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How to Market on the Social Web - Jackie Peters Interview
When I worked on the Mixergy Traffic Forum, I posted to Twitter and Facebook that tickets were available. Within minutes a few people bought tickets. That’s when I really started really caring about social media.
I’m a businessman, I don’t care that Twitter lets me tell you what I ate for breakfast. But if you show me how to use it grow my company, I’ll pay attention and take notes.
That’s why I called Jackie Peters. She’s the Founding Partner of Heavybag Media, an interactive marketing firm that helps companies like Sun connect with communities. We talked about her 5 pillars of marketing on the social web.
One of those pillars is to use online tools to listen to what people say about your brand. So I did that for “Mixergy” and “Andrew Warner” on Technorati, Google News, Summize, and FriendFeed.
Do you know of any other free services that will help me and others hear what people have to say? Add them to the comments.
Right click here to download my conversation with Jackie (36 minutes)
Following Up on Last Night’s Drinks 2.0 Event
Here’s a *raw* video of my interview with Sarah Lacy from last night’s Mixergy Drinks 2.0 event. It was shot by a guest on a little camera, while Tech Zulu filmed using their professional equipment. The audio and video on this version are pretty bad. When Tech Zulu posts the official version, I’ll add it here.
Click here to see pictures that I took:
Wm Marc Salsberry took even better pictures (naturally):
Thank you Tech Zulu for giving me 2 great new Mixergy signs! I need to do a better job of branding my events and the Tech Zulu guys helped by surprising me with a gift of two beautiful signs.
Here’s a video of Jerome Chang talking about he brought a Mixergy event to his company, BLANKSPACES.
And finally, Steve Morin, who co-hosted many of the most popular Mixergy events is leaving LA for Silicon Valley.
Mark Suster Interview From the Mixergy Funding Forum
At the Mixergy Funding Forum, one of TechZulu.com’s new reporters interviewed Mark Suster, Partner with GRP Partners. TechZulu.com posted the video today. Here it is:
LA’s Version of the TED Conference - Douglas Campbell Interview
There’s an event here in Los Angeles called Mindshare. It brings together an eclectic group of speakers which includes scientists, artists and philanthropists.
It was co-founded by Douglas Campbell, who led an eclectic life himself, which included a trip around the world in a tuxedo. Mindshare was partially insprired by the TED Conference, an event that’s notirously tough to get into. Douglas found his way into the conference a few years ago by volunteering. He gave away gift bags, which helped him get to know the conference’s attendees.
I met Douglas at a past Mixergy event and asked to interview him so I could learn how he puts together Mindshare. Here’s our recorded interview:
Right click here to download the 42 minute interview.
Why I didn’t email you about tomorrow’s Drinks 2.0 event
Tomorrow night, Mixergy is hosting the next Drinks 2.0 in Los Angeles. Here’s your online invitation.
When I started emailing the invitation last week, the guest list instantly jumped to 200 people. Most locations can’t handle such a big crowd, so I had to stop emailing. I just got word from our location host Blankspaces that they can accept a few more guests. If you want to come, RSVP now.
Food and drinks are provided by Originate Labs, our event host. Originate is flying their people in just for this event.
Also I just talked to Sarah Lacy by email. She’s going to be in LA for this event. I’ll see if I could interview her for Mixergy on TechZulu.com. If you have a copy of her new book, Once You’re Lucky, Twice You’re Good, bring it in and she’ll sign it.
The Local Startups that Robert Scoble Will Video
A few months ago, I told you that I asked Robert Scoble to shoot video for FastCompany.tv about some of the great startups that I meet at my Mixergy events. He agreed, so I asked anyone who was interested to submit their startup for consideration.
I got more applications than I could go through on my own and I didn’t want to flood Robert with requests, so I formed a 3-person committee to help me recommend startups for Robert to video. (I sent him our recommendations and the full list.) The three people are:
Steven Kan - Associate, Clearstone Venture Partners
One of the nice side effects of having Steven go through the list is that it he asked me for a few introductions to startups, which helped give some early-stage founders a helpful connection to Clearstone.
Tyler Crowley - Marketing & Strategy, Mahalo
Scott Metcalf - Senior Account Manager, MySQL
With their help, here are the 6 startups that Robert Scoble will interview when he’s in LA on July 17:
Understanding Widgets - Alex Funk Interview
At a recent Mixergy tech event, Alex Funk of digital-telepathy told me that he’s amazed that some companies don’t have a widget strategy. He’s been giving presentations about how companies can use widgets to grow, and some people don’t even know what a widget is, let alone how to create one for their users.
I got on the phone with him and asked him to teach me so I could blog about it. You can download a recording of our call below, but here are my notes.
A widget is anything that can be taken off of a web site and run somewhere else.
There are 3 kids of widgets:
- Self-expression widgets - enable people to show off who they are and what they’re passionate about. A good example is a flickr widget that lets people post their pictures.
- Ecommerce widgets - allow people to sell things from their sites. Amazon has a good example of that.
- Enhancement widgets - add functionality to a web site. Guestbook widgets are a popular example.
5 things we need to know about creating widgets:
1) You have to understand your customer - Southwest was able to get people to download and install Ding! a widget that does nothing but sell tickets because they knew their customers will go out of their way to find good deals.
2) Focus on just one thing - Think about how the YouTube video widget only lets you view video. You can’t upload videos. You can’t comment on videos. You can only do one thing. It’s tempting to add more features, but widgets need to be kept simple so users can figure them out instantly.
3) You don’t have to make your own - Alex suggests using Clearspring and/or Widgetbox to develop your widgets. They have the tools to make widget creation easy.
4) Everything will be widgetized - No matter what you’re working on, Alex says you can find a way to let others take it off your domain and put it anywhere they want. In the future, everything will be widgetized
5) Go cross-platform - Don’t limit your distribution. You should think about ways to let people interact with your product on other web sites, on different computer platforms (Mac/Windows/anything), on mobile phones, and anywhere else.
Right click to download a recording of our call (38 minutes)
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