SMOjoe.com

Build Social Capital with Smojoe
Wednesday, January 20, 2010
6:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m.
Centre for Social Innovation
215 Spadina Avenue, Suite 120

On this evening, I, Rob Campbell the Smojoe will demonstrate exactly how to build ‘Story Funnels to Buckstops’ and together with audience members we’ll work through the little known principles of article replication, blog and discussion forum marketing as I show off the methodology my firm uses to put clients on the first page of search engines, diminish negative press, and increase our clients’ overall findability.

Keri the Canadian Explorer on Canada Blog Friends

Earlier this month I got a chance to meet and share stories with Keri the Canadian Explorer in the back of the Starbucks at Queen and John.  We talked about the dream job of creating web videos for a living and what it takes to succeed in that business. Without question, @KeriCDN is going to try.

It wasn’t long after that meeting I profiled Keri the Canadian Explorer on Canada Blog Friends and was halfway through writing the article when she emailed me to tell me the late breaking news - she has just been contracted by Canoe.ca and Sun Media to travel to the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics and attend opening ceremonies and all subsequent athletic events as an official member of the press.  Its a dream come true, and in fact this was exactly Keri’s dream.

Connie Behr on HGTV home renovation series House Poor.

While flipping through TV channels on Saturday January 16th, I spotted Connie Behr as a guest star on a new HGTV show called House Poor.  It was quite a surprise because eight years ago I was madly in love with her.  Indeed, she broke my heart.

This elf girl is really smart and funny and quick - the best word to describe her is nimble.  So of course she drove the episode, especially at the end when the reactions came and the couple had to pretend they were seeing the renovations for the first time.  Her facial expressions were magnificent.

The simple fact that the host labeled the couple ‘Connie and Sebastian’, and put her name first, tells me that she drove the show. She’s an actress on the verge of another big career boom, and oh the fella she married is slightly younger blond cameraman whose TV credits include Kenny vs Spenny.  He’s horribly attractive blond hair blue eyed guy, beard and all.  But he’s shy and diminutive, and I hope he’s not too boring for her.

When the show ended I scanned the credits for more stalker details,  but that’s really not possible on Global TV anymore. The names go by too fast and are too small to be comprehensible.  But rest assured, the jilted lover in me is satisfied.  I can reflect back without emotion on my journey knowing she is happily married with at least one child and a house that she paid $440K and after renovations some of which were subsidized by a television company, the downstairs basement apartment will carry half the mortgage making their payments $1200 a month. More like fourteen hundred I imagine as they’ll have to give a break on the basement apartment in Toronto’s condo rich rental marketplace.

The Toronto Blog Girls package a Value Proposition

Here are the five founding members of the Toronto Blog Girls and if you click through the link you’ll end up on a Tumblr page that collects their blog feeds. They all have uniquely different styles and content themes. Where some write a lot of text, others post more images than sentences.

Casie Stewart - Daily blogger, social butterfly and Digital Marketing Girl at Much MTV

Carly-Anne Fairlie - Agent and owner/founder of the Fairlie Agency

Carol Zara - Geeks Lover, Digitally Blonde show, voted Top 3 “Women of Geek Culture” by G4TV

Lisa Charleyboy - Pop culture with an indigenous twist

KeriCDN - Video blogger and Canada’s biggest fan.

Look for these writers at all the hottest parties, wearing the latest fashions, trying new beauty products, reviewing spas, shopping and attending live theatre throughout the city of Toronto this summer.

My Brother’s Bicycle Helmet Video Camera Contraption

Yesterday my Brother Ian used a helmet camera, which a small video camera strapped to a bicycle helmet that’s strapped to his head, to record a rather brisk bike ride through suburban Seattle. This was just a test ride, so he could record a video and post it on Youtube and then send the link to the company that provided the camera. There were some earlier bugs that this ride proves are now fixed. Ian writes that he had to use super-glue to mount the camera to the base, and then shim us the base to my helmet so it wouldn’t move. He notes that It was inputting a lot of annoying noise because the device was moving around as he rode his bike.

Tomorrow, Ian will be riding in the mountains and viewers will see some really interesting scenery on Ian Campbells YouTube Channel. I did embed the video below, but its too slow and bogs down all of Smojoe.

Smojoe with City Events seminar, How to Market Events in Toronto went off smoothly at the Spoke Club on Weds Oct 14th , and we had an excellent audience that came to listen and take notes - twelve folks shared their own ideas in exchange for a free 375ml jar of pure Canadian honey.

The first half of the talk was Deb Lewis doing her thing, sharing her secrets and generally bringing the gathering together. At the very start of the night she polled the audience for a show of hands to determine that pretty much everyone in the crowd was somehow involved in event marketing.

Michael Braun the publisher of Bizbash.com was waiting in the audience and came forward to share his business model with everyone… He made it clear that his magazine is always willing to help promote and market events, and his specialty is of course publishing high quality articles with nice glossy photographs detailing the production of upscale parties.

Smojoe Gets Specific About The Path to Web Personality

One thing about my presentation, like my blog, is that it’s filled with good information, and lean on positive affirmation. I don’t butter up the crowd with useless success stories, or tell bogus tales of personal empowerment, because I have so much real information to communicate in such a short period of time. My talk is like a checklist of things to do to complete a long journey.

My speech comes complete with short anecdotes outlining mistakes, scams and things to avoid. The greatest payment I get is seeing the attendees scribbling notes and filling their pads with website URLS and insights and new marketing ideas for their own enterprises. One lady made three pages of notes!

At the end of the evening I walked away drunk with sore feet and a fist full of business cards, promises and compliments; I left a twenty seven dollar bar bill unpaid in the lounge and my half finished paperback novel in the gallery.

Attending the event was David Yohands, a gifted composer and audio production engineer, singer, songwriter and piano bar crooner. David is a class act and likes to laugh and listen and learn things about social media – we put out laptops together at the Dizzy gastro pub on Roncesvalles on Tuesday Oct 20th.  Despite the traffic problem and the loud construction outside, the restaurant is still my first choice for meetings because it has free wireless, a great burger, and commercial free classic rock from sattelite. It was an enjoyable meeting because nobody tried to sell anybody anything; we just shared ideas as we explored the audio tech keyword landscape together.

Everything Smojoe knows about how to market an event in Toronto will be revealed on Weds Oct 14th, 2009 starting at 6:00pm - 8:30pm inside the Spoke Club 600 King St W, Toronto.  Get tickets in advance here they’re cheaper.
https://secure.gettickets.ca/?event=15422

Deb Lewis has certainly outdone herself with this picture she has created to help promote the upcoming How to Market an Event in Toronto seminar at the Spoke Club. This is why Deb Lewis of City Events is one of the best event marketers in the city. Her Photoshop creation is strangely compelling and the bees represent buzz, but they might also represent the honey that I’ll be dispensing to reward audience participation.

Can Social Media Work for Event Marketers?

Social media is defined as using online networks to connect and share stories and information with friends. But its my opinion that effective social media marketing campaigns need time to generate interest before they can affect strangers outside the storyteller’s own sphere of influence.

Most marketers are disappointed with their results after they attempt to use online tools like Facebook and Twitter to sell tickets and ‘put bums in seats’ at actual live events. Nine times out of ten it just doesn’t work, and if you are starting from scratch then building short term solutions is doomed to failure.

Because online media lasts forever, good stories should be used to engineer audiences in long term scenarios.

Smojoe has lots of experience event marketing weird things like ballet movies for Empire Theatres, plays at Shaw Festival and comedy at Second City.  My moment of epiphany came while marketing the Miss Teen Canada-World pageant event this summer. That’s when I went on a quest to find and index all manner of online services that are built to capture event listings. That’s what I’ll be talking about on Weds. There are so many ways to shout out so many different types of messages, but unless you’re actually having conversations with your audience, it isn’t really true social media. Twitter followers and Facebook friends have real value to event marketers, but only if they are niche targeted and qualified to appreciate the messages.

Online Marketing is different than Social Media Marketing

When people ask to use my tools to help sell paid attendance to events, I generally caution that social media shouldn’t be used like that, and any money spent creating perishable stories will be wasted. Rather, I would digitally market their event using Craigslist and Kijiji.com and Eventful etc more on this Oct 14th * You can build widgets on Eventful.com that can be posted on your friends’ homepages.

How to use Social Media Marketing to Build Ready Audiences?

I would attend and document the artist’s event and make videos, take photos and write stories. Then I’d comb the media for the very best story hook. I’d certainly write about any celebrities that attended, detail the fight that happened outside, the forgery that was discovered, the food… whatever I’d combine the media in wonderful stories split across classic Smojoe story funnels that spiral down to the artist’s gallery and blog. I’d hope these destinations have proper conversion tools necessary to sell paintings or register subscribers so the artist’s work is better known and easier to market next time they host a live event.

Who are they? That’s what everyone wants to know. And what do they do, exactly?

Raymi the Minx and I have been talking about the way blogging has evolved for the last ten years and where it will go in the next decade.  She has been writing and posting her photos online since 2000, and has seen the trends. In the last nine years she has made quite a few friends, and has a thousand stories. She can tell you about all the brand managers, event marketers,  recruiters and link farms that have contacted her over the years, looking for blog love and trying to imagine new incentives. She can wax poetic about the history of banners and buttons and affiliate marketing - but after nine years of actually doing it, Raymi understands the utilitarian web empowers the user and offers hard rewards.

Zucket has lots of energy. She has championed this idea from the start and wrote about it today. I noticed when my traffic to Canada Blog Friends jumped this morning because of her link.

This is Dom from Queen West Girl which is still a bit of mystery right now… more on that later.

But what do they do exactly?

Just like an art movement, Raymi’s local Toronto blog movement is a chorus of well trafficked voices that can be solicited to showcase important messages, particularly to promote interesting events and tell ‘multiplayer’ local branded stories.

Specifically,

They share widgets that link them together like WebRing used to do, and perhaps display the most recent headlines from individual member blogs. Ritualized visits and comments and they bookmark each other’s blogs on StumbleUpon, Digg, Delicious and Reddit.  They are, everyday, a tweet-up and share pages on Flickr and songs on Last.fm and etc etc; over time the collective will evolve a signature style and be easily recognized on an international stage.

Toronto City Events + Smojoe Social Marketing are holding a special event With Raymi and Petite Fashionista

Raymi the Minx and Christa Jean of Petite Fashionista will share secrets at the Spoke Club on May 27th from 1:30 pm to 5:30 pm on the subject How To Be Famous On The Internet. Tickets are available here for $45 and there’s a mixer afterwards so people can finally meet Raymi and Christa and pose for photos for their blogs no doubt, that’s what I’ll be doing.