This week we have a guest blogger: Hadassah Levy. Hadassah has done great work growing The Pet Wiki and is the Social Media expert for Jewish Ideas Daily.

Pet Lover

The statement that had the most effect on me at the 140 conference in Tel Aviv was that the key to online communication is taking an offline interest and moving it online. In other words, there are very few online activities per se. Almost everything we talk about online is something we are involved in offline.

This is clearly true of the pet community. Pets are very much an offline activity – we feed them, play with them and groom them in real life. For some of us, that’s enough. But for others it is important to connect with other pet owners online to share information, humor, advice and support.

For website managers whose goals include building an online community around a specific topic, the challenge is to find people whose interests include theirs and give them a reason to join their community. To return to the pet example, a person who owns 3 cats is a potential community member, but he may prefer to spend his time on social media discussing politics, entertainment and his children’s accomplishments. But if this person sees value in a twitter account or Facebook page which talks about pets, he will join. And when he sees conversations that interest and stimulate him, he will express his opinion. When asked for his advice or to share something else, he will engage in that way.

When you’re thinking about social media, the key is to start by figuring out what resonates with your community. Think about what gets you excited and what kind of issues you like to hear about. What kinds of activities do you get involved in offline? What are your concerns and what makes you smile? Listen to what the members of your community are talking about online and experiment with different types of materials. The emphasis should be on “community,” not on “online.”

Jeff Pulver in Tel Aviv

I have to say that I really love hearing Jeff Pulver speak. The first time that I saw him in person was at the Bird Brain Un-Conference. He is genuine and sincere in what he does. He believes in people, encourages them, and enjoys their success. The only problems with conferences like Bird Brain and 140Conf is that you only get to hear him for about 10 minutes. That’s it and then it’s time for the next person to go. Fortunately he can do a lot with 10 minutes.

Jeff opened up the conference by talking about how, with the help of twitter and social media, we are building our time capsules. Everything we say and do on the internet is stored. In the future, we’ll be able to look back on the stories that we’ve created through our words and pictures. We are documenting our own lives as they occur. We are leaving digital breadcrumbs to be shared. Human nature gives us the desire to be remembered. We all want to make a difference and stand out in the world. With networks like twitter, we are able to share the everyday story of ourselves. It’s pretty powerful stuff.

Being that the conference was in Tel Aviv, part of the panel (a whole 20 minutes!) was scheduled to talk about where Israel stands in the world, technologically and in the use of the real time web. I think that everyone would agree that Israel is a front runner in innovation and that Israel has had a very high impact on the high tech world. According to some of the pannel, Israel is lagging behind in its use of the real time web. I can understand where they are coming from – I happen to be the foursquare mayor of 3 different locations. It’s not that I’ve checked in all that often, it’s just that no one else has. On the other hand, Israel is a very small country, and if you consider the size of the US and how many small towns there are, I think that Israel is doing OK. It’s true that there is a lot of room to grow, but we can do it.

One thing that I did not agree with the panel on is that they didn’t think that a revolution like Facebook could come out of Israel. If there is anything that living on the web has taught me, it’s that there are no boundaries. To talk to people, all you need is an internet connection. Not only do I believe that incredible innovation can come out of Israel, I believe that it can come out of any country. The key is not to try to create something similar to twitter, but to create the next game changer, like twitter did. Don’t be copycats, be innovators.

For a one day conference, Jeff really pulled together people from all walks of Social Media life. Food, comedy, fashion, music, and art. Things that wouldn’t really seem to go over well in 140 characters or less. I never really thought about how other mediums need to express themselves with pure text. The key is that all these domains can influence people on an emotional level. Once we like the music or art or food, we want to share information and learn from others what they have to say. You probably won’t start listening to a singer’s music because you like his tweets, but you will be more interested in knowing that singer as a person if his music speaks to you.

We make ourselves cool by association. There are a lot of products out there that get talked about on the internet. Every time that we like a page on facebook or talk about it on twitter we are building our personal brand by associating with other brands.

Twitter can be used to save lives. A great example was how twitter was used in the recent earthquake in Haiti. It was amazing to hear spokespeople from the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) talk about the rescue mission that they conducted there. After the earthquake there was no goverenment to help with evacuation efforts. By listening to information that was being broadcast about where people were trapped, the IDF was able to find and rescue them.

In the world of the real time web, even the way that we are telling stories is changing. Twitter is a great way to create personas that can act out different plots. People can form emotional attachments to the characters as if they are real people, and then they can read the live drama as it occurs in the twitter feed. It’s really cool. I’ve heard about a project that happened before Passover, where the different bible characters tweeted out the Exodus. It can make the story come alive.

A teenager was also one of the speakers. Michael Matias spoke about what it’s like to grow up in the real time web. We’ve only experienced it as adults, but to grow up in a constant information environment is a very different thing all together. He is constantly online. Even when he watches television, he is connected to his computer. When asked if he had to choose between the TV or the computer, which would it be, he answered that he couldn’t make that choice. It would be like choosing between his mother and father. I find that a bit scary. On the other hand, he was able to attend classes in Israel while he was in New York with the help of a live feed from his classroom.

The last session was about ways to use Social Media for social good. Promoting causes, like clean water in third world countries with Twestivals and raising awareness of Gilad Shalit by trending topics were talked about. You can even donate your tweets through JustCoz.org to raise awareness for the cause of your choice. It’s really amazing. I have talked about the amazing things that Romeo the Cat and Frugal Dougal have done to help support animal shelters for a while now. Their pawpawty’s raise real money to do good.

It’s truly amazing how much reach we each have from our computers. What are you putting in your own personal time capsule?

Taking time from a business trip to root for the Mets

Everyone talks about how to do Social Media. About how important it is to do Social Media. About how you have to be part of the conversation and how you have to be involved with your users. The one big thing that they’re not saying about Social Media is about how much fun it can be.

I work in a different niche than any of the friends that I see on a regular basis. I love animals. I always have. None of my friends have any pets. I find that such a pity. They really don’t know what they are missing. There is so much that having pets adds to life. But I digress, that’s not what this blog post is about.

Social Media has been a wonderful way for me to connect with like minded people that share my passions. I’m passionate about animals and their welfare. When I created The Pet Wiki, I was creating a place for all animal lovers to come and share their knowledge with the community.

When I get up in the morning, one of the first things that I do (sometimes before I get out of bed) is to check my user page, twitter feed and facebook fan page. I want to know what’s going on and be part of the conversation.

I live in Israel, so most of the friends that I’ve made over the past year are people in different time zones. I have been able to connect with wonderful people from all around the globe. I have friends in every continent. Our love of pets has been a unifying factor. Social Media has given us a platform to bring us all a little closer.

I’ve been pretty successful with growing the fan base of The Pet Wiki. If I had time to work on it full time, I think that I could be more successful. There are just so many hours in a day. Luckily, when you work on Social Media, if you’re in your niche, you really don’t feel like you’re working at all.

The biggest trick with Social Media is getting people who love being social involved. That might not necessarily be your marketing team. I don’t come from a marketing background. I’ve worked in Content most of my professional career. I’m good at it because I love it and I love spreading my message. I love engaging people.

This isn’t work at all. I kind of feel guilty about being on twitter and facebook so much. Although it’s work, it’s not work. It’s truly a pleasure to do what I do.

T-shirts

I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately. The more people that I deal with, the more that I realize that people are good.

I’ve been running a T-shirt giveaway for The Pet Wiki for the last couple of weeks. The only thing that I ask of people is that they post a picture of themselves wearing the shirt, with their pet, to facebook. I figure it’s a win-win situation. Fans of The Pet Wiki get shirts, and I get a little (hopefully viral) publicity.

The thing that gets me about all this is how amazing people are. Instead of people asking for Ts and not committing to send a picture, people have gone out of their way to tell me about their pets and how they can’t wait for their fur babies to be in the spotlight. I even have someone who is going to make sure to get pictures of landmarks in Australia into her pictures. Wow, The Pet Wiki really gets around . I am so pysched!

Most of the people that are getting shirts are people with whom I’ve had a relationship on Twitter. I know them. Although we’ve never met in person, we’ve had real conversations. I’ve been able to make great friends all over the world. It’s fun to think that my Ts will be worn in places like London, Sydney and even Croatia (and all over the US and Canada).

Talking about how good people are, another thing that really suprises me is foursquare. Foursquare is a service that allows you to let your friends know where you are. When I originally heard about foursquare, my initial reaction was that if I broadcast where I am all the time, people would be able to know where I am and break into my house. What does that say about me? Not that I’d break into anyone’s house, but it was something that did concern me. I’m cool with it now. Foursquare gives me the opportunity to meet great people, where ever I am.

The same is true of twitter. Have a question? Need an answer? Just ask and there is sure to be someone out there on the web who can help. It’s not just that they can help, they want to help. In the words of Guy Kawasaki “it’s a beautiful thing.”

Don’t get me wrong, I’m sure that there will be people that will take advantage of others, but the positive, by far, outweighs the negative.

The first week of the Social Media Success Summit was amazing. They kept it going with more incredible presentations the second week:

• 18 Tips for getting the Most Out of LinkedIn with Lewis Howes
• How Big Businesses are Leveraging the Power of Social Media with Whole Foods’ Marla Erwin, Best Buy’s John Bernier, and Home Depot’s Sarah Molinari
• YouTube Marketing Strategies with Greg Jarboe
• How to Bring Raving Customers Repeatedly to Your Local Business with  Foursquare’s Tristan Walker and Groupon’s Andrew Mason
• 5 Social Media Case Studies Worth Close Examination with Ann Handley
• Creating Buzz with Social Media Contests with Michael Stelzner

Michael Stelzner, of Social Media Examiner gave the Creating Buzz with Social Meeting Contests session at the Social Media Success Summit (SMSS). They recently had a contest for free entrance to the SMSS, so he was able to tell all about the tricks and how to run a contest. The main reasons that Micheal says to run the contest are to get people excited, provide exposure to your business, and bring traffic to your site. Contests should help you sell and should be fun and memorable.

Michael Stelzner

There are 3 major rules for running a contest:

1. The reward has to be compelling
2. The action step has to be easy
3. There needs to be a social media component

Rewards-based contest

• The bigger the prize, the better the response
• Make it easy to participate. Things like tweets and blog comments (or blog posts) do well
• It should be viral so that friends spread it around and customers need to take action by using social media so that everyone knows about you and your contest
• Create a separate contest page and drive traffic to it. That page should be written in conversational language
• Design the page for the skim reader – use small paragraphs and bold text and make sure that people understand what they are going to win
• You can use the page to sell your product  and stress the importance of what you’re giving away
• Create a special hashtag for your Twitter contest so that you are able to find the winner. Use a tracking URL like bit.ly
• Point URL in the tweet to the contest page and not to the general website
• Make it easy for resellers and affiliates to promote the contest
• The key traffic is in the first 3-4 days

Prestige based content

• The purpose of these contests are to let people know about the site and increase subscribers
• People like to see their names in lights – make a top 10 contest (best…)
• Get high profile people involved
• Hire experts that are respected in the community to be judges
• Nominators and nominees tweeted about the contest
• Create a system of scoring to make it easier for your judges to select a winner
• Give out “Badges of Distinction” for winners to put on their site. This will provide branding and ongoing traffic for your site
• Promote the judges that are known in the industry

More from the Social Media Success Summit:

• Best of Social Media Success Summit Week 1
• 18 Tips for getting the Most Out of LinkedIn with Lewis Howes
• How Big Businesses are Leveraging the Power of Social Media with Whole Foods’ Marla Erwin, Best Buy’s John Bernier, and Home Depot’s Sarah Molinari
• YouTube Marketing Strategies with Greg Jarboe
• How to Bring Raving Customers Repeatedly to Your Local Businesswith  Foursquare’s Tristan Walker and GroupOn’s Andrew Mason
• 5 Social Media Case Studies Worth Close Examination with Ann Handley

Ann Handley gave the 5 Social Media Case Studies Worth Close Examination session at the Social Media Success Summit. She took interesting case studies that are less well known. What she was looking for were fresh ideas that set social marketing campaigns apart. Each one of these campaigns shows at least one of the following:

Ann Handley

• Friendliness – being human and using a voice that’s real
• Focus – actively participating in the social network that their customer are in now
• Fertile – cross pollinating using content creatively across social media venues

Disney

• They wanted to promote the 70th anniversary edition of Pinocchio, so Disney hired Melanie Notkin of SavyAuntie.com, not a mommy blogger
• They wanted sponsorship of tweets to PANKs (Professional Aunts, no Kids)
• Malanie used her own inner voice
• Everyone knew that the tweets were sponsored by Disney
• Malanie tweeted about 300 tweets for Disney in 3 weeks
• Disney was happy with the success

Coffee Groundz

• Wanted to differentiate themselves from the crowd – there are a lot of coffee shops
• One of the owners decided to use Twitter to engage customers
• One customer tweeted an order and it become the first to-go order on Twitter
• It was written up in the paper and gave the shop a lot of publicity
• Coffee Groundz built an entire community on Twitter, and they sponsor local tweet-ups
• Coffe Groundz is now known as the hip, tech savy place to go
• Business increased 30%

General Mills – Fiber One

• General Mills uses facebook to further communicate with customers and have customers talk about Fiber One
• They created a cause – a pretend disorder: IDS (irrational disbelief syndrome) for their social media marketing campaign
• They created a phony clinic with specialists to let people know how IDS is treated
• Videos where created with phony patients who had problems believing in gravity, animals, and that fiber one is high in fiber because it tastes too good
• Subtle marketing with product placement of Fiber One in the videos and finishing the videos off with “Major funding provided by Fiber One”
• Facebook fans started creating pretend people with the disorder. They would talk about fake patient outings
• The campaign was very viral and engaging. General Mills sat back and let the users take off with it

Intel

• To coincide with the release of their new processor, Intel created a page on facebook for “Live Music” – the 1st global crowdsourced animated short film
• Intel created the storyline and allowed animators to add 5 second segments of film with a special facebook app
• Fans were allowed to vote on which clips should be included in the final release
• Creators of the segments that got the most votes got a Dell system with Intel’s new processor
• Over 50,000 fans were part of it
• The finished version of “Live Music” has been shown at many film festivals

Forty

• Forty is an interactive marketing agency in Arizona
• Most ads on facebook are B to C, but Forty was looking for B to B messaging
• Their first ads were traditional facebook as that had company logo and a link to become a  fan
• They changed their ads to display team members, with a picture and mini bio which linked to their profiles on the website
• People wanted to know more about them and the click through rate was 1 in 11
• The ads were targeted to businesses in Arizona
• Created buzz and made their employees more recognizable at events
• The cost-per-click campaign was only $400

More from the Social Media Success Summit:

• Best of Social Media Success Summit Week 1
• 18 Tips for getting the Most Out of LinkedIn with Lewis Howes
• How Big Businesses are Leveraging the Power of Social Media with Whole Foods’ Marla Erwin, Best Buy’s John Bernier, and Home Depot’s Sarah Molinari
• YouTube Marketing Strategies with Greg Jarboe
• How to Bring Raving Customers Repeatedly to Your Local Businesswith  Foursquare’s Tristan Walker and GroupOn’s Andrew Mason
• Creating Buzz with Social Media Contests with Michael Stelzner

Tristan Walker of Foursquare and Andrew Mason of Groupon gave a panel session on How to Bring Raving Customers Repeatedly to Your Local Business, at the Social Media Success Summit. The session was moderated by Rob Birgfeld of SmartBrief. They spoke about how it’s important for local businesses to bring local traffic to stores. These new services are designed to bring foot traffic.

Tristan Walker of Foursquare

• 

  Tristan Walker

  Foursquare is a social application that make cities easier to use. It helps people explore the cities that they live in or visit

• To use Foursquare, you check in and share your location with your friends
• By using game mechanics, users compete with their friends in order to get more points and better deals with businesses
• There are Mayorships and other badges that people can acquire by using the system that makes it more fun
• Merchants are able to learn more about loyal customers. Things like how often they come, when they check in, etc
• Foursquare provides an open API to allow people to create their own applications through the service
• Branded badges like Starbucks help encourage customer loyalty
• People who use Foursqaure can share the information on Twitter and facebook

Andrew Mason of Groupon

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  Andrew Mason

  Groupon is a service that features deals all over North America. They feature one deal a day per local market

• Customers buy the deal at the Groupon site. It only becomes effective if enough people sign in for them (a group)
• This causes a lot of people to visit merchant locations and causes a lot of foot traffic
• Groupon sends emails to hundreds of thousands of people a day about the deals. Merchants don’t need to deal with it – everything is taken care of by Groupon
• Groupon is a marketing tool that functions as the commerce layer for Twitter and facebook
• Merchants pay for customers, not exposure, which is harder to measure
• If a merchant gives a good experience, they will be rewarded with customers that evangelize those merchants on social platforms
• Customers buy Groupon and print the voucher and present them to the business

I know some people that are considering opening up a gym. There is so much potential that they can do with both of these services.

More from the Social Media Success Summit:

• Best of Social Media Success Summit Week 1
• 18 Tips for getting the Most Out of LinkedIn with Lewis Howes
• How Big Businesses are Leveraging the Power of Social Media with Whole Foods’ Marla Erwin, Best Buy’s John Bernier, and Home Depot’s Sarah Molinari
• YouTube Marketing Strategies with Greg Jarboe
• 5 Social Media Case Studies Worth Close Examination with Ann Handley
• Creating Buzz with Social Media Contests with Michael Stelzner

I’ve already started working on creating a YouTube channel for The Pet Wiki. It’s not much, but it’s a start. I’ve added a bunch of videos that look more like home movies that anything else. After hearing 3 Reasons You Need a YouTube Marketing Strategy (and Tips to Help You Generate Results) from Greg Jarboe, it’s a no-brainer.

Greg Jarboe

• 24 hours of video uploaded evey minute
• More people are watching video content online than are going to social networks
• Average video gets 100 views
• Front end load – listen to first 10 sec
• YouTube search is different than google search – it uses a different algorithm. YouTube has its own keyword tool
• Make sure to create a transcript of your video to make it more searchable, and add detailed tags
• You need to be compelling in the first few seconds
• The YouTube blog, Creators Corner, has a lot of great tips
• You should look at the stats on when people bail out to find out how to make your video content more compelling
• Allow videos to be embedded in blogs – each view is counted and it helps in video rating
• Promote your video. You can even embed them in press releases

More from the Social Media Success Summit:

• Best of Social Media Success Summit Week 1
• 18 Tips for getting the Most Out of LinkedIn with Lewis Howes
• How Big Businesses are Leveraging the Power of Social Media with Whole Foods’ Marla Erwin, Best Buy’s John Bernier, and Home Depot’s Sarah Molinari
• How to Bring Raving Customers Repeatedly to Your Local Businesswith  Foursquare’s Tristan Walker and GroupOn’s Andrew Mason
• 5 Social Media Case Studies Worth Close Examination with Ann Handley
• Creating Buzz with Social Media Contests with Michael Stelzner

The Social Media Success Summit panel discussion on How Big Businesses Are Leveraging the Power of Social Media was very insightful. I know that I’m not there yet, but I’d like to think that I will eventually have to deal with multiple communities, and everything that comes with it. The panelists were Marla Erwin from Whole Foods (the biggest retailer on Twitter), John Bernier of Best Buy and Sarah Molinari of Home Depot.

Marla Erwin (Whole Foods)

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  Marla Erwin

  Corporate accounts are used for evergreen content and customer service. Individual stores and metro areas operate their own Twitter and facebookaccounts (they have about 200 stores on Twitter)

• Store accounts broadcast store specials. They’re controlled by the individual stores.
• There are also topical accounts – recipe of the day, cheese and wine. They each have a unique voice
• Whole Foods started using flickr to feature store artists. Now it is also used to show store and
• community events
• Their YouTube channel is a corporate channel that feautres local content. It also shows things like cooking demonstrations, interviews with chefs and producer profiles (to let customers see where food is coming from)
• Started using Gowalla to give deals and coupons to users
• Started using four square to create competition for Mayorships and better deals at the stores
• It is important to cross promote social media channels and places. Create landing page and promote directly at the store. Give specific information.

John Bernier (Best Buy)

John Bernier

• @twelpforce is a  twitter base customer service used to talk with users, not at them.
• It is employee-driven and it is left up to employees how much to share
• They provide value to the conversation and “help customers know what we know as fast as we know it”
• They provide trusted advice. They do not jump into conversations uninvited
• There’s no need to have “a” voice of a company. Differnt voices humanizes the brand
• By lettting the user evolve with them, they are able to create a unique experience

Sarah Molinari - Home Depot

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  Sarah Molinari

  Many parts of the company are involved with social media and they gather monthly to discuss things to do

• Creating a weekly dashboard keeps people on track
• They use their YouTube to show tips, and how-to videos
• Point people to YouTube to give customers access to real time tools
• Customer service is being there when you are needed
• Let customers know that their feedback matters and make sure to personalize the outreach
• Important to create a single landing page which is an official place to send people
• Home Depot is new to facebook and they are seeing natural growth
• Syndicate video and share them where the customers go
• Enjoy the fun moments
• Focus where people are talking about you before you start

More from the Social Media Success Summit:

• Best of Social Media Success Summit Week 1
• 18 Tips for getting the Most Out of LinkedIn with Lewis Howes
• YouTube Marketing Strategies with Greg Jarboe
• How to Bring Raving Customers Repeatedly to Your Local Businesswith  Foursquare’s Tristan Walker and GroupOn’s Andrew Mason
• 5 Social Media Case Studies Worth Close Examination with Ann Handley
• Creating Buzz with Social Media Contests with Michael Stelzner