Lani Voivod, co-founder of Epiphanies Inc. loves what she does and it shows. She inspired the audience yesterday at the “A-Ha” NH Social Media Business Summit with insightful information on blips, spurts and dashes.
- Blips are those pieces of content that you put out in the social media world. Your whole life is essentially a series of blips that are now shown through the timeline in Facebook.
- Spurts are bursts of energy that cause you to take action. When you’re in a spurt take advantage and engage with lots of blips.
- Dashes are what’s between the year you were born and the year you die. It’s so important in life to take chances and to stay inspired.
Thank you Lani for inspiring me and so many others. I know you had technical difficulties that made the audience miss a key component of your presentation, but you pushed through and used your spurt to blip some fantastic content. You certainly are putting all you can between the dashes in your life.
Holy cow, new technology! Walter Elly, consultant with V2 Strategic Advisors and former senior director of emerging technology at MicroArts Creative Agency, has his finger on the pulse of what’s new and exciting in helping businesses use technology to its greatest advantage. Here are the two important points Walter focused on in his presentation:
- Some of the lesser known social media channels like location platforms (Foursquare) are becoming strong marketing methods with coupons, incentives, etc.
- Social enterprise is possible through Chatter and other social enterprise platforms which allow for secure and private business collaboration
The juices are flowing after hearing Corissa St. Laurent speak about Engagement Marketing™ and how to build and maintain business relationships. Without question she has a handle on the best practices to use for email and social media marketing.
Corissa inspired me at the “A-Ha” NH Social Media Business Summit with ideas for online marketing strategies.
Email and Social Media Marketing are a Super Duo when you use them together to:
- Save the right audience
- Activate your outreach
- Have a clear call to action in your newsletter
- Use sign up icons in every email
- Include standard links for subscriptions
- Save your audience from sales pitches
- Super use your content – put it in multiple channels
- Engage your following
- Be a hero with your campaigns – make it easy to share out to your networks
As a result you’ll get:
- Faster list growth
- Larger average list size
- Higher click-through rates
Often mentioned as “New Hampshire’s Best Agency with Big Ideas,” this reference to the Glenn Group is obviously due to Nancy Clark, its Chief Strategist and President.
Nancy added to the “A-Ha” NH Social Media Business Summit by offering some big ideas in a lively presentation on:
The Art of Fearless Story Telling
- Your story is unique, memorable and the single reason for consumers to choose your business
- It’s why consumers will pay more
- It makes a promise
- Start at the beginning with passion as the foundation
- You can evolve your story if it has gotten stale
- Your story should be genuine, have emotion, provide some fun while being kept short and sweet
- Everything you do in your business should be your story
I’m already totally charged up by what I’m learning here at the “A-Ha” NH Social Media Business Summit. Incredibly useful information!
Lou Bortone, YouTube video pro and marketing and branding expert, just blew us away with tips on how to use your online presence and increase visibility. Here’s some key takeaways:
- Social Media and video are a perfect marriage
- Video connects, personalizes and entertains
- Make your videos social with these free options:
- Video chats
- Live webcasting
- Video to Google+
- Skype
- TinyChat
- Oovoo
- LinkedIn
- Google+ Hangouts
- Share your videos to Twitter, LinkedIn (thru Google Presentation) and Facebook from YouTube
- Quality is not as important as the content
- The shorter the better for video length – as short as you can get the message across effectively
Thank you Ric Pratte, Director of The Meltwater Buzz Social CRM product for the Meltwater Group, for your captivating presentation at the “A-Ha” NH Social Media Business Summit describing how consumer facing businesses can use new methods to reach and connect with their customers and market. I learned it’s all about letting the customer control the engagement. Here’s some ideas Ric shared:
- Engage your customer base
- Grow advocates – that will come naturally if you are doing good things for your customers
- Do customer service in an open way on social media – show how you address challenges
- Social media is going from a job to a skill – everyone needs to know it
- Listen to what’s being said about you on the web – if there are negative comments about your company respond to it in a good way and people will appreciate that
The “No Bull” Business Blog written by Steve Boucher, the Communications and Legislative Director for the NH Division of Economic Development, has been awarded “Best in Show” twice in the last three years. After hearing him speak today at the “A-Ha” NH Social Media Business Summit, I understand how the blog’s title fits his great no nonsense approach to getting down business. Steve is down right funny too!
Steve explained that six years into his career with the state he realized that had fallen into a marketing rut. Then he met Allen and Lani who were at his office for a meeting. At the time he didn’t have an interest in social media – he thought it was a fad with little value. Of course they changed his mind.
Lani and Allen got him to start a blog that is now wildly successful. Here’s his tips on blogging success:
- Compelling content – include some info besides just boring business stuff
- Consistency – keep up with your posts
- Unique voice – write conversationally
- Interactivity – do things that will get people to connect
- Know the pain threshold – know that not every idea is going to be embraced
- Take inspiration from unlikely sources – find ways to build a buzz and be your best advocate
- Dare to do the impossible – try things that might seem difficult but maybe are doable!
Co-founder of Epiphanies, Inc. and The “A-Ha” NH Social Media Business Summit, Allen Voivod rocked the room with his engaging demonstration of his Seven Jedi Strategies for Mastering the Social Media Force.
Allen explained the Social Media Force will be with you when you use these:
- Give yourself time to think – get outside – meditate
- Use calendars to plan your social media strategy
- Think about your audience
- Create engaging content that creates action
- Develop allies
- Use location based platforms like Google Places or Yelp
- Look at statistics like Google Analytics to discover untapped opps
Kevin Skarritt, founder of Flock Marketing and Communications Director for the Michigan Computer-Human Interaction, never disappoints when he speaks and he certainly did not today at the “A-Ha!” NH Social Media Business Summit.
So I just finished listening to Abby Fichtner, the Keynote speaker of the “A-Ha” NH Social Media Business Summit who is an evangelist for startups at Microsoft and a highly regarded blogger on Agile Development and Lean Startup.
