positive disruption by: Tom Martin | New Orleans based Social Media Consultant

Social Media Marketing Workshop Announced

Pretty excited to be announcing my first Social Media Marketing Workshop.

For some time now friends and associates have been asking when I'll create a special workshop specifically for small business owners and marketers in small companies. A workshop that is designed to give them the necessary information and insight into exactly how to make all of this social media work for their company.

Well, I'm happy to announced I finally finished it and I'd love to here what you think about the content we'll be covering. Did we get it all? Anything we left out? Just click the button below to see the registration page.

I'd love to have you join me... but if you can't, I'd sure appreciate it if you could tell a friend or two about this workshop. You can email it to them, or better yet -- just click the Facebook Send button below... yes, it's that easy and I'd be forever in your debt.

Oh, and one more thing... because we all like to give a gift... so if you tell a friend, be sure to tell them to use the discount code "Disruption" to save $50 off the price of the workshop. Just my way of saying thanks to you for being so kind as to share. And it's good for you too. But you or your friend have to register by May 5... so get cracking! Cheers.

How The Mobile Phone Is Changing Marketing

Last week I had the honor of chatting with the Social Media Club of Dallas about the role of mobile in the future of marketing. I promised I'd upload the deck and the sync'd audio of my talk for folks to share... and here it is.

Mobile Marketing | Mobile Content Creation

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Rather than discuss mobile stats or adoption rates, we spent the evening discussing a few key trends that I feel are leading to a bigger role for mobile both as content marketing tool and content consumption device.

Specifically, we talked about how mobile tools like the iPhone4 are really so much more than phones. They are full-fledged multi-media production studios that we all carry in our pocket every day.

We also reviewed numerous examples of consumers' ability to use their smart phone as a personal HUD (Heads Up Display) for life. Today's smart phone gives marketers the ability to push information that is presented in an easy to understand format that tomorrow's consumer is already being trained to want.

And lastly, we talked about technologies like QR (Quick Response Codes) Codes, AR (Augmented Reality) Markers and key tips for using both.

If you're not yet using or planning to leverage mobile marketing as a larger player in your 2011 marketing or 2012 marketing plans, you probably should. Mobile Marketing is the ultimate propinquity marketing tool because quite often, that mobile phone is the last item in the same hand that is about to grab the credit card that is going to be used to purchase your product or your competitor's.

Think about it. Watch the slidecast and then let me know what you think. After all, as I told the folks in Dallas, I don't have to be right, but I do have to be aware... because that's what my clients pay me for... so let me know if you agree, disagree or whatever with the points in the deck.

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When is a phone not a phone?

I remember it like it was yesterday. My three year old son sitting on my wife's lap in the doctor's exam room. The doctor explaining that now that my son was old enough to communicate we could finally end a three year mystery that had started at birth.

Today we'd find out if he could see in his right eye.

First they tested his good eye. He was moving right along the chart and then it happened.

The image to the left appeared. All of a sudden, he stopped. Said nothing. Just sat there. The doctor asked again, "What do you see?" Yet my son said nothing.

And then it dawned on me. "Son, do you see anything on the screen?" I asked.

"Yes" he replied.

"Well what is it?" I asked.

"I don't know." was the answer.

You see, my son had never seen such a device. The image above is of a rotary, desktop or tabletop phone. My three year old son had never seen such a device. He has only known a world in which phones were sleek, mobile or wireless.

As technology changes, so do people. We develop new new norms. We allow technology to change how we see and interact with our world. And that change, is important for we marketers to understand.

If you're in the Dallas area tonight, I'll be discussing that change at tonight's meeting of the Dallas Social Media Club.

Specifically, we'll be exploring how Mobile is changing our customer's lives. We'll talk about:

• How mobile is becoming the HUD (Heads Up Display) for life
• How mobile puts Hollywood in your back pocket
• The Encyclopedia Phontanica

If you're in Dallas, I'd love to see you. If not, I'll be sure to post up the preso some time next week for those of you that can't make it.

In the meantime, ask yourself if you honestly feel like you understand how tomorrow's customer views their mobile phone? Do they even think of it as a phone? Or like my son, have they changed their point of reference to an entirely new image?

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Content Rules - Thirsty Thursday of Knowledge

I had the pleasure last night of dining with my friend CC Chapman, co-author of Content Rules. He's in town to talk about content marketing at our local AMA luncheon today.

If you haven't yet picked up the book, do yourself a favor and do so today. Here, I'll make it easy -- you can buy Content Rules right here. [Amazon affiliate link]

But this post isn't about all the great ideas that CC and Ann share in the book, instead, it's about why brands, especially tourism or destination brands should be reaching out to content creators like CC.

CC arrived yesterday afternoon and it was a really nice day here in New Orleans. So he did like anyone who's never been to a new city would do on a nice day... he walked all over the French Quarter and a bit of the downtown. Only CC's not like every tourist or businessman in town... he's a content guy. So his walks include his camera.

As he said last night over dinner -- "I'm not sure which is going to have more fun, my camera or my belly."

So along his travels he takes a host of really cool pictures of  New Orleans and tags them all with keyword rich words that the New Orleans CVB should love. The entire set is titled "New Orleans Weekend" and a vast number of shots have a title "Walking the streets of New Orleans." On top of all of that... the shots are really well done as CC is an accomplished photographer. The only thing that would make it better for someone like the New Orleans CVB would be if the photographs were offered restriction free, but they are offered under a licese that would at least allow the tweeting of the set or individual photos in a CVB Twitter stream. 

And that's the point of reaching out to content creators -- regardless of how big or small their following is and inviting them to join you in your city. Social Media craves content, lots of it. But for many tourism marketers (hotel/restaurant/destination) budgets are tight and manpower limited. So why not harness the natural tendencies of folks like CC? Whether you simply pay attention when they're in town and then share the content they create or invite them to town on your dime with a hope that they'll create, you've got a really simple, cheap tool to help create awesome content that you can share with fans, followers and Google.

Think you might leverage this for your tourism destination, hotel or restaurant? If so, how would you approach it? See any downsides? Let me know... comment away, please.

UPDATE: Just back from CC's AMA NOLA talk -- he told a story about how he asked for restaurant rec'ds via Twitter, and only one restaurant in the whole city tweeted him back. Guess where he's having dinner tomorrow evening? And he mentioned the restaurant (GW Fins) by name in front of the entire crowd. He also asked if it was any good, to which the crowd assured him it was. Yes, just one more reason to engage creators like CC -- you might just get a free PR shout out to 70 locals and an additional shouout in any post trip blog post he writes (which he also indicated he'd be writing and including Fins).

Disclosure: GW Fins is a client of my social media markting firm - Converse Digital. But CC didn't know that until AFTER he booked his reservation and was actually surprised when I told him.

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Related articles

• Is Social Media Making It Cool To Be Square? - Thirsty Thursday of Knowledge (tommartin.typepad.com)
• Why Content & Curation is Critical to Business with @CC_Chapman [@InboundNow #14] (hubspot.com)
• Segmentation key to content marketing (mktg2bizexecs.wordpress.com)

Social Media & Content Marketing Strategies for Malpractice Insurance Providers

Last week I had the opportunity to address members of the PIAA Conference and talk a bit about how they might consider using Social Media, Content Marketing and Digital Marketing strategies in their marketing and sales cycles.

Social Media & Content Marketing Strategies for Malpractice Insurance Providers

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Primarily we talked about using Social Media to create leads, improve relationships and garner better search engine optimization on Google, Bing and other search engine sites.

I've also included the audio and sync'd it with the slides. It's 52 minutes in all, but if you give it a listen, do let me know your thoughts please.

Thanks again to the folks over at PIAA for the opportunity and such a wonderful experience.

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Do Your Customers Want a Second Date?

We hear a lot about Customer Relationship Management -- CRM -- but when's the last time you heard a keynote or workshop at a conference about Customer Service Recovery -- CSR? In fact, when I Googled "Customer Service Recovery" [using quotes] I got a whopping 37,500 results vs 9,270,000 for "Customer Relationship Management."

What's that say about the focus of companies and individuals today? We live in a "gotta make sales this quarter" kind of world but we're focusing all of our attention on long-term customer management while forgetting that the first step to any long-term relationship is getting the customer to agree to a second date.

Which begs the question... does your company have a "second date" strategy? Are you actively listening to your customer to hear or sense that you've made a bad first impression? Do you have processes in place to act on that information in real time so you can correct the first impression before you lose the chance? I'd love to hear what you've got to say.

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photo: By Nina Matthews Photography