• 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!

Take a look at www.visualthesaurus.com. It’s a new tool to me, but seems so helpful! You type in a word and it gives you a mindmap. Here’s an example using the word “Imagination”:

You click on any of the words and start getting expanded synonyms. This was so helpful in a positioning exercise and some other communication pieces!

There is a small subscription fee to fully use the tool. I’m still on a trial basis. I’ll let you know how it goes…but I suspect I’ll be a subscriber!

Julie@JulieBurrows.com