Well, the social media marketing workshop blitz out West (which went very well by the way) is now over. It’s time to go back home. This past month has been pretty crazy for me, not just professionally (4 client strategies due), but in my personal life as well. On April 4th, 2008 I finally took the plunge and proposed to my girlfriend whom I’ve been living with for the past 3 years. She said yes after a surprise 4-hour timed treasure hunt I had organized for her involving 6 locations, GPS tracking, snowshoeing, sweating, hill-climbing, drinking at a bar, clues, lifelines, romantic spa, horseback riding, 200 candles, PowerPoint slide show and driving long distances all the while not being allowed to contact me for help. To make things even more challenging, we are moving into our new home this week (closing date is April 15th). I have decided to take the next week off for obvious reasons. Anyway, I usually don’t use this blog to spill out too much personal issues, however I wanted to explain why I haven’t posted in a few weeks , although I have been using Twitter , which is a great tool to communicate in exactly these types of situations (especially when it is integrated into your blog).
I though I’d share with you the single most valued item that many of my workshop participants mentioned on their evaluation forms. To me, this is basic stuff, however I have to keep reminding myself to stop swimming in the small fishbowl of the social media community and take a plunge into the ocean once in a while. One of the first steps in my workbook is to “Gauge the existing level of conversation about your organization or marketing initiative”. The simple tool I provided participants with was the Technorati Advanced Blog Search, specifically the resulting conversation graph tool that is provided in the search results. It gauges the level of “conversation” , whether positive, negative or neutral on the give topic. Since I had many individuals from the BC government, I did a quick search on that term (shown below). I then asked if anyone knew what all those sudden spikes in conversation were? If anyone was there to respond or get engaged in the conversation? Then i told them to imagine doing this for their specific initiative. They were amazed. What’s even better, Technorati allows you to post this little graph tool as an HTML widget that dynamically updates on its own. Very useful.
I’ll leave you with that this week, and will be back full force once I set myself up in the new house. For all you public sector marketers and communicators out there, be sure to attend MARCOM 2008 this year. You can use the MARCOM Wiki to suggest round table topics.
Cheers,
MK