I will be upfront that I am not an expert or anywhere near in social media. I know how it works in theory, but implementation been lagging I just don’t seem to have enough patience or maybe my strategy is just wrong and I need to hire social media specialists. In my mind I compare every life situation with either driving on highway (don’t ask I have a whole theory) or martial arts training, so I figured that social media is like martial arts – never happens overnight, takes practice and lots of patience.
That is a reason why I feel very happy even when I make small steps to improve my social media profile and skills. I did two things in last couple of days to improve:

Twitter:
It seems that everybody on the net talks and uses Twitter these days. I’ve been slow in using it and only have 56 updates – partly due to a simple fact that I had no followers. However, now when T4C is near its completion it is time to reach out to the public of Toronto, I said to myself, it is time to start actually using Twitter. Now, I know that my approach is totally wrong – I should have been developing relationships and followers along the way and now it will take some time till I build creditability with the community and actually benefit from Twitter – but hey, it is better late than never right?

So I did two things:

1) I installed Twitter – Facebook application. What it does is copies my Twitter updates to Facebook, I don’t think it works in reverse. This allows me to tap into more developed Facebook network while building up my Twitter account as well. I think this is a first step one should do.

2) Now before I go to sleep I go to search.twitter.com and search for terms relevant to T4C it is amazing how many people are on Twitter from Toronto while nobody around me doesn’t even know what Twitter is. I read through first two pages and check out interesting people. I don’t want to follow each and everyone, because then really it will be impossible to follow all of them. So I click on user profiles, check out their updates and their blog or website. If a person is interesting – I follow. Then – magic this people start following me as well. So in a day I grew my followers from 8 to 30.

I know that mastering Twitter is a slow process and I also need to bring value to people who follow me and not just promote my content. That is why I am going to take my time to develop this relationship and gradually grow the readership. I think next step would be to get custom designed Twitter page and participate more in conversation of people I follow already.

Toronto Food Blogs
Really there is no direct competition to T4C ( and that is why we started the project), but it doesn’t mean somebody is not starting the same project and you still have to follow other players in the industry. From my perspective the nearest to us in topic are food blogs and entertainment guides. Finding major ones is pretty easy, but how do you go deeper? I used a system that I read from Dave’s Fleet blog :Practical 101s: Google Reader And Persistent Search . So I set a brand new Google account, so it doesn’t mix with the regular feeds I read and set up a system that monitors every media company in Toronto I could think about as well as keywords like “Toronto Restaurants” or “Toronto Dates.”
Yesterday I logged in to this account and scanned the 660 feeds that appeared over there in a matter of 10 min I found 15 local Toronto blogs that are dedicated to food – I was amazed, because I couldn’t find them before when I was doing the research for my business plan.

Now these new websites that I discovered could be our competition or in opposite could become our content partner – you never know. What I do know that as a professionals in what we do – we just have to keep on eye on what these guys do and try to develop a relationship with them where everyone will benefit.

So here they are – my baby steps in social media. I think I will spend more time with blogs and Twitter for now, and not going to use use Stumble or Digg anytime soon – because I want to be authentic and that requires time and patience.

This was probably the first casual yet business event I went to in my life. Coming from traditional media I am used to black suites,politically correct speeches that are usually held in conference halls or hotels.

Needless to say that the crowd that attended the Casecamp was very different and very diverse. More than 500 people attended and I saw some people in suites and some in converse sneakers. I think the uniting factor was similar to Web 2.0 itself – transparency. It felt like everyone is just who they want to be without the need to put a facade so needed at a corporate job. Even the venue Circa itself was one of trendiest clubs I saw in Toronto and I am sure I will visit it again on a regular night.

The bottom line is the contrast between tradional media and new media was evident. I decided that I am finally where I want to be. Thanks a lot to Eli Singer for organizing it and lowering barriers so everyone can parcipate.

Bits of pieces I gathered from 15 minutes presentations:
Brian Segal from ComScore:

• Canadian spend the most time in the world visiting social media websites. It correlates to what I heard at the conference from Yahoo’s Daniel Maor
• The segment of internet useres over 30 is again the largest in Canada.

Bottom line: if you are in Canada and targeting  tradional audiences social media marketing should be integral part of your marketing plan.

Boxing Day 2007 at RedFlagDeals.com:

• Derek started while living with his parents in 2000.
• They make money from affiliate links
  
• When he first launched forums it was a failure due to the lack of existing traffic
• He mentioned that without 100,000 existing visitors they couldn’t approach big advertisers
• Boxing week is the most profitable week for them
• Last Boxing week the organic traffic from Google grew by 151%, already during November they ranked the highest for the keywords
• Last Boxing week they brough 8.5 millions in sales to one retailer
• Now there is RFD factor – when they mention the deal on the website the retailer is sold out in a very short time

Bottom Line:The success is based on transparency, user collobartion and constantly improving user experience.

Story2Oh!, Evolving TV Storytelling to Social Network

• for the fake story they got enormous amount of clicks and followers
• one woman in the audience got mad, because she had no idea that characters were fictional and she was actually following really closely the evolving drama
• they plan to run a whole season

Bottom line: I am not sure if the succes of the show was due to the new nature of the storytelling or because some people didn’t pay attention that characters are fictional. It will be interesting to see how they will monetize it when the time comes.

Update: Due to complain from the lady they took down the characters on Facebook

Radiothon Diaries, Harnessing YouTube for the Hospital for Sick Children

• SickKids used YouTube videos with a widget button at the top for the first time
• The Radiothon’s fund raised increased by 40-50%, but it is unknown if all of is attributed to YouTube
• It was a lot more work in terms of editing the videos than they ever expected
• The videos on YouTube were different from their typical TV spots.

Bottom line:no matter what industry you are – you can find a way how to use social media for your benefit. I think for fund raising with their limited funds for publicity it is even more true.


The TD Canada Trust Facebook Story
Sue McVey, VP Marketing Planning, TD Canada Trust

• Social Media was new to TD Canada Trust
• The biggest fear was the loose of control over the message comparably to tradional media
• They did receive some negative comments and left them intact
  
• They exceeded the goal and quickly gathered more than 10,000 fans on their Facebook page
• RBC launched the Facebook page couple of days after TD and that means they are doing something right.

Bottom line: It is hard for tradional businesses to start using social media due to the lack of control over the brand. Naturally there are only few companies whose customer service doesn’t suck. Still it is a needed component for staying competetive in the current marketplace. Develop contingecies on how you are going to deal with negative complaints. Metrics for social media are not as straight forward as for tradional media or PPC advertising, but they still exist and needed to be measured.