*photos by Wei Yang

Last Monday, I attended my second Social Fresh conference—this time in Charlotte, NC. Jason Keath has a great concept going with Social Fresh, and Charlotte didn’t disappoint. SoFresh worked its magic on me, and I walked away feeling enlightened and ready to put my knowledge into practice.

In this post, I’ll provide you with relevant highlights and takeaways from several of the sessions, beginning with Web Video for Marketing.

Web Video for Marketing: Panel

This session was definitely one of the highlights for me—the panel was impressive, and their insights were inspiring. Here are a few notes from the session:

Panelists:

Paul McClay, Definition 6 (@paulmcclay)
Jill Hanner, Youtuber (@jillhanner)
Wayne Sutton, Our Hashtag (@waynesutton)
Jonathan Kay, Grasshopper (@GrasshopperBuzz)

Highlighted Video Examples:
The New Dork (Grasshopper)
The Happiness Machine (Definition 6)
Sexy Beach Day Ruined (Jill Hanner)

Session notes:

- Brands mistakenly perceive web distribution as cheap
- The quality lies not only in production, but in creativity as well; in the case of The Happiness Machine, the 2-day, heavily produced shoot manifested a video style that was very real, and very grass roots
- Tip: place people that you’d like to write about you into your videos
- Question for the panel: if small to mid-sized businesses choose to invest in video, what equipment do you suggest that they invest in?
1. A nice HD camera that’s compatible with a computer (doesn’t have to be a $20,000 camera)
2. Sound and editing is crucial; people have a short attention span, and will tune out video content that isn’t viewer-friendly
- Is it acceptable for companies to create a persona?
Hoaxes and personas are acceptable as long as you’re being transparent about the fact that it is indeed, a hoax
- Focus on the quality of the storytelling—this trumps all
- Use mobile & social graphs
- Don’t close out your videos—be sure to allow embedding functionality
- Generate a quality seeding strategy for distribution of web video
- First focus on low-hanging fruit; then turn to paid media
- Sentiment of response is crucial to consider with viral videos; achieving desired sentiment is the ultimate goal
- Know and understand your goals from the beginning stages of the process; for example, Grasshopper’s goal with The New Dork video was one thing: brand awareness. They essentially accomplished in three months what it took them 5 years to achieve previously (when they rebranded as Grasshopper)

Keynote Speaker: Amber Naslund of Radian6

The Now Revolution

In her keynote presentation, Amber accurately gauged the pulse of social media today. Here are a few of her points that really resonated with me:

- The Now Revolution is characterized by speed, expectations, open communications and reciprocal communication
- Social media offers unprecedented opportunity—we’re making business history here, but it still has us on our heels
- The new roles in social media require analytical minds, folks who are willing to hustle, people who can speak the language of the C-Suite, and natural marketers
- We need to be willing to break toys, fail, and learn from our mistakes
- Robust company-wide training programs are essential
- Everyone is a brand ambassador, and we need to hire people with this understanding in mind
- Encourage employees to harvest stories; facilitate the “Humanization Highway”
- Have a solid crisis communications plan in place; design a response plan
- Measurement is crucial; however, measurement and accountability aren’t fast—they take time and effort

You can reference the slideshare version of Amber’s presentation here.

When I attended the Social Fresh event in Tampa, I chatted with Amber and asked her if she’d ever be willing to donate her genius to the social media and business community by way of a book. She hinted that something might be in the works. A few months ago, I was thrilled to hear that Amber Naslund and Jay Baer were joining forces to write a book, titled The Now Revolution.

If you haven’t already, make a point to subscribe to her blog and start raking in the useful, original tidbits of information that transcend beyond the typical ‘5 Tips for Marketing on Facebook’ type of content that you encounter on a daily basis. (The same applies to Jay Baer and his Convince and Convert blog.)

Being There Before the Sale:

Greg Cangialosi of Blue Sky Factory

Greg is CEO and President of Blue Sky Factory, an email marketing company. He shared his company success story and provided some great observations on the art of “Being There Before the Sale”, from a new media perspective. Here are some highlights from his presentation:

Blue Sky Factory business practices:

- Find your internal company champions, and consider bringing them in from the outside, if necessary
- Turn your marketing organization into a publishing/educational organization (remember that the social web is a beast…and the beast must be fed)
- Publish on blog everyday
- Create ebooks
- Extend messaging by contributing to other brands, e.g. guest author posts on MediaPost, etc.
- Work from a solid editorial calendar
- Crucial: monitor and listen
- Use social networks to engage and connect (LinkedIn groups, for example)
- Send frequent email communications
- Experiment, Evaluate, & Adapt

You may be surprised to hear that 22% of Blue Sky Factory’s business can be attributed to social media marketing, which is remarkable for an email marketing company. Further, Blue Sky has generated 425,000 links—and growing—to their various touch points on the web.
Here are some final takeaways that Greg shared with us:

- Sales is a by-product of participation
- Avoid the Kumbaya effect; in other words, realize that social is serious business, and is about hard dollars
- Social revolves around trust and real relationships
- Realize that people work with people—not brands; brands aren’t social; people are

Managing Social Media with Limited Resources: Panel

Panelists:

Lisa Hoffman, Duke Energy (@lisahoffman)
Brian Dresher, USA Today (@bdresher)
Chris Moody, Phonebooth (@cnmoody)
Jennifer Ecclestone, GM (@JenEcclestone)
Moderator: David Thomas SAS (DavidBThomas)

Lisa Hoffman of Duke Energy:

- Assess your company’s understanding and readiness (provide framework for others to decide whether they’re truly ready)
- Train others to monitor (allow responsibility to be divided among employees when monitoring various topics)
- Be a coach (avoid the temptation to do the work for others; instead, concentrate on teaching; let go of control and free up resources)

Brian Dresher of USA Today:

- Empower employees to become the voice of the brand (e.g. journalists at USA Today breaking their own news and becoming curators via social media channels)
- Demonstrate social media as a way to increase productivity, efficiency, and fun factor
- Understand key tools—then continually educate and inform staff on how to use them (backtweets is a great way to monitor/trace back tweets to your links)
- Celebrate successes and share metrics, so everyone stays on board (go beyond simply monitoring fans and followers; for example, USA Today utilizes onsite analytics to measure the amount of traffic that comes from social media sites)

Jenny Ecclestone of GM:

- Leverage your assets (people, skills, outreach, branding, etc.) to accomplish your goals
(Currently, GM is very focused on grass roots marketing and consumer engagement)
- Remember that quality of fans, followers, and conversation is more important than number of followers
- Transparency is key (be a part of the conversation, speak honestly and authentically)
- Bring online conversations offline, and vice versa

Chris Moody of Phonebooth:

- Listen to what customer are telling you, and incorporate that into the product (Phonebooth has a user voice forum that they utilize for customer feedback; they implemented the two top requested features into their product)
- Create appropriate channels to escalate issues within the company (Phonebooth goes beyond Twitter responses and picks up the phone to speak to customers)
- Understand where your customers are and engage with them
- Routinely ask yourself how you can make your tasks more social (events, promotions, repurposing content, etc.)

Quick aside: Phonebooth was one of the official sponsors for Social Fresh, and they created a wonderfully creative concept, titled “The Great Phone Tree of Knowledge.” Chris Moody and his Phonebooth crew called upon 16 influential figures in social media and invited them to be available for Phonebooth calls to field questions from conference attendees. The Phonebooth project was a hit—you can learn more details about it here.

So there you have it—my rather lengthy summation of Social Fresh Charlotte. If you weren’t able to attend the conference, I hope that these highlights provided you with some knowledge from the event. If you’d like to hear more about the event, be sure to check out these blog posts from attendees:

What I learned at Social Fresh Charlotte
2010 Social Fresh Charlotte Notes and Takeaways
StaceyAlex.com (search for Social Fresh; you’ll find several blog posts here)

For those of you who attended SoFresh Charlotte, what stood out for you?

Kirsten and I recently took a day trip up to Chattanooga, TN, to present “Designing for Non-Designers: Tips, Tricks and Techniques” for the Lookout Chapter of the Public Relations Society of America. We were welcomed by a good dose of Tennessee summer heat and Southern hospitality (including giant pieces of chocolate and vanilla cake to accompany a delicious lunch!). We’d like to give a special thanks to Kristiina Braden for her warm welcome and introductions.

The audience was an engaged and diverse group. One member had a degree in graphic design and was transitioning into a PR position. A good amount of PR professionals had experience with Adobe InDesign, and they came from varied industries, including insurance, healthcare, and the nonprofit sector.

Kirsten started out asking what everyone was working on in order to get a better sense of how to tailor her presentation. Attendees had a wide array of projects ranging from print to web. Before going into overviews of technical information, Kirsten talked about getting past a problem we all experience: creative blocks. Before starting on projects, she recommends we give ourselves time to brainstorm and sketch. Brainstorming can be play in which we create multiple designs, collage and look for inspiration in sources from designs to photos to colors we like.

The first technical topic sparked quite a few questions from the audience: Designing for print vs. designing for Web. One audience member was curious which type is best for the Web. Kirsten listed Verdana, Arial, Tahoma, Times New Roman and Georgia among others as good choices. This question became a smooth transition to the next technical topic, typography.

After confessing her “love affair with typography,” Kirsten spent just the right amount of time on it, summarizing type anatomy, serifs vs. san-serifs, leading, text alignment, line length, ways type can communicate tones, and the audience’s favorite: the do’s and don’ts of decorative type. Kirsten listed four favorite fonts people tend to overuse: Rosewood, Comic Sans, Curlz, and Giddyup. She explained how these fonts actually take away from your message because they’ve become so cliché. Attendees laughed and agreed when she joked, “If someone tells you, ‘Make this friendly; use Comic Sans!’ say ‘No!’ and run away!”

At the end of the presentation, after Kirsten had just a second to taste the cake, attendees came up and thanked her for providing such practical information with appropriate detail and depth. One member found the presentation especially helpful to catch him up to speed after spending several years outside the field of PR. Other attendees said the presentation empowered them to juggle the multiple hats PR professionals now have to wear.

If you’re interested in learning more about the basics of design, click here to download a PDF of Kirsten’s complete presentation. We also welcome your comments below!