DISQUS

Also, the other reason we created PodCamp was because we didn't want to have to travel to the West Coast for every single podcasting event back then :)

Inspire action by taking action yourself. Less noise, more signal - as the Warcraft crowd says, less QQ, more pewpew. Do. Act. Create. At worst you'll get a learning experience. At best, you'll create the Next Big Thing.

Here is how you determine social media's ROI:

"How did you hear about us?" or "What made you purchase today?"

If the answer is never any of the social media channels, then you're wasting your time.

I have the Bose headsets - they do exactly the same thing. The best noise suppression you'll get is from the foam in ear buds from Etymotic or Sennheiser - these do block almost all ambient sound, making them perfect for airplanes and exceptionally dangerous for being mindful of your environment.

You should be able to A/B test fairly easily, then. Here's Brand A without social media, here's Brand A with social media. Here's the conversion rate, the funnel, and at the end of the day, social media delivered X% increase in sales.

Thanks for the writeup, Lon! I'd also recommend uber-economist @mesimos of e-Forecasting. She's wicked smart at the econ stuff as well!

Microfamous is a contradiction in terms. You are famous, or you are not. It's really a binary thing to me.

Famous in the truest sense means you have serious logistical issues. You need executive protection services, fraud and identity theft protection, and a whole host of things that come from a lot of people liking you, and a decent number of people angry and bitter enough to resent you or actively wish you harm.

If you don't need executive protection services, if you can show your face in public without getting mobbed, then you're not famous.

And for most people, that's probably a good thing, myself included.

Best wishes and condolences to your family. Knowing your religious beliefs, she'll soon be in better hands than our mortal ones.

On this I'll say you're wrong, sir. It is exactly during those times, those trials when everything IS going wrong that you find out who has the superhero powers - the greatest one of which is to keep going in the face of adversity. The worst of times can and should bring out the best in us.

What makes superheroes great is that they have powers that would corrupt a normal person. They manage, even with incredible power and temptation, to stay true to what they believe in. Superman could rule the world easily but chooses not to.

It's easy to look like a hero when life is good, the economy is sound, the world is sprinting. It's when all the above is opposite that you can truly shine.

We are always superheroes. We are always great. Whether we choose to live up to our potential is up to us.

One of my teachers, Stephen K. Hayes, often says that people like that are a backhanded compliment - you've increase in importance enough to be worth the time of some poor schmuck. If you never have to deal with stupidity, you're probably not important enough. So congratulations!

Christmas music!

I have a video from MarketingProfs - the session right before yours, actually - talking about prerequisites of social media. Search comes BEFORE social.

Watch the video on Marketing Over Coffee!

I did have to call bullshit on a speaking gig in Boston recently, on the paid thing. They said, oh, we're running on a tight budget, we can't afford to pay, but we can comp an admission ticket - and the tickets for the gig are $2,199. I'm sorry, but if you're charging over $1K for tickets, you have more than enough room for speaking fees. We did all of PodCamp Boston at a kick ass, first class venue, WITH some food and a party, for $35,000 TOTAL, for 450 people, and managed just $50 per person.

I bank with a credit union for these exact reasons - plus a whole slew of features and benefits that are free, free, free, like Internet home banking, bill pay online, etc. When I call my credit union during business hours, I get a human being after just one menu selection, and when I walk into my credit union's branch, the teller knows me by name.

Numbers matter in aggregate. They measure trends. Look at 7 and 30 day moving averages and you'll know whether your work is successful or not.

And hey, I'll be there too. 2 Chris' for the price of half of one!

More on this:

http://www.christopherspenn.com/2008/08/27/why-...

There's also one other aspect that Chris Brogan missed in his post, one of the "secret sauces" of PodCamp:

Strive to get at least 50% of the attendees to be people who are NOT currently involved in new media or social media.

New people are the lifeblood of PodCamp and what keeps it from becoming a clique or a club of people talking about talking. New people bring new ideas, new problems to solve, new solutions to create, and new inside jokes.

Keep it local. The community you build at a PodCamp endures.

How do you do that? Marketing. That's one other area that's not on the list. Start a PodCamp at LEAST 90 days out so that you have time for marketing, press releases, direct mail, blogs, etc. to all reach the people in your local geographic area.

There are 6 rules which govern what may or may not be called a PodCamp. If your planned event meets all 6 and accepts the terms in the PodCamp Foundation License, you can call it a PodCamp.

1. All attendees must be treated equally. Everyone is a rockstar.
2. All content created must be released under a Creative Commons license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/
3. All attendees must be allowed to participate. (subject to limitations of physical space, of course)
4. All sessions must obey the Law of 2 Feet - if you're not getting what you want out of the session, you can and should walk out and do something else. It's not like you have to get your money's worth!
5. The event must be new-media focused - blogging, podcasting, video on the net.
6. The financials of a PodCamp must be fully disclosed in an open ledger, except for any donor/sponsor who wishes to remain anonymous.

Have a major financial crisis and be the financial guy in social media ;)

Seriously - become an expert in your niche.

MarketingProfs Digital Marketing Mixer dashboard:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/financialaidpodcas...

Depends on the conference. I would link in Eventful RSS feeds, Upcoming.org to see who's posting on it there. Put the conference in Twitter search to pull mentions of it, pull hashtags, add in the feeds and streams of speakers and keynotes who will be presenting to see what they have to say, grab your own network updates from LinkedIn via RSS to see if any of your contacts are also going, put an expense tracker widget there so you remember to do that... the beat goes on.

Segmentation.

Mass customization.

Prediction.

That's what is next.

Because the wider your net, the greater your opportunities.

A large bank in California hit me up on Facebook on Wednesday. Their student loan provider went out of business. A friend of a friend referred them to me.

Deal signed. Value: quite large (under NDA as to exact amount, but it's more than you and I will make in salary for a few years).

Cost? Only the cost of maintaining the net.

Welcome to social arbitrage. This, by the way, is so old that it's taught to high school students in elite private schools. I had a chat with a girl at a private elite academy in Massachusetts who has formal lessons in power brokering. It's why her family remains in the elite class.