Help select the Third Tuesday Measurement Matters speakers

Today, I’m asking for your help in deciding which developers of social media measurement tools we should invite to speak at the Third Tuesday Measurement Matters conference.

If you could hear from the people behind the leading social media measurement tools talk about their approach to measurement, who would you most like to hear from?

Insight from the people who design measurement tools

We’ll provide an opportunity for the key architects of three of the leading social media measurement tools to speak at Third Tuesday Measurement Matters.

This won’t be a standard product sales pitch. Instead, we’ll ask the speakers to talk about the key social media measurement problems they set out to solve and the solution they’ve developed. We want to get insight into the leading edge of measurement. And we’ll also ask them to look ahead and give us some insight into the biggest social media measurement challenges they believe we must solve in the coming year.

Who would you like to hear from?

Which measurement providers do you consider to be the very best? What do they do especially well? What do you think we can learn from them?

Please give us your suggestions and opinions as a comment below.

In this week’s episode of Inside PR, Martin Waxman, Gini Dietrich and I talk about Mark Breslin’s wedding in Los Angeles (listen and you’ll see why it’s relevant to Inside PR.) We also discuss the still uneven embrace of social media by communications pros. And how could we get away without discussing Twitter’s ongoing status of the social media tool for … not everybody.

And a comment from Bob LeDrew re our discussion of Prince’s statement that the Internet is over.

You can listen to the podcast here:

 

 Inside PR 2.12 [24:43m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Third Tuesday Ottawa

Are you interested in helping to organize Third Tuesday Ottawa? If so, then please attend this special “organizers only” meetup.

We’re looking for people to help us with

• Managing logistics (arranging for the meeting location, sound system, lighting)
• On-site registration (yes, we need people to greet and register people at the events)
• Finding and booking speakers (Because we don’t pay appearance fees to speakers, we rely on the networks of our organizers to be able to reach out to top notch people they know and persuade them to appear at Third Tuesday.
• Soliciting sponsors (to cover the cost of speaker travel, sound and lighting, hall rental)
• Promoting awareness of Third Tuesday (a Wikipedia entry anyone?)

If you have the time and are prepared to help us with these tasks and the other work that goes into organizing Third Tuesday, then please register to attend this special Organizers Only gathering.

Are you interested in helping to organize Third Tuesday Toronto?

We’re looking for people to help us with:

• Managing logistics (arranging for the meeting location, sound system, lighting)
• On-site registration (yes, we need people to greet and register people at the events)
• Finding and booking speakers (Because we don’t pay appearance fees to speakers, we rely on the networks of our organizers to be able to reach out to top notch people they know and persuade them to appear at Third Tuesday.
• Soliciting sponsors (to cover the cost of speaker travel, sound and lighting, hall rental)

If you have the time and are prepared to help us with these tasks and the other work that goes into organizing Third Tuesday, then please register to attend our upcoming Organizers Only gathering.

Dave Fleet has earned a loyal following for his thoughtful and provocative posts on public relations and social media.

Recently, he wrote a couple of remarkable posts, the 2010 Social Media Marketing Ecosystem and  Strategies in the 2010 Social Media Marketing Ecosystem. Taken together, they present an up to the minute view of the range of communications channels that communicators must be aware of and integrate into our marketing programs.

Dave will be coming to Ottawa next week to speak at a day long conference. But we’ve grabbed him for a Third Tuesday the night before (yes, it’s Third Tuesday on a Thursday.)

If you’d like to meet Dave Fleet and hear his thoughts on the Social Media Marketing Ecosystem, register online to attend Third Tuesday Ottawa.

Thank you to our sponsors

As always, I want to thank our Third Tuesday sponsors – CNW Group, Molson Coors Canada, Rogers Communications, Radian6 and Fairmont Hotels and Resorts. Their support make it possible to bring great speakers like Katie Paine, Julien Smith and Shel Israel to Third Tuesdays in Ottawa.

We have a special Third Tuesday Toronto on Feb. 23. It’s special because we’re holding it in conjunction with Personal Brand Camp – a project being undertaken by Michael Cayley for the Humber College social media students.

During the afternoon, the Humber students will meet with volunteer mentors to discuss the importance of their online personnas, the issues involved and how they can develop an online brand that will be consistent with the people they are.

Then, in the evening, Mitch Joel will be our featured speaker at Third Tuesday. Mitch has built a remarkable personal brand. He is well known and widely respected as a marketing thought leader. This year, he published Six Pixels of Separation, a handbook to digital marketing and social media.  He’s often referred to as “Canada’s Seth Godin.” That’s no small feat.

Mitch will offer us his perspective on the concept of personal brand. Does he build his brand consciously? Are there rules, implicit or explicit, that he applies in doing this? Is personal brand building something that we all should be engaged in? What advice would he offer to anyone concerned about the image they project online and in the real world.

Interested? Register online to attend Third Tuesday Toronto with Mitch Joel.

As always, I want to thank our Third Tuesday sponsors – CNW Group, Molson Coors Canada, Rogers Communications, Radian6 and Fairmont Hotels and Resorts. Their support make it possible to bring great speakers like Mitch, and others including Katie Paine, Julien Smith and Shel Israel not just to Toronto but also to Third Tuesdays in Ottawa, Montreal, Calgary and Vancouver. (Speaking of Vancouver, stay tuned for the announcement of a Third Tuesday Vancouver with Mitch Joel.)

Thank you to our sponsors – and thank you to our speakers.

Julien Smith is co-author with Chris Brogan of Trust Agents, a New York Times best-seller that has been named one of Amazon’s top 10 business and investing books of 2009. And Julien Smith will be the next speaker to “go cross-Canada” with appearances at Third Tuesdays in Ottawa, Toronto, Calgary, and Vancouver.

I found Trust Agents to be a smart, practical introduction to the mindset that underpins success in the interconnected world of social media. A few quotes from the book that will give you a sense of what to expect from Julien:

“You need to be liked, and you start becoming likable by being worthy of being liked.”

“Helping others is probably one of the most effective ways to help yourself. By spreading ideas that help others, you get credit and people get the help they need. It’s win-win. What a change from the scarcity mentality most people live with every day, isn’t it?”

“One element of being considered One of Us is that the benefits or rewards you will encounter come from genuine interactions. Exchanges of kindness or transactions involving social capital tend to build on each other.”

Julien will be sharing his insights into the nature of social capital, the role of trust agents and how we can form tribes with others who care about the things we care about. In Julien’s words: “We will never need more advertising. We will always need more community, and tighter links between those we care about. Learning to build tribes using the new radios has never been more important, and understanding social capital has never been more valuable.”

Register to attend

Julien will appear at Third Tuesday Ottawa on November 30 and Third Tuesday Toronto on December 1. He’ll then do a pair of appearances at Third Tuesday Calgary on January 18 and Third Tuesday Vancouver on January 19.

You can register online now to attend Third Tuesday Ottawa and Third Tuesday Toronto with Julien Smith. The links to the Third Tuesday Calgary and Third Tuesday Vancouver events will be posted soon.

It takes a community to make Third Tuesday possible

Our sponsors – CNW Group, Rogers Communications, Molson Coors Canada, Fairmont Hotels and Resorts, and Radian6 – underwrite the cost of bringing speakers to Third Tuesdays in cities across Canada. Their sponsorship goes toward travel, accommodation, the costs of the venue and audio visual.

Our speakers donate their time. Thank you Julien.

And volunteers in each community organize the events. So, a big thank you to our volunteers – Michelle Sullivan and the Montreal team; Tanya Davis and Monica Hamburg in Vancouver; Doug Lacombe and Andrew McIntyre in Calgary; Kirsty MacRae in Ottawa and Sarah Laister in Toronto.

Without you, Third Tuesday simply wouldn’t be possible.

Who would you like to hear from at a Third Tuesday social media meetup? What topic would you like to hear discussed?

One of the great things about Third Tuesday is that we can program the speakers and topics to respond to the interests of you – the Third Tuesday community. So, I’m asking for your suggestions of the speakers and topics that you are most interested in and that you think other members of the Third Tuesday community would also be interested in.

Have you seen someone speak at a conference who absolutely blew you away? Have you read a book that gave you new insights into social media, community, search and the future of our online life? Is there a blogger who is writing great content that should be shared with others? Is there a company, organization or person who is using social media in a creative and cutting edge way?

Your suggestions will guide the programming for the winter sessions of Third Tuesday. So, please have your say and let me know who you think we should invite.

And thanks to our sponsors – CNW Group, Molson Coors Canada, Rogers Communications, Radian 6 and Fairmont Hotels and Resorts – we’re able to bring these speakers not just to Toronto, but also to the other Third Tuesday cities across Canada. Already this year, we’ve brought Shel Israel to Vancouver, Calgary, Montreal, Ottawa and Toronto. And just last week, we were able to bring Katie Paine to Ottawa.

So, who would you like to hear from and what would you like to discuss at Third Tuesday. Please offer your suggestion as a comment below or a tweet to @thornley.

Where do you look for advice when you are considering whether to buy a product or service? If you’re like me, you’ll probably search for customer reviews on specialty Websites or, event better, you’ll reach out to your online friends to find out who has experience with the product or service and what they think of it.

Customer reviews married to social media are changing the way that many people make decisions.

At the next Third Tuesday Toronto, four well-known entrepreneurs will share what they have learned building and working with customer reviews and social media. We’ll hear from Ali De Bold, co-founder, ChickAdvisor Inc., Pema Hegan, co-founder, GigPark.com, Brian Sharwood, president, HomeStars.com, and Stuart MacDonald, CEO and founder, Tripharbour.ca and Tripharbor.com.

Special thanks go to Eden Spodek, founder of Bargainista.ca, who suggested this session and put the panel together. Eden also will moderate the discussion.

You can register online to attend Third Tuesday Toronto. I hope to see you there.

One more thing: As always, we’re grateful for the ongoing support of our Third Tuesday sponsors: CNW Group, Molson Coors Canada, Rogers Communications, Radian6, and Fairmont Hotels and Resorts. Their support is allowing us to program great speakers not just in Toronto, but at Third Tuesday across Canada.

Katie Paine earned her reputation as one of the foremost experts in public relations measurement. So, when social media emerged, it was a natural step for Katie to begin to explore the best ways to measure social media. And she has emerged as a sought after speaker on how to measure the right things in the right way.

Katie will be sharing her expertise at the next Third Tuesday Ottawa #TTO. I asked Katie to give me a preview of what she’ll be talking about. She replied:

Social media measurement doesn’t require new standards or new methods, just a new mindset. How the best measurement tools today are some of the oldest. Relationship surveys, content analysis, correlations and statistical analysis have all been around for decades, and we really don’ t need much more than those.

What we do need is a new way of looking at measurement – from a functional perspective, not a tactical perspective. It’s not about measuring what you do – those individual campaigns, or tactics, or gimmicks you happen to be using. But rather about measuring why you exist. What’ is your function within the organization, and how are you contributing to the success of your organizations objectives.

Each communicator must face the fundamental fork in the road. Are you doing social media for sales? For reputation? For cost avoidance? For crisis management?  Once you’ve decided the reason, then measurement becomes quite simple.

This sounds like an interesting perspective on measurement. I’m definitely looking forward to attending to hear Katie elaborate on it. And, of course, we’ll keep at least half the time available for Third Tuesday attendees to ask questions and discuss Katie’s ideas.

We’ll also have a bonus at this month’s Third Tuesday: a demo of Google Wave. A lot of us have heard about Google Wave, but relatively few of us have had a chance to use it yet. Come and see what all the fuss is about.

One other thing is special about this month’s Third Tuesday Ottawa: the time. We’ll be holding the event at 7:30 AM on October 23. We’ve been able to book Katie on her return from speaking at the MeshMarketing conference in Toronto on October 22. And a Friday evening event just didn’t seem like it would work. So, for this one time only, we’re making Third Tuesday Ottawa a Social Media Breakfast (Hat tip to @bryanperson and the real SMB Ottawa organizers, @sylc, @ryanAnderson and @roblane).

If you’re interested in attending, you can register online for this month’s Third Tuesday Ottawa.

Thank you to our sponsors

Of course, we wouldn’t be able to book a great speaker like Katie Paine to come to Ottawa without the support of our sponsors: CNW Group, Molson Coors Canada, Rogers Communications, Radian6, and Fairmont Hotels and Resorts. You make it possible to bring smart speakers together with Third Tuesday participants across Canada.