Elizabeth Cawein, Matthew Crawford Trisler, Lorrie Jackson, Dave Barger
Welcome to the second season of the Social Expedition! Are you embarrassed that you didn’t get us a gift? Don’t worry, we didn’t warn you it was coming. We’ll still gladly accept any cards, letters or gifts of frankincense, myrrh or gold bullion you feel so inclined to send.
We’re aligning our seasons with the seasons of the earth, so the passing of the winter solstice on Monday means we’ve ventured into season two, and we’ll be here until the arrival of the equinox in March. With a new season inevitably comes change; you’ll note the absence of our usual “Tweeter of the Week,” but be on the lookout for new regular features arriving soon.
Though we wouldn’t call this our “holiday” episode, we definitely have Christmas on the brain. You might even hear some jingle bells if you listen closely. You’ll also hear us get into one-stop media shopping with a discussion of Boxee, a cross-platform freeware media center that’s designed to work with your home television set. We also share the secret to getting results from your Wii Fit (hint: it involves actually using it) and what Matthew’s dating tactics have in common with auto-play video and audio on web sites.
Our guest is Lorrie Jackson, a blogger and social media practitioner who serves as the Director of Communications and Marketing for Lausanne Collegiate School. She also speaks around the country on social media topics, and she schooled us for about 20 minutes on everything from the influence of social media on holiday shopping to the necessity of staying in the conversation when the tides turn.
The Core Conversation is on hiatus until the new year, but you can catch our first show of 2010 on January 8. And of course, the Expedition won’t miss a beat – we’ll be here next week with Rick Tarrant as our guest. Have a safe and happy holiday!
Time passes all too quickly, and we’ve reached our tenth episode. Though we weren’t sure what the traditional gift for the 10th anniversary is (turns out it’s tin or aluminum), we have always known what we’re here for – celebrating the ideas behind and progress of social media, as it expands into both our personal and business lives.
Google seems to have jumped the gun a little bit on releasing their new real time social search. It’s going to drastically affect the way businesses and marketers behave on social networks, even if it doesn’t much change the way people search.
One major risk faced by businesses who wish to optimize their social networks for the new social search is that they’ll put their customers off with their behavior – this is more critical than ever, given that Facebook’s new privacy settings make it easier than ever to make annoying business practices (and annoying relatives) disappear from your personal profile.
Shawn Danko of the Kooky Canuck
We talked with Shawn Danko from downtown Memphis’ Kooky Canuck restaurant about how he got into using social media to promote his business and build relationships with customers.
You can find Kooky Canuck’s social efforts on Twitter and Facebook.
We also give a nice shout out to the Peabody Hotel’s social networking – they are our Memphis Tweeter of the Week.
As for upcoming events, Friday will see our next Core Conversation podcast, the first of a two-part series on predictions for 2010 and what you think will happen with social media and the internet.
Lastly, if you’re a podcaster, or if you’re looking to get into podcasting, or if you’re just curious to meet other people who are addicted to listening to podcasts, we’re having MemCast – a gathering of Memphis podcasters and podcast enthusiasts – on Monday, Dec. 14. For information about that, follow MemCast on Twitter.
You can download the podcast, click the player below to listen on the page, or subscribe in iTunes.
In the “Social Expedition Podcast #3,” we interviewed Justin and Jared from the “Shut Up and Listen” podcast about how they got started podcasting, and about their advice for people just getting started.
"Mastering" by kasperbaago on Flickr
But, as we said, the interview was heavily edited to meet our desired time limit – roughly 30 minutes. In reality, the conversation covered a lot more, from their recent Twitter epiphany, to their day jobs, to the value they find in their community.
You’ll probably also notice, if you’ve listened to the podcast, that a lot of the conversation was originally in a different order. In cutting down the interview for time, it was also necessary to re-sequence the conversation somewhat to maintain a natural-sounding dialog.
If you have questions about whether these edits are par for the course, we’ll have to defer you to some people who’ve been doing this longer than we have – here’s a story about editing audio for radio by John Solomon, from NPR’s “On the Media.”
Do you have one of those people on your Twitter feed who only ever tweets about having a bad day? Or stuff going wrong? Or maybe one of those people whose every tweet is a hardly legible string of @ symbols and Twitter handles and long, unruly hyperlinks? Or perhaps someone on your list commits the greatest crime of them all – answering literally the question “What are you doing?”
Wouldn’t you like to tell them that you don’t care?
We don’t claim to be Twitter experts. In fact, that’s kind of the point of this whole expedition thing – we’re all figuring it out and exploring social media together. And with that in mind, we think there’s a more constructive use of our Fridays than just another long list of Twitter handles of people whose only commonality may be that you follow them. So we’re going to reclaim the #ff and transform it from “follow Friday” to “feedback Friday.”
We think there’s a more constructive use of our Fridays than just listing people we follow. Feedback Friday.
During the week, post a tweet when you see things that make you crazy. Then on Friday, let your followers know that you’re willing to hear some feedback on your social media presence. If you want it, say you do, and commit to give constructive feedback to at least two people. Then tweet that you gave feedback to a friend as part of #feedbackfriday and let’s see if we can make the trend of becoming better Tweeters catch on.
To really get the ball rolling, we’ll be hosting a PodCast on Friday to talk about the concept and the ideas behind it. It’ll be a call in show on Blog Talk Radio so we’ll want to hear your thoughts, too.
If you’re anything like us, you’ve been spellbound by the trailers for the upcoming theatrical adaptation of Maurice Sendak’s children’s classic, Where the Wild Things Are. We’re so spellbound, in fact, that we’ve decided we just have to see it the day it comes out — and we want you to come, too.
What better occasion, we thought, for a good old fashioned Tweet-Up? On Friday at 5:30 p.m. we’ll meet up at Osaka for some tasty sushi or a cold beer (or a little of both) before heading to the theater for the 7:15 p.m. showing of Where the Wild Things Are. Since Friday will be opening night and the movie has already gotten a fair amount of buzz, we recommend ordering your tickets online just to be on the safe side.
So mark your calendars and prepare to put some faces on those Twitter handles this Friday!
If you’ve ever gotten a wedding invitation on Facebook or kept up with your kids by reading tweets from their teachers, you’re part of the movement. And at SocialCamp Memphis Sept. 19 at the Memphis Academy of Science and Engineering, we met the people leading it.
The second “un-conference” of its kind in Memphis, SocialCamp was an even mix of planned sessions and peoples’ choice, with topics ranging from SEO for Social Media, Facebook for Small Business and round-table discussions on topics like non-profit web strategies. Regardless of the specific topic, though, the overwhelming theme of the day was that social media is less about the internet and more about real life: the whole point is to connect. It’s not about being attached to your PDA or your iPhone (though we’ll admit that’s often a side effect); it’s about community. Whether it’s a business connecting to customers or a blogger connecting to an audience, there’s a community of real people behind those avatars.
The idea of connecting came up again and again: in the Grow and Foster Your Blog session, we learned about applications that can increase comments on blogs, allowing the blogger to return more comments, visit more blogs and create more conversation to yield repeat visitors. In The ‘Cheers’ Model of Marketing, we learned that, well, you want to go where every body knows your name. And in Don’t Be A Social Media Douche Bag, we learned that you’ve got to engage as a real person, or else you and social media have failed each other.
But really — in keeping with the theme of connecting — what gets us excited about SocialCamp is truly the social aspect: bloggers, marketing pros, SEO experts, web designers and avid tweeters meeting up and sharing ideas. Not only were some of Memphis’ best and brightest in attendance at SocialCamp 2, they fit into no one mold; the range of ages, professions and personalities represented inspires a lot of confidence in the future of the medium. We just hope we can have breakfast with some of them soon.
We’ve got something special in the works for SocialCamp. And in the spirit of Saturday’s unconference, we’re going to let you in on that “unsecret.”
We love small businesses. No doubt you’ve noticed. This week’s closing of the Memphis High Point Coffee shops drove home just how much we rely on small businesses in our day-to-day life.
And, being that we work in an office, we’ve also noticed just how much we rely on coffee just to keep us going and productive.
"Hot Coffee 'City Limit'" by jimmywayne on Flickr
So we’re working on a panel of local coffee businesses and local social media practitioners, and we’re going to look into how the coffee businesses use social media to communicate with their customers and promote their brands – and help them develop new strategies to leverage those tools in the future.
We’ve got a few interested participants already, but if there’s a local coffeeshop or coffee roaster you’d love to see represented, drop them a line. Tell them how excited you are about SocialCamp, and how much you’d love to see them there. (Also, let us know, so we’ll be ready for them.)
And don’t forget to tip your barista. It’s a much tougher job than it seems.
August came and went faster than anyone could have expected. Cooler than usual weather made it seem that much faster.
But now, we’re bearing down on September, and that means that SocialCamp 2 is right around the corner. In fact, it’s on Saturday, Sept. 19. That’s only about two weeks away. If you’re already sure you’re coming, there’s no reason for you not to take advantage of one of the best deals you’ll find this fall.
If you register for SocialCamp before Sept. 8th, you’ll get in the door for a lot less money than you will if you hesitate.
Here’s the deal.
If you’re coming as an individual, for your own benefit, your registration fee is $44.50. Unless you register now. Early Bird registration for individuals is only $39.50.
Save yourself a few bucks, or go out for coffee on your way in on the 19th – you’ll still come out ahead with Early Bird registration.
And we’re not leaving out our corporate friends, either. If you’re attending as a representative of a company, your Early Bird Corporate Admission is only $49.50 for the full day. If you hesitate, however, the registration fee is $74.50.
Social Media Expedition’s TwilightCamp is no longer a new part of our regular event schedule. It has graduated to simply being a regular event. That hasn’t stopped it from being a refreshing catalyst for burgeoning relationships and ideas.
Gary Duke shares his Social Media Yay
We were happy to see new faces and familiar friends at the Bronte Bistro in Davis-Kidd Bookstore this past Thursday doing exactly what Social Media is meant for… socializing.
We had a lot of good conversation about our individual Social Media “yays” and “boos” for the past few weeks. People shared their big wins with the group and some of the things that they were struggling with in the social realms. We had a lot of awesome yays from the group and by the end of the dinner, many people had helpful suggestions on how to fix some of their boos.
