This week has been a pretty busy one for the team here at Serengeti Communications, especially those of us blogging here at Social Conversations about Social Media Marketing.  On Tuesday both Beth Harte and myself presented at the Social Media Plus conference in downtown Philadelphia.  It was a great conference full of a lot of really insightful presentations and questions from the audience.  Beth and I spoke on two different issues surrounding social media – B2B Marketing and How Search & Social Media Mix.  Then on Wednesday I had an interview with Cover Story on Webmaster Radio talking about our new social media measurement dashboard,  Social Snap, how we at Serengeti Communications approach building strategies for Social Media Marketing and also about my new book, Social Media Marketing:  Strategies for Engaging in Facebook, Twitter & Other Social Media.

We’d like to share our presentations with you and would love to hear your feedback or questions!

Social Media & Your B2B Marketing Mix

Wondering how social media marketing can fit into your marketing communications efforts for your B2B business? Beth Harte’s presentation gave attendees of Social Media Plus just want they needed to understand planning, expanding, executing and measuring when it comes to Social Media & B2B Business Marketing.

Social Media & Search Marketing, What’s the Link – How Can it Work For You?

Wondering what the link is between Social Media Marketing & Search Marketing? Well at the core, it’s about being found. Liana “Li” Evans’ Social Media Plus presentation gave attendees information about how social media marketing and search are related and tips on how to capitalize on it for their own online marketing and social media marketing success.

Social Media Strategies, Social Media Measuring Dashboards & Social Media Books

In this interview about Social Media Strategies & Tools, Li Evans discusses the release of the Social Media Marketing Book, plus a new social media strategy tool called Social Snap, a dashboard that gives organizations quick insights into the results of their Social Media marketing program in one place. Just hit the “play” button below or “play in popup” to get the podcast started.

 Social Media Measuring Dashboard & Strategies Interview on WebMasterRadio.fm [33:59m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Like I said… quite a busy week, but a lot of great conversations about Social Media Marketing!

While at Search Engine Strategies in New York last month, Web Pro News did a live interview with me about Social Media Marketing Strategies and what you need to figure into it when you are planning your own.  Abbie also asked me about social media sites that businesses can incorporate into their strategies beyond Facebook & Twitter.  While Facebook & Twitter might really seem like the tactic you should be implementing because they are the “hottest” things in social media right now, you might want to take a deeper look into forums, message boards and even location based social media communities like Foursquare as part of your strategy.

Last week I had the delightful opportunity to present on two panels at Search Engine Strategies in New York City (#sesny).  Beth Harte, my colleague here at Serengeti Communications presented as well, our John Lynch, also of Serengeti Communications was live blogging on both Endless Plain and Take It In House some of the great sessions the conference had to offer.

I get a lot of questions after the sessions, as does Beth, some of these questions pertain to certain aspects of our presentations and we just don’t have the time to bring up the slides again.  So in the effort of sharing some of our knowledge with our audience we like to upload some of our presentations to SlideShare to give you a bit of understanding around the conversations going on in Social Media Marketing.  You can get the basic of understanding from just the slides, but if you were present for the panels, likely these will make more sense and refresh your memory.

Social Media 101 – The Basics

This was a solo presentation I did about the basics of social media.  The who, the what, the how.  Very top level, very 101.  I presented this from the standpoint of the audience knowing that social media is out there, its hot, and its likely something a marketing department should know about.  There’s some do & don’t tips as well as things to keep in mind.  This basic presentation can give marketers an idea of just how involved developing a social media strategy is and it’s not something to step into lightly.

Speaking Geek:  Introducing Your Social Media Ideas to Your IT Department

On this panel it was all about speaking geek to your IT people.  The other panelists took the approach of search and ppc and discussing it to their IT departments.  My presentation was how to approach your IT team about the social media tactics you want to implement.  Bringing your IT department in early is key to success, they can tell you if what you want to do can be done or maybe help you find a work around.

Later this week Beth Harte will be placing her presentation out on slide share as well, and it will be available on our Endless Plain property.

First a Little About the “Ethics” of Ghost Tweeting….

While at Search Engine Strategies Chicago I was interviewed by Web Pro News about the panel that I spoke on about Social Media and the ethics of “ghost tweeting”.  A lot of people had a lot to say about Guy Kawasaki and his use of Twitter back in March when he was the keynote speaker at SES NYC, most of it was not good in the eyes of the search marketing experts speaking about his keynote.  Granted, some of his tactics could definitely be classified as spammy, but at the end of the day, Guy Kawasaki is a marketer.

That being said, was his “Ghost Tweeting” ethical?  I’m more of the opinion it’s not a question of ethics, its more of a question of disclosure and expectations.  Knowing how busy Guy Kawasaki really is, most people likely wouldn’t have expected him to not be running his Twitter account by himself.  He’s got staff, he’s got help.  The problem with the situation was that he wasn’t disclosing it until Dave Fleet called him out on that fact.  Was his audience in an uproar about it?  Yes, some were, some stopped following, but since the disclosure, he’s gained more followers.

At the end of the day, its about the relationship you want to make with your audience.  Are you forming personal relationships with your audience, do they expect that from you?  Or are you just disseminating information like Guy does with his account?  There’s no real interaction going on, so the expectations are much lower. So what’s ethical, what’s not?  You’re audience is actually the one that will decide.  If you are trying to “trick” them by employing other people to tweet for you in a personal way, it will show through eventually.

And Then About Measuring Your Social Media….

Abby then went on to ask me about Measuring Your Social Media Strategy because Serengeti Communications put on a session about doing just that at SES Chicago.  Measuring has to be a key fundamental part of any Social Media Strategy you implement.  Without measuring how do you know what’s successful and what isn’t working?  What are you wasting your time on or what should you dedicate more resources too?  Along with that is your agency – SEO, PPC, PR or Advertising – selling you a laundry list of social media tactics because they know how to set up those types of things or is it because there’s been significant research done and you are going to be actively engaging with people in those social media channels?

It’s certainly not easy, and there’s no cookie cutter approach!

A lot of companies are facing a crisis of conscience. Should I use an agency to ghost write my blogs, tweets and other content? Is that ethical?  If it’s great content does it matter if it wasn’t made by my employees? Will my audience care as long as it’s great content? What if I can’t build the same level of content internally?  Li Evans and her co-panelist Andy Beal, CEO of Trackur, will tackle these and other tough questions in their Ghost Blogging, Tweeting, Content Production – Ethical? Does It Matter? at SES Chicago at 4:30pm on Monday, December 7th 2009.

If a picture really is worth a thousand words then you don’t want to miss out on Li Evans’ panel at SES Chicago on Images & Optimization at 1:45pm on Monday December 7^th, 2009.  Join her and her co-panelists Grant Crowell, Senior Media Analyst at ReelSEO.com, and Mat Siltala, Founder of Dream Systems Media, as they discuss everything from image search to geo-tags to accessibility issues to alt attributes to file sizes to image-specific search engines.

Not sure where to begin with how to build a strategy in social media?  Wondering what the difference is between just marketing and engaging?  How about measuring the affects of  implementing your social media media strategy?  Well then if you have the time, come to New York City on November 5th, 2009!

Nathan Linnell, our Director of Analytics and myself (Liana Li Evans) are conducting a training on social media strategy and measurement for Search Engine Strategies on that day for the early morning session of the training day.

In this social media training we’re going to teach antendees all about what goes into building a social media strategy and what do you need to know and do to measurement everything involved from successes to failures and when do you just stop, re-tweak and start again.  You’ll get a lot of take aways and you should be able walk away and apply your knowledge you’ve acquired to your own online media strategies.

If you are interested in attending the Social Media Training in New York city check out the SES Training page about the entire training day.    If you can’t make the social media strategy and measurement training in New York and are interested in getting training for your organization, feel free to contact us!