• His greeting to the group with “Sawabona!” a Zulu word which means “I see you”.  He urged us all to use social media to “see” your customers in a new light.
• “Social media is the right way to do marketing.” He felt most prior marketing messages made the marketer feel good, like they were talking to themselves.
• Key social media tasks:  Listen > Connect > Publish
• Listening by “growing bigger ears” is the secret sauce.   See his blog entry with practical ideas:  http://www.chrisbrogan.com/grow-bigger-ears-in-10-minutes/
• Connect:  use social media tools to bring value to your clients.  For example, instead of a blog that promoted GoToMeetings he worked convinced this client to address the needs of the not-in-the–corporation worker with a blog called workshifting.  (FYI…this is a great resource for me!)
• The key to publishing is to write about others…on a “12:1 ratio. The more you write about others the more awesome you are to your customers.”  Another quote: “ People matter more than that one sale.”
• Interesting tidbit:  Social media now bigger than porn on the web.  Fantastic!
• Final words:  “BE HELPFUL!” I say “Amen!”

It was a great event… so fun to finally meet many folks I had been following:  Mary Bjorn @mbjorn, Rich Mahn @rickmahn, Mykl Roventine @myklroventine, Christopher Lower @mrchristopherl , meet some new social media MPLS folks:  Aimee Cheek@aimeecheek, Keith Privette @keithprivette, Lisa Grimm @lulugrimm, Kristin Hortenbach @pickycook, and of course  see old friends Dan Wallace @ideafood and Pam Muldoon @pamelamuldoon.   Looking forward to meeting Desarae Veit@desaraev as well!

Thanks Chris for spurring us all on in your humor-filled way!

Sam Richter has written a great book on web research – Take the Cold out of Cold Calling. The sub-title of the book is how I use the book – Web Search Secrets.  While Sam talks about how to go into sales calls better prepared, I use the same techniques to find great information on the web for the “5 Cs” – Category, Consumer, Competition, Channel and Company.    There are great tips on using search like use Google Advanced Search.   He stresses there is 80% of the web not searched by search engines, yet you can still access it.  He’s put up a totally free site to get to these sources: www.warmcallcenter.com.

If you ever get a chance to hear Sam speak, he’s entertaining and so knowledgeable.  I heard him speak at  TCE (Twin Cities Entrepreneurs) gathering last year.  And my searches are getting better and better.  Thanks Sam for your great resource!

What is my feedback so far?
Class 1: Blogging – very basic but I recommended it to some folks new to the internet and social media. Why should you care? Nearly 50% of internet users read blogs monthly!!!

Class 2: SEO – awesome reminder of this ever-changing field. Remember to think about keywords, your link strategy and keeping your site search engine friendly. Why should you care? Most site’s key traffic driver is search and your work on natural search is a low-to-no cost way to drive traffic to your site!

Class 3: Chris Brogan, community guru today!
Keep in learning yourself!