7 Minutes of Blogging Wisdom – #SoSocial
I was honored to be one of the presenters last night at the Inaugural Southern Socials Event #SoSocial in Little Rock. The presentation format was pretty interesting, we used the Pecha-Kucha format where you basically present 20 slides x 20 seconds each. So, each speaker gets roughly 7 minutes to do their presentation, then of course the Q&A segment. While there was an awesome turnout for the event (we even had a group from Jonesboro drive over), the atmosphere was still very engaging and there was a lot of discussion within the group.
I opted to do my presentation on Blogging as opposed to Social Media because I couldn’t think of a Social Media related topic that hasn’t been covered several hundred times already by others. In case you missed my presentation, here are the slides: (warning: one of these racier slides had a few people spewing their drinks through their noses!)
Here are a few tweets in relation to the presentation:
- arlton: Had a great time @southernsocials. Thank you @bryanjones @amybhole @cottonr @downtownlawyer. Good times with good people. #SoSocial
- jgreghenderson: Good quote "people who are afraid of social media are usually the ones in the business with the checkbook" @cottonr at @southernsocials
- tsudo: @cottonr has now visually offended the entire room
- donaldG: And @cottonr makes a good point, "I didn’t have any value to add so I kept my mouth shut." quality over quantity…
- bryanjones: I’m just gonna say it – I love @cottonr.
- tsudo: No doubt @cottonr knows blogging, great talk
- ghidotti: Ask a question in your blog; you’ll be amazed at the increase in comments and activity. @cottonr
- ghidotti: @cottonr giving the 7 minutes of blogging wisdom. This is good stuff to know in anticipation of my new blog hopefully coming soon.
- donaldG: I just saw the best presidential plea thx to @cottonr, ‘obama bring back arrested development!’ #SoSocial
- steventrotter: We made it to #sosocial! Just in time for @cottonr’s presentation. – http://twitpic.com/o6ufo
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About the Southern Socials:
Realizing the need for such a group in our area, Bryan Jones from CJRW took the lead and organized the group. Here’s a description of the Southern Socials taken from it’s Facebook Group Page:
Description: (Aspiring to be) A community of southern social media leaders. I’ve launched this group because, in the new world of the Social Web, authenticity and integrity can quickly be traded in for a paid blog post, or a false product/service review. The need exists for a group of professionals to face the ethical challenges together, and discuss standards and proper use of Social Media for PR & Marketing. Cheers! -Bryan Jones
Currently the Southern Socials is a closed group, more or less invitation only. The reasoning for this is to ensure that the foundation of the group consists only of people directly involved in strategic development or execution of Brand/Product/Service community management.
Advantages to Outsourcing Business Class Email
This past weekend my business partners and I went away on our annual corporate retreat to discuss our existing business model and to evaluate each of our products and services. We each agreed that our most popular solution is one that we don’t spend a lot of time promoting, our premium email solution. There are several advantages to businesses that chose to outsource their email to us, in this post I plan to cover a few of these bullet points.
I am also including a presentation that I put together regarding our solution, click on the play button below to start the presentation. If you would like to learn more about business class email solutions, please feel free to drop me a note and I will be glad to schedule a time w/ you to discuss your needs in more detail…
- You Get Our Team of Experts - When you turn to a hosted solution, it’s as though you suddenly have an entire staff of experts working for you—serving as an extension of your IT department and allowing your in-house team to focus on the other critical aspects of your infrastructure.
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- Storage & Transmission Security - Businesses can spend thousands of dollars to protect their data—or they can save thousands by turning to a hosted system like ours. We integrate extensive security measures to protect your data from physical threats—such as theft, overheating, power outages, and fire—as well as technical threats from hackers or prying eyes. Our data centers are designed to protect your data from all physical and technical threats. And to secure your data during its journey through cyberspace, our system uses DoD standards-based protocols, as well as extended SSL encryption, and we meet all PCI DSS data security requirements for information security.
- Automatic Software Upgrades - When you choose hosted apps like ours, you don’t need to worry about downloading and installing software upgrades or security patches. Your system will always be up-to-date. We stay on top of upgrades and security patches around the clock, so you’ll always be using the latest versions of all system software. And we partner with leaders in the security industry, to give you the strongest level of protection available.
- Data Access - With hosted apps like ours, you benefit from having a wide range of data access options. This flexibility helps your employees to be more productive, compared to employees who are limited to using only a specific computer or specific software. Location is no longer an issue. You can access and manage data from any Internet-connected computer or mobile device. And your data transmissions are secured, to avoid any possibility of data leakage.
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Brand Promotion & Reputation Management Presentation
I was recently asked to be part of a panel discussing social media to a group of business owners at a South Missouri Business Expo, but found out later that I had a scheduling conflict so I had to decline. I was really looking forward to this engagement, as was my wife who says I never take her anywhere! In addition to being a panelist for an open Q&A session, I was also asked to do a breakout session of my choosing regarding social media.
The topic of my breakout session was going to be Brand Promotion and Reputation Management using Social Media. I figured for the sake of archiving my thoughts and providing my readers with some original content that I would share my thoughts and presentation here… I realize that this presentation casts a pretty large, or broad net, but it was my intention to give more of an overview and drill down some key techniques for brand and reputation management as well as product promotion. Here are the slides from the presentation:
Here is kind of an overview of my notes regarding the presentation:
Defining Social Media by Conversation Types
Given the fact that most business owners are not as familiar with social media as those of us inside the industry or that follow it closely, my first few minutes were going to be spent defining social media. I broke this out into the following areas based on conversation types:
- Long Conversation Networks (Facebook, MySpace)
- Short Conversation Networks (Twitter)
- Other Conversations & User Generated Content (Blogs, Message Boards, Website Reviews)
Making the Plunge into Social Media
This section of my presentation is dedicated to more or less coaching business owners to get involved, and what kind of presence they need to have. I used a couple of corporate examples in my presentation as to how social media is being used. Since I haven’t gotten permission from these corporations to include them in my presentation, I won’t mention them here. I also go over, in very basic terms the types of social presence that I feel are necessities.
- Facebook Presence (Long Conversations)
- Twitter Presence (Short Conversations)
- Google Eyes (Blogs, Message Boards, Website Reviews)
Twitter and Facebook Best Practices
Once I have covered the high points of creating a presence on both Facebook and Twitter I then go into the third portion of my presentation which deals specifically with the management of these tools. I seperate Facebook and Twitter and cover the following areas…
- Facebook: Promoting Your Brand, Products, etc.
- Facebook: Establishing a Fan Base / Membership
- Facebook: Communicating with, and Keeping Your Fan Base Interested
- Facebook: Protecting Your Brand (Fast Service + Fast Resolutions = Happy People)
- Twitter: Finding Followers
- Twitter: Promoting Your Brand, Products, etc.
- Twitter: Communicating w/ Your Followers. and keeping them interested…
- Twitter: Protecting Your Brand (Fast Service + Fast Resolutions = Happy People)
Being Socially Proactive: Where to Look for Trouble…
In this section of my presentation I more or less define the customer experience and show how they can best locate negative customer experiences that might have already occurred. I do a Twitter search for a couple of popular brands or products and point out a few negative experiences that should be addressed.
In this section I also demonstrate how to setup and manage a discussion forum inside Facebook, and emphasize how advantageous it is to manage a discussion inside of Facebook as opposed to the “open web” where there is little power to correct or remove negative comments.
I also demonstrate how a simple Google search can yield a lot of information about a brand or product and enlighten the group on how critical this mass compilation of user generated content on blogs, message boards, and review websites, can be when a person is looking to make a purchase. I also cover how to best counter this information and leave a good impression of your product.
A New Level of Dedication Required…
In closing, I go over the differences between managing a website and managing a social presence. I also make mention of the fact that several large corporations are hiring “social media specialists” in addition to their in-house IT people who manage websites. I stress the differences between the two web presences and emphasize the importance of being punctual in returning dialogue with potential customers as well as providing support to your existing client base.
I also emphasize the fact that content has an extremely long lifetime and that brand management is a lifelong process that requires a lot of dedication and skill. At this point of the presentation I was going to open up for questions that the group might have…
Do You Need a Speaker?
Since I am not a full-time speaker and actually do this sort of thing for a living on a daily basis for my clients at Pleth, I feel that I can provide a lot of “real world information” to your panel discussions. If you are interested in having me as a speaker, or part of your panel, please feel free to contact me by email: cotton.rohrscheib@pleth.com or by telephone: 501-206-1664.
Powersite Ministry Solutions Overview Presentation
A while back I posted a note regarding the recent launch of our Powersite ministry solutions product. This website package is geared toward churches, missionaries, evangelists, and non-profit organizations that have a need for specialized functionality. Some examples of the functionality provided with our Powersite Ministry Solutions include; content management, podcasting, video (streaming & embeded), mapping, forms, online giving / e-commerce, and blogging. For more information about our ministry solutions, please visit: http://powersitedesign.com.
This is an overview presentation that I prepared a while back to give perspective clients an overview of our solution. This presentation just touches on some of the high points of our solution, but for more information feel free to contact us.
