Shel Israel is Coming to Houston on Twitterville Tour and to a City Near You?

 

 

I am very excited to announce that Shel Israel will be coming to Houston October 20-21, 2009, as part of his book launch tour for Twitterville that will start this weekend in San Francisco with his Twitterville Bash (TBash) party.

 

This is not his first book. Shel co-authored Naked Conversations with Robert Scoble in 2006. Many of my clients still use the book as a primer for new blog team members. While the case studies might be getting a little dusty, and the book is blog-heavy, it gives an accurate feel for the culture of social media.

 

I am looking forward to reading Twitterville when it arrives in a few days and will give you all a more detailed review at that time. I have kept up with what is in it by reading Shel's blog Global Neighbourhoods and it is chock-full of amazing case studies.

 

In the meanwhile, I thought it would be a good idea to get him out to Texas (if you are from other places, you can check if he is coming to a city near you here). A few organizations stepped up to the plate to bring him here including the AAF Houston, Schipul: The Web Marketing Company, and the Social Media Club of Houston.

 

Book Signing - October 20

The newly minted Social Media Club of Houston will host him for a book signing on October 20, 2009, from 5:30 to 8 p.m. at the famous Coffee Groundz (@CoffeeGroundz), which is also featured in the book.

 

Luncheon Speaker - October 21

The next day he will speak at the AAF Houston's luncheon (October 21, 2009), which is sure to be sold out.

 

Other Appearances

If you don't live in Houston, or Texas (road trip), he will also be doing a five-city tour in in Canada in September with Joe Thornley.

 

And following his visit here in Houston, he will be headed to Washington D.C. to participate in Geoff Livingston's last Blog Potomac.

 

He is also coming to Chicago, Pennsylvania, Kansas City, the UK and Ireland, with more dates being added. You can check them out on his blog's Speaker tab.

 

Photo of the first signed copy of Shel's book by Jeremiah Owyang

Please Vote: A Smorgasbord of Learning for SxSW Interactive 2010

I am really excited about the potential of the SxSW Interactive panels this year. If you have some time take a look at the many (over 2,200) panels on this year's program. The following four are panels which I am on. I hope you will take just a few minutes to vote for one or more of them. You can read all about them below.

• Social Media ROI: Results that Measure Up
• Finding a Social Media “Expert” Who Really is An Expert
• Social Media Ménage à Trois: Advertising-Marketing-PR
• Building a Team That Embraces Social Technologies

Social Media ROI: Results that Measure Up

Description: When measuring social media, people are often tempted to replace the “I” in the ROI equation with terms like Involvement and Influence. Like it or not, the bean counters are looking for cold, hard cash. Learn to count what matters while still valuing human interaction and relationship-building in your community.

Panel Speakers:

Charlene Li, Alimeter and co-author of Groundswell
Katie Paine, KD Paine & Partners and author Measuring Public Relationships

Avinash Kaushik, Analytics blog, author of Web Analytics in an Hour a Day, analytics evangelist for Google and Co-Founder and Chief Education Officer for Market Motive

Finding a Social Media “Expert” Who Really is An Expert

Description: Social networking has exploded and so have those who claim to be “experts.” If you are a company, how do you know company you are hiring is worth their salt? If you are a consultant, how do you become a skilled practitioner of social media – minus the snake oil?

Panel Speakers:

Valeria Maltoni, Conversation Agent, will take the inside view on hiring consultants and agencies

Todd Defren, SHIFT Communications and PR Squared blog will take the agency point of view

Kami Huyse, My PR Pro and Communication Overtones will take the consultant point of view

All three of these speakers have proven track records of successful social media campaigns.

Social Media Ménage à Trois: Advertising-Marketing-PR

Description: Advertising is good at creative, public relations is good at relationships and marketing is good at sales. Hear representatives from each of these three worlds discuss how working together can yield much better social media campaigns than any one can accomplish on its own.

SxSw Top Ten List @Conversation Age

View more documents from Valeria Maltoni.

Speakers:

Valeria Maltoni, Conversation Agent

Olivier Blanchard, The Brand Builder fame

Kami Huyse, Overtone Communication Overtones

Building a Team That Embraces Social Technologies

Description:

This session will cover how brands successfully integrate internal and external teams to engage with customers using social technologies. Both agencies and companies will learn how to work together more effectively to serve the customer. It also covers what consultants can do and what is best left to the brand.

Speakers:

Bert DuMars, Newell Rubbermaid

Paull Young, Conversion

Jerimiah Owyang, Forrester Research

Kami Huyse, My PR Pro

Other Great Panels for Communicators

Here are some other panels that I voted for. If they sound good to you click the title and it will take you to their page on the panel picker. These are just the ones that I found as I was scrolling through, so I am sure there are some other ones I've missed that are great, too.

If your panel is aimed at communicators and isn't on this list, please feel free to add it in the comments and include the title, a short description and the link to the panel picker so we can check it out and vote (my comments section takes basic html re: TEXT so you don't have to add a long link or use a shortened one f you aren't comfortable with html)

• Getting Social in Your 'Hood," Sandra Fernandez, Houston Public Library
• Unleashing Employees Through Social Media, Lionel Menchaca, Dell Inc.
• Kicking Recession Ass With A Killer Company Culture, Katie Laird, Schipul - The Web Marketing Company
• You're a Twit, Managing Your Online Social Brand, Jason McElweenie, Schipul the Web Marketing Company
• DON’T PANIC – The Geek’s Guide to the Next Big Crisis, Ed Schipul, Schipul - The Web Marketing Company
• Open Leadership: The Upside Of Giving Up Control, Charlene Li, Altimeter Group
• Managing a Crisis in a Hyper-Communicative World, Rob Le Gesse, Rackspace
• Harvard Was Wrong: Profs’ Perspectives on Blackboards/Backchannels, Lauren Vargas, Radian6
• Mom Blogging - Beyond Swag and Diaper Bags, Joanne Bamberger, PunditMom
• How (Not) to Get Banned on Social Networks!, John Adams, Twitter
• Can They Buy Your Voice? Blog Disclosure Ethics, Sheila Scarborough, Writer
• Drawing the Line Between Free and Paid, Sheila Scarborough, Writer
  My Mom Just Joined Facebook--Now What?, Bryan Person, LiveWorld

Who Owns the Social Media Play: Marketing, PR or Advertising?

Let me start by saying that each of the communication disciplines of marketing, public relations and advertising have strengths and weaknesses. One is not necessarily better than the other, they just have their inherent place.

 

• MARKETING is great at putting together communication that gets results
• PUBLIC RELATIONS is great at building and maintaining relationships, as well as creating informational content
• ADVERTISING is great at creating compelling and entertaining content that could go viral

Valeria Maltoni has a great post describing the differences between the disciplines that I recommend you take a look at to get more context.

 

So who should own social media communication play?

 

Working with larger enterprises, I have often been at the table as these battle lines are drawn and it rarely is pretty. I fall down on the side of Jason Falls who writes:

 

"I’ve long held the belief that public relations, as a discipline and department, should own the responsibility for social media across the spectrum of enterprise and corporations."

I agree completely with this thinking, and it turns out that a new Digital Readiness Report, completed by researcher Tom Smith, PRSA, iPressroom and Korn Ferry International, finds that this is playing out in the real world.

 

It turns out that organizations of all sizes are adopting social networking and that PR is leading the management function for most online tools, except for e-mail marketing and search engine optimization, which is led by marketing.

 

Social networking only comes second to e-mail marketing in the activities employed by organizations as a part of their web-based communications.

 

But why PR?

 

Social media is relationship-based and, as I mentioned before, of all the disciplines public relations is the best at this. The public relations department is also really good at creating content.

 

That said, I think that PR needs the other departments to succeed. The weaknesses of each are filled in nicely by the others and the weakness of PR is that we usually aren't particularly interesting or entertaining. Not to mention the fact that we are generally not all that great at driving the sale or measuring results.

 

According to the Ruder Finn Intent Index the top six reason people go online are as follows:

 

1. Pass Time	100%
2. Educate Self	96%
3. Connect	92%
4. Research	89%
5. Share	86%
6. Be Entertained	82%

 

 

At their best, Public Relations is great at education, connecting and sharing; Marketing excels at research and could easily share this with stakeholders; and Advertising is best at developing entertaining content that help people to pass the time.

 

Caveat: Note that I said "at their best." Let's put aside the fact that ALL of these disciplines have their tepid dark side with PR leading the way in being disingenuous, marketing being too pushy and advertising being too direct sales oriented.

 

What if these three disciplines could put aside their petty war to dominate the social media play and work together?

 

Would we have campaigns that were intelligent, fresh, entertaining and that connected well with the stakeholders.

 

Would these kinds of campaigns inspire people to donate, share, buy, etc.?

 

I suspect they would,

 

Notice that only 33% of people say that they go online specifically to purchase something, But clearly WHILE they are online they do purchase things, join organizations and otherwise close the sale.

 

The key is meeting their needs.

 

What do you think? Is there a opportunity for all these disciplines to be better together?