Was really looking forward to this panel of awesome women in (social media) marketing, and it definitely lived up to and blew away my expectations!

From the Podcamp Toronto 2011 Website:

Meet some women leaders in social media that you need to know! Featuring Diana Gallo of Cineplex, Jennifer Lord of Astral Television Networks, Jessica McLaughlin of Shaw Media and Corinne Rusch-Drutz of YWCA Canada.

Panelists:
Diana Gallo - Marketing Manager, Interactive and Social Media (Cineplex Entertainment LP)
Jennifer Lord - Digital Producer (Astral Television Networks)
Jessica McLaughlin - Manager, Community (Shaw Media)
Corinne Rusch-Drutz - Director of Communications and Membership Development (YWCA Canada)

Moderator: Wendy Jacinto - Manager, Regions & Program Development (Canadian Women in Communications)

Notes

Strategy vs Format

According to Diana, Cineplex identifies goals first and then applies social media to the goals that it can best support.  There was definitely a theme to #pcto2011 sessions that emerged: now that social media is for the most part accepted by marketers and business people, many are applying social media without pausing first to see if social media would actually be a value add in that specific context.  Social media is awesome – but isn’t always a great idea.  The same way that big budget television ads aren’t always the right idea for your current project.  Let your goals (and audience and content) determine what media you use – don’t just “make everything social” (@davefleet).

Online community hasn’t changed

Jessica has been working with online community management for a decade or more – dating back to Yabbernet (an online community for kids in the early 2000′s).  Wendy asked her to comment on how community management has evolved and her answer was: it hasn’t.  The goals of creating a personal connection with your audience, and to engaging your audience, were the goals then and remain the goals now.

QR Codes

I was really interested when Diana brought up Cineplex’s use of QR codes.  Diana was very clear throughout the panel that traditional media is still very much on the table and that social needs to be partnered with traditional to realize its best results.  QR codes are one example of how Cineplex is integrating mobile/online into traditional methods – such as the giant movie posters inside the theatres.

I just don’t get QR codes.  They remind me of businesses that try to follow me on fourquare*.  Companies getting hyped and acting on something that just isn’t quite right.  QR codes “aren’t quite right” because they are only native to a very limited selection of phones (blackberries).  iOS/Apple and Android owners need to download a third party application in order to interpret the codes.

Wouldn’t it just be easier to type a short URL, than to go into your App Store, search and select an app, install and then snap a photo? Unless I’m stuck at a bus stop that happens to have a QR code – I’m just don’t see myself taking the time to do that.  Yes, once I have the app – I don’t need to download it the next time – as long as I remember that I downloaded the app and can find it easily on my phone.  It’s not likely to be on my home screen, so it’s probably buried on a deeper page – or in a folder.  I could search for it – if I could remember its name.  It would be awesome so see a study on QR conversion vs just displaying a short URL.

Note: I remember hearing that QR codes get much higher use when they are displayed next to a set of instructions.  I know that would have helped me – I’ve taken pictures of several with my iphone camera – just because I assumed that was how they worked.  If there had been a note saying that I would need a third party app, I may have had more success and consequently a more positive impression of QR codes.

Regardless of my personal read on QR’s, Cineplex is having success with them.  Specifically when used to offer exclusive content.  Cineplex is a bit of a better fit for QR, I think, because the environment is different.  Out in public, I’m moving – I am not likely to stand around beside a QR getting myself read to snap a photo of it.  Cineplex is using QR codes inside theatres to offer extra content related to its movies – so I’m standing in the popcorn line, or chatting in the warm lobby waiting for another friend to join our group – so I’ve got more time to fool around with QR’s.

Dear readers – do you use QR’s? How regularly do you actually consume these in your real lives? What do you think? Here’s a recent Mashable.com article on ways to use QR codes with events …

*Businesses trying to follow me on foursquare & why it “isn’t quite right”: Businesses, for the most part, stay put.  The purpose of connecting on foursquare is to watch each other’s check ins.  If I connect with Stobies Pizza – it is going to be one sided.  I will be doing all the giving of check ins, and they will be sitting there at the corner of Dufferin & Richmond consuming my information and not giving back.  And why would I want Stobies to know where I am, other than when I am in their store? No thanks!  The role of businesses on foursquare, other than unusual cases, is to claim their locations and interact with users that way.  Facebook Pages = Foursquare Venues.  Facebook Profiles = Foursquare Accounts/Friends. Get it? That’s my take anyways.  Businesses are always requested to connect with me on foursquare and not yet has there been one that would have made sense for me to have approved.

Geo-location platforms (foursquare, facebook, gowalla)

According to Diana from Cineplex, they are doing exactly what I’ve just said.  They have claimed all of their theatres across the country on foursquare and are interacting via the claimed venues.  Geo-location services such as foursquare are a great fit for Cineplex because they have a nation-wide network of physical locations that receive visits from their customers.  This goes back to what Diana mentioned earlier – let strategy decide whether social media is for you.

Cineplex has been experimenting with rewarding loyalty (number of check ins, foursquare’s “mayor” feature), as well as rewarding first time check ins.  They are able to see if there are days that receive more check ins than others – also movies and theatres that receive disproportionate check ins.  Geo-location is still in the early adoption phase – knowing that a certain theatre or movie has more foursquare users than another can definitely tell you something about your audience.

Cineplex is interested in seeing if they can use geo-location promotions to boost traffic on less busy days of the week – and then see if they can realize a long-term shift in customer behaviour.  ”Tips” on foursquare have also been a great source of feedback for Cineplex.  User feedback isn’t always positive, but is it supposed to be? Take a step back from being afraid of negative brand implications and see tips for what they are – insight into your customers’ experiences with your product or brand.  Listen, learn, improve!

Foursquare might not be such a good fit for one of the other panelists, Corinne, from the YWCA.  Yes the YWCA has a series of locations – but many of these are women’s shelters.  Women who need shelter, possibly from a dangerous situation, are not an audience that would benefit from broadcasting that they’ve just checked in at Shelter X (123  John St., Cityville).  I love that there is so much social buy-in these days – but the downside is the number of groups “jumping in” without thinking it through.

YWCA is looking at geo-location a different way.  Create ways to point clients to the right services in their area.

Social @ Work

I touched on Diana Gallo’s point that traditional media are still here to stay, and that social is not ALWAYS the answer – remembering to evaluate social media ideas against your higher level strategy, your audience and your context (do you have social friendly content available? do you have locations across multiple geographic areas?).

Corinne (YWCA) talked about how great it is that social is so much more widely accepted now but it is still important to move people forward at their own pace.  Yes it would be great to go at your pace – but pushing too fast could cause you to lose the buy-in from the rest of your organization.

Jessica (Shaw) recommended making sure that people in your organization know about you.  Especially in larger organizations, silos keep the marketing people separate from the other departments.  Reach out to people, run internal seminars, let people know you exist and that even though you maybe housed within a silo, you are there for the entire organization.  Of course, this might give you more work to handle – and most of us are under-resourced.  But you won’t get resources if you don’t have work, so hopefully resources will follow if you are able to execute successfully and prove your value.

All four panelists (and several other sessions at the conference) agreed that content is emerging as the hot skill set of 2011.  Sometimes this is content creation – writing, media editing, photography, infographic illustration.  Another new leg of the content skill set is curation.  There is only so much that most brands can say about themselves that is of interest/use to their audiences. Reach out to content leaders in your industry to find relevant, attractive content for your audiences.

The panelists also agreed with each other that the current trend of a “social media person” on staff will fade away soon.  Social media is just one more format for communications people to master.  As it shifts from “new” to “standard,” it will be taught along side press releases and television ads and will be part of every communication person’s skill set – rather than isolated to a single individual on staff.

Social brand management

Diana: As much as you would love to control your brand, it’s not happening. If you’re in that space and listening. You can correct incorrect content. Often, the response is thank you. Rather than seeing user-generated content (comments, wall posts, foursquare tips) as potential brand damage, look at it as insight that you can learn and improve from. The key point here is potential brand damage.  Looking at UGC this way gives you the false impression that you can prevent that damage by staying off of social.  You can’t.  UGC is happening on sites that you don’t own all across the internet.  The result of staying out of social is the equivalent of stuffing content in your ears – and does about the same amount of good for your brand.

Our amazing systems/servers master at work tipped me off on a great deal with Dreamhost last month and this weekend’s project is converting a few lower traffic sites over to Dreamhost WordPress installs.  If it goes smoothly, I will be moving everything over to Dreamhost over the next month.

Dreamhost

If you are in the market for a web host – check out Dreamhost RIGHT NOW. I have heard awesome things about it over the years, and they have a 90% off sale going on for the Super Bowl weekend. GO!

Dreamhost’s interface is nowhere near as slick as my current host (Media Temple), but it is also packed with options.  If you’re building your first website, you may not be quite ready for Dreamhost.  That said, and Ken will back me up on this, I know almost nothing about hosting and I’m happy as a clam in Dreamhost so far.  They’ve one click installs of just about every app you can think of (WordPress is the only one that I’m looking for); easy to set up mirroring to work on sites before redirecting the DNS; regular old hosted email as well as super duper gmail email; and boat loads of other things.

To give you an example of how Dreamhost isn’t as streamlined as Media Temple (and why I’m happy about it): When adding a domain, it asks me whether I want to a) support both www and no-www, b) force both to end up at www, or c) force both to end up at no-www. I have built sites on no less than 10 hosts in the last 14 years, and I have NEVER been asked that as part of a routine domain set up.  I’m sure almost all hosts offer that option, but buried somewhere deep inside a panel of Advanced options rather than on standard screen.

WordPress /cms

Something else that’s new that I’m trying is taking my WordPress installs off of the roots of my sites.  Troy Chaplin did this with the site he just built for pseweb.ca, and it seems like a good idea for security, so off I go.  I’m going to use instructions from here – I’ll let you know how it goes.

Elegant Themes

Rather than go in depth on free vs pro vs build your own WordPress themes – here’s a great article from Read Write Web.

Elegant Themes is a pro WordPress theme provider that continues to impress me.  I love finding a great tech company that continues to innovate and improve itself – Seesmic used to  be one of these in my opinion, Hootsuite is currently a great one, Involver.com is amazing (breaks my heart that I can’t afford their pricing) and WordPress obviously is master of all.

I signed up with Elegant Themes last April when I had a family member who needed a website redesign.  They had no budget for a designer and our in-family designer wasn’t able to pull through for us, so we went with a pro theme and tweaked it to fit.  When my annual subscription runs out, I will be upgrading to a Developers license because for someone like me who creates sites frequently but can’t code or design to save her life – it’s a godsend.  I will definitely be telling my clients about it and I’m sure they will jump at the chance to put on one of Elegant Themes’ gorgeous designs over what I was able to provide to them years in the past.

I’m  bringing up Elegant Themes today because, as I mentioned, I’m moving my low traffic sites over to Dreamhost as a test run.  I want to do this quick and clean and I don’t want to get bogged down in redesign & build – so WordPress plus Elegant Themes is going to save the day.  For example, I incorporated in August but haven’t had time to do the corporation’s website.  This weekend, it’s going to get done – and with zero stress thanks to the combo of these services.

I’ve recommended the ET + WP combo to every small business and blogger I know that has come to me for a site in the last year. Unless you really need a custom design, keep your money in your pocket and explore the awesome pro and free WordPress themes out there. And please, please, stop building static HTML websites :)

Step 1: You will need a YouTube account

We will be using the Favourites of this account to specify what videos to be pulled in.  This must be an account that:

• does not already use favourites for some other purpose (i.e. personal sharing), and
• does not act as a public-facing/marketing profile – as the videos you favourite will show up in the YouTube newsfeed of this account.

Above: Screenshot showing how favouriting videos will impact your YouTube newsfeed

Step 2: Add some favourites.

Go to www.youtube.com/iveybusiness and browse the available videos. Mark the ones that you would like to feature on your Facebook page as favourites.

Above: Screenshot of the Add to Favourites button when viewing a video in a channel view.

Above: Screenshot of the Add to Favourites button when viewing a video in normal/non-branded view.

Step 3: Add the YouTube Facebook Application to your Page

http://www.facebook.com/apps/application.php?id=2513891999

Step 4: Link your YouTube Account

Use the “Preferences” link in the upper right of the screen.

Above: Preferences link is located in the upper right corner of the application screen.

Result: A tab showing the most recent favourited videos of the linked account.

Above: Screenshot of the YouTube tab added to Ivey's Facebook Page.

What I think is worth discussing, is the placement of CTA’s (Calls to Action).

In web ,we see a lot of CTA action in the right column of websites – it’s a great way to place relevant calls high on the page without pushing the page content down. It’s so great, that I’ve seen it carried over into email as well.

Width is a major limitation for HTML email designers, and if we can stay in a single column instead of splitting ourselves across two (or more), then the user experience is definitely improved.  Tim Hortons (and I’m sure many other brands with smart designers) have tacked their CTA’s onto the bottom of their banner image. It’s not too “In Your Face”, it’s pretty and it gets the CTA’s placed prominently without needing a second column.

Way to go Tim Hortons email design team!

Step 1: Connecting iPad as a Monitor

Some quick googling told me that Air Display was limited to Mac computers and that my PC option was MaxiVista.  Both are $9.99.  I have this weird feeling that I already bought Air Display in an app buying frenzy earlier this year, so when I search “second monitor” in the iPad app store and see that Air Display now supports PC as well, I went ahead and installed it.

It was very easy to get going. Bought the app, installed the software on my computer, restarted and then ran the program and selected my iPad from the list of options. Bam – done.

Step 2: Remote Desktop with Dual Monitors

I googled “remote desktop with dual monitors” and found these great instructions from Splitview. I got going and then connected and realized that while my RDP session was spanning both monitors, it was treating them like a single giant screen. This is where Splitview comes in – it’s a quick install that improves the way the dual monitors perform. Again, the process was really easy – download, install, no restart required, and I’m in heaven and ready to work from home with my new $1,000 monitor (iPad).

In Summary

• Get Air Display or MaxiVista for your iPad
• Install the app’s desktop software on your computer (must be on same wireless network as the iPad)
• Connect remotely to your other/work computer
• Install Splitview (on your remote computer)
• Follow Splitview’s great instructions for RDP with dual monitors
• Done! (Make sure Air Display/MaxiVista is running on your home computer and Splitview is running on your remote computer)

Troy Chaplin helped me find a link a few months ago, explaining that if I comment out one line in /wp-includes/feed-rss2.php, it’s all fixed!

Here is a quick excerpt:

1. Open file.

<wordpress-root>/wp-includes/feed-rss2.php

2. Find following lines

<?php if (get_option('rss_use_excerpt')) : ?>
<description><![CDATA[<?php the_excerpt_rss() ?>]]></description>
<?php else : ?>
<description><![CDATA[<?php the_excerpt_rss() ?>]]></description>

3. Now comment out last line. We can remove it too but commenting is safe option. So it will look like…

<?php if (get_option('rss_use_excerpt')) : ?>
          <description><![CDATA[<?php the_excerpt_rss() ?>]]></description>
<?php else : ?>
          <!- -
            <description><![CDATA[<?php the_excerpt_rss() ?>]]></description>
          - ->

4. Save file. That’s it.

That’s all, just wanted to make a note for myself – thanks Troy!

Andrew’s blog starts with the case of Peter Janiszewski, a health sciences researcher, who released one of his publications as a five part blog series and went from unknown to being read by 12,000 people and covered by MSNBC.

“[T]he same research which I published in a prestigious medical journal and made basically no impact, was then viewed by over 12,000 sets of eyes because I decided to discuss it online.” – Peter Janiszewski, Why all scientists should blog: a case study

MSNBC also contacted him for a story. The MSNBC story does cite the journal article, but it was primarily through Janszewski’s own blogging efforts that his research drew the attention he did.

… he did not usurp the traditional approach to scholarship. He merely augmented it — providing in essence a public service by sharing the new knowledge to a broader audience.

I don’t see Janiszewski’s efforts as self-serving but as a service to the public.

Andrew also discusses how a retired professor’s blog brought considerable media attention to his university during the BP oil spill:

David A. Summers, Curators’ Professor emeritus of mining engineering, is an expert in energy and blogs extensively on his own site, Bit Tooth Energy, and on the popular energy site The Oil Drum, where he goes by the nom de blog Heading Out. Last spring, when BP was attempting its “top kill” approach to plugging the leak in the Gulf of Mexico, several news outlets contacted our office in search of Summers. Other reporters contacted Summers directly, thanks to his accessibility via both blogs. Reporters knew about Summers not only from his research in the field of high-pressure fluids, but also from his blogging. As a result, our campus and Summers both got a good deal of media coverage. It was a win-win.

As soon as I started reading this post, I remembered a presentation by Jim Estill back in 2008 in Toronto.  Jim’s CEO Blog “Time Leadership” is the number one Google result for “CEO Blog.” His blog is so visible and so widely read in no small part due to his success at posting frequent updates – something that is very challenging for anyone with a busy schedule such as his.  Here is a link to a post by Jim discussing 8 ways he is able to write a blog post in 20 minutes: http://www.jimestill.com/2005/11/8-tricks-to-write-article-in-20.html

Blogging requires a commitment to frequently generate new content.  In return, it offers forgiveness on length and formality.  When I discuss blogging with faculty, I caution that there is an expectation of at least 2 posts per month.  For faculty that are not familiar with the tone and style of blogging (short & conversational), the tips Jim offers in the link above can help them transition from the pressure of academic writing to the less demanding expectations of a blog.

RGB, not CMYK!

Take yourself up to the Image menu, go to Mode and make sure you are set to RGB mode.

Don’t save for web!

I learned to always use Photoshop’s Save for Web function when creating web graphics.  This allows you to compare the results of JPEG high resolution, vs medium resolution, vs GIF, vs PNG, etc. Turns out, GIF’s are better off if you just use Photoshop’s regular Save function. Maybe you could still use Save for Web to compare your possible outcomes, but if the decision is to go GIF, then cancel on out of there and use Save instead.

When to GIF

JPEG is for photos, and GIF is for illustrations. That is the logic I go by – but it’s always good to compare the two. Also, you can’t have transparency if you use JPEG, so that’s another factor.

A very brief post, but there you have it.  I’m by no means an expert on the subject, but I’ve been plagued with messy GIF’s for the last few months and I was just shown how to miraculously clean them up – so I thought I would share! Thanks Chris!

M.

As Twitter’s growth and hype continue, it seems like everyone is getting in on the act — athletes, actors, politicians, and even educators are joining the virtual conversation. But what happens when that virtual conversation becomes the main event? How should presenters and educators prepare themselves for this reality? And what responsibilities do audience members have when thoughts shared amongst friends can suddenly become “trending topics?’ Join us for a conversation focused on the need to understand how the crowd in the cloud and the sage on the stage can coexist to create an environment of engagement, respect, and conversation, including first-hand observations of some recent “tweckling” incidents (some closer to home than others).

Presenters:

• Robin Smail, Disruptive Technologist, Penn State University

• Patti Fantaske, IT Specialist, Information Technology Services, Penn State University

• Lori Packer, Web Editor, University of Rochester

Notes:

How powerful is it? Of all the ppl who weren’t here last year, only one person hadn’t heard about “hella drop shadow” (aka the Great Keynote Meltdown of 2009).

Backchannel has always been around:

• now we have a megaphone
• no longer contained to geo-physical space
• not just public, it is pseudo permanent. It is findable.

Social media is forcing us to change how we do things.

Monitor the online and in room backchannel – speakers are partnering to watch each other’s back(channel)s.

The days of fifteen bullet points per slide are over: unless of course you are using an accepted new technology such as Google Wave, or Prezi.

Challenge for speakers is to be compelling enough for the audience to pay attention.

Are presentations many to many now?

There needs to be a referee – an ombudsperson – who stops and says there is a question on Twitter, please answer it.

Backchannel in the Classroom:

• Hotseat – participate via Twitter or Facebook, via laptop or mobile. Purdue University
• Harvard Question Answer
• Goal with software is to not require users to change their behaviour.

Backchannel can go bad on good speakers:  “spectacle at web 2.0 expo … from my perspective” (dannah boyd)

• dannah is a brilliant academic and sought after speaker who had a negative backchannel experience when presenting at web2.0 expo (she was the only academic speaker at the event and her format was much different than that of the non-academic speakers)

The same way we can tweak online ads from day to day, minute to minute to get the best performance possible … Conferences/events can use the backchannel to provide the best experience possible.  They can protect the speaker, act as a moderator, and can act on issues impacting the experience of the attendees. i.e. Mark is able to hear the wifi isn’t working and get it fixed.

With danah boyd, did the organizers fail? Putting the backchannel onscreen with the speaker – taking away the audiences choice whether to pay attention to the speaker or go into the backchannel. dannah also didn’t know the set up of the stage/backchannel screen until she got onto stage.  Is enough thought going into the physical and tech set up at events? Over and over speakers can’t see their slides, the screen is too dark, or in this case, the panelists are behind a podium and can’t be seen by the audience.  At eduweb09, the podium where my laptop was setup was about 20 metres from the screen where the slides were shown – to point to the slides, I had to jog across the stage and talk and point, and then jog back across to click forward to the next slide.  Could have been improved if screen and podium were closer to each other, or if a laser pointer had been provided, or if the speaker had a remote control clicker.

As a speaker, I have a choice to be scared or to take control and own (the backchannel).

The audience is the paying customer.

Rule with radio, television is that when it goes south – you end it. No matter how long the session is supposed to be. Used to be at you walked out, now people enjoy watching the crash too much to look away.

My take from hella drop shadow at #heweb09 was that the speaker and his content did not match the audience.  Maybe he was a poor selection, or maybe (definitely) he was poorly prepared (for us).  It is critical to know who you are talking to – what they know, what are they interested in, what’s their background. That said, was there any value in leaving the speaker on stage? He couldn’t be heard, his slides were sloppy and unprofessional, and his content was out of date and self-driven.  I’ve never taken a speaker off stage, but I’ve definitely considered it and watched the backchannel and audience for cues that things were headed South.  Would I have the guts to stand up and end a presentation if it were of no value to the audience and damaging to the speaker? I hope so – but I haven’t yet.

Above: The Bootlegger Fan Page if you aren’t a fan …

Take a look at the display picture.  It is very simple, but the spacing between the photo of the models, and the brand creative below the photo, makes it seem like Bootlegger has managed to earn themselves two display images instead of one.  Because Facebook has a white background – all you’ve got to do is throw in some white spacing and fake it.

Below: The Bootlegger Fan Page if you are a fan …

Here’s what’s going on: Facebook is checking to see whether each visitor is a Facebook Fan of Bootlegger.  If they are a fan, then they are shown specific content.  If they are not a fan, they are shown completely different content.

I think this is really effective! What could be more clear than the giant LIKE with a big blue arrow.  It is also very easy to do …

A few more screenshots:

Above: The contest landing page for Bootlegger’s become a fan and win a $500 shopping spree contest.

Below: The email campaign sent out to Bootlegger’s customer database, promoting the shopping spree contest.