Tag Archives: suny cobleskill

Social Media Breakfast Tech Valley #2 Recap

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smbtv-red_mdOkay, so Albany may not be the first city that comes to mind when you think of innovation, digital marketing, a vibrant creative class or a social networking hotbed, but we have a budding community here that’s really becoming interested in all things social media. This morning was the region’s second Social Media Breakfast, and 80 people turned out at the Capital Repertory Theater in downtown Albany to hear Justin Levy describe how he’s used social media to improve business at his restuarant.

Capital Rep is in the middle of a production called Shear Madness, which takes place in a beauty salon, so it was pretty amusing to see Justin up on a pink and green stage with hair dryers and shampoo stations as a backdrop. Thanks to Annmarie Lanesey at MZA Multimedia, we livestreamed this event: click here to access the recording.

A few key takeaways from Justin:

  • Listening is the most important aspect of social media. It trumps any tool or service or platform. You have to listen to your customers.
  • You can have the best store or product in the world but if no one’s coming or knows about it, you’ll fail as a business
  • Each organization needs to be strategic with their use of social media and not just try tools or tactics because they are popular. Define what success looks like for your organization and develop a plan based around your goals.
  • Customers trust Google to give them the answers to their questions. They don’t understand SEO and don’t realize that big companies with huge marketing budgets can essentially “buy” the front page of Google results. You have to create good content that will get you ranked and help people discover and link to you.
  • Twitter is where you can be helpful, be a real person. A blog is your proving ground to show that you really know your stuff. Use many platforms in combination to reinforce your brand.

Justin also shared some key social media tools with the group:

  • Radian6 (paid) and Google alerts and Twitter search for monitoring mentions of your company online
  • Tubemogul as a single upload point for video that then deploys it across the web to video sites
  • Disqus and Backtype for managing comments on your blog and searching comments
  • BrightKite for location-based social networking and Twitter updates

And of course, Justin plugged Chris Brogan and Julien Smith’s new book, Trust Agents, as a great source for understanding customer relationships.

Here are a few pics from the event (when I wasn’t running around setting up, moderating the Q&A, or live-tweeting!):

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I’m really pleased at the turnout and reactions for the first two Social Media Breakfasts in Tech Valley and am excited to keep this going and continuing to see the local social media community grow. Thanks again to sponsor SUNY Cobleskill (and their twittering cow, @CAbunga) for sponsoring the event for the second time.

Check out the full Twitter transcript of SMBTV here.

Tech Valley’s first Social Media Breakfast

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New York’s Tech Valley (Albany, Schenectady, Troy, Saratoga Springs) became the 25th location to host a Social Media Breakfast last Friday. It’s an event that I’ve been working for the last eight weeks to plan, and I was excited to see how it would go over in this area.

With more than 60 attendees (we had to cut of registration  after just three days due to the limitations of the room size) and two hours worth of engaging conversation and discussion, I’d definitely call it a success. As with any “real life” event, it was also great to connect with folks I’d previously only known through Twitter.

I moderated a panel featuring Mike Germano from Carrot Creative, Rhea Drysdale from Outspoken Media and Stuart Foster of TheLostJacket.com.

You can catch all of the Twitter chat (#smbtv) that happened during the breakfast here, but here are a few of the highlights:

  • No social network is “better” than another. Find what platform works for your audience. Don’t necessarily jump in with Facebook and/or Twitter if that’s not where your target audience is engaging. But, it’s important to protect your organization’s reputation across the Web by securing usernames. Use sites like Knowem.com to register a name across dozens of social sites so that trolls can’t appropriate your brand.
  • People become fans of brands on Facebook because they want to “tattoo” their profiles and associate themselves with that brand. People like associating themselves with cool or hip things. That’s why there are tons of Facebook fans for The Onion, Stephen Colbert, Coca Cola… but no one says, “Hey, I think I’ll become a fan of plumbing fixtures or sleep aids.”
  • People expect “stuff” to talk to/interact with them now. The GPS-enabled Oscar Meyer Wienermobile has a Twitter account. Interaction and being useful is key – not merely broadcasting. Products and brands talk to the network. The people behind the brands may leave the company, but if the brand is strong, its voice/image will remain consistent.
  • Mobile apps are emerging as the “next big thing” in social networking. The key is making apps easy for users to interact with and share with their networks. Apps are really only effective when their use is widespread. Use a related app not necessarily to sell a product, but to provide a useful service that helps improve your organization’s branding/reputation (“This app provided/built by…”).

Thanks so much to Rhea, Mike and Stuart for being such engaging speakers and getting Social Media Breakfast – Tech Valley off to a great start. Also a huge thanks to the event sponsors, All Over Albany and SUNY Cobleskill (who also provided cool schwag for everyone in the form of coffee mugs).

A few pics from the event:

Pic from panel table, taken by Mike Germano

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Photo from back of room, courtesy of Jim Stagnitti

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Panelists rockin’ the mugs from SUNY Cobleskill (photo via C. Abunga):

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If you’re interested in attending the next SMB-TV (hopefully mid-August), follow @smbtv on Twitter or join the Facebook group.

Join me June 19 at Social Media Breakfast Tech Valley

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Well, I had planned to do a “soft launch” of all the content for the inuagural Social Media Breakfast Tech Valley this week while Patrick Boegel and I scrambled to find a second sponsor. I set up the Facebook group, Twitter account, event registration page and a page on this site (see the SMB-TV link above) and figured I’d publish everything to test it out and then let it sit dormant until I nailed down a co-sponsor and was ready to start promoting.

Hah! Not so much. The registration site was quickly found out and within the first 24 hours of the registration site going live, almost half the seats are gone! Apparently there’s a lot of interest in the Capital Region in learning more about social media.

I’m truly excited to bring this event to Tech Valley. We have a trio of outstanding panelists lined up for the first event: Stuart Foster, Mike Germano and Rhea Drysdale are all extremely knowledgeable in the social media space and I’m sure they’ll give us lots to think about. It will also be great to meet and network with other social media enthusiasts in the area. I hope you’ll join us Friday, June 19, from 8-10 am at the BluStone Bistro in Colonie.

If you’re interested in attending, grab a seat now! They’re free, thanks to our sponsorship from All Over Albany, but seats are limited. Guess we’ll have to get a bigger room for SMB-TV #2!

*We’re still in need of a co-sponsor for this event! Please contact me if your organization is interested in partnering with us and co-sponsoring SMB-TV #1 with All Over Albany.

UPDATE: SUNY Cobleskill has agreed to not only sign-on as co-sponsor for SMB-TV#1, but they are also committing to being involved as a sponsor for SMB-TV#2. Thanks, SUNY Cobleskill!

Here’s my “I’d like to thank the Academy” speech: I’m very grateful to Arik Hanson for putting the bug in my ear and encouraging me to take this on. Thanks to Bryan Person, SMB founder, for offering his thoughts and advice on how to get this started in Tech Valley. Many thanks to Patrick Boegel for being a great sounding board and helping with the planning. I’m so appreciative of Greg & Mary at All Over Albany for their sponsorship and to our three panelists for agreeing to be SMB-TV guinea pigs. And I’m thankful to everyone who’s attending the event! Looking forward to the first of what I hope will be many great breakfasts!