showed and told. We certainly learned a lot and brought back a nice long list of tools to check out in the next few days. Dave, ever the iPad champion, extolled the virtues of Flipboard, an RSS and social feeds aggregator. What makes it different from competitors, though, is it’s beautiful magazine layout.
Tim brought us a fun and insightful presentation on how far the internet has come in the last few years. Are we still in Web 2.0? Have we moved on to Web 3.0 yet? Tim argues we’re in Web 2.5. We just have to be flexible, keep evolving, and not end up like the Dodo bird.
Lorrie Jackson taught us about social marketing tools like Socialmention.com and Involver.com. Then she shared some other great resources, like Twitterfeed.com, which pushes your blogposts to Twitter, and Pagemodo.com, an FBML template service.
Rachel presented us with her virtual business card on Flavors.me, a social aggregator with a sleek, professional look. Just to give you more options, About.me is a similar service with a slightly less silly name.
Will anyone use Path? Let us know if you are. We’re all so curious. Is it Instagr.am? Is it just Twitter for 50 people?
Mary suggests Outbrain.com for increasing site traffic and Polaris, a desktop platform for Google Analytics. She also found BackUpMyTweets.com, which I believe is self-explanatory. And it’s free! Maggie likes Sproutsocial.com to find new potential customers for ecommerce, Dave likes Blekko.com for “slashtag searching,” and we all feel a little ambiguous and apprehensive about content farms.
And finally, Beth has a QR code on her business cards! Thank you so much to all of your for contributing and making this a really interactive breakfast. See you all after the holidays!
You may have heard Maggie geeking out with us on the podcast two weeks ago, and rest assured, she is just as vibrant at 7:30 am. As the Inside Scoop guru at the Commercial Appeal, Maggie was able to offer keen insight into the subtleties of successful email marketing.
A few bits of her concrete advice included…
Treating the subject line like an elevator speech.
Promoting interaction with a survey.
Aim for a consistent send time.
Address problems publicly.
These hints, she emphasized, should not only improve your conversion rates (the number of people who end up purchasing divided by the number of people who view a site or email), but it should also build trust among your customer base. When they can rely on you, they will trust you enough to invest in your products. Plus, Maggie is definitely someone to trust on tips to improve conversion rate – while the industry standard is around a 2% conversion rate, the InsideScoop is at about 12%.
She was knowledgeable, energetic, and just a delight to have as a speaker. Follow her on Twitter at @MaggieLouie, or follow the Inside Scoop at @insidescoop901.
If, however, you were unable to make it, we have more upcoming events! Namely…
BarCampMemphis!! It is so very close (only 10 days), and final details are gelling and we are just getting so excited. Definitely check out the website for the whole 411, but here’s the quick scoop:
Use the code LAUNCHMEMPHIS for $10 off your ticket!
So we’ll see you there? We sure hope so because we’ve got some great topic proposals rolling in. Check ‘em out, but remember – nothing’s set in stone because we’ll vote on the topics that get presented that morning. Even you could be a presenter. Just bring whatever materials, and we’ll vote!
Memphis, Light, Gas and Water, our local utility company, may not strike you as a business that would derive much from social media. As it turns out, they are a stellar example of how a social media presence can be an effective customer service tool. In their presentation, Glen Thomas, the supervisor of communications and public relations, and his co-worker Richard Thompson shared how MLGW wields multiple presences to distribute specific information on an outage, give out emergency numbers, and address any misinformation. Their main focus is on Twitter, but they’re also on Facebook, YouTube, and Blogspot. Plus, in the case of an outage, many customers can still connect to Twitter and Facebook via their mobile phones, even if their power and landlines are out.
More than just answering questions, though, social media allows MLGW to develop a personality. Thus, a previously faceless utility company can become more than just a monthly bill. They can engage in a conversation. They’re really doing some great things over there, and we were excited to hear about it!
If you missed the breakfast, though, never fear! You can hear Glen talk about MLGW’s social media strategy on our recent podcast! Then, be sure to check out some of these awesome events. In particular, we are so pumped about IgniteMemphis next week. If you’ve never heard of the format of an Ignite event, it’s a series of 5 minute presentations (we will have 16). Each presenter has 20 slides, each of which will automatically advance after 15 seconds. The topics are varied, and it’s sure to spark some great conversation. Join us on Tuesday at Playhouse on the Square!
Then, come to the LunaWeb offices on October 21 at 5:30 pm for our monthly Twilight Camp, and definitely stay tuned for more information about BarCampMemphis on November 13!
