So Fresh was Feb 8^th in Tampa. I knew this was coming because I had a chance to bump in to Jason at the Addy Gallery after being introduced by Carl V. from Social Forces. I think we all know by now the everyone is claiming to be a social media expert. Yep it’s the new hot thing right now as everyone knows. But some of us really eat, sleep, and breath this stuff. Social Fresh was from 7am – 5pm and what they were dishing out was so good that I may need to get seconds in St. Louis.

After handing out some door prizes one in which a winner performed jumping jacks while running I caught the first presentation from Spike Jones of Brains on Fire. I made a sweet choice. Spike talked about their Fiskateers program and how Brains on Fire crafted a social media strategy that created Brand Advocates for Fiskars. Your talking scissors folks. It doesn’t get any less exciting when it comes to scissors except for this.

Anyway their strategy involved and a process of requiring a potential fiskateer to send a sentence or two explaining their interest. Once accepted they were received a special pair of scissors that you can’t buy in the store. In other words swag for the next scapbooking event that will have everyone wanting to put their paws all over your scissors. And that creates conversation about Fiskars. People promoting your brand. It’s free and it’s what social media is about. My two paragraphs don’t do this presentation justice, but some other points Spike made. What do you have after advertising in traditional media? NOTHING! The ad campaign stops. Lastly, and I used this while talking to a prospect the other day. We use caller id to block out telemarketers, Tivo to skip commercials, Satellite Radio to skip more commercials. Pop Up blockers online to bock ads, Spam filters to….You get the point.

Next up after sucking down caffeine and some brief networking was Maggie Fox of Social Media Group. Have you ever listen to someone talk and you can just tell they definitely know WTF they’re talking about. This lady knows her stuff and was one fast talking Canadian. At about this time I realized that no matter what else happened the rest of the day I have definitely gotten my money’s worth. I stumbled upon a nice RFP on Social Media Groups Website. Hand it to the next self proclaimed social media expert you find. Maggie talked about Earned Media and Social Ads. This is a concept that had never crossed my mind other than Facebook’s Pay per click. Social Advertising or using PPC to drive traffic to various social media efforts. She stated with much fanfare from the crowd that “Viral Just Happens” viral in social media is the equivalent of a NY Best Seller for books. Again you really need to see this in person to get it.

Greg of Blue Sky Factory Talking about including your social media links on your email marketing. Adding a way for fans on your Facebook page to subscribe to your email list. Segmenting your email lists and a few other things that will help you grow your email list. Good stuff.

Lunch made time for networking, returning phone calls and email, Wii tennis, photo ops, Flip Cam (Kodak Zi8) interviews and all the other social media goodness that happens at So Fresh.

There was a tremendous amount of live tweeting going as one would expect at an event like this. After lunch Chris from GM presented on using social media in a crisis which I quickly realized wasn’t for me. IMO they have a mediocre product not a crisis. Toyota has a crisis. I skipped over to Using social media for internal and enterprise use. Ehh. Not my cup of tea either so I ended up in the Social Media for Social Good presentation. We really like to help non profits, we helped 4 last year with pro-bono development. I learned about Chip In >>http://www.chipin.com The next day we had this embedded on on tbbca.org. They have raised $520 already from using this. Kick Ass!

Cassandra from Intercontinental Hotels talked about how they use community networks to generate revenue and get feedback. They also build trust and even let their member in on info that isn’t privy to the general public. It’s interesting how people respect that trust.

Lastly Rick from Hubspot spoke about inbound marketing. I was really excited and highly anticipating this presentation. You need to grade your website and twitter account with Hubspots software, We score a 95 on our website and 97 on our twitter account. Yea I was always an A student. He touched on lead nurturing and getting folks to come to you. In other words your Grandpa went door to door selling with the advent of the automobile. You Pa Pa cold called on the phone and businesses advertised in the phone book with the advent of the phone. And you better come up on Google when people search on the internet with the advent of computers. (notice I only mentioned Google)Unless you like doing thinks the hard borderline archaic way.

I have never made a cold call since I started Incept Design. That has always gone against conventional wisdom of most sales books I have read. Well times are a changing folks. Adapt or be left behind. Attend Social Fresh if you are remotely involved with marketing. You can’t go wrong.

Your social media account can keep you from landing a job as we all know. Most employers conduct reviews of potential employees and those reviews always seem to touch on social media account at an ever increasing rate. But what on a social media account is considered inappropriate? Who hasn’t gone out and drank a little too much? I agree that social media profiles should be kept professional especially if one is looking for a job. If you maintain a blog what type of content should keep you out of the running. We all make mistakes and say things that we may regret. It’s only human to make mistakes. I know of a person who was immediately taken out of the running for an internship b/c something she tweeted was taken completely out of context. It turns out a disqualifying tweeted phrase, was a slogan on a website popular with young adults and teenagers. I know personally that perfectly good talent was ignored over a tweet. I think it could be a huge mistake for employers to disqualify someone based on something seen on a social media account without even meeting an individual. Especially with the generation gaps between the decision maker and the person being reviewed. So think twice about keeping an individual out of the running with out meeting them.

As a web developer I realize the importance of social and viral media to promote my business and generate new leads. When work is steady rolling in I seem to neglect my social and viral networking responsibilities. I consider myself lucky since the media would have everyone believe that the sky is falling in on us with the economy. I also realize that not all business owners are as lucky as myself. Viral Marketing can be a relatively cheap way to market your product or services while providing a boost to your websites rankings and traffic. It can become time consuming so some business owners choose to pass it on to a web developer or marketing companies. Whatever you do DONT ignore social  networking and media. Lots and Lots of people are on these sites. It can also become a good a form of advertising depending on how far you take it. For example Burger King has launched a new ad campaign that I must admit is pretty clever. Starting out with the “Whopper Virgins” people who have never had a whopper before…you have to crack a smile at that one. The latest viral marketing campaign they have launched involves a custom built Facebook application called Whopper Sacrifice. The catch…delete 10 of your Facebook friends and get a free Whopper.

Viral Marketing & Social Media Advertising Campaign

What is the point of this social-viral ad campaign and the Facebook application?!? I’m glad you asked. Lets break it down. If one person with a Facebook profile add this application to their profile the first thing that happens is a notice will appear on their wall notifying anyone who browses the profile of the “Whopper Sacrifice App” Curiosity will definitely stir the interest of some individuals and they will begin to add the application. What about the 10 friends that get deleted. The funny part is that when you sacrifice someone they show up in your activity feed. So it’ll read, for example, “Alex sacrificed Mark for a free Whopper.”  A certain percentage of the 10 people that are deleted along with those who read the activity feeds related to the application will add it to their profiles. Pretty soon you will know who is and isn’t a vegetarian on Facebook. I’m not sure if Burger King recently switched ad agencies or not but this is on smart idea. I guarantee you will see copy cats of this. Happy New year everyone. Make 2009 your breakthrough year. Let Incept Design take your web presence to the next level.

Sincerely,

Alex Adekola – Founder and Lead Developer at Incept Design

Over and over I find myself in a conversation with business owners informing them of the opportunities the internet provides in getting out their message, promoting their business, selling products, and building their brand. Obama transcended this concept into a presidential campaign.

Some say it’s never a good idea to talk about politics, but I think we can all agree that the recent presidential election has changed politics forever. Not only in how our political map is divided, but the importance of the internet in getting out the vote in this and every election to come. Obama launched an unprecedented internet campaign during his election that helped tremendously in tipping the scales in many of the swing states. Obama’s web team included the founder of Facebook a popular social networking website with 70 million users. He also had an email base of over 10 million names.

Obama leveraged social networking websites Myspace and Facebook. A UCLA survey of 272,000 college freshmen found that 86 percent spend “some time” each week on social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace. Obama had 2.4million users as supporters on Facebook alone compared to McCain’s 624,000.

Obama posted nearly 2000 videos on Youtube, and launched a text messaging campaign. In fact Obama announced his VP choice at 3am via text message.

During the primaries, volunteers could sign in online, download a list of phone numbers and make calls from home to voters in the target states. A brilliant idea.

How are you using your website to generate sales?

Are you on the social 7 – Myspace, Facebook, YouTube, LinkIn, Twitter, Flicker, & Digg?