Marketers Studio - David Berkowitz's Marketing Blog

Beyond Mobile Social's F-Words

Originally published in MediaPost's Social Media Insider

Is any form of mobile social media more viral than Cat Paint?
(Taken on Atlanta's MARTA mass transit this month)

Beyond Mobile Social's F-Words

Whenever mobile social media comes up in conversation, I tend to hear a lot of f-words. Hopefully they won't be censored here, as the ones I'm referring to are Foursquare and Facebook.

Perhaps I'm part of the problem. When I'm not writing about all the mobile check-in apps I use or what it's like to be a Foursquare Super Mayor, I'm making overblown claims about Facebook gaining a universal following thanks to growth in its mobile user base. The f-words play important roles, but mobile social media is much bigger.

To give a sense of how much bigger it is, below you'll find various forms of mobile social media that may be relevant when developing a marketing program. Perhaps mobile social media is part of the core idea, or it comes up specifically when assessing mobile or social media. However the plan comes together, the tools and tactics should come last, but understanding them provides a sense of what's possible.

Much of the information below has been adapted from a guide to mobile social media that I've been working on and has just been published today on 360i's blog. The guide has much more information overall, while I've added some color in here that you won't find in the official perspective.

Here are the mobile social media categories to consider:

Mobile extensions of online social networks: The largest social network, Facebook, not surprisingly has the most mobile users as well: well over 100 million. MySpace and other social networks have mobile extensions, such as optimized sites or apps, and many are ad-supported. In last week's column on Facebook, I mentioned "the mobile flip," where the ratio of mobile users will surpass online users. It will happen at different rates for different networks, and some networks may be spared the flip entirely, but social networks consume such a large share of mobile web pageviews (see more here) that it's largely a question of how soon it will happen.

Mobile-central social networks: MocoSpace, Mig33 and Peperonity are three social networks that launched on mobile devices and attract most of their users there. They tend to appeal to feature phone users and may specialize in reaching certain audience targets, such as MocoSpace with 70% of its 12 million members comprised of Hispanics and African-Americans. They also tend to be even more friendly to advertisers, as they need to stay competitive and can't rely entirely on coasting on their online revenues.

Location-based check-in services: Users check in to physical locations primarily through mobile applications. Foursquare and Gowalla tend to get a lot of the attention these days, often deservedly, even if they're far from achieving mass reach. A couple favorites of mine in particular include Whrrl, which centers on user recommendations, and SCVNGR, which can turn every location into a game.

Social gaming: Many mobile gaming applications are either built entirely on social functionality or rely heavily on social features. For instance, Words With Friends by developer Newtoy is an asynchronous form of Scrabble; it's part of a "With Friends" series that has recorded over 6.5 million downloads. Gaming company Ngmoco has developed a number of mobile social games where users derive in-game benefits by cooperating with each other. Social gaming is much better on the iPhone than other phones, and the iPhone 4's new gyroscope and enhanced display will only pad its lead before other devices catch up.

Mobile web-based sharing: Any mobile-optimized webpage can include various calls to action to share content and offers with friends. Mobile sharing is just one element of many to consider, though, as it only matters if you have a site designed for mobile devices in the first place. There's one other little hitch: you need to have content on your site that's worth sharing.

App-based sharing: Many applications utilize Facebook Connect to make it easy to share updates or photos directly through the social network. Apps will also often allow users to find and invite their friends through Facebook, Twitter and other networks. If your app includes certain features like photos or leaderboards for high scores, social integration is a must.

The fs are prominent in the list, but they're clearly not all there is to mobile social media. More categories will arise as well as the field evolves. It's a symbiotic relationship: Social needs mobile just as much as mobile needs social to thrive. The consumer demand for incorporating mobile and social together is already here.

Google Voice Voicemail Transcription Partially Useful, Unintentionally Hilarious

I recently gave Google Voice another shot. I was an early user that never used it much, partially because I didn't like my phone number much.

I checked it out again and paid $10 to switch my number to something more memorable. You can even search for number strings in your preferred area code, like any numbers with 1111 in it or some memorable sequence.

One of the benefits of Google Voice is voicemail transcription. I'm particularly bad about checking voicemail so I loved having this as an option. Here is the complete text of a voicemail I received on Friday:

Hi David, show look like early evening on Friday. Hope you guys are doing well. 
Wanted to catch up with you. Well, I'll try and I know, we're having tons getting, in reply to that 
and would love to try that dosomething with you guys so wanted to see what your schedules like 
the conclusion make that work, so give us a call. I'm going to make this my phone calls now 
and if you have a pretty wiped out. I think wemight just try to watch a movie later or something 
but but give me a try. And if you had left not getting. We directly and how that he says clear 
sense of times of might work of that and let me know, otherwisewe'll just talk to soon, okay. 
Take care bye bye.

As you can imagine, the person who left the message was older than an infant, and he's even a college professor. Some of the message sounds nothing at all like the transcription. I did at least get the gist of it, so it served some benefit. It's just not exactly a personal secretary yet.

How Facebook Gets to 7 Billion

Below's my latest column from MediaPost. Clearly it's not for everyone. It's funny, as I'm a day late in posting this while in Atlanta, the tweets have been positive (those I've seen at least) while the comments are much more negative. My next column will be a response to those comments, as I want to hear more from them - not more negative feedback (though that comes with the territory) but more on WHY they are so adamantly opposed to social media while reading the Social Media Insider.

Separately, you can read my review of The Facebook Effect here, or just scroll on down to the next post if you're on the homepage.

 Photo from Gotham Media Ventures: Adam Eland, me, Jerry Spiegel, David Kirkpatrick, Ian Spalter (photo credit: Valerie Milkins, RGA)

On to the column:

How Facebook Gets to 7 Billion

"Ubiquity" was one word that struck me when David Kirkpatrick, author of "The Facebook Effect," kept mentioning it at a Gotham Media Ventures breakfast panel last week. The other was "China."

Those were the answers. The questions, if you summon Johnny Carson's Carnac, were, respectively, "What is Facebook's goal?" and "What is Facebook's biggest obstacle in achieving its goal?"

China may be Facebook's single biggest obstacle in growing from 500 million users to 7 billion and beyond as it tries to gain adoption by every single person on the planet. Yet there's a bigger obstacle collectively: the other 4 billion people who are neither currently using Facebook nor living in China. How will Facebook colonize the rest of the world?

The question came up on the panel, and I had an answer. By the time Facebook has exhausted other courses of pursuing growth, it's going to go for its most ambitious marketing push yet: Facebook will give every person alive age 13 and up a phone.

Facebook will need to do this once its growth levels off, as it reaches somewhere between 1 and 2 billion users. Once it has signed up between 15%  to 30% of the world's population, one of the most ambitious companies the world has known will need the mother of all stimulus packages. Here's how the phone will serve its ultimate mission:

Doing more with Zero: Facebook already has a service called Zero(0.facebook.com). Launched with more than 50 mobile carriers worldwide last month, it allows consumers from Anguilla to Uganda to access a text-only version of Facebook without incurring data charges. Viewing photos incurs data costs, but for no charge at all, users can post status updates and comments, send and receive messages, view the News Feed, and write on friends' Walls. Partnering with carriers this way still will only reach mobile subscribers, which falls short of Facebook's ambition.

The mobile flip: While Facebook reports over 100 million users of its mobile services today compared to an estimated 500 million users overall, the ratio of online to mobile users will quickly flip, especially thanks to carrier partnerships. That flip is already happening elsewhere. For instance, Mixi, Japan's leading social network, has three-quarters of its users accessing it from mobile devices.

One mobile per child: One Laptop Per Child is already pursuing $99 tablets, and the concept of "one mobile per child" is being discussed in various pockets of the web. What would be the cost of getting some kind of mobile device running Facebook in the hands of everyone? That's the ultimate realization of Facebook's mission to "make the world more open and connected."

Voices that care: If Facebook pulled off the feat of finding a scalable way to get billions of Facebook-enabled phones out to the world, it would still need to figure out the phone part. Here's where the next piece of the puzzle fits in: Facebook acquires Skype to enable free calls among handset users. That's just the beginning, as Facebook will pioneer voice translation software to allow someone speaking Ndebele in Zimbabwe to communicate with a Mandarin speaker in China.

There are still countless questions as to how this would work, and the business model is hardly clear-cut. Yet at some point, Facebook's growth will slow and everyone will wonder what's next. For Apple, the answer was the iPod, and then the iPhone. For Google, it's Android. For Facebook, it will also be mobile, but with even greater ambitions. Mark Zuckerberg's one person who can make a goal like gaining top market share in China seem trifling compared to the bigger picture.

The Facebook Effect: Even More Fun Than Spending a Few Hours on Facebook

I had no interest in reading The Facebook Effect, the new book from David Kirkpatrick. I spend way too much time on Facebook as is, and when I'm not spending time on it, I'm working on a client's Facebook program or reading about all the latest news. Why would I want to read a book about the damn thing?

It turns out I had a very good reason: I was serving on a panel with him so I had to read the book in advance. If only everyone could find such a good excuse.

The real joy reading the book came from watching Mark Zuckerberg's revelation as the genius that he is, working with a few equally gifted youngsters and ultimately some very supportive older mentors to unleash Mark's vision on the world. It's inspiring, and truly amazing. Luck may have played a role, but what's more striking is how great decision making - from people who often had little experience making such decisions - played a tremendous role. It's not just people who built a somewhat better network and managed to get ahead; these were people who believed in a vision and had the brains and balls to carry it out. And several weren't even 20 when they started doing so.

Then there's the latter part of the book, which is very good and interesting, though not quite as inspiring. Kirkpatrick focused extensively on Facebook's approach to privacy - along with its missteps, and the development of its advertising-focused revenue model. These chapters felt a bit more like work, which is fine since I love my job, and if you find debates about privacy particularly touching maybe you'll like it more than me.

It's clearly written for a business audience. That's a shame in a sense, as it really could be two books - the version of it that's a riches to megariches tale of a kid pursuing his dreams, which would have much wider appeal and just about any Facebook user friend of mine would love it. Then there's the rest, and it's hard to recommend that too broadly. But readers of the blog should appreciate it.

And while I am publishing this an hour before sharing a stage (or a table) with Kirkpatric, I'd be just as glowing if I wasn't. It shouldn't have taken that much motivation to get me to read it, and with any luck you'll be a little less hesitant now. I actually read relatively few business books these days (while reading as much as ever in general) so I have to choose carefully, and this was well worth the time spent with it.

Over 100 Lessons from over 100 Events

 
If there's one thing I've learned from public speaking, it's that you always want to provide value to your listeners. Maybe that lesson alone is everything any speaker needs to know, but there are a few other things I've picked up.

Last September, I reached a milestone of speaking at 100 events as a panelist, moderator, or keynote speaker, and I've been working on a roundup of 100 lessons from the experience ever since. Rather than force it, I expanded and edited the list over time until I added them up and saw it crossed the 100+ mark. I'm sure there will be much more to add down the road.

I haven't followed all of these lessons every time, and there are thousands of things I have to learn. Please add your own thoughts in the comments. Some lessons below will be especially biased toward the media and technology events where I've spent the bulk of my time and may not apply universally. Still, I hope this is a useful reference, even if it is a work in progress.

And now, here are over 100 lessons for anyone who ever speaks at or actively participates at an event or conference:

Pitching the event

1. Follow instructions. As someone who has organized events for MediaPost and elsewhere, it's amazing how many speakers fail to fill out basic forms.
2. Have a webpage somewhere with your speaking experience and any relevant content. Mitch Joel has great advice on this. Include this link in relevant places, such as from your LinkedIn profile (where you get several links) or blog. (You can view my page here.)
3. Come up with a new angle for the agenda rather than trying to fit the previous show's agenda, especially if you're pitching early in the process. Some of the best speakers I selected offered ideas that were great for the event but hadn't occurred to me when planning it.
4. Offer up other great speakers, especially if you're proposing a panel. I often get requests to refer speakers for events that aren't a good fit for me at all, but I'll often know people who'd be perfect. Being a good resource can keep you top of mind.
5. Never pitch anyone as a guru. Just delete that word from your vocabulary. And make sure the speaker doesn't use it in their Twitter bio, unless they're the Dalai Lama (he avoids the term, so you definitely can).

Before the event

6. Always ask yourself how you'll provide value to the event and its attendees. Ask yourself when accepting an invite or making a pitch, when you're preparing, and right before you speak.
7. On that note, accept some events when you'll be providing far more value than you're getting. There are certain events that you'll be dying to just get into even if it's to hold another speaker's cue cards. There are others where you won't find as much professional value but where you can offer something to the audience. Do some of the latter as they're often the most rewarding.
8. Triple-check your schedule and any remotely foreseeable conflicts before accepting anything. And then check again.
9. Events often get clustered together, sometimes with multiple events on the same day. Make sure you can give enough time to each of the multiple appearances when it happens.
10. Especially as you're starting out, take any kind of role the event organizer will use you for. Be the bench player, get in there, and exceed expectations. As they say in the theater, there are no small parts.
11. Stretch, if you know you can deliver. Remember the 'provide value' rule, but you rarely need to be the world's foremost expert before you accept an invitation.
12. Check to see if the event's listed on Facebook or LinkedIn (assuming it's a public event) and RSVP. For event organizers, that's always appreciated, and they'll notice.
13. If the public event isn't listed on those sites, or on emerging sites like Plancast or HotPotato that may not be on the planners' radar, list the event. Alternatively, let the organizers know of opportunities like those for them to promote their event.
14. Assuming you're active in at least one social channel - LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, blogs - mention that you're going.
15. Review Twitter the day before, or even earlier if the event has some buzz and/or an active community of participants. Get a sense of who these people are and what they're saying. You can search blogs and other forums, but Twitter's where most of the relevant conversation will be today.
16. If you're giving a presentation, work in some of those people and comments that you come across. See slide 2 of this talk I gave to the Rochester AMA for one way to do this that took five minutes (even if I spent awhile longer getting to know those attendees virtually).
17. Look for the event's Twitter hashtag to further do some research, and to join the community when you tweet anything about it. If it's not clear, offer one up, ask the event organizer, or ask attendees on Twitter what they plan on using.
18. Stalk people on LinkedIn and Facebook, especially if you're on a panel, but you can also stalk other speakers. You don't have to connect with them in advance (and you shouldn't connect unless you really know them), but it's a good ice breaker when you discover know people in common.
19. Buy an adapter that converts one outlet into three. They're $5, fit in your pocket, and often come in handy when power's tight. Usually the power outlets are fine on stage, but it's another story if you're making last minute edits the day of the event.
20. Don't worry too much about the time you're scheduled to speak. At great events, people tend to stick around for all the content.
21. If you're on a panel and the moderator sends questions, come up with a few bullets for how you'll answer them, and make sure you can answer the questions concisely.
22. Get rest beforehand.

At the event

23. Show up early.
24. You won't always have the option of starting on time. End on time, even if it means taking less time for yourself, and attendees and event organizers will love you.
25. Savor your preparation rituals. Before I speak, I always take a few minutes to myself - and hit the restroom.
26. Turn off all electronic devices before you're on. The exception is if you're moderating and monitoring Twitter for feedback or otherwise using gadgets to illustrate your talk.
27. When answering moderator or audience questions, numbered lists are awesome. Every speaker sounds smarter when they go, "This can play out three ways," or, "These are the four obstacles the industry needs to overcome." I'm not advocating being gimmicky or hokey, but if you can do it on the fly, it sounds like you really have a mastery of your material.
28. Keep a bottle of water handy.
29. Tweet that you're there.
30. Stick around after you're done.
31. Bring business cards. And when you think you have enough, pack more.
32. The experience is more important than the content. The audience's reaction to a good speaker is largely emotional. You don't have to cram in a ton of hard information like statistics to make it work.
33. Find people in the room to connect with from the stage, or at least one person. You want to make sure you're talking to the audience, and as long as you find a friendly face or two - especially when giving a solo talk - you can keep looking back in their direction for reassurance. Once you hook a few people, it's much easier to hold on to them.
34. Wear comfortable shoes.
35. If it's an event that thins out toward the end and you're on late, consider it a great opportunity to refine your material. If there's only one person left in the room, he or she might just impact your career someday.
36. Enthusiasm's contagious. If you love what you're talking about, others will love it too. If you don't love it, it'll show.
37. Smile.
38. When you get to the event, familiarize yourself with these three vital locations: your session's room, the speakers room (if available), and the bathroom.
39. Come handy with real world examples to include among your talking points.
40. If you wind up shaking a lot of hands, you should probably bring hand sanitizer.
41. If you wind up not shaking a lot of hands, you should probably bring breath mints.
42. Check in on Foursquare, Gowalla, Whrrl, or your mobile social service of choice. If the event or venue isn't listed there, create it and say why you're there. If there are multiple listings where people have checked in, use whatever's more popular. Even if this doesn't matter as much to you, it's another bonus for the event organizers.

After the Event

43. Thank the event hosts or organizers.
44. Request feedback from organizers. Many events collect feedback but not all share it.
45. Review Twitter and other social channels to get feedback.
46. Embrace the positive feedback. Savor it. They know what they're talking about.
47. Take consistent critiques to heart. Most of the time attendees will let you slide even when you're not at the top of your game - and I have days where I'm much more enthusiastic about how sessions went than others. Once in awhile you get called on it.
48. Brush off any hecklers. Reviewers are harsher during keynotes, and big crowds are less personal so people sharpen their knives. You'll find an occasional jerk in any size crowd.
49. Use the custom URL feature of bit.ly when you're sharing links. Even months after giving it, I can tell you my slides from SMX in October 2009 are at bit.ly/smxsocial. When good links are taken, add in your initials or something else easy to remember.

Speaking on Panels

50. Odds are if you're on a panel of three or more people, you won't be the smartest person on the panel. That brings three benefits: you won't have the pressure of the highest expectations, you'll get to learn more from everyone else, and you'll have a chance of matching wits with people at least as smart as you.
51. Keep answers concise. You can always stick around after to elaborate. If you answer a question for a full minute, it'll feel like five to the audience and ten to your other panelists.
52. Don't answer every question if you really have nothing to add.
53. Keep a pen and paper with you so as others are talking, you can jot down notes on what to respond to. It also helps when you don't want to forget any talking points when a moderator asks a question.
54. If the moderator does take the time to send questions in advance, think of one more to add and send it back to him or her.
55. Stats make you sound smarter. I don't do this too much, but I am a stats junkie (spending a few years at eMarketer only helped fuel that). If you can cite some brief statistics to answer a question (rather than just to sound smarter than anyone else), do it. And stats ALWAYS get tweeted.
56. Tools also always get tweeted. Have some favorite in your back pocket and mention it if it's relevant.
57. If you're in a bunch of office chairs behind a table, check to see if you can adjust the chair to raise the seat as high as it'll go. It just feels better sitting up, and the people in the back will see you better.

When Using PowerPoint and Visual Aids

58. Use lots of pictures, few words.
59. Use a PowerPoint remote to untether yourself. A PowerPoint remote, which can run $50 to $100 for a decent one, is the safest bet. I've seen other options like iPhone apps that work as presentation remotes, but you need something reliable.
60. If it's at all worth sharing, put it up on SlideShare after - or even right before you go up if you can.
61. If you really used a lot of pictures and minimized text, uploading that presentation to SlideShare won't be too useful for most people as is. Instead, annotate it. I did it for this presentation on Facebook, which would have been hard to follow otherwise.
62. Except for those cases where you're doing a very short intro and are given a maximum of 1-5 slides or so just to get your point across, don't go by any rules for how long it takes to present a certain number of slides. You can have one huge idea on a single slide you can talk about for an hour. On the flipside, I presented a 114-slide deck in under 30 minutes - and didn't rush anything more than I wanted to.
63. Spell check. And do it again. I've reviewed talks ten times over and went on with a typo and beyond looking like a boob, it just makes me want to skip over the slide as fast as I can.
64. Ask yourself for every slide and component of a slide, "Does this help the narrative?" When it doesn't, delete. If you're not sure after making some cuts, keep saving the file as new versions, or keep a section of deleted slides at the end until you finalize the deck. Rarely have I gone back and reinstated deleted slides.
65. Do a run-through on the computer that you're presenting on. Allow time to fix errors.
66. If you're not using your own laptop, save PowerPoint in the 2003 version. Anytime in the past couple years I've had a glitch it's been from using a 2007 version on a PC running 2003.
67. Audience members are far more likely to request presentations that include stats or case studies. Top 10 lists and the like (such as this Top 11 Twitter Tools one I did) are also great.
68. Adapt your visual aids and examples to the nature of the content. Talking about video? Show a clip. Talking about mobile? Incorporate your phone.

Keynote/Solo Speeches

69. Tell a story.
70. Rehearse it until it feels natural - and you can do it within the allotted time. My favorite part about rehearsing is that a lot of my best ideas for what I'll say come up when I'm going through the material aloud. It also becomes very obvious when you don't have proper talking points or transitions for each slide.
71. Time your presentation. Doing it a couple times, know that you can: a) do it in the time allotted, b) still do it all, perhaps picking up the pace in parts, if you're given less time should other sessions run late or there's a schedule change, and c) cover enough ground - perhaps not even all of it - if there's some Q&A that may take place before it's over. I don't time talks down to the second because of these variables, but if I'm given 30 minutes and I do it once in 25 and another in 28, I know I can make it fit when I get 22.
72. When you're going through a dry run and there are some really slow parts, cut them - even if it's really smart. Prepare some leave-behinds or follow-up materials if it's vital.
73. Leave time for Q&A.
74. When there is reliable Internet access for your presentation and it's relevant, use it. Live examples are powerful - they make what you're saying more real and show not everything's perfectly rehearsed. But of course be prepared with visuals or just good talking points if the connection flakes.
75. Break free from the podium. Wireless remotes help.

Moderating

76. The best advice I can give is this: the panel you moderate is YOUR panel. Make it yours. You'll have lots of guidelines and limitations set by the event organizers, but for the hour or so that you control, the room is yours. Do what you can to make it a great session.
77. Don't forget to introduce yourself.
78. Learn your panelists' names well. It shows when you know them, and it shows even more when you have some chemistry.
79. Don't spend more than a minute on your own introduction. The ringmaster may make the circus, but ticket holders are there to see the lion tamers.
80. If you're merging multiple presentations into one deck, go through it a few times and make sure it looks at least half-decent. Otherwise you run the risk of embarrassing your panelists.
81. Send questions to panelists at least a week in advance - or within a few days of getting all their contact info. Often the session description will have questions included, and if it doesn't, you can base a lot of your questions off of that.
82. A good rule of thumb for questions: come up with ten. That's probably five more than you'll get to on a typical length panel.
83. Find some way to connect with all your panelists at once. I've moderated a lot of panels and most of the time it doesn't make a difference whether you do a call or you find a way to meet in person the day of the event. Some panels are more collaborative where people will benefit playing off each other, so then it's good to get a call in early. Some great ideas can often come out of prep calls, and you can often tell how well speakers will play off each other.
84. If your panelists are presenting - meaning, they're talking for more than just 1-2 minute opening introductions - request their talking points and/or their slides a few days in advance and share those with the other panelists. It helps the other panelists to have that context.
85. After the event, make it easy for audience members to find any presentation materials, assuming it's okay to share them. The event organizers may do this too, but you're the ringmaster for your hour or so. If you have a blog that's one easy way to do it, but there's no shortage of ways to efficiently share such information online.
86. Leave time for audience Q&A no matter how little time you have for the panel. If you don't, you run the risk of really irking the audience. They're paying or at least taking the time to be there. You're there because you're smart or accomplished or charming or paying a lot of money so your questions count for something. The audience's questions still count for more.
87. When you think you've left enough time for audience Q&A, start 5 minutes before that.  
88. Prepare enough questions so that if the audience really has nothing - it's just a dead crowd or they're in a post-lunch coma - you can fill the time.
89. Don't make your panelists answer bad questions from the audience, and cut off sales pitches. Give the audience a shot, but they don't always know best.
90. Moderate, don't pontificate. Let the panelists do the talking. On occasion if you really are the best person to chime in with some insight that will be valuable for the audience, fine, but you're there to run the show.
91. If it's a tweeting crowd, encourage it - and even try checking Twitter for feedback and questions during your session if you're able to multitask.
92. If there's debate or controversy, keep it going. Don't move on to another question if the panelists are getting into it. The audience lives for moments like that, and it's what'll get discussed during and after.
93. Know who's in the audience, in a general sense. The 'show of hands' device early on can help.
94. Visit your panelists' corporate sites before you reach out to them. Get a sense of how they're positioning themselves.
95. Search for panelists' blogs and Twitter accounts if there's a chance they have them.
96. Consider creating a Twitter List with your panelists' info in advance so others can easily follow them, or use some other vehicle to promote them.
97. Try Google Moderator to share questions in advance and let attendees and others vote for the best ones. People can even submit their own. I've been trying this experiment recently, such as offering questions for my interview with Google's Dylan Casey at TWTRCON, and I've already tried it again.
98. Send an email thanking your panelists after it's done.
99. Selectively link up with panelists on social and business sites after. On Twitter it's appropriate and even courteous to follow everyone if you're so inclined, but in other venues such as LinkedIn and Facebook, make sure they're people you made a real connection with and plan to keep in touch with, rather than just more names to boost your friend count.

Event Organizers

100. If the audience has any Twitter users at all, collect Twitter names of speakers - and share those on-screen when speakers go up.
101. Create a tag for the event and get the word out about it to any of the content creators. It comes in handy for Twitter, Flickr, Slideshare, YouTube, blogs... most anywhere (except some sites like Facebook that don't use tags). And you'll be able to aggregate it all after.
102. Share that content after it's done. This is surprisingly rare.
103. Limit panels to four people tops, unless it's a radically different format than your typical talking heads. I'd love it if organizers could use a rule of thumb of making sure the panel runs at least 15 minutes per number of speakers on a typical panel, so that, as an example, an event with four-person panels has sessions lasting at least 60 minutes. With Q&A it's still not a lot of time. It's also a bad sign when you start running out of mics - and chairs.
104. Welcome bloggers. Yes, I'm biased, but they'll help disseminate ideas, aggregate insights, and create great content you'll be able to share. It also provides value for speakers and attendees after to get some outside, informal opinions from people who aren't paid to be there (as opposed to conference staff or journalists).
105. Get a sponsor for power outlets. I'm thinking back fondly to Chevy's branded surge protectors at SXSW, and then AT&T's power sponsorship at TWTRCON NY. It's great for brands and attendees, and the conference can at least cover costs if not turn a profit. Ample power is becoming more of a perk than cocktails or swag.

Keep learning

106. Read Presentation Zen. Slideology is great too, though I haven't read every last page yet.
107. Tim Sanders, one of my favorite authors and speakers, frequently shares great advice on his blog.
108. Peruse SlideShare. It's such a great place for education and inspiration.
109. Participate in EventCamp. I met some of the most passionate event planners, speakers, and other related practitioners on the planet when they generously included me on their agenda in February, and the community is one of the most welcoming I've seen before, during, and after an event. Follow Jeff Hurt too, one of the founders and a great resource.

That's a wrap, for now. Be sure to leave your own thoughts in the comments so others reading this can benefit from your lessons as well.

Acknowledgements

I only reached the 100 event milestone thanks to the support from hundreds of others. To call out a few, Michelle and Ferrol while at PR Newswire took a chance on including me in their webinar, which kicked off my public speaking in any professioanl sense. The team at MediaPost gave me my first moderating role, and I've spoken at more of their events than any other by far; so much of their team has been incredible to work with over the years. I've been at 360i for most of the time I've been speaking now, and I wouldn't have spoken at nearly this many were it not for the great support of Sarah, Bryan, Amanda, and Katie, among many others.

The saying goes that people are more scared of giving a eulogy than being in the coffin. I'd much rather be giving the eulogy, and I don't plan on shutting up any time soon. Thanks to all of those who've taken the time to listen, and I can only hope I've done a decent enough job returning the favor.

Arming My Mafia At 7-Eleven

Originally published in MediaPost

If, decades from now, I lie on my deathbed having flashbacks of some of the more humiliating moments of my life, then last week's encounter at a 7-Eleven will be one of them. It was at such an establishment on East 23rd Street in Manhattan where a young, amiable staff member saw me working the Slurpee machine and asked, "Do you need help with that?"

The fact was, I did. I didn't know how to get the Coke Slurpee to come out, nor did I know how to order an Oscar Mayer hot dog. I was juggling a handful of store-brand products as well, while surreptitiously reaching for my iPhone to document it all (see photos and screenshots on Flickr).

You might ask why I was playing the part of a convenience store anthropologist. No, I wasn't trying to be the Jane Goodall of the Slurpee kingdom. Instead, I was there, still in my sport jacket following an Internet Week event, to arm my mafia. This mafia consists of nearly 300 friends and virtual associates in Mafia Wars, one of three of Zynga's social games (along with FarmVille and YoVille) participating in a cross-promotional deal with 7-Eleven.

Through this program, 7-Eleven shoppers will find specially marked goods with codes printed on the package. During my visit, a Slurpee, Big Gulp, hot dog, brownie, and various varieties of chips all qualified. The codes can be entered on the co-branded site BuyEarnPlay.com to earn virtual rewards within the game. Participating this way then unlocks new challenges within the games. I was able to complete the Mafia Wars Corner Store Collection, where I performed tasks to earn virtual goods like a lighter and cup of coffee that I ultimately traded in for a special gun. It's hard to write this with a straight face, because either you play this game and must think I'm taking the fun out of it, or you don't play and must wonder why this would be considered fun at all.

Zynga and 7-Eleven managed to create a special kind of experience that bridged online and offline worlds. The experience, if carried through to completion, can take two paths. Zynga gamers will find 7-Eleven branding in the game that leads to instructions on what to do at the store; following a store visit, the gameplay is then enhanced by entering a code from a purchased good. Alternatively, 7-Eleven visitors will find products with codes that lead them online to try Zynga for the first time or power up their existing accounts.

Who gets the better end of the deal? Zynga reports that 240 million users play Zynga games daily, while 6 million people stop by a U.S. 7-Eleven store each day. Zynga's customers may not pay as much every day, but the margins are higher on virtual guns than on real hot dogs.

This kind of online and offline partnership that has the potential to bolster two very different businesses will likely become more common. It makes sense from the consumer's perspective. I'm a Mafia Wars player whether or not I'm playing the game at that moment, and 7-Eleven regulars will identify themselves as such even if they're not physically in the store.

There's one element missing: mobile. Zynga will soon start rolling out mobile versions of its games, and when it does, this kind of promotion could be more seamless by scanning product barcodes or customized QR codes. Other rewards could be unlocked with geolocation, allowing players to earn certain virtual goods by logging into Zynga games while at or near a 7-Eleven.

In the meantime, it's a good excuse for Zynga's gamers to pop into a 7-Eleven. With my goal of buying one of every Zynga-branded product I could find, I expected to later expense the trip. Then I discovered that an overflowing bag containing about a week's worth of calories for an average adult could be acquired for all of $11. That price was an even better deal considering the store's stellar customer service.

Beyond the meal, I gained a virtual gun to better protect my mafia. Real goods earned me virtual goods, and perhaps if this works, the cycle will continue where amassing more virtual goods will allow me to redeem them for real goods. If the experience is seamless enough, in time I may even be able to find my way around a 7-Eleven without any assistance at all.

 

Vote on Questions to Ask Google's Dylan Casey at TWTRCON

Today I'm interviewing Google Search Product Manager Dylan Casey (right) at TWTRCON, an event about the real-time Web. As a first, I'm sharing my questions in advance not just with Dylan, but with everyone. You don't just get to see them - you get to vote on them. Go here: http://bit.ly/twtrconDC

I can't promise I'll ask them in order of popularity, but if there are any clear winners, I'll definitely ask them.

Submit your own questions if you like and they'll be part of the mix; anyone can vote on those too if they're signed in.

20 Confessions of a Super Mayor

Originally published in MediaPost

Over Memorial Day weekend, I reached one of those coming-of-age milestones that only a Social Media Insider reader could appreciate: I became a Super Mayor.

I'll wager you're in one of three camps right now:

·  You're yawning. You became Super Mayor a year ago, and admitting I just did this is like a one-time high school prom king bragging that he lost his virginity... at age 25.

·  You're scratching your head, unaware that Super Mayor is a Foursquare badge earned for holding down ten mayorships simultaneously. The mayor, a title earned for the most loyal recent visitor to a given location, earns bragging rights and sometimes additional perks.

·  You empathize, recalling your own recent triumph, or you're looking forward to joining that badge holder's club someday.

In light of the achievement, it's a good occasion to reflect on what the badge means beyond the sum of its pixels. Here's one Foursquare user's tell-all.

1) I became much more aggressive about checking in when I knew I was in the running for Super Mayor.

2) I haven't earned a single tangible reward for being the mayor of a location.

3) I tried telling one Indian restaurant staffer how Foursquare worked, secretly hoping for a perk. He then left to work at another restaurant before I could get him on board.

4) The reasons I use Foursquare, in order: finding tips at places I'm visiting, the serendipity of badges, seeing where friends are, earning mayorships, discovering new businesses, and staying current for my job.

5) Leaving home helps earn mayorships. There's much more competition for mayorships in major cities, so I spent a while in New York without any mayorships at all. Vacations to Miami and Atlantic City helped pad my count. Atlantic City was especially interesting. I got a cheap mayorship by adding my grandmother's Boardwalk high-rise in Ventnor and then "owning" the nearby Mento's Ice Cream & Water Ice, but I couldn't snag the Wawa's across the street, nor Tony's Baltimore Grill near the Tropicana.

6) If you're at a doctor's office, especially one where they don't treat highly communicable or embarrassing diseases, that's a great time to check in. By the time I got LASIK in April, I was handily mayor of Dr. Pamel's office.

7) My wife, hooked on Facebook and a casual tweeter, can do without Foursquare entirely. She can also do without me getting so obsessive over it, especially since I'm often checking in with multiple apps.

8) I'm not sure the number of times I've checked in from bathrooms, but I have made several bathroom visits just to check in.

9) I don't like services where you check in to multiple places at once. For the best apps -- Foursquare, Gowalla, Whrrl, and SCVNGR among them--- there are value propositions unique to each service that span utility, social currency, and fun. I also don't trust geolocation data to be consistent enough across apps.

10) I can't stand Foursquare addicts who auto-post their locations to Facebook and Twitter. I'll do this selectively, as when I visited Sprinkles Cupcakes in Dallas on Saturday.

11) I used to auto-post updates for mayorships and badges to Facebook and Twitter. Then I felt these updates were happening too frequently and I stopped automatically sharing them. Then I got annoyed that I had no way of easily sharing my milestones, including becoming Super Mayor.

12) I'm only somewhat embarrassed about all the thought I've put into auto-posting Foursquare updates.

13) I've never falsely checked in at any location, though I have done so by accident. One social norm on Foursquare I've always wanted to violate but never did was checking into places from which I've had food delivered.

14) On a few occasions, I've picked up food instead of having it delivered just to earn or maintain a mayorship.

15) The coolest place I ever became mayor of was Madison Square Park. I earned it right before I spent a week in Miami and never got it back.

16) I seldom check into Madison Square Park anymore. It's such a beautiful park that I'm trying to make it a gadget-free zone for me.

17) Getting out of the running of mayorships for places like the park and 360i's headquarters made me less inclined to check into those locations.

18) I don't get what happened at 360i. I had dozens of check-ins there before anyone cared, and I became mayor for about a second. Then my colleagues Matt Wurst and Meg Minuskin got into it and had a battle for mayor, and I was forever out of the running. Whenever I see my check-in total for the office, well into the triple digits, I feel a tinge of resentment at Foursquare.

19) The same thing happened to me with my apartment building. Not that I'm bitter or anything.

20) There's an upside to the last two points: it got me out of the habit of checking into my office and home. I know, it's lame.

Maybe all of this is lame. Foursquare's compelling, though, both for the fun and utility, and it can change consumer behavior. Side effects include addiction, competitiveness, serendipity, bitterness, and the potential for it to get inside your head so much that you'll wind up writing your own Foursquare confessions.

 

Connecting Roots and Branches

Originally published in MediaPostAbove: My grandfather's emigration card from Germany in 1951, found on Ancestry.com. Born in Poland, he escaped the Holocaust with his family through Siberia and Kazakhstan, settling in Germany after the war before coming to the United States.

Connecting Roots and Branches 

Some people compete around badges and mayorships (Foursquare), connections and testimonials (LinkedIn), followers and list appearances (Twitter), and gang members and farm acreage (Zynga). Lately, I've found a new addiction: racking up profiles added and managed (Geni).

Geni, one of the leading genealogy sites, tells me I've added 334 relatives to my family tree. I created the tree on January 17, 2007. Most of the connections happened in the past few weeks, and it's all thanks to social media.

The network effect applies to genealogy. Having more people active in a network increases the value of the offering for everyone taking part. In this case, when more people are part of my family tree, it increases the likelihood that I will connect with others in the tree and thus discover more people in turn. Additionally, as I create more spokes branching out from me, other family members will gravitate toward me as a hub, and all such hubs in turn will strengthen from the increased information flowing among us.

As in any network, you'll find hubs who actively create content, joiners who manage their own profiles and perhaps those of their immediate families, and spectators who passively peruse the content without contributing to it. In this case, hubs are both people and content. I'm a hub because I've connected so many branches of the tree together in one place, just as my David Berkowitz avatar on sites like Geni is a hub that links to branches such as those of the Silversteins, Baraks, Samuels, Freilichs, and too many others to name.

My "come to Jesus moment," if I can borrow the phrase given my lineage of Berkowitzes and Silversteins, came from using genealogy sites as social networks. I maintain a profile on another site, MyHeritage, and my father's third cousin discovered there that our trees overlapped.  He provided information that I then incorporated into my tree, and I built on it, wiki-style. He then introduced me to other relatives. I shared some details he didn't know. I discovered more far-flung family members, including one woman whose tree has about a thousand relatives; she is my first cousin three times removed's husband's third great nephew's wife. (Cue "Spaceballs": Dark Helmet: "I am your father's brother's nephew's cousin's former roommate." Lone Star: "What's that make us?" Dark Helmet: "Absolutely nothing...")

If you're curious to see how the worlds of social media and genealogy collide firsthand, here are a few tips I've picked up along the way:

1) Use a Web-based program. There's some great software you can download, but even if you go that route, upload the tree periodically online to find other relatives. Thanks to a string of connections, I met a relative in his 80s actively managing a tree who reconstructed family lines I never knew of before, and he's doing it all on his computer. He's extremely generous with his information, but he'd be much easier to find online.

2) Use several sites. I'm partial to Geni, MyHeritage, and Ancestry.com. I find Geni to be the easiest to use. MyHeritage has led to the most discoveries of family members, but those relatives are in Israel and each site will undoubtedly have various geographies and demographics where they are strongest. Hedge bets if you're trying to find new family members rather than simply organizing what you know. If you start filling out one tree, you can export data to other sites using the standard GEDCOM format.

3) Fill out complete profiles. What's true of LinkedIn and dating sites is true of genealogy sites: complete profiles get better results. It's hard enough finding the right matches for names like Berkowitz and Silverstein. If you're Jack Smith, forget it. Yet if you're Jack Smith married to Elaine Harris Smith, you were born in Houston in 1954, and your parents are Roger and Millie, you increase your chances of finding more relevant relatives. Much of this is possible thanks to the matching technology (e.g., Tree Matches on Geni or Smart Matches on MyHeritage) that look for similar family relationships and allow you to reach out to those trees' managers.

4) Consider trial subscriptions. If you're already investing a lot of time in genealogy, investing a little money can help. All of these sites have premium offerings, and the value proposition is somewhat different with each one. At Ancestry, the advanced record search is invaluable; I found my father's family's emigration files when they left Germany for the U.S. in 1951, along with census information on my mother's ancestors in early 20^th century New York. Geni promotes its tree matches, which linked me up with several relatives and greatly contributed to my tree. MyHeritage hooked me when it said I'd need to pay up to manage more than 250 relatives, a number I'll likely double by the year's end.

5) Repeat searches periodically. Ancestry seems to constantly add new databases to its search records. Search functionality across all of the sites keeps getting better. New databases keep migrating online. Every year or so, try some searches that may not have proved fruitful the first time.

6) Pick up the phone, and pack up your suitcase. Some relatives like keeping the past in the past, but there tend to be a few who are willing to recreate the past as best as they can remember it. Software will never replace that truly personal form of social networking.

If you have other tips, share them in the comments. If you've connected with relatives of yours this way, share your story. If you think we're related, share your tree. I have more relatives today than I thought I did a month ago -- and always welcome a few more.