I’m a charter member of the Online Marketing Advisory Council, started by my good friend Aaron Kahlow. Our mission is to bring together the very best minds in online marketing to contribute news, ideas, strategies, commentary, insights, research and much more. 

The Webinar.

Our first Online Marketing Advisory Council event was a webinar “Town Hall Meeting.” The webinar instructions were easy enough, “click on the link” in order to download the webinar software. Already, I’m thinking, “oh no, I’m going to get the infamous VISTA warnings about the terrible things that will happen to my computer if I continue with the download.”  After being pleasantly surprised that no warning messages appeared, I was able to easily download the software (Go To Webinar offered by Citrix Online).  I’ll definitely keep this software in mind, next time I need to schedule a webinar.

The instructions also say that “you’ll be connected to the audio portion of the webinar using VOIP.” Uh, oh, what the heck is VOIP? I decide to keep it simple and just dial in using my phone.  Of course, this entire process took me about 15 minutes to do, so I’m not feeling too confident about being able to contribute much.

(For the record, a webinar is an online seminar that may contain both audio and video, it’s a great way to run a meeting for folks in different locations.  VOIP means: voice over Internet protocol, or the transmission of your voice over the Internet rather than over phone lines.)

The Wiki.

On to the wiki. A wiki, according to Wikipedia, is:

“a collection of web pages designed to enable anyone who accesses it to contribute or modify content, using a simplified markup language. Wikis are often used to create collaborative websites and to power community websites.”

We’re going to use wikis to create online marketing resources. Aaron briefly goes through how the wiki works. This sounds easy enough, it’s kind of like a community Word document. I can handle that. I use Word all the time and of course, I’m quite familiar with all the edit commands.

I go to our wiki website and I don’t see anything titled, “wiki.” Oh boy, not an auspicious start to my first wiki attempt. I manage to create an account, I’m first asked to supply my birthday? What? I won’t even divulge my actual birth year to most of my friends. I’m assuming this question is in here to make sure users are over 18.

Aaron has set up a practice area so we all can get comfortable using a wiki. As I look at what other team members have put up, I’m completely intimidated. Some have put up creative little poems and others have written some detailed suggestions. Me, I can’t even figure out how to add something to the practice section! Finally, I click on the little button that says “easy edit” and an edit tool bar appears. Now what? I type in some text, hit save and the edit tool bar disappears. I’m now debating whether I should ask how to make the edit tool bar stay visible, but I’m afraid there’s a really simple way to do that and I’ll look like a complete dork.

Enough for today.

The Wish.

I finally decide to pose my question about the Tool Bar edit on the forum and almost immediately, another person comments that they, too, were wondering about that. The moderator answers, saying that this is indeed an issue and he’ll bring it up with the software company. So, all in all, I’m glad I brought it up.

I really liked the idea of the practice wiki. It truly is intuitive and it was good to practice before going into the ‘real’ wiki.

I am really looking forward to this project. My wish is that not only can I contribute to the knowledge base, but that I’ll learn a lot from my peers around the country. Stay tuned.

Webinars and wikis are fun and fairly easy tools to help with collaboration, which is what social media is all about.  The best way to learn and become comfortable with them is to just dive and start using them! Have fun!

Nancy Loderick

Here’s a test developed by Penelope Trunk.  It is taken from her Brazen Careerist blog entry: “What generation are you part of really? Take this test.” 

From Penelope:

“So here is a test I put together with the help of an interview with Weigel and an evening reading her blog. Add up your points to figure out what generation you’re really a part of:

Do you have your own web page? (1 point)
Have you made a web page for someone else? (2 points)
Do you IM your friends? (1 point)
Do you text your friends? (2 points)
Do you watch videos on YouTube? (1 point)
Do you remix video files from the Internet? (2 points)
Have you paid for and downloaded music from the Internet? (1 point)
Do you know where to download free (illegal) music from the Internet? (2 points)
Do you blog for professional reasons? (1 point)
Do you blog as a way to keep an online diary? (2 points)
Have you visited MySpace at least five times? (1 point)
Do you communicate with friends on Facebook? (2 points)
Do you use email to communicate with your parents? (1 point)
Did you text to communicate with your parents? (2 points)
Do you take photos with your phone? (1 point)
Do you share your photos from your phone with your friends? (2 points)

0-1 point – Baby Boomer

2-6 points – Generation Jones

6- 12 points – Generation X

12 or over – Generation Y”

Some of you might be scratching your head and thinking:

What the heck is IM, text, YouTube and MySpace?
Downloading free music is illegal?
Cell phones can take pictures too?
If so, it may be time to ask a teenager for help.

And for the record, my score was 15, making me a Gen Y person, although my real age is that of a baby boomer.

I knew I was going to enjoy myself when Aaron Kahlow, founder of the Online Marketing Summit (OMS), opened the Boston conference with “this is not your Daddy’s conference.” Aaron is a great speaker, very entertaining and topical.  He knows how to really engage the audience. The OMS Tour went to 11 cities this summer and is a unique conference. It’s purpose is purely educational, and no vendors are allowed.

This year’s conference focused on social media, the hot topic these days.  Wikipedia defines social media as:

“an umbrella term that defines the various activities that integrate technology, social interaction, and the construction of words, pictures, videos and audio. . . . [It] can take many different forms, including Internet forums, blogs, wikis, podcasts, pictures and video.”

Aaron explained that today’s consumer wants:

• to control his media
• honesty about when something isn’t working
• two-way communication
• no sales pitches
• to stay constantly connected and updated.

These characteristics accurately described the both the conference content and audience. Attendees were all very open and friendly. I go to a lot of conferences and I’ve never been to another one where it was so easy to start a conversation with total strangers.Of course, it’s always easy for me to talk about the the Downtown Women’s Club.

Some of the conference highlights follow below.

Complete Website Strategy, presented by Michael Weisfeld, Senior Web Strategist, Business Online

Summary of this session:

• Think of your users first
• Make your website the hub of all marketing activities
• Build a strategy before diving into the details(project management 101)
• Insure your user has multiple ways to interact with your website
• Start small
• Test, revise, test and revise again!

Demand Generation 2.0: Social Media by Michael Lewis and Neil Costa, Stimulate Solutions

Social media is hot these days, but how do you translate this phenomenon into revenue for your company? After all, business is all about the bottom line.

Summary:

• there is no magic bullet
• there is no one formula that works for every company, since audiences are different. John Deere customers are very different than the Downtown Women’s Club customers.
• listening is a major component of social media
• people are in charge of their own media, companies no longer control the conversations.
• figure out influencers, listen to what they’re saying and engage them.

It’s always good to learn the latest trends, however I would have liked more tactical information in this session on how to best determine your return on investment. My business school training tells me that in order to analyze your investment you should:

• determine what you want to measure, i.e. is it increased sales, website visitors, newsletter sign ups?
• do a controlled experiment, i.e. add a blog and see if this translates into more of what you’re measuring.
• make another incremental change and see what results you get keep repeating until you’ve achieved your goal, or if necessary revise your goal.

All in all, the Boston OMS Conference was a fun and worthwhile experience. The tour is continuing in:

• August 7 – Seattle
• August 12 – Atlanta
• August 14 – Denver
• Sept. 25 – San Diego.

If you get a chance, I would definitely try to attend. There is more information on the OMS Tour website.

Nancy Loderick