Last week the Triangle Social Media Club had two guest speakers, Karlie Justus (@karliej) and Jason Peck (@jasonpeck). I’ve had the pleasure of meeting both the speakers and interacting with them on Twitter over the past several months. I was glad to see Karlie speak about the NC State Fair since I had been trying to catch up with her to find out how effective social media was in promoting the State Fair. I have written two blog posts about the NC State Fair and Deep Fried Tweetup in the past few weeks so was interested to see how the campaign went for the NC Department of Agriculture (NCDA) that manages the Fair.

The goals of the social media campaign were to reach new audiences as well as reach media in a new way. The campaign started in July of 2008 and ran for a full 16 months. The team began with a new web site design and created a blog that communicated interesting facts about the Fair as well as announcing entertainment acts and other announcements. Other social media sites that were created included Facebook group, MySpace page, Twitter account, Flickr photos and YouTube channel. Some of the more interesting stats were:

• 70,000 unique blog views with 27,000 unique visitors in October
• Facebook page had 5,000 friends, 420 fans and over 1,400 photos tagged
• Twitter account had over 2,331 followers with 1,828 updates and 422 direct messages. Many of the direct messages were from local media that supplemented the PR plan.
• YouTube channel hosted 37 videos and had 58,000 unique views with 55 subscribers.
• MySpace page had 928 friends with 8,000 blog views and 99,000 page views.

Other social media tactics included having a Deep Fried Ambassador contest among local bloggers, inviting bloggers to the press conference and hosting the Deep Fried Tweetup on the Thursday night of the Fair. The Tweetup attracted over 150 attendees and further extended the Deep Fried brand. One interesting note was that Thursday traffic spiked with 2000 unique visits to the blog and average of 60 tweets per hour. The event was also streamed and attracted 43 views.

 Overall the NCDA team achieved success by incorporating social networks to further establish relationships with fair attendees, media representatives and other audiences. Also social networks facilitated customer service by responding to questions from the general public and directing them to specific information on the web. Karlie also pointed out that it was a team effort and that her coworkers contributed to the effort (Jen Nixon (@jennix5), Natalie Alford (@joynatalie), Brian Long (@brian_long66), Andrea Ashby (@aasbhy) and Paul Marshall Jones (@pmarshalljones). Great work by this group!

Whew, that’s a whole blog post, but wait there’s more! Jason Peck had a tough act to follow but did a fantastic job speaking about branded communities. Jason’s company eWayDirect takes features of social networks and brings them into a single platform. The goal is to bring people together while having full control of the look and fell, content, ads and metrics. I have a dream and that is what eWayDirect offers…a single platform with control, basically a branded community.

Some of the great advantages to their approach include:

• Protection: no random Facebook ads, your community is spared from junk and spam
• Exclusivity: you may not want everyone, just certain people that are your customers and prospects
• Research: polls, metrics and other tools to gather information from your community.
• Business metrics: the ability to determine revenue per member. Mmmm, ROI is that something everyone keeps talking about regarding social media?

One of the biggest advantages is the ability to aggregate existing content into a single location. My job requires me to try and automate all the outbound communication including social media. I have been able to use tools like RSS and other data exports to cross reference all the sites. But in order to aggregate all the RSS feeds and sites content I would have to create another site, basically a portal. Hence one more site to design, configure and maintain.

Jason gave a few examples of how his customers have employed their technology. One great example was ELF (Eyes, Lips and Face) beauty network. Their goal was to identify brand advocates and deepen relationships as well as acquire new customers. The campaign started with a personal invitation to the network and also has a desktop announcement feature that I want to find out more about.

ELF had some great results three months into the campaign including:

• 4,500 new members
• 56,000 visits
• 5,000 unique visits, increase of 75%
• 9% of members opted to received the desktop notifications and reminders
• Average revenue per member increased 270% more than non-members

Again social media ROI can be achieved with the right strategy, platform and planning. Jason closed his presentation with some great lessons learned:

•  Have a purpose for your community, give people a reason to join
• Make people feel welcome, it's important
• Establish measurable goals ahead of time will drive you towards them during execution
• Make sure the community does not exist in a silo

Many thanks to Jeremy (@jeremysaid) and Brian (@unravelthetwine) of Twine Interactive for hosting the event and Our Hashtag (Wayne, Jeff and Ryan) for organizing the best social media series in the Triangle. I met another great group of people whom I’ve followed and chatted with on Twitter and other networks so it’s always great to attach a person to an avatar!

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As a long time web addict, I have watch Google’s rise to power from a distance at first. I started with Yahoo! and even bought stock in the company. To me they were the first and I was happy with my search results. When I first heard of Google I thought, great name but there are plenty of search engines and I’m happy with Yahoo!


However much has changed since the 90s and Google has evolved from much more than just a search engine. Google has developed and offered email, online mapping, office productivity, video, voice and now Android mobile Wi-Fi devices. This week alone Google announced free Wi-Fi in 40+ US airports, an operating system and purchased AdMob, the largest mobile advertising marketplace. For most companies this would be a year’s worth of development and acquisitions.

And let’s not forget Google Wave that has slowly been creeping out over the past few months. I’ve sat patiently watching this play out a bit as well. Many a tweet has passed by me stating, “I’ve got Google Wave invites, who wants one?” This past week I finally asked for one and low and behold last night I got three! In fact I’m writing this post just before I strap on my digital board shorts and get ready to ride the Wave! (Hint: more about Google Wave in a near future post!)

Let’s face it what is Google going to do next? Offer electricity and water to your home? Online ticket brokering, personal shopping, pet sitting services? At some point when does Google become like Wal-Mart and become too much. Is being able to offer ALL things to ALL people a great idea but somewhere along the line your quality suffers and consumers turn on you? Is that OK as long as you return profit to your shareholders?

Sadly to say the answer to both of the previous questions is yes. Yes you can try and be all things to all people but at some point you cannot deliver the ultimate in quality, price and service. Wal-Mart uses extra low prices to get you in the store; once you’re in they want you to buy other stuff they make profit on. Sounds like a casino, free drinks as long as you are gambling!  But Wal-Mart has recently rebranded itself including changin the logo to soften its image.  Their tag line changed from "Everyday Low Prices," to "Save Money. Live Better" Will Google have to do the same in 10 years if they face similar consumer backlash?

The other marketing strategy Google has done extremely well is the free model. Free as in you don’t have to fork out money. Of course Google does own your content and tracks data that is valuable to advertisers and other research hungry marketers like me. But we don’t care as long as it’s free and it works! Yet we know it’s not free entirely. There are ads and other sponsored messages that are supporting the costs.

Don’t get me wrong I like Google. I use many of their tools and their technology is great. This blog you are reading is free from Google. I know many of you out there are saying yes but Blogger is basic and Wordpress is better. I agree with you as well and in the coming months I will wean off Blogger and build my Wordpress blog. But to get started and not have to deal with design and configuration, Blogger gets you blogging. Isn’t that what it’s all about?

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I watched the roll out of the new Twitter Lists feature last week with some anticipation. With the growth of Twitter there’s a lot of clutter to cut through and Lists offer a great way to do that. At the same time there has been some ho-hum reaction to what has been needed for some time, an ability to group and filter content on the Twitter web interface. So I thought I would tackle 10 questions I’ve had either asked of me by friends or have asked myself in the past week. With the help of the lazy web and my own testing here are my 10 Twitter Lists Questions and Answers.

1.  What are Twitter Lists?

Twitter Lists are a new feature that allow users to create a named list of user accounts. Call it grouping or filtering it’s basically a subset of who you are following. Lists can be either public or private with private lists being only available for viewing by the List owner.

2.   What does a List look like?

Twitter Lists look just like your Twitter feed but have some additional information listed on the page. The Following number represents the number of users the List is built from. The Followers number repesents the number of Twitter accounts following the List.

3.  Do I have to follow someone to add them to a List?

No, you can go to a user’s Twitter page and simply add them to a List without having to follow them.

4.  Can I follow other users Lists?

Yes and you can follow as many Lists as you want to follow.

5.   How many Twitter Lists can I create?

Currently you can only create 20 Lists per Twitter account. If you maintain more than one Twitter account you can conceivably create more than 20 Lists.

6.  Can I post a tweet to just a List?

At this point the answer is no. Lists are designed at this point to receive and not transmit information.  But Twitter has a new division call TLISTS for Twitter Lists that will "enable media companies to curate the real-time web.  Stay tuned at tlists.com.

7.  Will apps like TweetDeck and HootSuite add Lists to their interface?

TweetDeck has Groups that works the same as Lists. I’ve used TweetDeck groups to filter my Twitter stream around subjects like News, Sports and Local Tweeps. Will have to wait and see how other Twitter clients and applications adopt Lists but it should be in upcoming releases.

8.  Will being listed increase authority?

I think it’s plausible to say that at some point yes, Lists will add to authority. In the same way that having 25,000+ followers gives a user some perceived authortity, having 15,000+ on a List would have the same authority. For users being listed shows a level of interest above following in the sense that the account is elevated to a more precise level.

9.  Can I export RSS feed from a Twitter List?

As I’m writing this post my wife is reading Tweets to me on her iPhone and answers this question. Twitter has created a widget that allows you to display a Lists on your blog or web site. Create your widget at: http://twitter.com/goodies/widget_list.

10.  Will Twitter Lists kill #FollowFriday?

Probably not, personal recommendation from someone you trusts is stronger than listings.

I hope I answered some of your questions about Twitter Lists and tried not to be just another post on this topic. I personally think that Twitter Lists give a great tool to bloggers, web site designers, marketing and communication professionals to aggregate information for specific content around events, topics, or anything you want. Thanks to my wife Maura (@mcdezigns) for her timely input and there is some great info out on Mashable, Twitter Blog and TechCrunch on using Twitter Lists.

What do you think of Twitter Lists? Have you created one? Are you following any? Are you Listed?

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Last Thursday Triangle Tweetup was held at the NC State Fair for the first ever Deep Fried Tweetup. Sponsored by the NC State Fair and Our Hashtag, the gathering was a fantastic event for everyone that attended. I was able to combine my kids’ trip to the Fair with the Tweetup and ended up spending eight hours at the Fair. Some people would say that eight hours is a long time at the Fair but if you plan correctly the time goes by fast, even with two kids in tow.

So after several hours of rides, food and exhibits we headed over to the Folk Festival tent at 7 pm for the start of the Tweetup. At the registration desk we received our badges and gift bags containing two nice posters of the State Fair and the Tweetup as well as some other nice gifts.  Inside the tent there were several great activities to choose from. For the ladies, mini makeovers were being done. A sketch artist was present and did sketches; my kids were patient long enough for him to capture them. People lined up for face painting of Twitter birds and Fail Whales. My daughter had her whole face painted as a Twitter Princess. Samples of chocolate cover bacon, buffalo crab Rangoon and other deep fried treats were available. And of course everyone was meeting and greeting new tweeps as well as reconnecting with existing friends.



In keeping with the Tweetup Theme, there were several Twitter activities too. Tweetgrid was being used to search and aggregate all the related tweets on a large screen. A charging station was set up which for me was vital since I had exhausted my battery being at the Fair all day. Using a neat random tweet selector tool Wayne Sutton selected the winners for the evening giveaways on the big screen. The evening ended with a scavenger hunt for clues found throughout the fairgrounds. Several teams participated in the hunt and tweeted their answers to participate.

Being a good parent I had to leave around 8:30 as the kids' batteries wore down as much as my iPhone. I had a great time seeing everyone and meeting new people. The Tweetup lived up to the hype in that it was a “Whole Lotta Happy,” based on the good cheer and smiles on everyone’s faces. The NC State Fair team and Our Hashtag did a great job promoting the event and keeping the activities flowing.

Click here to see my photo album from the Tweetup and State Fair.

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I have been reading about Foursquare over the past few months on Twitter. Several people I follow in New York City had been raving about it so when Foursquare came to Raleigh I was excited to see what the hype was.

Foursquare is a mix of location based social network and fantasy football without the professional athletes. Users check in at a location using their smartphones, laptops or even via text messaging. Points are awarded on weekends and non-business hours for "checking in" at venues. Badges are awarded for various activities including “Bender” for checking in four nights in a row, and “Local” for checking in at the same venue three times in one week.

Users accumulate points and are ranked among their friends as well as in their geographic location. Each Sunday night the leaderboard resets and starts all over again. I have read that if you accumulate enough points and badges you can receive free stuff from local vendors, bars, and restaurants. I’m interested in how Foursquare goes about doing this in each of their markets.

So I checked in at my office just to test the iPhone app and see how this works. I quickly learned that my office is not listed in the Foursquare directory so I entered in the address details and got more points. I also found out that many of the places I visit were not listed in their directory requiring me to look up addresses using Brightkite (another location-based social network) and then entering the address into Foursquare.

Of course I’m a 42 year old married person with two small kids so I’m not sure how many check-ins I will have at the latest bar on Glenwood South or Fayetteville St. So I quickly realized that Foursquare would ask me to enter a lot of addresses since Target and the movie theatre may not be on the “hot” lists of places to go out to. Much less my kid’s soccer practices and games held at middle schools and churches.

Other features that Foursquare offers include tips from other users. For example you can see what other users recommend on a menu to a new restaurant. Other tips may include nice quiet spots in public places or the best bartender or wait staff to ask for. Users can also create "To Do" lists to keep track of their task but it's not a task list like you would find in Outlook. These to do's are more like "Go to the gym" or "have lunch with John."

I have to admit if I was a young twentysomething I would de digging Foursquare more. The fact that the network will alert you when friends check in is a neat feature to engage in social behavior. I wonder what my Foursquare would have looked like back in 1990. Would I have a “Local” badge for checking into The Five-O Club four nights a week? Would I have been the “Mayor” of The Comet? Note to Raleigh newbies: these are bars that are either no longer around or not-so-cool anymore with all the new entertainment venues.

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The North Carolina State Fair opens tomorrow and runs for the next 11 days. From deep fried candy bars and corndogs to the latest kid character giant stuffed animals, the Fair is an exciting time in Raleigh and for everyone attending.

Everyone has their Fair memories and stories. I have to state that the Fair grew on me since I did not grow up in NC. I moved here when I was 16 years old and was puzzled when my high school classmates were upset when the school did not have a “State Fair” day. My previous experience with the Alabama State Fair was not that great and prior to that I’m not sure if I had ever been to a state fair.

I can’t remember the first time I went. I think it was a few years later when I was attending NC State that I first went to the Fair. Looking back I’m amazed that it took me so long to go to the Fair. Now I get excited and enjoy taking my kids and sharing their future memories of going to the Fair.

This year I’m even more excited to go to the Fair due to the Fair’s social media presence over the past several months. The Fair is run by the State of North Carolina Dept of Agriculture and has a team of professionals to manage their marketing, promotions and communications and now social media. Some of their titles even have the word “Officer” in them which is way cool for a PR/Marketing geeks like me.

The social media team has done a brilliant job using Twitter to generate interest for the Fair. There have been contests, trivia, links to blog posts and other great chatter leading up to the Fair. Also this year the first Fair Triangle Tweetup will be held on Thursday Oct 22 from 7 to 9 pm. I even drove by the Fairgrounds last week to see how strong the Wi-Fi network was and was happy to see two strong network signals on my iPhone.

Other marketing efforts have included the Deep Fried Blog where staff members assumed pen names like Bearded Lady and Cotton Candy to personify the Fair experience online. Other social network sites include Flickr, Facebook, MySpace and YouTube. I especially liked the deep fried food previews posted on YouTube the past few weeks, where the latest Deep Fried goodness is tested.

From a design standpoint I think the team hit a home run on their web site. The look and feel of the site has an old fashioned, feel to it to capture the history and heritage of this 150+ year event. The use of historical photos from the fair combined with the links to social media really worked well. The ragged edge brown paper and old wood barn background makes you feel like this is posted on the outside of a barn.  The Playbill font and antiquing of the social media logos complement the design and serve their purpose to draw attention.

From a content standpoint the site has all the info you need when attending the Fair and that’s no small tasks. The event has over 800,000 visitors each year and it seems like there are over 100 different events going on each day including livestock judging, concerts and tractor pulls!  If I had to manage an event like this I would probably go crazy about 15 minutes before it started.  That's if I survived the planning and setup.  There are many things that go wrong or are unexpected when managing live events. I could probably have Ken Burns do a whole documentary on these stories alone over the years.

I plan on attending the Tweetup and will post about the event. Also I am working on interviewing some of the NC Dept of Agriculture staff that worked on the social media program after the fair is over to find out how well their planning and hard work paid off. Stay tuned over the next few weeks to see how it unfolds. If you’re going to the Tweetup and we have not met say hello and let’s connect!

Here's my first Fair tip: if you have small children and want to avoid crowds, go first thing in the morning after you eat breakfast and get to the Fair by 9 am.  You can get in a good 4-5 hours before it gets really crowded and be home for an afternoon nap.

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Since I'm a marketing geek I'm always interested in new tools, networks and other communication platforms. Over the past few years I have investigated and used many of the new social media networks and tools to see how well they worked. However I realize now that I have too many accounts and some of them are redundant. Therefore, I am cleaning up some of the accounts listed below but I thought a listing with some notes on why I joined the network and what I liked would be a good start. I will follow up over the next few weeks with comparisons of the sites and why I chose one over the other.

Facebook: www.facebook.com/bmcd67
Wanted to see what the fuss was all about. Since I have moved around quite a bit in my life, great way to reconnect with old friends.
MySpace: Deactivated
Had to join to see photo of old friend that office mate told me was online.  Ended up getting a bunch of spam off the account so I deleted it.
LinkedIn: linked.com/bmcd67
Thought it was better than keeping regular resume on file.  Also great way to reconnect with former co-workers.
Delicious: delicious.com/bmcd67
Used to keep track of press hits and articles of interest.
Twitter: twitter.com/bmcd67
First intrigued, then did not understand, then did understand, then did nothing else for several months.
Pandora: pandora.com/people/bmcd67
I'm a huge music buff so this was an instant hit. Like that I can create my own station.
Social Vibe: socialvibe.com/bmcd67
Interesting premise, raise money for charity through clicks but that's all that's there. Cool interface.
Ning: http://www.ning.com/
First used as a test for project that migrated elsewhere. Good tool but have only seen a few good sites on it.
Blogger: zen-marketing.blogspot.com
Main blogging tool that I use. Good starting place for bloggers that want to write and don't want to have to learn web site design.
FriendFeed: friendfeed.com/bmcd67
Used this to aggregate all my feeds and social media accounts.
YouTube: youtube.com/bmcd67
Never thought that I would post on YouTube but it's a great platform for video.
SlideShare: slideshare.net/bmcd67
Use this for storing presentations, integrates with LinkedIn.
Ping.fm
Created this account to use for autoposting to several accounts and forgot about it.
Blip.fm: blip.fm/bmcd67
Site allows you to search individual songs and post message at the same time.
Brightkite: brightkite.com/people/bmcd67
Never used this until I got my iPhone with ability to ping my location.
Storyteller: bmcd67.storytlr.com/
Found this before FriendFeed and liked their layout better
FriendFeed: friendfeed.com/bmcd67
Created profile and several rooms. Not a fan of some of their features.
Technorati: technorati.com/people/technorati/bmcd67
Joined when I started blogging. Still trying to gain authority.
Posterous: bmcd67.posterous.com
Recently joined and have posted a few items. Not sure what best application of this tool is.
Slide: bmcd67.slide.com
Found this easiest of the photo apps to use and customize, plus no limit on images.
Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/people/73834932@N00/
Great photo site with ability to create sets. Very easy to embed on other sites as well.
Picasa: picasaweb.google.com/bmcd67
Signed up when started using Google tools but has limits on images.
qik: qik.com/bmcd67
This was the only tool that I could shoot online video with on my BlackBerry in real time. Had problems with controls and naming on BlackBerry, thus half my vids have the same title.
TwitPic: twitpic.com/photos/bmcd67
This is a great simple app that I use all the time.
NetVibes: netvibes.com/bmcd67
Great aggregator tool that allows you to create a portal. Still need to finish this page.

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