I guess I knew it would happen eventually.  After serving a a volunteer on the OTEF board for several years and helping stage the Arizona Entrepreneurship Conference for the first five years of it’s life, I should have expected to get invovled in something entrepreneurial in Colorado before long – and I did.  I like the mission of recognizing these second stage companies that represent the bulwark of our economy and I’ll do what i can to help in the mission.

The display was called ‘Terminal Kings‘ and represented 3 artists working to produce a functional art project of 100′x8′ panels that will be used as construction barriers for the next 5 years at Denver international Airport.  The combination of the art work, the venue and the company made for a pretty fun evening.  I had to return the next night and filled a Pinterest board with some of the images I liked best.

Colorado Companies to Watch (@ColoradoCTW and at Colorado.CompaniestoWatch.org) is a Denver-based organization I’ve thrown in with that recognizes ‘second-stage growth’ companies for being that essential part of the Colorado economy that these organizations represent.  The second-stage description means that the companies that have made it through the first few year of getting launched and they’ve becoming revenue generating.  As a ‘second-stage’ company, they are contributing to the Colorado economy with jobs, capital and innovation and through this program, they can be recognized and promoted.  The initiative is a joint public-private venture staged with the support of the Edward Lowe Foundation, the Colorado State Office of Economic Development and International Trade, an awesome group of media partners and sponsors and a hardy group of volunteers.

What’s next for my involvement with the group is to lend some assistance in content development (pics, & videos maybe?) and see how I can again support the building of entrepreneurial fires, in Colorado this time!  Thanks for having me gang!

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First item at hand is that NPT did not make it easy for me to participate in the discussion on their topic – here they are espousing social engagement and then THEY do not allow a conversation on their post or article.  It may be that as it is a reposting of the content from print, they thought may never occurred to them to support a discussion on this very hot topic.   In my experience though, it is not unusual to see this kind of behavior – a lot of organizations see social as just another form of media and treat it like it was print, radio or TV which is all one-way.

Beyond them apparently not really wanting to engage, my sense of the article is that the writer seemed to be taking issue with stats that show MySpace is declining (it is), that ROI in nonprofits is somehow different from other businesses (it’s not) and that there is work involved in correlating the data that can show an ROI that is meaningful (and there is!)  They present a spreadsheet calculator for nonprofits (from Care2.com) that delivers a projected ROI of some kind of online effort. 

IMHO, projected ROI vs. actual ROI are often two very different numbers and using a tool like this is maybe helpful, but if you deliver results that are wildly off, what then? Imagine that for all the money finance puts into treasury services they’re somehow off on their figures?  What if they’re off 10% – heads would roll I think, but somehow we’re expected to allow marketing projects to be off to an even greater degree.  The travesty to me is that most organizations spend far more on items like banking to measure and track their money (already in the bank) than they spend on measuring their marketing (impacting future revenue / donations).

The article is just a bit too off for me to say that I think it’ll be helpful to NPO’s, but if it gets them thinking about how social can support their mission then it’s a good post.  What’s possibly more relevant is a discussion that every outreach effort needs to be tracked, just like a marketing campaign anywhere else.  An ROI model that considers all aspects of media and marketing is what really relevant here – the burden of suddenly asking social-based marketing to prove an ROI when previous marketing efforts have is somewhat disingenuous.  All marketing should be aligned with ROI; the really cool part about social marketing is that it is by far the most measureable form of media we have right now.

So whether your an NPO, commercial entity with regional, national or global reach you should be demanding and working towards a relevant ROI model for all your campaigns and marketing efforts.

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In this episode we explore how Twitalyzer is being used by both individuals and companies both.  The profiles and benchmarking are important to individuals using Twitalyzer – it is just information for them, but not actionable.  Organizations however are using the Dashboard Authenticated features – that includes setting and managing goals and understanding the sentiment of their brand; very much a data-centric, benchmarking and optimizing their behavior.

Where do they see their product advancing?  Jeff sees the tools and technology in this space at the starting line, sort of like the early days of the web.  They’ve already produced a series of API’s and they are looking at integrating their functionality into theirs; since we recorded the podcast they’ve announced integration to both TweetMeMe (February 2010) and the Viralheat Analytics platforms (March 2010); they had integration with Google Analytics already in place.

Sentiment analysis and tonality is still pretty much manual, but it can be supported by the user managed dictionary; usage and native language continue to be areas of focus for the near future.  The ‘art’ of semantic and tone are probably going to be the more labor intensive aspect of analysis and monitoring in social media for a while.

Play / Download Jeff Katz / Twitalyzer Episode 2 Podcast Here

I will share with you that initially I wanted to take issue with their tag line. 

It is one of the first efforts I’ve seen that uses the term ‘expert’ along with ‘social media’, which implies that there could be such a thing as a ‘social media expert’.  In the past I’ve regularly expressed the perspective that it would be hard to be an expert in an industry that is only months old, but that that logic is flawed. 

Social media is not and should not be taken as a standalone channel for communications and interactions – the reach is just too low.  It needs to be incorporated to work with traditional media in new ways, to make the other media more social.  ‘Social media’ as a standalone tactic will not be on it’s own for long – it has to join other media types and support the effort to reach and connect with prospects, customers & stakeholders, regardless of how they they decide to participate in the  conversation.

Is it time for ‘experts’ to emerge in social media?  hmmm… yeah I think so and perhaps we can begin to apply the ‘expert’ title to those that are both experienced and observant of the social media space – Jeremiah Owyang, Chris Brogan and Gary Vaynerchuck come to mind right as my favorites.  Who are the experts in social media you see?  Who’s emerging?

To get our posts as they happen, follow us on Twitter (@ROISocialMedia) or subscribe to SocialMarketingConversations.com via email or your RSS Reader.

To support the effort in uncovering the ROI question in social media, we’ve set up a Fan Page at Facebook, and a LinkedIn Group.  Come join us and let us know what the pressing issues are in your efforts to determine an ROI in your social media presence!

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We’re seeing non-profits, for profit SMB and large organizations all coming to grips with the understanding that a social media presence is essential in connecting to their customers, stakeholders, prospects and employees.  What we see is very, very smart people struggling with how to involve themselves with various social media components.  With a klaxon going off in their head and their hair on fire, they are looking for tactics to implement right away.

We’re seeing varying approaches.  Some are staging a social media campaign, others are creating a social media position within the marketing department and others are undertaking tactical deployments of particular set of tools and then waiting to see what happens next.  What these all have in common is a short-horizon demand to prove what social media can do for them.

What is missing in all these efforts is a perspective on how to use social media to connect with their customers in a lifelong relationship, all the while monitoring the things that can be monitored, applying a return-on-investment metric to the data and thus being able to manage what kind of incremental return they can create by a transparent, public presence.

Admittedly, this is my perspective based on years of involvement in online social technology, not one based on the recent boom on attention being given to social media.  What is supportable in all these efforts is that they are steps along the journey toward what I think is a broad, global cultural adoption of a media model that presents a social element in virtually every exposure.

It will start with simple icons identifying where to connect with the brand in print ads, expand to interactive capabilities during broadcasts on the 2nd, 3rd and 4th screens (Television, computer and mobile phone) and with the pending leaps of technology ahead of us in the next few years, a socialized element in media will become an expected, albeit optional part of virtually everything we see.

So that’s the future, what do you do today? Short answer – whatever you are comfortable with that leads you down that path.  Longer answer – Lose the mindset that social media is episodic, or a short run element in an overall marketing program.  Adopt instead a perspective that a social, customer-centric interactive approach is where you and your organization is headed.  Recognize that media, with social elements will impact more, much more than just how your message gets out.  It will impact how you service your customers, find your prospects, connect with stakeholders and develop your products.  How it will do all that is the journey we’re on.

A word of advice is to not get caught up with self-proclaimed ‘experts’ promoting a flavor-of-the-day approach.  Look for partners with experience in business, online communications technology and the ability to work across the organization you already have in place, embedding a social component into the fabric of the enterprise – it’s where your headed anyway.

Images used in the picture courtesy of TodayinArt.com, Guwashi999 on Flickr and overlaid by Steven Groves

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 Childhood Hunger in America is Real

More than 12.4 million children are going hungry right here in the US. That’s 1 out of 6. Chances are you know at least one of them. With an economy that threatens to force those numbers upward, significant steps must be made to stem the tide. We hope you join us!

Scott Henderson at mediasauce is being joined by Chris Brogan, Beth Kanter and now me to promote an end to childhood hunger in the United States.  This is not the childhood hunger where your (well, my…) daughter gets up late and misses breakfast on her way out the door to school, this is a persistent condition that children are being malnourished by conditions beyond the control of the adults in their lives.  It might be the economy (easy to blame), might be personal choice of parents or caretakers that ends up impacting the kids (drug or alcohol use) but the abundance of food on the planet that is not reaching our kids can be remedied.

This is the second such endeavor I’ve come across to move toward a cure for hunger.  The other is being headed up by my friend George Roundy, who has spent the last decade committed to ending hunger through his work in The Hunger Project and more recently he has turned his efforts to a project to cure hunger a little closer to home.  His effort is called ‘The All In Campaign to Transform Poverty to Sufficiency for All’ and in it he is applying the teachings he has learned from The Hunger Project and he is seeking to making a difference in Phoenix Arizona.  With his Ning site up to over 120 members, looks like he’s reaching people and connecting private, public and non-profit efforts in Phoenix.

I admire any and all efforts that seek to alter the status quo – and I’ll be a Champion on this one too.  Thanks for the invite Scotty!

Here’s the link for more info about the Pledge to End Hunger program that we’re supporting with our partners at MediaSauce

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• Generational / Cultural Connections - I have often been called somewhat of an anomaly in my career before, so it’s not to weird for me to have people say so now.  Early on, I was the youngest of the team and brought a lot of energy and creativity to an effort.  Now I am one of the older guys sitting around the social media technology table and I still bring creativity to the table that has been tempered with experience.  I hang out with both a traditional entrepreneurial community and I’ve also been working more and more with what I’ll call a new generation and culture of entrepreneurship, a culture exemplified by social media and it’s impact on marketing and it’s ability to create community.  One is often represented by slacks / suits, collared shirts, hard shoes and ties and the other by flip flops, jeans and silk-screened tees.  This event saw both of them mixing and mingling in the pursuit of knowledge in the entrepreneurial equation.  I think we need to see a lot more of it and we need to look for way to connect the two, not drive generational or cultural wedges between them.
• Passion by Gary Vanerchuk – My favorite presenter of the day was Gary Vanerchuk.  It was not so much his stories about WineLibrary.TV or the family business’ trials and tribulations that struck me, but his emphatic encouragement that we all have to do what we’re passionate about, the thing that is meaningful to us individually.  Not just doing the thing we think is going to make us some money.  In this age of social media, what you’re passionate about WILL come through – either by you delivering it to your audience or from your customers, suppliers and competitors doing it.  People will find you out if you’re just posing and they will talk about whether or not you’re passionate about what you’re doing.  Gary suggested that even if that approach does not make you a million, you will be happier with your life than if you gave up your passion for a buck.  I liked Gary’s message.  I have my own story about why I do the work I do and how it fills my life with a passion to learn and do what I do in social media.
• Microsoft BizSpark - BizSpark is one of the biggest announcements of the year, I am not sure a project of this scope and caliber has even been launched in the history of business.  It is a project that only a company the size and depth of Microsoft could have launched.  At it’s core is the ability to provide the start-up entrepreneur with integrated enterprise-quality tools at little or no hard cost.  The low-cost alternative has been the development and deployment of solutions using OpenSource Solutions (OSS) technology with the integration left to the entrepreneur.  OSS is not necessarily a bad alternative, but the addition of the Microsoft suite to the decision process means that now the tech entrepreneur can make the best possible decision, not just the best OSS-based decision. Silent Dispatch was announced as an early adopter / inductee of the program, so again I am in full disclosure here – I like what they’ve done and have some perspective after 25 years in tech.

These are the things that made the event significant for me; I’m interested in hearing what made it worth the investment of time and dollars for you

(Update – Chance Carpenter / EET just post a bunch of YouTube videos on what many of you thought about the conference – thx Chance!)

• Gary Vaynerchuk: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tH7Ik9oOZ-Q
• Matt Mullenweg: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=laFy1vhtlMM
• Roseann Higgins: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jRv8DXm_C1g
• Chance Carpenter: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CPLegfqw8-Q
• Toby Lindeman: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XYEkhWekdB0
• Chris Brogan.: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dw2le3Vg8Ls
• Mike Edwards: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MLWR988VN-w
• Heather Herr: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7crDz0eYrI4

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