The Big Wave Blog

Meeting Geoff Livingston
December 4, 2007

 Here is little bio on Mr. Geoff Livingston. He is the acclaimed “local blogging guru” and author of the book Now Is Gone. Geoff has over 14 years of marketing experience and has provided winning strategies for clients such as AT&T, Verizon, and Intelsat, to name a few.

It’s hard for me to capture his professional accomplishments in a paragraph, but what I really would like to share is his great nature and personality. I had a very entertaining session thanks to him.

He was on Twitter most of the time and almost convinced me to open an account. We had some good laughs. He truly is a great guy who is approachable and not shy to share a joke. I wish I had taken a photo with him, but something tells me I will be seeing him around.

Thanks, Geoff!

PS: Now Is Gone is a great book for anyone interested in social media and the emerging media marketplace.

Reputation Monitoring and Management
December 4, 2007

This panel provided some excellent points on taking charge of your online reputation by using tools to monitor, manage, and influence what is said about you online.

Andy Beal was on this panel; he writes one of my favorite blogs, Marketing Pilgrim. It was great to see him in person and hear him deliver a power-packed presentation.

Here are the top 10 reputation monitoring tools mentioned in the session:

1. Moreover
2. Yahoo News: Industry-Specific Feeds
3. Google News: Mainstream Media, By Company Name
4. Digg: Newsfeed by URL, Feed, Keyword
5. Technorati: Crucial for Blogs
6. Co.mments: Keyword and URL tracking
7. Blog Pulse
8. Del.icio.us
9. Flickr
10. Blogtrends

Here is an interesting point to consider when practicing reputation monitoring and management online. Message control is gone! The word will get out there faster than you can think. I would like to add here that good news will travel, and bad news will travel at warp speed (any star trek fans?)

Monetizing Social Media Traffic
December 4, 2007

Continuing my Social Media Tuesday here at Pubcon, I moved on to the next session, comprising a top-notch panel of experts talking about how to monetize the buzz.

Monetizing buzz is harder than creating it. Here are some of the gems from the session.

1. Social Media Bestsellers: The top sectors/promotions that can benefit from monetizing Social Media traffic.
   • Products
   • Software
   • Impulse Buys
   • Price Specials
   • Tech Sector & Gadgets
2. Monetizing Pitfalls: Where the cookie crumbles. (Thanks, Bruce Almighty.)
   • Restricted Quantities: People who make it to your limited time offer too late will not be happy.
   • Incorectly Predicting Demand: Microsoft and the 2GB flash drive fiasco. Make enough before you promote it.
   • Failing to Maintain Consistency: What will you do when the traffic spike ends?

I sat in a very dense search marketing circle during this session. Geoff Livingston was on my left. In front of me was Mr. Lee Odden. To my right were Markus Tandler and Brent Csutoras.

 That’s what I love about conferences. You never know who will be sitting next to you!

Social Media 101
December 4, 2007

This was our first session at PubCon. It was great to have the industry experts speaking on the hottest and the most misunderstood search medium: Social Media Marketing.

Here are the “honorable mentions,” the networks mentioned during the presentation:

Flickr, DeviantART, AdultSwim, Mixx, Hugg, Sphinn, Digg, StumbleUpon, MySpace, Wikipedia, Technorati, SlideShare, YouTube, LinkedIn, Del.icio.us, IMDb, Tribe, Hacker News, Newsvine, Mename, Boing Boing, Techmeme.

Here are the top things to watch out for when getting into these networks to boost your online presence:

1. Think long term. Getting into any social network just for the short-term traffic spike will not be good for you or your business. Consistency is the name of the game.
2. Be an authority. Study the medium before joining it. Aim to be an active member. Don’t be the guy who logs in thrice a week to submit 20 articles for his clients and never contributes anything meaningful.
3. Deliver sharp content. Use catchy titles and images. Keep the content sharp and use it to solve people’s problems.

Neil Patel outlined “the dark side of social media,” which was very entertaining. A comedian at heart, I can now see how Neil became one of the top comedy channels on YouTube.

Personally, I strongly feel that in social media, “social” comes before anything else. You have to be involved and be an authority in the network before you start telling them where to buy goods and services.

Using this medium effectively to achieve marketing results is very challenging and requires a lot of effort. The downside to utilizing Social Media improperly is huge.

So beware what you wish for and how you get it online.