Just a quick administrative note: There are changes coming to this site and my other main blog, thoughtsignals.com. You’ll know the changes have been made once this post disappears.
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Don't just sit there. Make sure you get the most out of attending a conference or seminar. (Photo source: http://www.sxc.hu/photo/211097)
I recently attended Ragan’s Social Media for Communicators conference in Atlanta (which was excellent — the folks at Ragan did a great job finding speakers and putting on a great event). For 2½ days about 500 of us met at Coca-Cola headquarters and heard first-hand how some of the country’s best known companies are using social media.
In addition to getting a lot of good ideas about social media, I also came away with some thoughts — some new, some old — about ways to get more out of a conference or seminar.
1. If it is a social media event or if people will be tweeting about it, find out the hashtag (or designate one if no one else will) ahead of time. Bonus: start tweeting before the event to make yourself known to other attendees and meet them before you actually arrive.
2. Find other ways to organize attendees online. I started a Twitter list of conference attendees. After the Ragan conference, a fan page for conference attendees was started on Facebook and another attendee started a LinkedIn group.
3. Write your Twitter ID on your name badge. Even if it’s not a social media or marketing event and you’re the only Twitter user there, this still could be a great way to start conversations.
4. Camp out close to the walls and the power outlets in the conference room. It sucks to have your laptop battery die in the middle of a presentation as your taking notes or tweeting or whatever. Bonus: Bring a power strip with you to share the outlet with others — you’ll quickly be the most popular person there.
5. Decide which social events around the the conference you’ll attend. If you’re an introvert like me, you have to pace yourself a little bit, so decide what’s the most valuable to you and make plans to get the most out of that.
6. Bring back notes, copies of slide presentations and other materials to share with your colleagues. You can provide your employer and clients more value if you share what you learn after you return.
Everyone has their own tricks for getting more out of conferences. What are your tips? Please share them in the comments below.
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Publishing news about your niche or topic area is one sure-fire way to attract and retain an audience. (Photo: http://www.sxc.hu/photo/106233)
What do readers want? And not just readers, but viewers, listeners – audiences for all media. If creating content is part of your marketing strategy then you’ve got to figure out what content your audience wants. What kind of blog posts, ebooks, podcasts or videos will attract the most people, get shared most often and keep your brand uppermost in people’s minds?
What they want is likely to boil down to four kinds of content.
How To
How to be wealthier, how to be sexier, how to be slimmer. How to do something — create a great Facebook fan page, sell more life insurance or bake the perfect cake.
Bookstores and libraries are full of how-to books. Magazine covers are scribbled over with how-to headlines – “How to get your guy to ____” screams Cosmo. And the Internet has become a treasure house of how-to content of every type.
People want to know how to do things. They want to know how to do things because they think that being able to do those things will get them something they want — a better sex life, more money, less stress. How to content appeals to a fundamental human desire for empowerment. Help fulfill this desire, and your content will be successful.
Examples: Lifehacker, eHow
News
The conversations around the water cooler used to be about what happened the day before, what was on the news last night and the paper this morning. Now those conversations (which are perhaps more likely to occur on Twitter or Facebook) are about what happened today at lunch time, the announcement made an hour ago, or even the big press conference that’s taking place right now.
People want to know what’s new and different. We’re hardwired to constantly scan our environment (that’s why we’re so easily distractible). In the today’s world scanning our environment means monitoring the news. Providing relevant, up-to-date news can be difficult (I used to make a living doing this), but it can also attract massive audiences and attention.
If you can provide the latest updates in your niche or industry you can quickly establish your content as authoritative and worth revisiting frequently.
Emotional Experiences
Make them laugh, make them angry, make them cry. Whatever you do, make them feel something. If you provoke emotion in your audience, chances are they will stick around. Emotional experiences are the foundation of all good entertainment, and it can be the foundation of all sorts of compelling online content.
Fundraising appeals, for example, often seek to tap our empathy and inborn desire to help other people. Every funny TV commercial you’ve ever seen uses the same principle — it makes you laugh, giving the company a chance to deliver a sales message to you while you’re paying attention and feeling good.
Examples: Gary Vaynerchuk, Dooce
Secrets
Everybody wants to be part of the in-crowd. Letting your audience in on something that very few people know is a great way to keep them coming back for more. This is more than just a desire to know what’s going on in the world. People like secrets (or what they think are secrets) because knowing someone’s secrets makes them feel special.
If you want to quickly establish powerful ties to an audience, try giving them some secrets. Of course, the problem is that as soon as you tell them the secret, it’s not a secret anymore. So for most of us, this is probably only going to work a few times, at most. That doesn’t stop advertisers form trying to tap into this, however. Over the next few days, notice how many times the word “secrets” appears in ads that you see.
Examples: Post Secret, Penelope Trunk
As you might guess, you don’t have to restrict yourself to just one of these categories. A single blog post or video can combine, for instance, how-to content with secrets. And the content still has to be relevant to your niche. Mashable attracts readers interested in news about the latest in social media, not readers who want to know about the latest news in home improvement.
What category or categories does your content usually fall in? Please share your thoughts in the comments.Four things readers want
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Google Wave. Google Buzz. Farmville. Foursquare. Gowalla. Yelp.
Don't get lost in the maze of choices social media offers. (Photo source: http://www.sxc.hu/photo/1093677)
The list goes on and on. There are more social media sites, social media apps and cool online things that people are talking about than I will ever have time to fully explore. Even though I make my living in part by helping companies use social media, I can’t commit enough time to explore every new thing to come along. Chances are, you don’t have the time either. And that’s OK.
It’s easy to get caught up in trying the latest and “greatest,” easy to worry that you’re going to miss out on the next Facebook or Twitter if you don’t jump on a new site right away. In other words, it’s easy to forget why we’re here in the first place.
We’re here to have conversations, to learn, to market and brand ourselves, our businesses and our causes. Actually doing those things requires work, attention and focus. But the siren song of Google’s latest project or the newest game that all your friends seem to be playing on Facebook can be all too alluring sometimes.
A better strategy might be to focus on just a handful of sites and activities, to spend real time building real relationships, creating real content and establishing a real presence. It’s OK to not be everywhere. Instead, pick your places and really BE there. For me, these days, that means I’m spending a lot of time focusing on this blog (my home base on the web), on Twitter and on Facebook. I spend less time on LinkedIn and a private forum or two.
I have dipped my toe into Google Buzz and Google Wave, am intrigued by FourSquare but not ready yet to focus on it, and I keep an eye on the news, apps and sites that keep social media enthusiasts talking. But that’s all. And that’s OK. It’s better to pick your places, focus and have an impact. Trying to be everywhere is probably a formula for being nowhere.
So I don’t really mean that you should never try a new social media site. It just means that you should do so carefully and with some consideration as to why you’re doing it and how it fits into your overall goals.
What say you? Where do you spend your time online and how do you figure out what’s valuable? Please leave your thoughts in the comments below.
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One day your boss comes into your office and announces that he wants to publish an email newsletter about your department, company or organization. And then he gives you the job of actually producing it. He gives you a deadline and says “I look forward to seeing a draft of the first edition next week.” What do you do?
I’ve created and managed a few email newsletters over the years. Just as with a blog, an email newsletter is built around content. Here are 30 content ideas for your email newsletter.
1. Links to and excerpts from your recent blog posts.
2. Links to and excerpts from other web sites or blogs that your readers might find useful or interesting.
3. A short essay or letter that’s not published anywhere else.
4. An exclusive tip of the week/month.
5. Links to your company’s social media accounts (Twitter, Facebook fan pages, etc.).
6. News and announcements about what’s going on in your business or organization.
7. Special offers, discounts and coupons.
8. If your employer is a for-profit business, links to the favorite charity encouraging people to donate and explaining why you support the group. (Like I did with this post.) If you work or a nonprofit, links to businesses that support you in a substantial way.
9. Employee profiles (to put a human face on your business or organization).
10. Customer profiles.
11. Customer testimonials.
12. Links to independent reviews of your products or services (such as on Yelp or Amazon).
13. Invitations for readers to review your products or services on your web site or an independent site.
14. Contact information (seems basic, I know, but it’s important).
15. Polls or trivia questions.
16. The results of the last poll or answers to your last trivia question.
17. Photos of your products.
18. Reader-submitted photos of your products being used.
19. A contest.
20. Listings of upcoming events (sales, meet-ups, open houses or whatever’s appropriate for your organization).
21. A tutorial or lesson. You could do a series of these.
22. A guest column by an outside writer, perhaps a well-known blogger in your industry or even a celebrity.
23. Q&A style interview with a key employee in your organization.
24. Emails from readers, answered by you “Dear Abby” style.
25. Inspiring, compelling stories of about customers of yours who are doing great things (climbing mountains, raising money for charity or maybe training for the Olympics).
26. A funny video produced by your employees.
27. Holiday greetings (during the holidays).
28. An invitation to an event or webinar exclusively for your newsletter readers.
29. New job listings. Hire your customers? Why not. If they buy from you, they could be great advocates for your brand.
30. Sneak peeks or previews of new products or services.
What else have you put in email newsletters? What would you put in a newsletter if you were doing one? Please share your thoughts in the comments below.
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In no particular order, I'm a writer, MBA, ex-journalist, blogger, geek, strategic communications pro, father, struggling novelist 
