6:15 am: I’ll be using a Live Blog app all day today to post updates from #harsmp.

7:12 am: Todd Carpenter – @tcar is up first… talking about “Brand You”

7:18 am: Todd is doing an excellent job of using transparency in the way it should be used. Illustrations of the various “names” people have called him on the Internet, both good and bad.

7:21 am: “How are people branding you?” – @tcar #harsmp analyzing social media will tell you.

7:21 am: Google alerts and vanity searches are reactive, not proactive.

7:22 am: “Dont tell me your a big deal. Be a big deal.” – @tcar #harsmp

7:25 am: Todd is really highlighting the fact that actions speak louder than words. His illustrations, although just words, are very visual. Like the way he’s managing his presentation. It’s true to HIS brand.

7:29 am: Yelp.com – @tcar is extolling the potential virtue of Yelp for REALTORS. I agree. #harsmp

7:32 am: He said “Yelp Strategery” for the Texas crowd.

7:33 am: “Think about how you can help other local businesses.” – @tcar #harsmp

7:34 am: “I’m kind of a big deal.” – @tcar #harsmp (excellent presentation)

7:51 am: Up next: Paul Chaney @pchaney “The Digital Handshake” focused on Facebook and Twitter.

8:01 am: What should you do about it? Paul says, “Start a conversation.”

8:03 am: “In social media, the mindset is more important than the toolset.” – @pchaney #harsmp (truth)

8:07 am: “Information has to be findable and shareable.” – @pchaney #harsmp

8:09 am: Paul is preaching today. He’s really “on” this morning. Enjoying it.

8:16 am: There’s a business profit benefit to creating a viral conversation. But you have to be willing to work the way the web works today. Staying entrenched in old marketing styles, to the exclusion of conversation media, is a mistake.

8:17 am: “Listen. Engage. Measure.” – @pchaney #harsmp

8:21 am: “Twitter is kind of the new email”

8:24 am: “BLOG = Better Listings On Google.”

8:28 am: “If this is JUST about ROI for you. You’re missing the point.” – @pchaney #harsmp

8:30 am: Paul’s tears at the end of his presentation over the human element of social media were real. Quite a touching moment. “it really is a matter of the heart.”

8:31 am: Paul’s presentation is at slideshare.net/pchaney

8:41 am: Up next: Ines Hegedus-Garcia from miamism.com talking about “Blogging On Steroids.”

9:03 am: “You need a plan.” – @Ines #harsmp re: blogging

9:07 am: Your blog should be a direct reflection of who you are and how you speak. If you’re casual, be casual. If you’re formal, be formal.

9:11 am: Pay attention to your demographics. Who have you sold to in the past? Are they similar? Can you identify a “type” that you can blog directly to?

9:14 am: “I try things on my blog for at least six months. If they aren’t converting, I stop.” – @Ines #harsmp

9:17 am: “The top right corner of your blog is you’re most valuable space. Make good use of it. Don’t waste it.”

9:30 am: “Marketing reports are universally the most clicked on posts.”

9:33 am: Wow. @Ines just mentioned twext.me #harsmp

9:38 am: I’m up next, so I won’t be live blogging it.

10:48 am: Max Pigman @maxpigman is up next talking about mobile technology.

10:56 am: “Mobile data will eclipse voice by 2011″ – @maxpigman #harsmp

11:00 am: “even if you don’t want or own an iPhone you need to know what your site looks like when viewed from an iPhone or iPod Touch. It represents 65% of mobile traffic”

11:06 am: The document camera @maxpigman uses to show his iPhone sceens rocks hard! #harsmp

11:15 am: Max does a great job of demoing the apps he recommends for the iPhone. Demoing Red Laser now.

11:18 am: Crowd is laughing at Max’s demo of an app that let’s you text and walk and see where you’re going.

11:21 am: .@maxhigman is demoing the Top Producer iPhone app. #harsmp

11:26 am: “they just developed a 2 TB SD card” – that’s a lot of photos

11:31 am: Glad he’s demoing how to use Windows on a Mac. The compatability myth needs to be busted.

11:32 am: Ines and I are talking about Flickr next.

12:27 pm: Ginger Wilcox @gingerw from smminstitute.com is up next to talk about video.

12:39 pm: “Don’t be afraid to make mistakes in your first videos. Everyone does” – @gingerw #harsmp

12:44 pm: Ginger is showing off her MANY video camera she uses. She may have a camera buying addiction.

12:49 pm: Make sure viewers can rate your “YouTube videos or they won’t be found and add text to them so Google can index them.”

12:51 pm: “Publish regularly, publish to more than one location, be human, listen” – good advice.

12:56 pm: I kinda liked the “tv show” feel of the video Ginger show of her property listing. Perhaps she’ll come link to it in the comments.

1:00 pm: “Take videos of local business owners talking about why their business is unique and what they love about their community.”

The post HAR Digital Media Spring Training – A Live Blog Experiment appeared first on Zeek Interactive.

I’m live blogging Paul Chaney‘s presentation at the HAR Digital Media Spring Training today. The description states -  “This session will teach you the basics of using Twitter, not just the “how,” but the “why” as well. You learn how to setup a Twitter account, the rules of the road, and ways to utilize Twitter to most effectively connect with customers and prospects and grow your business.”

9:26 am: “Twitter is anything you want it to be.” – @pchaney #harsmp

9:28 am: Setting up a Twitter account is simple, but pay attention to the sign up screens… especially the follow help screens that follow the sign up page.

9:30 am: “What’s happening? Is the new Twitter question. But you should ask, what does my community care about?” – @pchaney #harsmp

9:44 am: Something is not working quite right #harsmp

9:52 am: Testing again.

9:54 am: Wish this were working

9:55 am: Attempting to live blog is not working as hoped.

9:57 am: Live testing is so much fun. It’s now changing my blog title. – @pchaney #harsmp

11:18 am: Test

The post Twitter: It’s Not Just For the Birds – A Live Blog Experiment appeared first on Zeek Interactive.

I buy large portions of that logic and have experienced some of the benefit of that thinking myself. And I also believe this concept may work better for large organizations than it does for personal brands, at least for the near future. For example, as I look around the web at REALTORS© who are and have been successful in the social media space, they have one thing is common. They may have strong positions in numerous social media sites, but they have one or a small number of hubs around which all of their social media efforts revolve. It might look something like this.

Typically the hub is their blog, though some are moving their focus to Facebook Fan pages. And the tools they choose to use all work to support their hub-focused approach. A tool like Posterous, for example, is a form of a blog/social media site, but it also gives the user the ability to skin their Posterous blog with their own branding and “park” it at a subdomain of their main site, like blog.miamism.com. This appears to the viewer as just a section of the main Miamism site, and in effect it is, even though it’s hosted on a different service/server. The benefit of a site like Posterous is that when you create mobile content using the tools Posterous provides, and set up the automatic distribution options, it leads the viewers at the various distribution points, Twitter, Facebook, etc., directly back to your hub. SEO value, links, eyeballs, they’re all focused back on the hub.

Some tools don’t provide this opportunity. We’ll take a closer look in Part 2.

(This post is part of a presentation experiment at HAR Digital Media Spring Training for rookies.)

The post A Hub-Focused Approach To Evaluating Tools (Part 1) appeared first on Zeek Interactive.

In this diagram, content created by the user is sent out to Twitter and Facebook, but the viewer is lead away from the user’s main web presence. The tools are usually set in the context of a service or another small or niche social media site, like TokBox, or Qik. Neither TokBox nor Qik provide a way to use their tools in a way that easily points the user back to their main web presence. Often, this is a necessary. The tools that are provided are so unique that they can’t be replicated using a more hub-focused approach.

However, some “services” that lead the viewer away from the content creator’s main web presence and have minimal benefit, in my opinion. I believe a site like TweetLister falls into this category. In this case, the user actually recreates content they have already created somewhere else, a listing for a house, and then sets up the service to send messages out to their Twitter audience leading them back to TweetLister. Proponents argue that their is some SEO benefit from taking this approach, but at what cost?

Choosing the right tools.

The same result – leading people to your listings via Twitter – could easily be achieved using a tweet scheduling service (like Twuffer, Tweetlater or FutureTweets) and directing people back to the listing page on your site, where they can then see more of your content, search, etc.

So, in evaluating potential tools, unless the tool provides an extremely unique benefit, I’m going to lean toward the tool that keeps the focus on my main hub or hubs.

(This post is part of a presentation experiment at HAR Digital Media Spring Training for rookies.)

The post A Hub-Focused Approach To Evaluating Tools (Part 2) appeared first on Zeek Interactive.