Kate recently arranged for the photographer Lisa Roah to come over to the house and take pictures of the kids.  She really did a great job, capturing their little personalities perfectly.  I’m surprised that she was able to get any good shots of Mary Kate who was allegedly one continuous blur of motion during the entire photoshoot.  Jimmy, as usualy, was quite the ham.  I wonder where he getis it from…

For some more shots from the shoot, plesae visit Lisa Roah’s website at: http://www.lisaroah.com/blog/jimmy-mary-kate/

In anticipation of the March SMCLA gathering to discuss “Building a Brand Through Social Media”, we thought we’d offer up a brief primer, a series of quality links, and a few questions to stimulate thought. It’s always amazing to see what this group comes up with when we all put our minds to something, so let’s have at it, shall we?

Can you use social media to successfully build or manage a brand? The sheer volume of Google results available to this query seem to suggest a resounding “YES We Can!”. For those who don’t want to read all 8 million results, here’s a quick primer on what you can do to get started. These are viewed as entry level tactics that are mostly free to use and easy to configure. If you or your brand are already doing these tactics, go ahead and skip to the questions section to really sink your teeth in to what we hope to explore at our next meeting.

Quick Primer

Building a brand online requires a three tiered approach: generate content, monitor conversations about your brand/industry, directly engage with people in a meaningful and relevant way.

Generate Content
Be a good writer or hire one. It all starts with well written content that provides value and encourages people to comment, borrow, re-post, and to come back for more. You can gain trust, reputation, and respect based on the quality of your content. Become trusted sources of information within their specific industries through blogging, document uploading, producing and publishing audio and video to fully blanket content channels with sources of information about you and your brand. Adding professionally produced photos, videos and audio is an extra level of polish that you may wish to invest in as the quality of your content reflects directly upon the quality of your brand.

Tools Used:

WordPress		www.wordpress.org
Blogger		www.blogger.com
Blogsome		blogsome.com
Movable Type		www.movabletype.org
Textpattern		textpattern.com
B2evolution		b2evolution.net
LiveJournal		livejournal.com
MSN Spaces		spaces.msn.com
Squarespace		squarespace.com
TypePad		www.typepad.com
Yahoo 360		360.yahoo.com

Blog tools credit: Forbes.com Best of the Web

Automated Dissemination (Makes Me Giggle Too)

Now that you’ve produced all this great content, you really want to get it in front of the people you’re targeting with your brand and your product. Assuming that they will all take a minute to drop by the one place on the Internet where your content lives is a bit naive. Taking that content and pushing it out into as many streams as possible is absolutely the way you’re going to engage with as many people as possible. Thankfully, automation of posting and Social Media networks makes this part very effective. One of our very own LA Tech stars, Sean Percival (@seanpercival), gave a very insightful presentation recently at “Startonomics” detailing out how he uses automation and aggregation to push his content out as far and wide as possible and how to follow and capitalize on trends.

Tools Used:
A full summary is available on PR 2.0: http://www.briansolis.com/2008/08/introducing-conversation-prism.html

Power Tools Used:
Friend Feed
Twitter Feed
Social Too

Monitor Conversations
Okay, now that you are a beacon for the world to tune into, it’s time to stick your nosy brand-building self right into the middle of all the chatter out there. My boss was once misquoted on a conference panel as describing Twitter as a “large cocktail party”. Ever since, whenever I read blog comments, I picture these people leaning into a circle of conversation to add their two cents. That visualization is actually a pretty good metaphor for what you should be doing when you monitor the conversations occurring all over the Internet.

Tools Used:
Google Alerts
BackType
Twitter Search
Technorati

Engage

Carrying the cocktail party metaphor right along, try to apply the same level of social engagement one would expect if you were to introduce yourself into that circle of people. Barging in and announcing your product without really getting a feel for the conversation or the people engaging in it won’t get you the results you want. In fact, you run the risk of turning people off due to your lack of finesse. Ease yourself into the conversation by listening to what the people are talking. Offer sage words of wisdom that are relevant to their post and actually help them or provide value to them in some way. Perhaps your product is exactly what they need…wouldn’t that be magic? At any rate, don’t be a poor conversationalist when you transition monitoring into engagement.

Food for Thought / Questions for the Next SMCLA

Good examples of Social Media Brand Building

• Zappos (@zappos)
• Whole Foods (@wholefoods)
• Wine Library (@garyvee)
• Planet Chiropractic (@chiropractic)

Bad examples

• Heavy Handed Comment Entries
• Spam-like outbound messages and auto-replies
• Large brands with non-existent social media presences

Questions
1. What are some more advanced ways to go beyond these basic tactics for social media brand management? (What’s NEXT?)
2. How does a larger brand use social media to manage their reputation? deal with a crisis? solicit product feedback?
3. Your questions and more via comments or tweets using the #smcla hash tag. See you at the next meeting (details to be announced soon)

Helpful Resources

Sources used to research this post:
http://mashable.com/2008/07/18/building-your-online-brand/
http://www.briansolis.com/2008/08/introducing-conversation-prism.html
http://www.maxgladwell.com/2008/06/be-a-beacon-first-principle-social-media/
http://www.maxgladwell.com/2008/12/social-media-predictions-2009/#more-1109
http://www.docstoc.com/docs/3302506/The-Socialization-of-Your-Personal-Brand-by-Brian-Solis
http://www.seanpercival.com/blog/2009/02/12/video-of-my-startonomics-talk-social-media-is-dead/

Written by: @geoffabrown

Twenty-Six Twitter Tools To Track Tweets

Finding the Tweet Spot – Top Tips for Building Twitter Relationships

This is the first blog entry I’ve done for SMCLA. Please head over and let me know what you think!

http://www.socialmediaclub.la

Our next meeting will be early March.

Please go ahead and watch them. Then head on over to http://socialtoo.com/survey/view/1221 and take the survey. If you are on Twitter (and you should be by now), you can real-time comment on the ads by adding the #superbowlads hashtag to your post.

You can do your ad research and background info checking over here at Mahalo.com

10. Top Chef
I love this show. It would be my top show if this were a bachelor’s DVR. But, it’s not and therefore there are 9 other shows in front of it on the pecking order. Ironically, we seem to always eat something really bland on the night we watch this show. It makes the food on the screen seem that much more enticing. My favorite Top Chef contestant of all time: Hung. Watching him dismember chickens was liquid gold.

9. The Real Housewives of Orange County/New York/Atlanta
Train wreck. That’s the only way to describe this show. In O.C., it’s silicone and botox mixed with greed and lack of parenting skills. In NYC, it seems to be long vacations, big shopping budgets, and skimpy Speedos mixed with poor parenting skills. Atlanta deserves a separate post of its own…let’s just say that those “ladies” could benefit from a heavy does of some Emily Post and, true to form, the kids seemed to raise themselves.

8. Numb3rs
Kate thinks the lead actor, David Krumholtz, is the bees knees. All I know is that he looks like my friend Bobby Cuza. The plots are interesting enough, and they try to be kind of Tom Clancy with a mixture of numbers, science, and criminology. It just seems really forced.

7. Criminal Minds
Once again, watching this show as a couple reminds me of the fact that Kate has a “thing” for Agent Gibson. The show consistently delivers a balanced diet of cerebral and visceral crime drama. I’ll forgive it the occasional cut corner when it comes to plot or special effect in the interest of the greater story line…an FBI unit that follows psychotic or serial killers. Extra points for
Mandy Patinkin (“Hello, my name is Inigo Montoya, you killed my father…prepare to die.”)

6. CSI: New York
It’s pretty much the CSI formula. Crime Drama + beautiful agents + Encyclopedia Brown sized capers. The big difference here is the lighting. Whereas Vegas has dark lighting, CSI: Miami has neon lighting, New York has “dramatic lighting” which also seems dark to me. On the CSI scale, I put it ahead of Miami, behind Vegas.

5. Gossip Girl
Blake Lively…Yowza! I think there are other actors and actresses in this show. I’m not really sure about much else. I like the way it uses mobile technology to show how the kids spread information and rumors about one another. Now, if I coud just get my mobile content placed on this show…

4.CSI: Las Vegas
The O.G. DNA tracking, crime scene investigation, murder scene depicting, drama series. I will never forget picking this up on Netflix, back when Kate and I were dating… We’d watch CSI: Las Vegas DVDs for hours on end, just soaking it all up. This series is just, plain, good. We’ll miss Grissom.

3. Sesame Street
Timeless. I watched it. Jimmy watches it. Mary Kate watches it. I love how they work in the celebrity guest stars. Current fav: “I Don’t Want to Live on the Moon” by Aaron Neville.

2. Caillou
At first, I hated this bratty kid. All I new was that if I turned it on, Jimmy would sit mesmerized for 30 minutes as this little French Canadian bald boy would bitch and moan about his day to day activities. Pretty soon, I was hooked and found myself liking little Caillou. It doesn’t hurt that his parents are clearly hippies. Mom rocks the one-piece and clearly doesn’t wear a bra. Go Caillou’s mommy! Caillou’s daddy clearly loses his keys and wallet about as often as I do, which is daily. I’m starting to feel a connection here…

1. Thomas the Train
According to Quicken, Thomas the Train ranks somewhere between “rent” and “college loans” on my monthly expenses. As goes Jimmy’s obsession, so goes our DVR. ‘Nuff said. Thomas grew on me. I’m beginning to really get into the stories and the narration. Favorite engine: Silly Billy.

Honorable Mention:
- Miss America
- Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders
- Jon and Kate Plus 8
- Real World
- The Hills
- The City
- The Secret Life of the American Teenager
- 90210

What we LOVED and wish there were more episodes of:
- Arrested Development
- The Wire

Stuff we used to record, but don’t anymore:
- Jeopardy
- CSI: Miami

What we’re not watching, but that I hear about ALL THE TIME:
- Heroes
- Lost

I haven’t had a chance to click through to all of them yet, but I’m surprised to find that we’re not using any of them…yet.

Here’s how we do things:
Calendar – Google Calendar
Photos – Picassa & Ofoto
Videos – Nothing yet…pile of DV tapes.
Finances – BofA, Excel
Family Communication – Email, Vonage, Skype
Family Tree – Family Tree Maker

Nothing shocking here…

We did, however, do a stint with: http://www.trixietracker.com/ on our firstborn to track feedings, sleep, bm, etc… It was amazing! Graphs, iPhone App, everything a stathead could want for tracking his baby.

BabyCenter.com is also great! Even for a dad…