This video, shot at the last Inbound Marketing Summit, touches on a number of important reminders and, I think, nicely sums up in a minute-and-a-half the last year or so of thought on social media:
It's all about content.Katie Paine answers the perennial chicken and egg question of which comes first -- or rather, which is more important -- content or community: "It's all about the content, and are you coming up with new ideas and new thoughts, because that's what gets people engaged."
It's not just the marketing team's job. Rebecca Corliss reminds us that the marketing team isn't the only group within your organization that should be (and, don't fool yourself, is) using social media.
Engagement means action.Mike Schneider advices us to make sure we've got a call to action in our messaging.
Marketer, know thyself. Gary Vee encourages us to be authentic, honest and transparent.
Measure twice, cut once. I have the last word (not Katie, but I'm sure she'll redress this), and it's on the importance of measurement.
Renee Hopkins is the editor of Strategy & Innovation and the lead editor of Innosight’s InnoBlog. She sat down with Todd Van Hoosear to discuss a challenge facing many organizations: how do you create a business culture that both encourages and captures innovation? Creative thinking, which is one of the essential components of innovation, does not like to be constrained by business processes. Renee helps us tackle how you can reconcile these two very different dynamics and build a structure for capitalizing on innovation.
Some of the more interesting excerpts:
“Innovation is something new that’s been created … that is providing some value…. It’s not just a dream, there’s something active about it.”
“I’m probably one of the few people who can say that a blog actually directly brought them to a job…. The blog sealed the deal, otherwise I would’ve been nobody to them.”
“We help companies grow by helping them understand how they can make innovation repeatable.”
“Innovation starts with … solving a job that the customer has to get done.”
“We don’t want to come out of the box. That’s such a nasty cliche, but what you really want to do is clearly define the box, and then ideate your butt off all the way inside that box so that you’re coming up with ideas very deeply in this space….”
“It’s not the technology that disrupts, it’s the business model.”
About the Fresh Ground Podcast: Each week, we feature 10 minutes of insights from people driving change in today’s competitive business and media landscape. We talk about the evolving worlds of media, public relations, marketing and business, with a special focus on creating more social organizations.
LaunchCamp divided pretty easily into two camps, companies and executives who:
Understand social networking technologies inherently; and
Know they need to do something, but are not sure what.
This divide isn’t new and frankly, it’s not going to end any time soon. In the past I’ve been asked to design training programs only to find that some people within an organization understand social technologies and concepts very well and wanted to move on beyond the basics. Then there are those who are still figuring out how to sign up for a Twitter account or maybe have just dipped their toe into Facebook.
With this type of audience one size never fits all.
During the startup panel it became apparent that most tech-based companies being founded today are steeped in social networking tools. Not just because the founders are young, in fact their ages run the spectrum, but because the genesis for their ideas come from first understanding social networking. In other words: the aspect of marketing that takes conversation into account is built in. It’s part of their DNA.
Jules Pieri, CEO of the Daily Grommet
Take the example of the Daily Grommet. When moderator David Beisel asked about how much each company spent on launch marketing, the answer came back as nothing. Though, as Jules will tell you, it was nothing EXTRA. Frankly, marketing is baked into the idea of “Citizen Commerce,” which is the idea that the customers drive the direction of the products featured each day. This isn’t a one-way system of “we produce, you buy” but community conversation of “we find what you want.”
Since the community members are, by nature, excited by the products they’re more likely to take action and talk about them.
The same goes for Runkeeper, which factored sharing right into the product. From the start the idea wasn’t only to use a mobile device to track your routes and save information about you, but to share that information with your friends. By doing that you are, in fact, sharing the product you’re using. If friends want to share back they need to get that product too. The viral nature is built in, not tacked on later.
By contrast I hear from companies that have traditional business models and are looking for a way to build social networking into their marketing programs. This isn’t a bad thing (in fact, it’s great) but it’s also just the start.
To truly engage in this world each company must look beyond their marketing departments and find their communities, then use the tools to engage them. After all, that’s how new companies are finding their way.
Okay, this is wrong on so many levels: another hacked Twitter account.
Since the Twitter spam seems to be getting out of control, here are a few basic rules:
Don't have a s***ty password.
Change your password occasionally.
Don't click on suspicious links.
Don't enter your password after clicking a link.
No, it WASN'T you.
No, he's NOT 24, female OR horny.
No, you DON'T look funny.
No, you WON'T perform better by clicking a link.
These are basic rules, people. Don't ignore them.
With apologies to the first poor bastard among my Twitter friends whose account got hacked and ended up in my Flickr (and now my blog) feed. If you recognize him despite the bar/blur, let me just say that his other tweets and DMs are spectacular and he now practices safe tweeting I'm sure.
Fresh Ground Communications is now officially Fresh Ground, Inc. Yes, we're incorporated (but we'll keep the same logo for the time being)! Same great team, same great services (with more coming soon), but now we have room to grow even more!
If you're currently doing business with us, you'll get a note shortly with the details. If you're not, well, why aren't you?
Cindy Meltzer is the Community Manager at Isis Maternity, where she helped the company dive into social media. Chuck and Cindy met up a few days after LaunchCamp Boston 2010, and right after she changed her title, to chat about her new role and the company’s move into social media. Cindy essentially credits Mike Troiano, one of the keynoters at LaunchCamp, for creating her new job.
Some of the more interesting excerpts:
“[Social media] was … one of [the] hats I was wearing starting about a year ago when I got involved with our Facebook page and created a … Twitter handle for us…”
“[Mike Troiano] gave a description [of the] role of the community manager…. I thought that was really interesting because … well, that’s what I’m doing…. I came back excitedly saying ‘I have a title’…. A light bulb came on, and I [officially] became [a community manager] three days after LaunchCamp.”
“We’re unique because our community exists in real life…. [Our moms are] already online, so we’re just showing them that we’re there too.”
“As soon as I engaged on Facebook, things exploded….”
“I try and keep them talking…. We have a question of the day…. I’ve been experimenting around with what types of questions get the most response, and I’m finding that moms really like to give advice to one another and recommend things to one another…. And I hooked our blog up to Facebook,… so now we get the Facebook traffic over to our blog, which is nice. [Just] doing those two things exploded our number of fans … without much effort.”
“We’re starting really small [with video]. We have a flip video camera and me and my husband filming me in my bathroom, which was the first video blog entry about potty products…. I said ‘hey, let’s bring people into my bathroom,’ so we did.”
“Measurement is becoming more and more of a priority, and [we’re] trying to get a little bit more sophisticated about what we’re doing, rather than having it be shots in the dark.”
About the Fresh Ground Podcast: Each week, we feature 10 minutes of insights from people driving change in today’s competitive business and media landscape. We talk about the evolving worlds of media, public relations, marketing and business, with a special focus on creating more social organizations.
My previous life found me in the news rooms and control rooms of various Boston TV stations producing the days' news. And yes, I produced the occasional snow show.
Snow shows don't exist much anymore, but back then when a big storm came to town we'd do "wall-to-wall coverage" of this snow event. We'd put reporters on highways and in emergency bunkers. They'd stand out on street corners and on beaches. We'd jump from live-shot to live-shot warning viewers to stay in side, make some hot chocolate and continue watching our coverage.
On one level this was born out of public service. Following the Blizzard of '78, everyone in Boston knows that snow can be dangerous and being in it can cause problems. So TV found itself in a great situation of having a positive message that actually brought in viewers (and advertisers).
Also, people just love talking about the weather. So when you put snow coverage at the top of the newscasts and warn people of a pending storm, it brings in viewers. Will they cancel school? Will I make my flight? Can I skip work and justify a day in my jammies watching wall-to-wall snow coverage of fools in the snow while sipping hot chocolate?
The danger here is pretty simple. You become the boy who cried wolf.
Predicting the weather isn't easy. In fact, it's downright hard. The problem is that the TV stations promote their weather forecasts as accurate, so when they turn around and say "oops, we got it wrong" it erodes the trust they've built with the audience.
Right now I'm sitting in my kitchen and watching the snow NOT come down. Sure, more may come later, but my school district closed schools early today. Men and women who normally would be working had to take time off to get their kids. Kids who would be in school weren't and really, for what? A 1/4 inch of slush? This is Boston, we can handle that.
I don't mind being prepared, but TV stations please don't throw us into a panic. Because when you really do have a warning and it's something we should worry about, we won't.
Please find below the video from last Thursday's LaunchCamp Boston 2010. We'll collect all the slides from speakers and post them shortly.
After some introductory remarks, John Wall of Marketing Over Coffee fame kicked things off by sharing his insight on the Three Factors of Startup Success:
After John's presentation, we shared some popular YouTube videos with the audience that helped folks understand the history and state of social media. First up was a history lesson by Brett Borders:
Next we watched the Social Media Revolution video from Socialnomics:
Finally, to help folks understand that companies both large and small can become social, we watched an interview of Scott Monty by David Meerman Scott:
Next up among our presenters was Jeff Cutler on the first of the Three Cs of Social (Content):
Following Jeff were Jim Storer and Rachel Happe of The Community Roundtable on the second of the three Cs of social: Community (naturally):
Last up for the morning Social Media Breakfast Briefing was Doug Haslam, who spoke on the last of the Three Cs of social: Conversation:
After a break for lunch and networking, Mike Troiano kicked off the afternoon LaunchCamp sessions with an excellent session on scalable intimacy:
Unfortunately, we didn't have the disk space or battery power to capture the afternoon breakout sessions on video -- you just had to be there, or watching the livestream. As mentioned, we'll be sharing the slides with folks separately.
LaunchCamp Boston 2010, the first in a series of events focused on connecting entrepreneurs and "intrapreneurs" with the folks who can help them launch their new brand or service, is over, and Chuck and I are exhausted but very pleased with the results.
180 entrepreneurs, marketers, speakers and volunteers convened at the Microsoft NERD Center in Cambridge -- joined by almost 100 people in the livestream room and even more on Twitter -- to share and learn together.
We then learned about the 3 Cs of social: Jeff Cutler shared his secrets on Content, Rachel Happe and Jim Storer gave their insights on Community from the perspective of The Community Roundtable, and Doug Haslam showed us how to engage in Conversation.
Our speakers did a bangup job, as is evidenced by the Twitterfeed. The feedback we collected from the morning event was resoundingly positive, but some folks commented that the material was a little too basic for their tastes. This is why we gave folks the option of opting out of the morning sessions, but perhaps we could have reinforced our warning that the morning goal was level setting, not breaking new ground.
I've gotten feedback from many folks about social media events in Boston saying that most of them proceeded from an assumption that everyone out there gets it, and that simply isn't true, even now. We tried to help those folks, at the risk of boring those of us in the know. It was a calculated risk, and I think it paid off. Nevertheless, it's a lesson learned: future LaunchCamps will still probably work very closely with the Social Media Breakfast folks in various cities, but we'll allow the presenters to cover more than just the fundamentals -- we weren't even taxing the brains of our great morning speakers, and we should have.
After a great lunch catered by Baker's Best, LaunchCamp proper kicked off. We heard spectacular keynotes from Mike Troiano and Dharmesh Shah, entrepreneur and PR panels led by David Beisel and Paul Gillin, and breakout sessions on topics that included exit strategies, branding, product development, search, agile methodologies and a PR improv session featuring guest journalists Wade Roush and Scott Kirsner.
Feedback from the afternoon sessions was overwhelmingly positive, especially around our two keynote speakers. In the future, we'll adjust the mix of vendors and entrepreneurs more to keep things lively. For instance, instead of an all-vendor PR panel like the engaging one we saw yesterday, we'll throw in some entrepreneurs and take a more case study-focused approach.
We were also asked to set aside more time for networking, and we'll do that as well. I'll talk a little more about the future in a second, but please feel free to share any of your thoughts and comments on Twitter using the #LaunchCamp hashtag -- we read everything, good and bad (and reply to both).
Before I talk about the future, I want to thank a few folks.
Thank Yous
First, thank you to my business partner Chuck Tanowitz, who was the glue and the steady hand throughout the planning and execution of LaunchCamp.
Next, thank you to the volunteers who offered to help out throughout the day, including Tracy Lee Carrol (who found her camera), Lisa Mokaba (who checked you in) and Stephen Sherlock (who, with his signature tricorne hat, applied his PodCamp volunteer experience to this smaller, more intimate group).
Thank you to Bob Collins and everyone else who helped us get the word out before, during and after the event. Thank you to Joselin Mane who provided the example of event management and marketing that we strove for (and -- because we followed his leadership -- whose help in promoting the event in the last few weeks we had to politely decline because of the sellout crowd). And thank you to Ja-Nae Duane, who teamed up with us and will share some of the proceeds from her book signing to offer three $100 LaunchCamp scholarships -- we'll share details on that next week.
Thank you to all our keynote speakers, session leaders, moderators and panelists: without you there would be only me up there playing videos!
There are so many other people to thank -- if I've missed you, I'm sure I'll get around to thanking you in person or on Twitter.
What's Next
As we mentioned at the event, we'll be restructuring how attendees can participate in future LaunchCamps to make sure that we get the right mix of entrepreneurs and vendors. We think this will better serve the needs of the entrepreneurs out there. We'll also be rolling out to new cities over the upcoming months -- stay tuned for more news.
But before that happens, we'll be sharing the video and slides from the event next week, as well as information on the scholarships I mentioned earlier.
One final reminder: you can automatically follow all the attendees using TweepML or the Twitter List.
LaunchCamp 2010 Boston is happening now. If you're reading this, you're probably not there (unless you're a tech-savvy well-connected mobile-Maistro stalker). Well, this is the next best thing: We're going to be livestreaming the event as much as possible. You can see live video, chat and Twitter feeds at http://itsfreshground.com/launchcamp/livestream/. Things kick off at 8am ET.
Better quality recorded video will be available at a later time from that same page. Join the conversation on that page, or by tweeting with the #LaunchCamp hashtag. Fresh Ground is not responsible for the comments that appear on our site -- please chat and tweet responsibly, folks!
Fresh Ground Communications is now officially Fresh Ground, Inc. Yes, we're incorporated (but we'll keep the same logo for the time being)! Same great 
Cindy Meltzer is the Community Manager at 
LaunchCamp 2010 Boston is happening now. If you're reading this, you're probably not there (unless you're a tech-savvy well-connected mobile-Maistro stalker). Well, this is the next best thing: We're going to be livestreaming the event as much as possible. You can see live video, chat and Twitter feeds at 
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