Social Media Week, Upcoming Appearances & Facebook Deals

I have a few more gigs coming up in the next couple weeks, so I wanted to pass along some details.  As a thank you for reading through this mostly self-promotional post, I’m adding info about facebook Deals at the end, which you will want to read if your organization has a Facebook page, local presence, and uses coupons/promotions.

Social Media Week

I customize virtually all presentations for the audience and always update older material with recent changes in the online marketing world, but here’s one that will be totally new that I’m really looking forward to.  Online Marketing Connect is hosting its Social Media Week this week and you can register for free for the entire week’s worth of presentations from a good looking group of speakers.  And by “good looking,” I mean in terms of their organizations and material.  I do not know what most of them look like, but I’m sure they’re all Greek gods and goddesses.

My presentation is more intermediate-level and will focus on recent changes in the local sphere and its effects on reputation management and, ultimately, profitability.  I hope you’ll join me this Thursday at 5PM Eastern for Brave New Local / Social World: Recent Changes to Local & Review Sites and their Effect on Online Reputation Management.

Association of Information Technology Professionals

On Wednesday, May 11, I’ll be sitting on a 2-person panel with fellow blogger and all-around smart guy Russell Dunkin for the Greater Wheeling Chapter of AITP.  We’ll discuss blogging and social media as often times organizations put these things in the laps of the IT departments.  Even when it’s not their core responsibility, developers are often tasked with setting everything up, integrating various platforms, and maintaining the technical aspects.

West Virginia High Tech Consortium Foundation

The next morning I head down to attend the Generation West Virginia Young Leaders Conference.  On the way, I’ll stop in Fairmont, WV to present an intro to social media benefits and pitfalls entitled Can Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn & Local Review Sites Help Your Organization?

Update with specifics: Attendees of this Do Biz U presentation – who include WVHTC Foundation Affiliate Members, the Marion Regional Development Corporation, and Create Marion – will be able to ask questions about their organizations to learn specifically if and how social media can help them.  As much as we marketers deal with social media, it’s still daunting to many businesses who want to ensure they’re not doing themselves more harm than good before jumping in.

Click here for more details or to register to attend this event at the Robert H. Mollohan Research Center in Fairmont.

Facebook Deals Getting a Push

When I logged into the Direct Online Marketing™ facebook page today, I noticed a big notice at the top for Facebook Deals.  Nothing new here – facebook often uses this space for announcements and Facebook Deals were announced back in November.

Now, this isn’t showing up to admins on all pages by any stretch, but I find the timing extremely interesting.  Google announced on Tax Day that it was discontinuing Tags, which was their product most directly comparable to Facebook Deals.  Now just barely a week later, Facebook is pushing its Deals.

So What the Heck are Facebook Deals

If you’ve not heard of Deals, they’re a pretty interesting concept.  You can make up offers to appear in your news feed that work either for a particular person or multiple persons,  i.e. “Check in here with three of your friends, show the phone to the bartender and get a half-priced margarita.”

(For now) there’s not cost to facebook Deals, so if you have a local physical presence and coupons or incentives work with your sales model, give them a shot.  It’s a super fast and easy process – just click to edit your page and you’ll see a link for “Deals” all the way at the bottom of your left-hand menu.  Just be aware: once you start your Deal and it gets approved, you can’t change it any way, or add a second one to run at the same time.  Although, you can stop the deal from running at any time.

To learn more, visit the facebook deals home page.  Yes, yes, it says it’s only available in Hotlanta, Austin, Big D, San Diego and San Fran, but that’s just old.  Why update the main home page where people can learn more when you’re promoting it to facebook owners?  That would just be silly.  Actually, just skip that link above and visit a subpage where it doesn’t have misinformation.

If you like whitepapers, here’s their pdf.  Or if you like short videos, try this (puff), this (for iphone – describes different types), and this (walks you through adding them).

Happy Dealing!