MEIEA Conference Recap

Several months ago, I was asked to moderate a panel at the MEIEA Conference for Advanced Social Media Strategy. It was a great opportunity and I was thrilled to be asked to moderate. The conference coordinator asked me to put the panel together as well, and frankly, that was the hardest part! None of the panelists were compensated for their time beyond admission to the rest of the conference so imagine my surprise when all of my top candidates for the panel agreed to sit on it. Here they are:

Fran Vincent – Retro Island Productions/MySpace for Musicians
Katherine Stimson – Bennett Law Office/Suman Entertainment Group/Farm to Market Music
Janet Hagan – Social Deviants/Naxos of America
Tony Grotticelli – TOGA Entertainment

Each panelist I invited has exceptional experience in social media marketing. Fran even wrote MySpace for Musicians, and the 2nd edition is about to go to print! (Highly recommend the book for anyone looking to get into MySpace – she even has medium-advanced HTML code and actually EXPLAINS what it means in lamens terms. I do own the 1st edition and have used it for many projects).

The questions I had for the panelists were all questions that Janet and I receive on a nearly daily basis. You have profiles – now what? What are the tools that you use to maximize your time spent online? What is the next big thing?

Now what? – Have a plan. Know why you're on the networks. If your fans aren't there, why are you wasting your time? If your fans are there and want to interact with you (as evidenced by their timid interaction on your profile), then how do you interact with them? Every company should have a marketing plan in place – social media is no different.

Helpful tools? - Tools I use to help streamline my social media initiatives are:
Twitter: Hootsuite | Posterous | Bit.ly | Ad.ly
Facebook: Hootsuite | Mashable has great articles on what applications to add to your facebook page that will not only enhance content you post, but will keep fans coming back
MySpace: MySpace for Musicians (disclaimer: I know Fran & bought the book!)
Discovery: Search.Twitter.com | Technorati | Google | BlogCatalog
Blogs: Google Analytics | IceRocket.com | Digg | Delicious | StumbleUpon | Technorati

Bloggers you should follow: Check out Mashable's article

Video: MeFeedia | Vimeo | YouTube

NBT? - Location based applications! Enter Yelp, Hot Potato, and FourSquare. I personally am an avid FourSquare user, and there's nothing better than checking into a location and getting the inside scoop on what to do and not do at that location. I've gotten some pretty great food recommendations that way!

Other companies are starting to use location based applications to enhance their incentive programs. Others are using them to shout out to their fans to increase brand awareness. Still others are incorporating them into a larger strategy where fans communicate to each other at live events over those platforms, and exchanging pictures, comments and experiences at the live event with everyone at a location. Use your creativity to tap into the potential of social media, especially location based apps as they are the future for at least the next year.

What apps are you using? Have you jumped on the FourSquare/Yelp bandwagon yet? Is there anything out there that you're using?