Case Study: 2010 World Series of Barbecue

January 13, 2011 by Tim Miner

Synopsis

The organizers of the World Series of Barbecue wanted to increase awareness for their charity poker event and shine light on the role that the Boys & Girls Clubs of Las Vegas plays in the lives of the kids that participate in their programs throughout the year. Every year, the WSOB organizes its annual event to raise money to help fund the programs for the BGCLV. The organizers were looking for a way to reach a larger audience, increase exposure in markets outside of Las Vegas, and ultimately raise more money for the BGCLV. They asked Vestor Logic to help.

Event Background

The World Series of Barbecue is an annual charity poker event that benefits the Boys & Girls Clubs of Las Vegas. Howard & Suzie Lederer began this annual charity event in their backyard several years ago. Each year it has grown, both in terms of the number of attendees and the amount it has raised for the Boys & Girls Club of Las Vegas. In the past, the marketing effort focused primarily on the enormous reach that Howard & Suzie have in their network of friends. The 2010 event would be the first to include any social marketing initiatives as well as any defined online content strategy.

Goals & Objectives

Vestor Logic set out to define a clear set of objectives for both our efforts and the event as a whole. The following represent our vision for both:

Use social marketing to raise more money for the BGCLV than in previous years
Build a centralized database of donors to serve as a base for future events
Offer supporters a way to officially register for the event in advance
Provide a secure way to accept donations online from supporters that cannot attend the event
Share the experience with videos and photos from past events

Techniques & Implementation

Our initial meeting with the organizers revealed that very little, if any, social outreach had been used in the past. Our first action was to establish the primary base for the event, in this case a Facebook Page. We designed a welcome tab that was set as the default for all new visitors providing the basic details of the upcoming event along with media from events of the past years. We used Flickr to aggregate a stream of images from the past year’s events which we embedded on the Facebook welcome tab so that visitors could access them easily.

We also created a Twitter account to share details about the upcoming event as it drew closer. This account was integrated with the Facebook page feed.

Perhaps the most powerful platform that we leveraged was the Vertical Response email management platform. We created a database for the event with separate lists that represented the sources for new registrations like Facebook, direct email, and past attendees. We wanted to know where the registrations were originating from. Because Nevada Gaming Law requires that the casinos collect all funds for the event, we just needed to register RSVPs. Vertical Response allowed us to do this very easily and build the database for future events. We will now be able to leverage this database for the 2011 event and even tailor the email correspondence to the platform that they originated from.

Our email marketing efforts were spaced about two weeks apart and over the course of all emails help to inform the participants of all the necessary details from buy-ins and re-buys to parking information.

We built out all of the creative elements for the event including the Facebook fan page, the custom Twitter background, a micro-site, the Flickr stream, and the email databases. Once these elements were in place, we began the outreach efforts including regular Facebook updates, tweets, dedicated emails to past attendees, and the “Bankroll your favorite player” promotion. This short lived campaign was used to establish financial support for a group of local celebrities that would be playing in the event. Supporters could donate to their favorite player adding to their total bankroll for the charity poker event. We launched this campaign just two weeks before the event. Despite the short exposure, the campaign was very successful and encouraged supporters to share it with their friends.

You can read more about the specific implementations and techniques used here.

Results

We couldn’t be happier with the results of the 2010 World Series of Barbecue. The 2010 event saw many new experiences for attendees and all measurable results showed sizable increases. Here are a few of the most notable:

228 “likes” on the Facebook page
310 “followers” on the Twitter account
Two satellite events were held by supporters which sent the two winners to the WSOB Charity Poker Event
68% increase in the number of paid entries
65% increase in the number of total players including comps
59% increase in total donations
The event raised more than $217,000 for the Boys & Girls Clubs of Las Vegas

Working with Vestor Logic

If you would like to discuss your upcoming events with our team, just send us a consult request. We would be happy to discuss how social media might play a role in marketing your event.

Filed Under: Case Studies, Email Integration, Email Marketing, Featured, Slider content, Social Media Tagged With: boys and girls clubs las vegas, social media case studies, suzie lederer, world series of barbecue, WSOB

Interview: The folks at Downtown Boulder know social media

October 5, 2010 by Tim Miner

Downtown Boulder

I actually heard about the #BoulderFire from Jessica, our Director of Social Media Design. She lives in Denver and has been on the listening end of my long rants about how great it will be when I am able to move my family to Boulder, CO. It’s been a favorite city of mine for a few years. I’ve made numerous weekend trips to Boulder, using the “it will allow us to learn more about the city” excuse. My wife loves it too so it has never been a hard sell.

I began following the #BoulderFire hashtag to learn more about the crisis. What I discovered was the power of Twitter and Facebook as crisis management tools. The folks at Downtown Boulder were posting on both platforms, sharing tons of updates as well as resources for local residents. It prompted a new research project here at Vestor Logic on how cities and municipalities use social media to engage with their residents. We’ve been following 50 cities across the country and even a few in Canada. We are learning a lot about how cities use platforms like Facebook and Twitter to stay in touch with the locals.

At the forefront of this group is Downtown Boulder. The folks at Downtown Boulder know social media. So I reached out to them with an idea – an interview of sorts, designed to capture some of their story with social media. The Q+A’s below reflect the story of Downtown Boulder as told by Terri Takata-Smith and Eli Madrone, the social media voices behind Downtown Boulder on Twitter and Facebook.

Tell us a little about the Downtown Boulder. What is the mission of your organization?

There are two distinct groups that fall under Downtown Boulder. The first is the Business Improvement District. The BID was formed about a decade ago when property owners in a 49 block area decided to tax themselves to create the district. The BID supplements services already provided by the city (e.g. additional maintenance & security), works on ensuring economic vitality and provide a comprehensive consumer marketing program.

Downtown Boulder, Inc. is a membership based organization. Members support the overall vitality of downtown through public advocacy, political involvement and community events that enhance the Boulder experience for residents and visitors.

How did your foray into social media happen and when did you start your efforts in earnest?

In early 2009, social media buzz started generating throughout the Denver/Boulder marketing/PR communities. I started reading lots of articles and attending workshops. I attended one hosted by Andrew Hyde (http://andrewhy.de/) and a light bulb turned on in my head. It was at that point, Downtown Boulder dived head first into social media (specifically Twitter & Facebook ). We had a YouTube channel, Flickr account and Yelp presence but not much else. Andrew was about ten steps ahead of the rest of us. He had been using Twitter and blogging successfully. In fact, by the time he was teaching the workshop, he was looking forward to the next big thing. In a way, he was over Twitter before the rest of us even got started. Andrew used social media to get his message out to the masses and the masses were listening, paying attention and engaging with him.

What was your initial goal(s)?

Connecting with people. We wanted to find out who exactly was out there and were they listening. Did they care what we had to say (and why) and what did they have to say about us? We wanted to figure out how social media could be could be used to market Downtown Boulder. Even more so, we wanted to be able to educate downtown businesses on how they could use social media to enhance their marketing campaigns. We wanted to be involved with our community and use our knowledge as a resource to our merchants and public.

What do want to accomplish with social media now? Has that changed over time?

We want to figure out what’s next and how “it” can help downtown businesses. Social media has forever changed marketing and communication plans for businesses big and small. We’ve created a community in social media that connects us to people who share an affinity for Downtown Boulder. We realize that it’s not about “selling” in the traditional sense. We don’t use social media to “market” the district. We keep people connected, informed, entertained and engaged. Realizing also that social media is just another arm of a multi-pronged effort to increase awareness, it can’t be the only thing we do, but can be leveraged in certain situations to enhance the effect.

When did you realize that you were “onto something” with your social media efforts?

Within a few months of developing a Facebook and Twitter account, the numbers of people engaging with us continued to grow on a daily basis. In fact, in the past year and a half, our numbers have continued in an upward motion. We haven’t had one month of decline since we started! We also have been recognized in the blogosphere, Twitter and Facebook community as being leaders in our field, even so far as to have been contacted by other business districts as a resource.

What tools do you use for engagement (facebook, twitter, etc)?

Mainly Facebook & Twitter. We also have a YouTube channel, Flickr account, we keep up with Yelp and have explored BrightKite. We are now also experimenting with location-based services like Foursquare and Facebook places.

How do you monitor the online chatter about your company, your city, and your downtown business partners? What is powering your “listening”?

Eli is the ears (and mouth) for Twitter and I oversee Facebook. We follow all the downtown businesses who use either/both and also stay well connected to local “social media” leaders. We monitor keywords important to our mission, receive Google alerts and have created a community to where other partners are also on the look out for chatter. In Boulder, a true community has developed through social media. By listening to what our followers are talking about, we’ve been able to join in on the conversation and engage them in a meaningful way.

How many staff members are directly responsible for your updates/posts?

While Eli and I focus heavily on Twitter and Facebook, we like to engage our interns to find their voice through our blog. The nice thing about having so many downtown people and businesses interacting with us is that we have a wealth of information to share from multiple sources.

Tell us about some of the challenges you’ve faced, or mistakes you’ve made along the way.

Finding our voice was hard at first. We are speaking as “Downtown Boulder” but really need to be transparent. People don’t want to engage with a company/organization. They want to interact with other people. We had to learn to speak as individuals while representing our downtown. We realized that Twitter and Facebook are two different audiences and need to be handled as such. We linked both for a few days and the Facebook audience was overwhelmed by the number of tweets. We also have different approaches and “voices”. Eli’s humor and tone works extremely well for Twitter and my “voice” fits well on Facebook.

Can you share some of your best results. Any ah-ha moments?

People don’t use social media for one way communication. We measure our results in the number of interactions (Facebook wall posts or re-tweets) we get with each post. Our fans like to share their thoughts, opinions and ideas. We ask a lot of questions. This past summer on Facebook, I posted a quote from a movie that was playing each week at Boulder Outdoor Cinema. I then asked people to post their favorite quotes from the movie. Yesterday, I asked everyone to tell me their favorite downtown coffee shop. It’s post like those that get the best interactions. For Twitter, the more irreverent and “only in boulder” moments you can post, the more people like it. Pictures are great to include, as it links to video and being an active member of the community during times of crisis, as we were during a recent fire the threatened Boulder.

If you were starting over today, what would do you differently, or what would you do more of in the initial phase?

I’m not sure we’d do too much differently. We moved forward pretty quickly and once we started to get the hang of things we shared the information with anyone who wanted to listen. The biggest mistake we made with Facebook was initially setting up our page as an individual rather than a fan page. Facebook took away our page but I was able to convince them to give us all our fans back!

Can you offer any recommendations to other municipalities interested in developing a social media presence?

Set goals and expectations. Remember to use social media as an engagement tool. Don’t talk at your audience. Find a voice that works (a tone and persona – don’t be fake but genuine) and talk about things that people want to hear about. Before you start talking…listen! It’s not a marketing tool, it’s a listening and engaging tool.

What can we expect to see from Downtown Boulder in the coming months? Any special social initiatives that you can tell us about?

At the beginning of this year, we launched our mobile site (m.boulderdowntown.com). Look for us to enhance the site in the coming year. We are also dabbling in FourSquare. We are not exactly sure how we will use it but we are watching other businesses who are using it well. We are about to launch a new photo contest (I am Downtown). We will rely heavily on social media to encourage participation. Watch what Andrew Hyde (and other industry leader) are doing…remember he’s always 10 steps ahead. We will see what he’s up to and maybe follow suit! The best part of being in the heart of Boulder is being surrounded by so many talented individuals who are amazing resources for social media and other cutting edge technologies.

Is your city using social media effectively to connect with locals? What are they doing?

You can find Downtown Boulder on Twitter and Facebook.

Filed Under: Case Studies, Featured, Social Media, Twitter Tagged With: #boulderfire, cities using Twitter, downtown boulder, social media for cities

Micromanaging at a Social Level

September 16, 2010 by Jessica Ziegler

Yesterday Valerie Bauerlein at the WSJ.com posted this article about Gatorade’s social media listening and engagement efforts. According to the article, Gatorade is attempting to regain market share it has lost in recent years to products such as Coca-Cola Co’s Powerade. One way they are attempting to gain a foothold with their customers is in the social landscape, utilizing Twitter and Facebook as well as other social media platforms.

Interestingly, Gatorade is owned by Pepsi Co. who gained tons of press and social media credibility with their Pepsi Refresh Project which launched during the 2010 Super Bowl. Clearly Pepsi Co. learned some important lessons about the value and reach of social media, so much so that they are willing to fund a social media team whose sole purpose is to support a single product within their family of products. They see the importance of individual brands, and the importance of treating them differently. They even go so far as to state that this approach may act as a model for other brands within the Pepsi Co. family.

It makes perfect sense. Different marketing for different products; therefore, different social strategies for different products. Think of it this way; there is a reason that Johnson & Johnson doesn’t try to feature Tylenol, Splenda and Visine in one TV spot.

How does this relate to your business? Do you have different brands that should perhaps be monitored and promoted as single entities as opposed to pieces of a whole? Would it be easier for you? Better question: Would it be easier for your customers? If it’s easier for your customers, doesn’t that automatically make it better for your business?

Update: This year Pepsi will be back during the Super Bowl sponsoring a user-generated advertising contest featuring Doritis and Pepsi Max. The the top finalists’ spots will run during the Super Bowl.

Filed Under: Case Studies, Facebook, Featured, Listening, Social Media, Twitter Tagged With: gatorade social media, social engagement, social media listening

Social Media and REAL Crisis Management

September 14, 2010 by Jessica Ziegler

Last week there was a massive, multi-day fire that began in Four Mile Canyon just to the west of downtown Boulder, CO. It started around 10:30 am on Labor Day and due to high, erratic winds that day it grew quickly. I live about an hour southeast of Boulder and could see the gigantic, fast-moving plumes of smoke from my back deck.

People live up in that area. Over 3500 residents were evacuated. By the time the fire was finally contained several days later, over 166 homes were lost. Thankfully no lives were lost.

From where I sat it took a while to get any of that information. The TV station websites were on it pretty quickly, but it was bare bones info, a few sentences. The newspaper sites had nothing until much later.

Enter Twitter. Immediately the hashtag #boulderfire was pumping out up-to-the-minute information and photos. The Twitter community in Boulder immediately rallied and began putting residents in contact with people who could help. They kept the information flowing in a constant stream.

By the next day local businesses began using twitter to offer goods and services to residents displaced by the fire: offers of meals, places to temporarily house pets, hotel rooms. Soon messages of encouragement and thanks to the local firefighters and police began appearing.

There was no promotional benefit to any of this. This was pure community outreach. Neighbors helping each other.

Wrapped up in our daily business lives it can be easy to forget how social media tools are perfectly designed for crisis management, to do good in completely non-commercial ways. Intellectually we know it’s all about “connecting” and engaging in the conversation, but sometimes events occur that shine a light directly on what that really means. It means more, a lot more.

You can follow the #boulderfire and #fourmilecanyon hashtags for the latest information or drop by the Downtown Boulder page on Facebook. They are doing a great job of keeping their community updated.

Filed Under: Case Studies, Featured, Social Media, Twitter Tagged With: boulder fire, Social Media, Twitter

Star Client: How Desert Perinatal is Doing Social Right

August 5, 2010 by Jessica Ziegler

Several months ago we had the pleasure to work with Tina Senter at Desert Perinatal Associates in Las Vegas, NV. Tina runs the marketing department for this practice specializing in high-risk pregnancies.

Vestor Logic was responsible for redesigning their existing website and implementing a WordPress install. We set up accounts and built a Facebook fan page and a Twitter background to maintain a consistent look across their various marketing initiatives. All of these are pretty foundational elements when starting a social media marketing initiative.

Often a client will have big ideas about all the ways that they could use social media to reach out to their existing clients, but fall short when it comes time to take the reins back from us to DO something with it all. Then again, sometimes we get a client like Tina who is ready to run with social media…

Here are some of the things that Tina is doing right:

Desert Perinatal runs a weekly contest looking for a super cute baby picture from their fans to use as their Facebook icon for the week.
Tina uses Facebook to engage fans by posting common questions that most moms can’t help but answer in a forum like Facebook, such as: What is your biggest frustration as a parent right now? Or, how did you transition from a crib to toddler bed?
She allows fans to post on the fan page wall. Parents will post pictures or questions of their own. She is allowing a community to form on her watch, without directly interfering or trying to guide that process.
Tina creates a monthly newsletter featuring classes, products, recipes, letters from the doctors and Q&A with the nurses, always promoting the Facebook page and Twitter feed to build awareness.
She also had Vestor Logic create a postcard-sized print version of the Facebook fan landing page as a take away at the front desk to build awareness.
She uses tools to automatically post Facebook page updates to the Twitter feed.
She runs a birthday cupcake promotion encouraging fans to post birthday baby pics and receive a cupcake certificate from a local bakery.

Most importantly, she is consistently DOING something in her social media space.

Tina certainly has some built-in advantages with her “product”, new moms are desperate to connect with other new moms and are frequently stuck at home for the first few weeks/months. Her population is all local to one city. She works within a field that people are passionate about: having babies. All those cute pictures don’t hurt, either.

BUT, she easily could have set up these accounts and wandered back to the textbook marketing approaches. She chose to move forward, stay engaged and experiment and it is truly paying off.

So. What can you do to create a community within your client base? How can you engage with your clients on a more meaningful level?

Update: We know, it’s not that easy for everyone. Maybe you don’t have the bandwidth, the staff, the understanding to make it happen for your organization. Soon we will be releasing a set of social media launch products: labs and engagement packages, to help get over that initial hump between set up and social stardom. Stay tuned…

Want to be notified by email of the new things that Vestor Logic has to offer? Join our email list to get those updates in your inbox! Subscribe to Vestor Logic by Email.

Filed Under: Case Studies, Facebook, Featured, Social Media, Web Design Tagged With: desert perinatal associates, doing social right, social media case studies

How We Use Social Media

February 19, 2010 by Tim Miner

At Vestor Logic, we use social media apps and platforms in a number of different ways. Some create efficiencies for us in the daily work flow. Many help us accelerate our learning curve about new technologies and tactics. Others give us insights into trends and breaking news that we would be hard pressed to discover without the help of social apps. And some of the things we do/use are for pure enjoyment.

The following is an inventory or sorts. It is a list of the tools that we use everyday and a description of how we use them. We are sharing this to give you a better idea of how we are embracing social media to make our business better but is not intended to be a blueprint for your business. Your needs and goals may require that you rework this mix of tools and maybe even how you use them.

Tell us how you are using social media to benefit your business by commenting below. We want to learn from you and your experiences as well.

The Vestor Logic Blog

Certainly the hub in our business model

The Vestor Logic blog serves up our original content and allows us to share our insights into the ever-developing social media landscape. We post weekly and will increase our frequency now that we have finished the development of a few other internal projects that have been huge time-sucks as of late. Our model is simple: create content on the VL blog and syndicate it through the various social outposts that we have created. Though our team has been at the forefront of social media for a number of years (we launched the first social network dedicated to real estate investors in Feb 2004: see The Investor Nexus), our Vestor Logic brand is relatively new having just launched in August 2009. We are still building out our foundation and further defining our marketing strategy just like many other companies.

The Vestor Logic site and blog are powered by a Content Management System (CMS) called WordPress. We host the site on our own servers and recognize the effort as one that will never truly be complete. We constantly tweak pages, add new widgets, and refine the message for our visitors. WordPress as a CMS makes this process easy. The learning curve is short and almost anyone can master the basics in a short time. The other big benefit of WordPress for us is the collection of plugins that offer social functions like Sociable, Tweetmeme and WWSGD. These plugins provide great functions to our site and cost nothing to use.

Facebook Profiles

We post to our personal profiles several times a day

Jessica (Jessica’s profile) and I (Tim’s profile) both have Facebook profiles that we use primarily to stay in touch with our friends. Of course, this counts for business too as many of our clients are friends or are referred to us by our friends. We post multiple times throughout the day on a variety of topics but try to keep the business talk to a minimum. Of course, we do share cool tips and tricks with our friends for some of the more popular social platforms like Facebook and Twitter. Both of us are passionate about other things. For me it’s hiking and I share pics and accounts of my trips on my profile page. Jessica has artistic roots. Her posts cover the spectrum of cool and unusual topics. She is a great follow for anyone looking for a laugh or smile during your workday!

Facebook Fan Page

We update the Fan Page a few times each day

The Vestor Logic Fan Page is a testing ground for us. We test different tactics relating to design and functionality in an ongoing effort to stay ahead of the curve and provide the best advice for our clients. We regularly post links to interesting articles from our favorite blogs, thought leaders and news aggregators. We post links to our new blog entries and maintain an active stream from www.TimMiner.com covering my ramblings on everything from social media to hiking to kids and family.

Twitter

I use Seesmic on my desktop and my Blackberry to check the Twitter stream multiple times each day

Our Twitter account is used primarily to research the current trends in social media and uncover the news sources (i.e. blog posts) that are covering those trends. We use Twitter to test drive concepts with other social media pros and to syndicate our own content from the Vestor Logic blog. We see Twitter as a news source and a testing ground for ideas. Our experience suggests that the value is far greater for those activities than it is for generating sales. But to be fair, we mostly follow social media people and do not focus on building a following for potential customers. Your experiences may bear more fruit from sales initiatives if you target more individuals that could be potential customers. Our Facebook page also posts to our Twitter stream.

I visit the site several times a day and try to post at least one update each day

We have a company listing on LinkedIn for Vestor Logic and I also maintain my own profile. We connect with other social media folks, each of our clients and prospects, the members of our past projects like Investment Riches and all of our referral sources. I participate in various groups and maintain close ties to many of my classmates from college on LinkedIn. We have had a fair number of referrals come from our relationships on LinkedIn, most coming from connections made years ago that now see what we are doing in social media thanks to the updates that we publish regularly.

YouTube

Our YouTube activity is just beginning – look for our new video series “Social 60″

There really isn’t any excuse for not posting video on a regular basis. I wish had some great reason for not doing it. But I don’t! We have been busy building our Vestor Logic outposts and YouTube fell to the bottom half of the list. But we are working on it now. We are launching a video series called “Social 60″ which is a video format that will allow me to rant on the top social media issues for 60 second clips and encourage responses and feedback. I don’t expect these videos to provide clearly defined answers up front but rather to create a place for us to discuss the hot topics of the day and encourage others to share their opinions. Together we will reach more of a consensus and perhaps all learn something. Look for a few new videos each week.

Micro-blog: www.TimMiner.com

This is my safe place to test ideas

It usually takes Jessica and I a few days to work through a new idea or concept or to reach an opinion on a new platform (like Google Buzz) that just launched. The micro-blog allows us to do two things: explore the value of Posterous (which is the backbone of the micro-blog) and test ideas that are not yet ready for the Vestor Logic blog. I also post pics from my hikes and backpacking trips, share interesting links to stories I find, and share my joy as a father of a 19 month old little boy.

Yammer

Yammer is our own private Twitter platform

I jumped on Yammer the middle of 2009 and have found that its value to Vestor Logic is really that of a link repository. I use a bookmarklet labeled “Yam It!” to archive links to interesting blog posts or articles or web pages and then check back later to review them in more detail. The most effective practice however is to use hashtags to organize my link submissions by topic and most importantly by client. I am working on the structure of a one day Discovery Workshop for a client right now. I have more than 25 archived links that point to blog posts and articles that are relevant to their event. I will go back about a week before the event and revisit each one turning many into slides for the event. I have found this practice to be very effective and it allows me to share all of it with my team.

Picasa + Flickr

I love photos!

I have nearly 15,000 images on my laptop (and a backup copy on Google using web albums in Picasa for just $20 a year!). I take pictures at each event we are part of, all presentations, every hike I embark on, all family events, and just about anything else I can think of. Up to this point, I have been storing all the personal stuff on my laptop install of Picasa. But recently, I changed my strategy to incorporate Flickr. Moving forward, I will use Picasa for personal images mostly and Flickr for the business stuff. Of course, there will be some spill over as I find it very difficult to delineate between work and personal.

Google Docs

A great way to share and collaborate on documents

Jessica and I have been using Google Docs for a long time. We collaborate on project specs, new page content for the website, new blog posts, just about anything you can do in Word or Excel. We use the Form tool to create presentation evaluations. Now that Google Docs allows you to upload ANY file to Docs and the storage is so cheap it makes it very easy to aggregate most of our docs on the Google platform.

Google Analytics

The best free tool for website owners in my opinion

We have a Google Analytics account that monitors all three of our web properties which provides priceless insights into visitor behavior. This application allows us to make changes and modifications to our websites to improve on the experience for all of our visitors. It also provides feedback on which social platforms (Facebook, Twitter, Email Campaigns, AdWords) are referring the most traffic. We look at Analytics every week.

Google Reader

RSS feeds are our lifeline!

I currently have 138 subscriptions in my reader. They produce somewhere between 400-500 new articles a day and cover social media, real estate, general interest, business, hiking, and even our ECHO. Our ECHO folder is a collection of RSS feeds that monitor platforms like Google Blog Search, Google keyword alerts, Twitter Search, Icerocket Blog Search, and each of our own RSS feeds for mentions of our brand. This is a great way to establish a basic listening channel for monitoring the chatter about your company. I spend about 90 minutes a day scanning the feeds, starring items, and reading about the topics that matter to me. This may be one of the most important functions I perform each day.

SlideRocket

SlideRocket is PowerPoint on steroids!

We use SlideRocket for all of our presentations and also for the image galleries on our site like the Portfolio page. They just recently released some social plugins including a live Twitter stream that can be integrated into live presentations. The best feature for us is the portability of the presentations and the fact that they are housed online accessible from any web browser. Of course, there is also the choice of linking to your presentations online using a link or simply embedding it into any blog post or web page. Very cool application!

Seesmic

Our desktop and mobile Twitter and Facebook interface

We have used many of the popular Twitter clients including HootSuite and Tweetdeck but have found Seesmic to be the most comfortable. They all do most of the same things and there are tons of reviews out there already for each, but I think it is a personal preference. Bottom line – I like Seesmic!

Feedburner

RSS management and promotion made easy

Each of our three web properties is armed with a Feedburner feed to manage the subscriptions and promotion of the site RSS feeds for posts and comments. If you want to step up the value of your feeds you need to take a close look at Feedburner which is another Google product.

Mobile Apps on the Blackberry

I use mobile a great deal but I expect that usage to increase

I find that I am using my Blackberry Bold more and more to connect to my social outposts. There are apps for almost everything. It will only get better (for Blackberry users specifically) as the development of apps continue to provide a functional experience similar to what we get on our laptops or desktops. Currently, I use mobile apps for Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, Google (which includes Picasa, Docs, Maps) and WordPress. I access a least half of these everyday if not more.

bit.ly

Keep it short!

Bit.ly is a URL shortening service that allows you to take those really long URLs and shorten them into something manageable. The service also tracks the metrics for each of your links showing you which content has the best reach or was most effective at reaching an audience. We see this as a nice compliment to the data we track using Google Analytics. I don’t visit our Bit.ly account as much as I should but will certainly do so more often now that we are running at full steam.

In testing…

Both of us are constantly testing new apps and programs. Currently, I have a list of about 25 that I am getting to know better and the following three have excited me the most in recent days. Feel free to check these out too and see if they fit for your business strategy.

Swix – a social metrics dashboard of sorts
Social Network Integration in Outlook – a cool way to connect Outlook to LinkedIn (and Facebook soon!)
SpredFast – a cradle to grave social marketing platform created by friend Scott with robust management and analysis capabilities

So what are you doing?

How are you managing your social marketing efforts? Are you doing the same things we are? What are you doing differently? We want to know…besides, I showed you mine so now you need to show me yours!

Filed Under: Case Studies, Featured, Social Media Tagged With: Facebook, Social Media, Twitter, Vestor Logic

Mind mapping my social ecosystem

January 28, 2010 by Tim Miner

I wrote a post a few weeks back titled Passion for Work, Family and Fun – How do you find balance? to discuss how I strike a balance for my passions. I’m an avid hiker, I like to cook, I am a dedicated husband to an amazing women, and the proud father of an 18 month old little man named Nate (my wife and I call him Nater Tot and Jess calls him Nato Potato!). During work hours, I obsess about new social technologies and how people are using those technologies to interact with each other.

So as I discussed that post with a few friends I realized that my social footprint, or my social ecosystem, is pretty large. Here is a mind map of it:

I have actually trimmed down my outposts a bit to allow for the addition of the Trail Sherpa and The Investor Nexus platforms. Both are new projects that I have begun to develop and both focus on passions that I have for work and hiking. Look for more information on these two pursuits in the coming weeks.

What does your social ecosystem look like? Have you created a mind map to visualize the structure? I use Free Mind to create my mind maps. You can find the free download here.

Is there some other app or service that you use that I don’t? Tell me how you are socializing on the web.

Filed Under: Case Studies, Featured Tagged With: ecosystem, mindmap, outposts, passions

Mind mapping my social ecosystem

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