June 2010

In preparation for tomorrow’s State of Social Media Marketing Vancouver event, here is a schedule of everything that’s happening.  To see full event information, click here.

Day 1

Program Agenda / Tuesday June 15, 2010

8:30 – 9:30 Keynote Presentation

THE STATE OF SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING:

WHERE WE ARE, WHERE WE’RE HEADED, & HOW TO LEVERAGE IT

Gillian Muessig, President & Co-Founder
SEOmoz Inc.

Social Media Marketing was the watchword of 2009. In 2010, as millions of new customers per month gain access to the web through pda cell phones, Mobile Media Marketing is taking center stage. And new life is being breathed into main street businesses with the increasing focus on local search. The convergence of local-social-mobile marketing is the Power Triumvirate of 2010. Today’s keynote covers the events that led us to this nexus, the deep databases that power it, and the process for developing strategies to help your business/clients thrive in it.

Gillian Muessig is the President and Co-Founder of SEOmoz, the web’s most recongnized and respected name in SEO tools, resources and community. Known as SEOmom throughout the industry, Gillian travels the world evangelizing for both the company and the search marketing industry. SEOmoz, Gillian and her partner, Rand Fishkin (son and CEO of SEOmoz) have been featured in publications such as Newsweek, NPR, and the NYTimes. Gillian is known to have hand on the pulse of the profession and has provided keynotes and sessions for conferences and seminars around the world.

Morning Refreshment Break  9:30 – 9:45 9:45 – 10:45: HOW STORIES AND SOCIAL MEDIA POWER ATB FINANCIAL’S ALBERTA ADVANTAGE Shawn Ohler – Director of External & Media Relations ATB Financial How ATB Financial used the web and social media to further its reputational and corporate social responsibility goals with a site called wearealberta.ca. Why it’s vital that companies don’t jump to social media “just because”, but rather use it in ways that solve actual business problems and align with their core values. Why attracting and growing an audience for your social media initiative can be trickier than deploying a great solution in the first place.  The six-figure budgets and external vendors are not compulsory if you have visionary leaders and creatives in-house.

Shawn Ohler is Director of External and Media Relations for ATB Financial, the largest Alberta financial institution. Before his move to corporate Canada three years ago, Shawn was an author and 15-year newspaper journalist at the Edmonton Journal and National Post. He is still at heart a storyteller who believes that ATB Financial’s ability and eagerness to tell resonant Alberta stories will help set the Edmonton-based bank apart in a hyper-competitive and commoditized industry.

10:45 – 12:15

CASE STUDY CHEVROLET ROAD TRIP: INFLUENCER ENGAGEMENT DURING THE 2010 OLYMPIC TORCH RELAY

Erin McConnell - President

Michael Allison - Consultant

Wilcox Group
General Motors of  Canada retained Wilcox Group to leverage the company’s 2010 Winter Games sponsorship as Official Vehicle Supplier, Wilcox Group engaged online influencers during the 106 day trek across the country and tied GM’s Chevrolet brand to the Olympic Games. We will use this case-study to explain why it is important to:

• Utilize personalities whenever possible instead of brand names
• Ensure all team members are familiar with social media tools
• Engage online influencers through unique experiences
• Utilize multimedia to maintain interest and drive traffic to online properties
• Integrate social media activity with traditional media relations
• Monitor brand mentions and influencer interactions for potential opportunities
• Create an online hub to house your message
• Maintain speedy turnaround for all content

Erin has led integrated strategies for companies in the mining, retail, telecommunications, manufacturing, energy, restaurant and legal sectors that span the communications spectrum. From corporate communications to media relations to internal communications and social media, Erin formulates bold, practical and strategic solutions for communications challenges by examining and considering all facets of an issue. With expertise in crisis communications planning and execution, Erin has helped some of the country’s best known companies to prepare for and navigate high-profile corporate issues. She is a highly-respected media trainer, providing key executives and spokespeople with the required skills to deliver their message during the most challenging situations. Erin has provided strategic counsel and project management to a number of clients, including BHP Billiton/EKATI Diamond Mine, TELUS, TD Canada Trust, Kinross Gold Corporation, Terasen Gas, Canada Safeway, Spectra Energy, Pacific Newspaper Group, the Cardiac Care Network of Ontario, the BC Cancer Foundation and Canaccord Capital Inc. Erin holds a degree from Simon Fraser University with a major in communications and a minor in publishing.

Michael provides communications support to clients including General Motors of Canada, KFC and Lesley Stowe. A deft communicator, Michael advises clients on fulsome approaches to social media that complement existing PR goals and strategies. He plays an integral role in creating employee social media policies, writing for the web, engaging online influencers, training clients how to use social media tools and building meaningful relationships. For General Motors of Canada, the official vehicle supplier of the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympic Games, Michael led an integrated social media strategy involving the Chevrolet brand for the duration of the 106-day torch relay. He developed and executed a Twitter and blog strategy for engaging influencers and assisted in generating multimedia content to cultivate an association between the client’s brand and the torch relay. This fully-integrated campaign garnered more than $500,000 in PR value. Michael holds a master’s degree in professional communication from Royal Roads University and a bachelor’s degree in political science from the University of Victoria.

Luncheon for Delegates & Speakers  12:15 – 1:00

1:00 – 2:00

CASE-STUDY SOCIAL MEDIA AND GOVERNMENT “YOU GOTTA BE” ONLINE

Christine Wood - Communications Director, Social Media and Online Communications

Public Affairs Bureau

• Hear how the provinical government is implementing social media strategies to engage and inform British Columbians by creating shareable and compelling content
• By reviewing real-life examples (H1N1) https://spring.gov.bc.ca/exchweb/bin.redir.asp?URL=http://www.gov.bc.ca/h1n1/
• BC Forest Fire Info and You Gotta Be here

https://spring.gov.bc.ca/exchweb/bin.redir.asp?URL=http://www.yougottabehere.com/

• Our campaign for the 2010 Winter Games and sharing our success stories, you will learn how to identify opportunities for your own public-sector organization, including practical advise to help you determine what channels and tactics will work best, and what kinds of resources you should expect to put into your social media efforts to achieve results

Christine is a seasoned communications specialist with more than 12 years experience in the private sector and 6 years in the public sector. Christine is passionate about strategic communications, collaboration and innovation. As the director for Social Media and Online Communications for the provincial government she now leads the development of strategic engagement using new media. At present, she is a member of a cross-government working group developing best practices for social media (web 2.0) and is implementing these strategies in her current role. She will be presenting on how the BC government is using social media to engage with the public, including lessons learned from the most recent campaign for the 2010 Winter Games “You Gotta Be Here.” The provincial government uses Wordpress for blogging.

Afternoon Refreshment Break  2:00 – 2:15 2:15 – 3:15

AVOIDING THE TRAIN WRECK: WHY SOME BIG BRANDS WENT OFF THE RAILS, & HOW YOU CAN STAY ON TRACK

Rob Cottingham - Principal

Social Signal

Learn from the mistakes of others, and avoid social media pitfalls! Looking at case studies from high-profile face-plants, we’ll help keep you on the straight and not-too-narrow.

Find out…

• How the CEO of an internationally-known chain humiliated himself and his company by using a fake online identity to trash a competitor
• Why failing to disclose they were backing a blog left both a PR firm and their department-store client wiping egg off their faces
• How a delay in responding to online customer complaints cost a widely-respected brand untold damages to their flagship product’s repuatation From honesty to transparency to resourcing, learn simple principles that can keep you upright – and spell the difference between understandable missteps and painful pratfalls.

For 20 years, Social Signal president Rob Cottingham has worked with senior strategic levels of government, business and advocacy organizations to help them engage with audiences – in both the digital and offline worlds. Pioneering in the online arena comes naturally to Rob, who launched his first web site in 1995. He built one of the earliest party leadership candidate web sites in Canada , launched the country’s first online political game, and oversaw the creation of anambitious anti-tobacco website targeted to youth years before similar efforts became ubiquitous. He launched the ground-breaking Confeederation.ca site during the 2005-06 federal election, garnering national media attention for a service that aggregated blog posts from candidates across the country. Rob believes strongly in sharing his skills and knowledge. An engaging and entertaining presenter, Rob has provided training and facilitation to government departments, political parties and conferences on everything from basic Internet skills to online advocacy. Rob maintains a long-running blog on technology and public affairs at RobCottingham.ca. He draws the popular Noise to Signal web cartoon, has been a regular freelance contributor to CBC Radio and performs in a variety of venues as a standup comic.

3:15 – 4:15

ON BEYOND PRESS RELEASES - ADVANCED LINK BUILDING

Gillian Muessig, President & Co-Founder
SEOmoz Inc.

Link building the most difficult, tedious task of SEO. And now that buying links is non longer an effective link building method, link building has become very expensive indeed. This session will give you some inside secrets to link building. From strategy to implementation, you’ll come away with a task list you can begin to use as soon as you step back into your office that will build high power links to your website and keep them coming over the long term.

• Linking building basics – what’s good, what’s not, link valuation methodology and tools
• Linking business strategy  – how many links do you need? How often do you need new ones? Where should they come from?
• Managing expectations – What will it cost? How long will it take?
• Getting ready – building pages with the correct keywords
• Getting down to business – making strategy alliances, asking for links, creating content that deserves links, promoting your content, secret link sources, tools to make your link building life better

4:15 – 5:15 TWITTER, FACEBOOK, BLOGS AND WIKIS: HOW TO USE THE NEWEST SOCIAL MEDIA TOOLS TO FOSTER INNOVATION & CHANGE

Kevin Grandia - New Media Director

Hoggan & Associates

You will learn how to use various social media technologies to build communities, both internally and externally. Through these technologies, you will learn how they have driven internal innovation and internal sourcing of subject matter expertise to create external changes. You will also gain an understanding of why this change in communications and hierarchy is so important to the changing nature of employees and the organization’s demographics. In this session, you will hear how to overcome the challenges of implementing tools such as: Twitter, Facebook, Blogs and Wikis Niche tools such as Yammer, Laconica   Finally, you will learn how all these tools can allow your organization to turn information and knowledge with the right resources at the right time

Kevin Grandia has over ten years of experience in communications. Over the last four years Kevin has focused entirely on social media and online media. Kevin is known internationally for his award-winning expertise in social media marketing, new media public relations, blogging, search engine optimization and online reputation management. Since joining Hoggan as the Director of Hoggan’s Social Media practice, Kevin has managed DeSmogBlog, which was named one of the Top 50 “Eco-Blogs” in the world by the Times of London. In 2007, DeSmogBlog won a “Leadership in Communications” award from the Canadian Publis Relations Society – Vancouver Chapter. Kevin is the co-founder of the Vote For Environment online campaign that was nomited in 2009 for a World Summit Award, an international recognition of the world’s best e-Content and innovative ICT applications.

Day 2

Program Agenda / Wednesday June 16, 2010

8:30 - 9:30 Keynote Presentation

ACCELERATING YOUR CORPORATE REPUTATION THROUGH CORPORATE BLOGGING, TWITTER, & OTHER DIGITAL PLATFORMS

Adam Killiam - Internet & Social Media Marketing Specialist

It can be difficult to establish a solid online presence. Maintaining a large social network can often seem like an impossible task or simply too much to handle and, in many situations, it becomes completely impersonal, doing more damage to your reputation than good. Successful organizations manage their corporate and product reputations using social media and other Web 2.0 tools. During this presentation, we will discuss:

• What is the basic strategy that builds value using social media?
• How can an organization use social media to increase business?
• How do you determine the communities you should address?
• How can social media help your Web site?
• How does social media form the “other half” of “normal” Web site marketing?
• How can social media work to build brand?

Adam Killam helps businesses get more traffic, more leads, and more sales using the web. An Internet Marketing & Social Media Marketing specialist by trade, he works with Vancouver companies to help them make their online presence profitable & to keep them competitive online. Since the age of 13, Adam has watched the web grow from a geeky past time to a main stream sales and marketing machine that has changed the way people do business. His career passion is helping people efficiently use the web to make a profit.

Morning Refreshment Break  9:30 – 9:45 9:45 – 10:45 WHEN COMMUNITY FLOATS YOUR BOAT

David Alston - Vice-President Marketing

Radian6

What does social media really mean to your organization?  It’s not a another channel for blasting messages or a cheap way to get eyeballs and click-throughs.  It actually is a way to find your community – the people who are as passionate about your “raison d’être” as you are. But is your organization listening to your community?  Is it engaging with them, learning from them, helping them, sharing their content?  Does your brand live within its community or does it still look over the wall at “the audience”?
David will challenge your thinking around what defines “marketing” in the age of the connected consumer. Their expectations of brands have changed. They hope you want a relationship. They want to deal with people not logos, both accessible and transparent. They want brands to line up for them, not the other way around. They want something different, and they want it now.
Find out how to transform your company into one where community is its biggest asset.

David Alston Vice President of Marketing & Community at social media monitoring solution company, Radian6. David’s focus at Radian6 is building the firm’s brand internationally through the use of social media monitoring, outreach and engagement. David has also become a featured speaker and panelist at a number of new marketing, blogging and social media events as a guide to how brands should be listening to consumer generated media online. As one of Twitter’s most followed CMO’s, David takes his interactive style of marketing to every speaking engagement – listening, learning and engaging with the audience. You can follow David on Twitter at @davidalston David blogs at TweetPR.

10:45 – 11:45

SOCIAL MEDIA IS NOTHING WITHOUT CONVERSATIONS

Chris Goward - CEO

WiderFunnel Marketing Optimization

Social Media can be a powerful tool for generating interest in your brand, but what do you do once the visitors arrive on your site? Does your site deliver a “sticky” and persuasive experience?

In this session, you will discover:

• The ways your website is failing to convert visitors
• Examples of how to lift conversion rates by up to 290%
• How to apply a continuous improvement process to your business

Chris Goward is the leading expert in applied Marketing Optimization and is Co-Founder and CEO of WiderFunnel Marketing Optimization. His Conversion Optimization methods using A/B and multivariate testing have helped clients improve their website lead generation and sales rates by up to 404% for clients such as eBay, Epson, BabyAge.com, SAP, Electronic Arts, Outrigger Hotels, Google and many more. His WiderFunnel LIFT Model™ is taught at the University of Eastern Michigan Conversion Optimization program. Chris is a globally recognized speaker at conferences like PubCon, SMX, and IMC. Chris was the “highest rated speaker” at SMX Search Analytics and IMC workshops. His work has been published in Marketing Sherpa, Search Engine Watch, the Google blog, Search Engine Marketing Journal and DM News. You’ll find him at http://widerfunnel.com/chrisgoward

Luncheon for Delegates & Speakers  11:45 – 12:45 12:45 – 1:45 THE SOCIALLY POWERED ENTERPRISE

Eric Weaver - Account Director & Digital Strategist

Tribal DDB Canada

Social channels and tools offer businesses the unprecedented ability to transform both their market offering and their operations. But how…and why? In The Socially-Powered Enterprise, social marketing strategist Eric Weaver will explain how businesses can adapt to redefine and improve their relationship with their customers. The presentation, aimed at VPs and directors of marketing, HR managers, and line-of-business managers, will discuss:

• Which trends are influencing preference and impact revenue at the moment?
• What is the value of social channels and tools both internally as well as externally?
• Is there a monetary benefit to socializing my business?
• How can these tools be integrated into the organization’s overall  value chain? What are the benefits they bring?
• How can collaboration, responsiveness, engagement, transparency, awareness and sales conversion be improved?
• Is additional staffing required? What kind of talent should I look for? How do I govern employees active socially?Attendees will walk away with several suggestions on socializing their enterprise, trumping the competition and improving their connection with their customers and prospects.

Eric Weaver is a veteran marketer who has helped drive awareness, revenue and loyalty for household brands across North America . As one of the very first digital marketers, over his 18-year career Eric has helped firms like Brita, Clorox, De Beers, eBay, Ford, GE, Johnson & Johnson, Kraft Foods, Lincoln, Mattel, the Mayo Clinic, Procter & Gamble, RCA, the US Postal Service, and the Clinton Administration build and extend their brands online.
Eric’s teams have launched the Lincoln Navigator, the BMW MINI, Ultra Cascade, the Lincoln LS, Mercury Sable, and Sebastian hair-care products. Joining Tribal DDB in 2009, Eric now focuses primarily on social marketing, helping companies understand ongoing shifts in culture, commerce and media. Most recently, he has helped develop social marketing strategies and provided counsel to Microsoft, UPS, Starbucks , BC Hydro, the Government of Alberta, Puget Sound Energy, Nature’s Path Foods and Perry Ellis International. He also uses social media to build awareness for causes like clean water, renewable energy and local homelessness. Eric speaks regularly on social marketing and social good, and has been quoted in BusinessWeek, Fortune, Hoover ’s, AdAge, the National Review, the Seattle Times and the Washington Post. In 2009, he was awarded a Brand Leadership Award from the World Brand Congress. He graduated summa cum laude from Xavier University .

Afternoon Refreshment Break  1:45 – 2:00 2:00 – 3:00 WHAT OTHERS THINK OF YOU MATTERS: MANAGE & BOOST YOUR CORPORATE REPUTATION USING SOCIAL MEDIA

Wayne Hartrick - President & Chief Reputation Officer

Reputations Corporation

Social media has an important role in helping manage corporate reputation. But what is corporate reputation and how can it be quantified and measured. Can you set a goal for corporate reputation? How do you determine the role of social media in driving that goal? This presentation will propose answers to these questions through a review of case studies and a reputation management framework.

Wayne has been offering strategic counsel to clients in North America, Europe and Asia for more than 15 years. He has been instrumental in building two successful communications consulting firms, holds an APR (Accreditation in Public Relations), and is an accreditation examiner for the Canadian Public Relations Society. Wayne is a past member of the Vancouver City Planning Commission, past Chair of the Vancouver Blueway Task Force and sat on the Board of Directors of the Vancouver Maritime Museum . He also sat on the Board of Directors for the Port of Vancouver where he was Chair of the Communications Committee. An active participant in provincial and civic politics, Wayne acted as Campaign and Communications Chair on several successful campaigns and most recently acted as Communications Director for Vancouver Mayor Sam Sullivan. Wayne is a former member of the Board of Directors of the Nanitch Policy Society, a society dedicated to improving the economic and social wellbeing of individuals faced with disability. Wayne is also the Director of the Global Civic Policy Society (GCPS) and Homes for the Games (HFG). GCPS undertakes and funds research that supports the social, environmental and economic resilience of Canadian communities. HFG is non profit home stay program for Olympic visitors that directs its proceeds to helping solve homelessness in Vancouver . He spends his leisure time enjoying the BC outdoors, including boating and snowboarding.

3:00 – 4:00 SOCIAL MEDIA: TIPS TO AVOID IN A RISK MANAGEMENT NIGHTMARE

Mark Fancourt-Smith - Associate

Fasken Martineau

With the enormous opportunities that social media offer come considerable potential risks as well. Organizations are now finding they must address this conflict in order to use social media in ways that enhance the business but also protect it. What are the risks associated with social media? What are the blogging liabilities? This presentation will help you understand the emerging and evolving legal privacy and disclosure issues but also what can be done to mitigate the risks.

• Overview of privacy law as it pertains to social media
• Understanding the issue of control in the social media environment
• What are the risks of being transparent and open to your consumers and employees?
• Discuss the legal liabilities for material published on the web
• How to determine which social media tools and communities to monitor & how to effectively monitor
• What are other organizations doing to deal with privacy and disclosure issues?

Mark Fancourt-Smith is an associate in the firm’s Litigation and Dispute Resolution Group. He practices within a broad range of commercial disputes, including technology and intellectual property litigation, protection of trade secrets, breaches of fiduciary obligation, and fraud. He has particular experience with injunctions, trade-mark protection, mining disputes involving confidential information, and the area of preservation and discovery of electronic documents and records in complex litigation. Mark has appeared as counsel in the Supreme Court of British Columbia, the British Columbia Court of Appeal, and in the Federal Court.

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Groupon:  only 18 months old, yet already valued at over $1 billion.  It’s safe to say that this innovative concept is at the frontier of social media marketing initiatives – and it’s changing the way local businesses make a name for themselves and get customers through the door.  So, what’s the fuss about?

Groupon is an online service that provides you with a deal every day – one really good deal every day in each city it services (think 50% off at a nice restaurant and for Groupon, that’s a pretty average sort of deal) .  The premise is simple:  businesses offer a discount (group coupon) that then gets sent to every Groupon subscriber in their city via email.  All subscribers who are interested can purchase the business’ offering at a steeply discounted price.  The customers get a great deal, and the business gets a massive, instant boost in visibility – not to mention an increase in word-of-mouth advertising and the chance to wow a large audience with customer service.  Groupon makes its money by taking a small cut of the discount offered. The business makes money on each sale that Groupon generates and the end customer gets a coupon for the product or service in question. Win, win, win.

The Catch

The catch for customers is that they only get the massive discount if enough other people also buy the groupon on that day. This provides people with an incentive to share the business’ offer via Facebook, Twitter, and other social networks.

Groupon does a few things that conventional advertising does not.  First off, it offers direct and measurable exposure.  This is measured through the number of emails sent out (the total pool of subscribers in the city), and through the number of users who buy and redeem their groupon at the business itself.  Businesses love seeing the direct results of their investment in advertising, and groupon delivers in this regard.  Not only that, Groupon has detailed demographics of its subscribers, which it makes available to prospective advertisers:

Second, Groupon is available to advertisers at no upfront cost.  Not only does this separate Groupon from other methods of local advertising, but it makes it afforable to smaller businesses looking for some visibility.  Groupon makes money on each Groupon redeemed at the business, tying their best interests to that of the business (always a positive when looking at advertising).

How effective are these ads at generating repeat customers?  Groupon seems to think they’re pretty effective, and has several case studies of success stories.  They also state that 97% of advertisers saw an increase in business, and 90% want to launch another Groupon.

While it’s too early to tell just how instrumental Groupon is as part of a local business advertising strategy, its advantages – low cost, focused audience and measurable return – are all compelling reasons to enlist Groupon to increase local visibility.

If you’re a business owner who’s interested in finding out more about how Groupon works, then visit Grouponworks.com They have several handy videos you can watch to get a better understanding of how you can promote your business and make a buck at it in the process.

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