Last week I collaborated with two of my Social Media Club colleagues, Philippe Tassin and Tara Coomans in a three-hour consultation with the very cool folks at Montgomery Motors. If you don’t know them, they are a sixty-plus year old, family-owned, and Hawaii-born and bred company that sells motorcycles and related cool gear.

There are a number of things about this meeting that really rocked the house:

• Ross and Ann and their marketing consultant Clint really know their brand, their customers, and their business and want to keep growing it stronger and larger. (Seriously, lots of small businesses can be too close to what it is they do well, and this makes it hard to work on marketingplans – social media or traditional.)


• I got to do this with two awesome colleagues! Who, on any other day, could be classified as competitors. Being able to work together though is a particularly strong feature of social media. We pros recognize that the space is huge, and no one person knows it all, much as we try.


• We worked in the truly functional and creative-juice-hub known as the ING DIrect Cafe in downtown Waikiki. Part of their business model is to share their space with outside groups, knowing that we will tweet and blog about them in a most flattering light. Please follow the local peeps @INGdirectHawaii on Twitter.


• The bonus gift for me was that I asked Ross and Ann at the very last minute , as we were all leaving, for a short video testimonial. They said yes! Then they rocked it as one take wonders. See for yourself below!

I shot and edited this video on my iPhone 4 using iMovie on my short flight home from HNL to OGG, aka Honolulu to Kahului, Maui.

Aloha,

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As a direct result of the U.S. Navy’s outreach to bloggers here in Hawaii, I have been fortunate to both participate in some outstanding programs (like an overnight embark on the USS Nimitz) and also developed enormous respect for their adoption of social media (video interview) and their orderly and standardized approach. They are among the best examples of what I often wish for: more grown-ups using social media to get the job done! I mention them frequently in my talks to business, as I did earlier yesterday to business customers at Hawaiian Telecom University.

Last night we held our monthly meeting of the Hawaii chapter of the Social Media Club (yours truly is the founder.) Our topic was Social Media, Tsunamis, and Crisis Management; lots of good links in the comments there too. Judi Clark live-blogged this event; you can read her summary here. Geophysicist Brian Shiro of the NOAA Pacific Tsunami Warning Center joined us to share the back story and help us fact check. View informational slides that Brian prepared here.

I had reached out to Chuck Bell, Emerging Media Director of the U.S. Navy Pacific Fleet based here in Hawaii at Pearl Harbor; he was unable to attend in person but sent me this thorough report via email. I am sharing it here as it really is a step-by-step example of how this works – written in plain speak and bullet points = music to my ears! I have bolded a few things that really stand out to me as best practices and best case scenarios.

Please leave your comments and kudos for Chuck and the US Navy in the comments below and on Twitter: @PacificFleet.

It was a given that social media was going to be a primary means of communication. Adm. Patrick Walsh, U.S. Pacific Fleet’s commander, emphasized early on in the crisis that our efforts via social media were critical in communicating with our wider Navy family. While we in public affairs realize this instinctively, we are fortunate to have senior leadership that embraces the use of social media as a key means of communicating with our various audiences.

Here are the actions we took: —I immediately monitored my Facebook news feed, which includes extensive likes of Navy commands, and my Pacific military Twitter lists, for announcements and advisories from Navy commands in Japan.
—I reposted each advisory on our Facebook page with attribution and by tagging the Facebook page from which the information came.
—The Navy is much more active on Facebook than in Twitter, so I tweeted everything I was re-posting on Facebook, for the most part.
—At critical points during the crisis, such as the decision to have the ships remain in Pearl Harbor, the Pacific Fleet PAO provided very specific verbiage for use on both Facebook and Twitter.
—As we began receiving questions that I couldn’t answer, especially those of an operational nature (no visibility on those types of decisions from my den at home), I immediately emailed them to the Pacific Fleet PAO and our PAO in the operations center. I would have answers back within minutes and was able to quickly respond to comments and concerns.
—We quickly had a “database” of answers to respond to questions, as many were similar.
—We addressed every question that was posted on our wall, often within minutes, and tried our best to keep a close eye on comments in our posts to quickly address any issues there.
—24/7 monitoring of our social media presence continued for three days.
—Given the ongoing relief effort in Japan that our Sailors are supporting, we are continuing to monitor our social media presence very closely, with truly, only a few hours during the day when there is not eyeballs on it from this office.

Biggest take away: Not only did the social media channels offer a way to immediately share critical information, but the interactive nature of it and our ability to answer questions and concerns immediately, appeared to provide reassurance in particular to the family members of our Sailors.

Thanks Chuck for being part of the conversation and for making it look so easy.

Aloha,

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I’ve been meaning to write more about the innovative travel blogger program I am doing with the Lānaʻi Visitors Bureau and have decided that it’s just gonna ship without being perfect! I started the conversation here with some advice for travel destinations. I am very grateful to my clients at the Maui and Lānaʻi Visitor Bureaus for their willingness to reach out in this ground-breaking way! Read more about the program I produced in 2010 for Maui here. Now, by popular demand, is an overview of the program itself!

Lānaʻi Visitors Bureau Launches Innovative New Media Marketing Program

• They received a special digital invitation to join us as our guest.
• They are invited to bring an assistant to help develop more, better produced, and richer stories.
• They are being treated as guests, Hawaii-style, and honored as “New Media Artists-in-Residence” to reflect each person’s talent as a travel story-teller in his/her unique style and perspective, for their diverse online communities.

• Each artist guarantees a minimum amount of content (stories, photos, and conversations) to be delivered across numerous social web platforms
• Each artist has agreed to collaborate with the other team members, extending and cross-pollinating their extensive individual networks.
• This collaboration creates a much longer and stronger impact (measurable by links and tags) across the six-month time frame as compared to having individual writers come on isolated, solo trips.
• Artists were selected based on several criteria, including their ability to reach diverse audiences: male/female, 20-30-40 age groups, single, couples, and family travel. They are based throughout the U.S., representing east and west coast as well as central locations. Six of the seven are currently in the top 100 Travel Bloggers.
• Numerous types of content will be created: text blog entries, Twitter messages with links, Flickr photos, Facebook conversations, and YouTube videos. There will be daily updates while on-site as well as edited stories posted before and after each visit.

• I created a new Posterous blog, that enables quick, simple article creation by approved contributors generating links that are automatically cross-posted to Twitter.
• I also created a Twitter account and Facebook page to help manage the online conversations on behalf of the LVB and begin to build some social media assets of their own. I also wanted to be sure and grab those names too!
• There is a central hashtag that is in use, to aggregate multiple assets across numerous web sites over the six months, (#VisitLanai)
• The conversation and market communications began within one week of confirming the initial group of artists, and will continue through May, 2011.
• Interested travelers can follow and join the online conversations in real time. It is interactive; we can entertain questions over the course of the campaign and give answers – documented in photos, audios, and videos. (Both Shannon and Matt have queried their readers about what to do.)
• A new media artist brings enormous credibility – they are committed to sharing the authentic travel experience. This can address one of the most common questions re: the out of the way locations: “What is it really like? What did you do actually? Show me!”

• Private online web site where partners can easily find information about the team, and follow the milestones of the trip.
• Periodic conference calls for Q&A with the partners.
• Brief training and “cheat sheets” to be provided so the partners can make the most of the artists while in residence.
• This will translate into some partners creating Facebook and Twitter accounts for the first time while others receive advanced tips for social media engagement.

New Media Artists ( in order of their visits)
Shannon Hurst Lane – Traveling Mamas
http://www.travelingmamas.com

Chris Gray Faust – Chris Around the World
http://caroundtheworld.com/
Featured in USA Today Travel

Matt Long – Landlopers
http://www.landlopers.com

Gary Arndt – Everything Everwhere
http://everything-everywhere.com/

Sheila Beal – Go Visit Hawaii
http://www.govisithawaii.com

Kara Williams – The Vacation Gals
http://www.thevacationgals.com

Melanie Waldman – Travels with Two
http://www.travelswithtwo.com

This program is being produced by Roxanne Darling, Bare Feet Studios for the Lānaʻi Visitors Bureau.

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I am producing a social media marketing campaign for the island of Lānaʻi, here in Hawaii. It is a rather unique concept, a “New Media Artist-in-Residence” Program. I will write about the specifics in a separate blog post, though I did start noodling on this idea back in 2008. Today I want to share with you some tips I have put together for the destination partners, which apply to any type of social marketing with bloggers.

Program Overview
The LVB has invited seven well regarded new media “bloggers” to visit as New Media Artists-in-Residence. Each will be accompanied by a companion to assist in developing stories and making media (writing blog posts, updating social networks, and taking pictures and videos). Their visits will span five months, generating an ongoing conversation online amongst each other (with hundreds of links) about the island of Lanai.

Working with New Media
These folks tend to be much less formal and far more interactive with the destination partners than is typical for traditional media reps or writers. They want to engage with you and other local people. They want behind-the-scenes experiences. They are looking for stories to tell and interesting people and places that can truly convey the essence of a place.

Keep in mind, a New Media Artist’s loyalty is to their readers, the people they inform and inspire, while sharing their authentic experiences. The more you engage with them, the more likely they will mention you. And the more likely others will learn about you and want to know more. If you want to make any special offers available, the new media team will be able to help you get the word out at no extra charge. They love having exclusives and scoops for their readers!

It’s All About the Conversation
Online social conversations cover a wide territory – from short greetings and reference links on Twitter to long form blog entries with lots of photos, links, and nuanced story telling. The conversation will be taking place in many locations or what we call, on several different platforms. Each artist has a destination blog where s/he will be writing their in-depth pieces about the trip. Light, chatty, link-sharing takes place on Twitter and Facebook. Photos are shared on Twitter, Facebook, and Flickr, where they can be seen by thousands of others. Videos are hosted on their blogs as well as on YouTube for extra wide distribution.

Remember, on the social web, everyone’s invited! That includes you too.

Here’s how you can interact with New Media Artists, aka Travel Bloggers:
* Introduce yourself on Twitter and their blogs; interact with questions and suggestions for their visit. Introduce them to others in the community. Point them to your website or Facebook page. Share a picture of your business location or activity. Tell them about you so they can share that with thousands of others.
* Post welcome messages to each artist on Twitter and Facebook the day of their arrival.
* Take a photos and/or videos with them and your staff while on property and post to Twitter, Flickr, and/or email to the blogger to post it for you.
* Follow the artists on Twitter and read their blog before, during, and after their visit. Leave comments!
* Mention them on your Facebook page (and include a link to them – any of their links will do) if you have a FB page.
* Follow (and use!) the tag we have in place to keep track of the conversation and all of the content being created: #VisitLanai. This is a short cut on Twitter to see what is happening right now amongst all of the team members too. Save the search as a bookmark so you can check in easily and often.
* Even if you are not on Twitter or Facebook, you can still follow the conversation in a web browser. See the links below and save them as bookmarks!
* You can take pictures with your phone and email them to the bloggers to get them posted.
* You can send an email message to your customer email list telling them to follow your hashtag to meet real people who are visiting here.
* You can leave comments on the bloggers’ web site.
* You can do something memorable that they will cherish and want to write about!

VisitLanai Web Resources
Search the tag on Twitter
The temporary blog for the LVB
The Twitter account for the LVB

Aloha,

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Here are the notes from the networking event at the Hawaii Chapter of the Social Media Club: Build a Social Media Strategy. We mixed up our format to complement the venue, Ka Restaurant. We met in the intimate (read: packed!) lounge room for a brief presentation of the highlights of social media strategy. Presenters were Tara Coomans, Rob Bertholf, and myself. We were limited to one slide each, plus the cheat sheet that we posted on all the tables scattered throughout the bar – and to where we adjourned for robust conversation after the overview. Download the PDF here.

Tons of links at the end of this post; get your goodies there!

Building a Social Media Strategy is like building any strategy: you start with that brilliant question, “What’s the point?” The catch with many of us in these rushed times is that we tend to jump into social media before thinking about strategy, and then forget to come back and revisit why we jumped in, in the first place! It is very easy to get sucked into the stream of activity and distractions, playing a few rounds of copy cat, and then being stuck having to write an annual report that basically says, “Well, we were really busy this year but don’t have a clue what we actually accomplished!”

This SMCHI meeting was an antidote to that. And, it used our guiding principle of “If you get it, share it” to bring us together as business collaborators. Of course, there were companies in attendance who normally think of themselves as competitors, but the beauty of social media is that we actually can help all of our businesses grow though collaboration. Just like how the gas stations learned long ago to all set up on the same corner.

Another aspect of social media at present, is that there are so many tools to use and it is not easy or obvious to know which ones are more efficient at specific tasks. I find people complaining that they don’t get results with SM, however when I look at their platforms in use and the activity taking place, I can see why. ;-) Twitter is the easiest example – where people start accounts, post some things, yet aren’t aware of the faux pas they are creating or the opportunities they are missing by not using links, keywords, and etiquette to their best advantage. As we help each other get smarter, our Hawaii business community gets stronger.

The concept was simple, even if the execution is not so easy – pretty much a metaphor for our evening. Seems the flat screens at Ka require a very obscure cable: VGA to RCA. Not being able to secure one in time, we could not use the TVs for the intended live Twitter stream. Nonetheless, we pursued our goals and you can see the results by searching “smchi” on Twitter. Here’s a screen shot with a curated sample of some of my favorites! (Click the image to see full size.)

We are purchasing a couple of those mystery cables and will be gifting one to Ka Restaurant so other groups who meet there will have an easy process of connecting their laptop media to the house screens. We’ll be heading back there December 15 for our Social Media Year in Review Party. Please join us!

Thanks for reading! Here are the goodies I promised above.
Handouts that we shared can be dowloaded here. Thanks to Tara Coomans for posting those.

You can the slides and photos from this event on Flickr.

You can view the live stream video of the presentation on uStream.tv.

You can play with the interactive Social Technographics Tool from Forrester Research.

Follow the tag #smchi on Twitter to catch some of the comments from the evening. (And remember, if you don’t include the tag, it’s nearly impossible for us to include you in the conversation and discover you!)

You can see who attended this event on our RSVP page.

Mahalo to Lululemon for donating a $25 Gift Certificate. Lucky winner was @lorenawire (photo attached of the cool Lululemon bags.) YOU can win a free yoga class, just by checking in to Facebook Places the next time you are at a Lululemon store. We have one here in Honolulu at Ala Moana Center. Tell them Tess sent you!

Aloha,

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I wanted to push the limits of the garden-variety talk on Social Media last week when I presented the keynote address at the Hawaii Social Media Summit. First let me thank Quincy Solano and team from Technology News Bytes and our own Social Media Club Hawaii for creating a high energy event! (You were awesome Tara and Rob – I loved having you there with me.) And check out NonStop Honolulu’s photos from the Tweetup afterwards. And be sure to check out this video interview on KITV from 6:15 am that morning! Mahalo Yasmin Dar.

I expected a small percentage of people from “the choir” in the audience, with the large majority being local businesses – and this turned out to be true. So how can I entertain and keep my peers not just interested, but hopped up and motivated for the rest of the day, while talking as jargon-free as possible to the business managers who gave their precious time to be there?

Well, I relied on the tools of our trade, the principles of our practice, and the voices of my peers.

Tools of the Trade:
Use Twitter. I made sure to put up an advance slide listing my Twitter handle and the hashtag for the day, #HISMS. This allowed people to start interacting even before I came on stage. I was tweeting myself as I was being introduced (by the lovely Ramsay Wharton) and by sheer, beautiful coincidence, my friend CC Chapman direct messaged me right in that time-space continuum. I clicked “submit” on my reply to him as I walked up the stairs – telling him I was actually using a video of him in my presentation! That is the “Psychic Friends Network” for real.

Use More Interesting Presentation Tools. I completely understand the comfort and usefulness of having a presentation, but we really can now move beyond the “death by PowerPoint” type of presentations with too many words at too small a size, and nothing left to the imagination. I built my preso in Prezi – which is like a mind-mapping tool for presentations. The audience loved it and there was an entire side channel happening on Twitter talking about Prezi, among people in the audience as well “out there.” I love that! Here is the link to my Prezi.

Incorporate Rich Media. When I first learned I would have 90 minutes, I mildly freaked out! “I am not going to stand up there and lecture at folks for an hour and a half – we will all be brain dead by 10:30!” Speakers, I recommend wholeheartedly you resist the urge to feed your audiences facts and figures. Those can be found on Google. Or Hubspot. Instead I used a lot of video. Some from clips I had in my archive from 3-4 years ago, some from YouTube, some new video slide shows I made using photos from HawaiiIRL.com and also from Flickr. Remember, a picture is worth 1000 words, but a video is priceless!

Principles of Social Media Practice:
Transparency. I showed them my computer, in WYSIWYG fashion – when I goofed on switching applications, I made a manini mistake and they got to watch as I fixed it. That is so much more interesting, in these times, than just trying to be perfect. I also shared my nervousness about using Prezi for the first time to such a large group; I had previously only used it in small, private training programs. Share some of you, your energy, with them. Be real. It’s not as scary as it sounds, and I can tell you, I had as much fun as ever, and experienced a lot less stress. Walk at least as much as you talk. Better yet, dance! (We did. I love music and I love movement, so I shared that part of who I am.)

Get People Involved. Disruption is OK. Can you believe we were dancing to a large screen YouTube video of Cheryl Lynn’s, Got to Be Real? Well, I was, and a few people even joined me! I also stopped between each of my six points…to give people something to do related to the previous point, and give me a minute to check the Twitter stream!

Give People an Experience, don’t just talk about the experience. Oh baby we did this! I planted a trick on the audience, to let them know first hand how a social media event is different from your typical conference. (Think disruption, opinions, etc.) Thanks to my colleague, Jesse Stay, we had some drama of the entertaining kind, that was perfectly on point.

The Voices of My Peers:
Crowd-Sourcing. As I mentioned above under Rich Media, I used video clips I had taken from several of my peers. Why hear just my perspective, when I can bring you the insights of Gary Vaynerchuk, Chris Brogan, Laura Fitton, CC Chapman, my Mom, Blanche Benton, and Bubbe of Feed Me Bubbe! The cool thing was that those peeps got shout outs too on Twitter from the precious people in my audience.

Share My Network With You. I wanted to include the local Hawaii “social media types” so that the businesses in the audience would start to get to know all of you. Even though I was running out of time, with close to 30 hours into my prep, I put together a brief slide show of some of you – thanks to HawaiiIRL again. This is about real people, not just lists of names somewhere. And of course I included all of my fellow speakers too.

Go Outside My Network. I also used videos from YouTube that I found inspiring, most especially the Lost Generation and my new friend, @MermaidKariel. I also shared excerpts from a video from GigOm about how Multitasking affects our brains.

The Result?
We had a grand time. People left the room highly buzzed and ready to go absorb as much as they could from the other sessions and hallway interactions. I was so happy to receive so much praise – from so many new people as well as from my peers. We do things so often in something of a vacuum – for me, having my colleagues entertained was a very sweet feeling! You can look at the Twestimonials in our sidebar – it shows the tweets I favorited and for which I am so grateful!

Here are the presentations from my colleagues that have been posted; I will update as I get more:
Dan Zelikman, on Communities and Advertising
Andy Beal, on Reputation Management

Aloha,

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For the best science and insights in the business I frequently turn to my colleague Tom Webster, whose blog, BrandSavant, has been exploring social media metrics these days. Tom is adept at pointing out the risk in over-relying on purely transactional data and reminds us frequently (one of my favorites) that baseline data is one of your most useful metrics. Most companies tend to rush in and worry about measurement later. On the web we are lucky, as some of this can be done after the fact: certain transactions are inherently trackable and come with a date and time stamp! I think Tom and I would agree though the ex post facto method will leave out some of the more relevant data points.

New media and internet business people have touted our ability to measure “things” as far superior and accurate as compared to traditional media. Traditional media surveys a manini segment of the population once or twice a year, hope those people are telling some version of the truth, and then they extrapolate like hell to come up with numbers. “Each magazine is read by an average of 3.4 people!” Really? (Please hear that “really” in your head through the voices of Seth Myers and Amy Poehler on Saturday Night Live.) New media people measure every things that shows up on a web page, then try like mad to turn it into something meaningful, aka sentiment analysis. I love that everyone is trying, yet we have by no means nailed this challenge.

Yesterday Tom was looking at some of things that are not easily measured, aka “The Unmeasured Power of Social Media” and why we should not be blinded by just sales data as in many cases it cannot tell the whole story. He was referring to a recent article from my other colleague Chris Brogan, on Social Media Metrics. Chris was sharing one of his faves, the value of conversion: How many of those warm fuzzies turn into sales? Of course that is relevant to business, and dare I say we “social media types” have gotten a little defensive at times from the onslaught of skeptics who maintain that social media is nothing more than a few warm fuzzies. Yes, conversion matters to us too.

So now that it’s on the table, of course we business people know that some things can be literally measured, some things cannot, (PR anyone?), and at the end of the day we can learn other ways to assess the value of our efforts in the marketplace.

Which takes me back to my earlier career as a health coach for Johnson & Johnson. You all know how hard it is to change health behaviors, right? Well, JNJ supported a researcher, Dr. James Prochaska, over 20 years leading to not only an understanding of behavior change but also the development of a coded system for creating behavior change. Would you believe that a 10-minute phone call between coach and client once a month for 6 months could translate into a 15-30 point drop in blood pressure or 10-20 pounds of weight loss or cholesterol down by 10-20? It did, over and over again.

The secret to our success was being able to assess the stage of “change readiness” and then collaborate with the client on a stage-appropriate behavior change that was not just palatable but welcomed by the client. While the human interaction was very important, the foundation is quite defined and could be applied in numerous ways, technologically speaking. Curiously enough, the first “stage” of change readiness is defined as “Not interested in change at all.” The brilliance of this methodology though was that there are prescribed things we can do to move a person from that stage to the next! Compare this to the traditional treatment for smokers. First, there are only two stages in most trained health professionals’ minds: smoker and non-smoker. So then if you encounter a smoker, your “only” option is to make them a non-smoker by enrolling them in a smoking cessation program – 80% of which fail. Not because the program or the patch doesn’t work – they do – but because most smokers are not at the actionable stage for quitting when others intervene upon them!

I have often wondered what would happen if we transferred this knowledge to business. We talk a lot about targeting based on evolving data of first demographics then psychographics and what I now call “friendographics.” What Tom describes in his post, is that early stage of market behavior: “thinking about buying a car” that by definition will not lead to a car sale transaction in the next 24 hours or in a single measurable transaction. I know Tom; he is far too thoughtful to act that quickly no matter how slick your sales offer or compelling your tweet. But if you have the patience to help educate Tom about the benefits of your vehicle and know how to engage with him in a “stage-appropriate” manner, you are well on your way to having not just a happy customer but one who will share his transaction with his followers. How do your strategies match up to the “stages of sale” as I will call it, and that Tom laid out so clearly below? (Emphasis mine.)

..consumers move from problem recognition, to information seeking, to evaluating options and eventually to a sale (and to post-sale behaviors, loyalty, evangelism, etc.)

It’s what I’ll be addressing head-on next Tuesday in my keynote address at the Hawaii Social Media Summit (#HISMS), hosted by Technology News Bytes: Social Media – More than Tweets the Eye. The seminar series tickets are mostly sold out however you can join the Expo from 12-5 pm for only $3. We’ll have a booth there for our “coming soon” KnowHow Cafe along with the Hawaii Chapter of the Social Media Club. If you are an early riser, please check out my related appearance on KITV 4 Tues, Oct 5th, around 6:15 am Hawaii Standard Time. Tweet them your questions and comments: @kitv4, @mahealani, @danmeisenzahl.

Aloha,

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This week is the first ever Nā Hōkū Festival, a celebration of the arts and culture of Hawaiʻi. I am fortunate to be a guest speaker at their conference event, which features three days of educational and inspirational sessions covering every aspect of being a Hawaiian musician. Other events include concerts around Oʻahu, and the kick off event, the annual Nā Hōkū Hanohano Music Awards happening tonight. (You can watch the ceremony live in HD via local TV station Hawaii News Now. Scroll down and look for the player in the left column if you don’t see it featured.)

Really, though, this post is about Kenneth Makuakāne. He is an independent Hawaiian musician, earning a comfortable living for himself, his lovely wife and their small child. So yes, it can be done, and I want to share with you some of how Kenneth does it. Here is an excerpt of a phone interview I did with him just in time for Nā Hōkū Festival!

Rox: How long have you been using social media?
Kenneth: About 4 years ago I joined Myspace. I attracted about 4000 fans. Over time though, I noticed Myspace was not about friends really but about signing up a lot of people. It was not really faciliting my needs other than serving as a free artist site. Then Facebook came along, and after 3 people asked me to connect with them there, I did. I find it a much better format for me because it is much more interactive. Podcamp was a real experience for me too. I started using WordPress for my blog after than and going to the Social Media Club meetings to learn more.

Rox: How are you using Facebook? I know you have a fan page for your music.
Kenneth: Well, I leave it on all day when I am at my computer. I get the notification sound and can respond whenever someone interacts with me. There is more interactivity and ease of use; it is easy to create events. It has a chat capability – fans see you are online and want to talk! I had to finally turn it off though, as I get too much – I only use it when I have time. The good thing is people can message and I can respond when I have time. A lot of Japanese fans now, sending me photos, etc.

Rox: What is your larger strategy in using social media?
Kenneth: I’ve changed my branding to being a solo artist. First I was a “lei and white pants musician” at the hotels, then musician for musicians and record producer, now back into the performance end. Had to rebrand myself and find another avenue. Social media has done that for me – it creates opportunities for younger and older people to connect – they feel like they can talk to you now! Greatest part – you don’t have to have live chat – you can respond in your own time. However I always answer my fans; that is very important.

Rox: What other tools do you use to connect with and support your fans?
Kenneth: Well, I learned I had to build a fan base. One by one. So they trust me and know me and call me a friend and know that Im a real person. They know I will answer. I do my Google Alerts to find out who is talking about me in other places. I go to those places and start commenting to people and then it drives them back to my site.

It takes time, but is well worth it. I have gained loyal fans, they are buying my albums, reading my stories, telling their friends about me.

Rox: Do have a specific example of how social media directly is supporting your business?
Kenneth: Yes! last year and this year I held a CD release party at the Ala Moana Hotel. We only used social media to get the word out, and both events were standing room only! That was the only marketing we did.

Rox: You also sent me some links showing you were ranked in the top 10 on both the folk artist (where you are #3 today right behind Makana!) and the world/reggae.
Kenneth: Yes. Just like when my music was used on your Beachwallks.tv, my fans use their own Google alerts and find me there and that helps build my connection to them, and your fans come to my web site too. All these links from other people help me on the ReverbNation charts.

Please visit Kenneth’s website here.
Please visit Kenneth’s blog here.
Please visit Kenneth’s Facebook page here.

Thank you Kenneth!
Aloha,

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This presentation was for the Hawaii Court Reporters and Captioners Association. These are the fine folks who work in the courtroom transcribing the proceedings, in lawyer offices taking depositions, and providing captioning for the hearing-impaired. Where would be without them?!

Here is a transcript of the slides I used, which was followed by real time web surfing looking at real life examples and Q&A. I will update with links after the presentation. You can download the PDF of my slides here. View and share the slides on SlideShare.net.

Promote Yourself with Social Media

• People Talk. Help them! Your identity. Your locations. Your messages. Your time.
• A Picture Is Worth…
• The Person – The Biz: Be clear about your identity: Keep it consistent across the internet. It’s not just your name and your avatar! Actions speak louder than words.
• Free eBook on howto manage your online identity: www.KnowHowCafe.com
• Your website is your prime real estate.
• Online Networking You’re invited! Culture matters. Find friends. Schedule smartly.
• Marketing The Good News: Other people can spread your message for you. You are no long limited by small staffs. You can benefit by creating “assets” that serve others as much as they serve you.
• Your New Media Voice Text Blog Podcast Internet Talk Show Photo Blog Live Video Stream Internet TV
• Tech IQ: Smart Phone Mobility RSS Efficiency Etiquette Literacy
• Best Practices: Ask. Respond. Share. Centralize strategy and Deputize across the organization. Personalize your goals and measure accordingly. Incorporate into normal j-o-b activities. Make it easy for others to talk about you.
• Online Self Promotion! Open 24-7!
• See you online!

Here are the links we visited

Note: All links open in a new window!

Aloha,

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I interviewed Charlene Kauhane (of Kauhane Inc.) and Keliʻi Brown of the Maui Visitors Bureau over at the Ulupalakua Ranch on Maui. I had been hired to create, staff, and execute a Social Media Campaign for the Bureau, all in the span of less than six weeks. There are many discussion points in here:

• How speed is affecting business and marketing
• The power of collaboration between new media and old media
• Using trust and gut instincts to choose the right partners
• Know how to choose the right mix of skills & reach for media team
• Giving your partners free reign to do what you hired them to do
• Social media has a lot of requirements behind the scene to be successful
• Add training for destination partners as part of the marketing plan

Download iPod Version | Duration: 6:55

Mahalo to our new media team:

Please stay tuned for a followup post where I will share some data with you and the four-pronged approach that helped make this campaign so successful!

Aloha,

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