Just as soon as my social media dance card cleared up, I’ve been busy booking new events, getting involved in more media sponsorships and being sought out for speaking opportunities. My next speaking engagement will be on a panel at the end of the month during the Convergence conference.

Cossette West invites you to attend Convergence 2008, a Digital Marketing and Communications Forum. Join other savvy marketing and communications professionals from across North America to learn how to stay competitive in the ever-shifting digital landscape. [Convergence2008]

I’ve been on a few panels before (and moderated one) and I have to say the talented people I’ve had the pleasure of speaking with just make it that much more exciting, informative, and entertaining.

This time is no different and I’m almost about to go into Wayne and Garth “I’m not worthy” mode seeing as how I’ll have Kate Trgovac on one side of my, and Darren Barefoot on the other.

I haven’t had much time to interact personally with Kate but she was with me on the victorious Team Blogger for CBC’s Test the Nation, she presented at the Northern Voice dinner, and most recently I saw her on a panel at Bridging Media.

Darren on the other hand is half of the world-traveling Capulet Communications marketing power duo who recently hooked John and I up with a Brother Printer and as a result, our faces were printed in the Wall Street Journal. Capulet is also responsible for the super handy “Getting to First Base: Social Media Marketing Playbook”, which is an e-book for purchase at SocialMediaReady.com.

Photo credit: Robert Scales on Flickr

Our panel will be moderated by Darren Roberts of Optimum Public Relations and we’ll be discussing blogger relations:

Influencers have grown beyond just traditional media outlets to include bloggers, who reign in the online space and who can drastically affect perceptions about your brand, your campaigns and/or any other aspect of your company operations. Are you listening? If so, are you talking back? In the very least, you should be working to tell your side of the story; at best, maximizing your message impact among these powerful individuals.

Given my recent tussle with Matchstick and other experiences over the years, I think all of us will be able to bring something from a blogger’s perspective and also from the professional landscape.

Convergence 2008 is taking place on Granville Island at the Arts Club Theatre on May 22nd from 9:30am until 5:00pm. More info is available on the website and you can check out the Techvibes as well for a preview.

In the summer of 2006 a viral marketing wave blanketed Vancouver. Matchstick, an exciting company out of Toronto, was offering bloggers free stuff as long as they wrote about it, which sounded too good to be true regardless of how questionable their methods were.

- Darren Barefoot: “Matchstick Crosses the Line into Spamming”
- Metblogs Vancouver: “Where We All Start Pimpin’ for the Man”

Initially John was contacted about getting a free Nokia 6682 and although I had my concerns and doubts, everything worked out wonderfully and he still uses the phone today, and I had mine up until I got the iPhone.

After such a pleasant “no strings attached” experience that first time, that we blogged about and promoted, when I was contacted about the Samsung T10 campaign last fall I was fully on board. My T10 arrived with all the bells and whistles, I wrote a blog post, posted notes to Facebook and told my blogging friends about it even getting Keira hooked up with the mp3 player as well.

Fast forward a few months and I was contacted by two separate Matchstick representatives about the Dove Chocolate campaign. Having had such a positive experience on the two previous promotions I was on board and even blogged about it in advance (on my site and WetCoastWomen). I know several bloggers who signed up because of these posts and received some delicious chocolate. Unfortunately I wasn’t called back about the promo and never received any Dove.

This week I had another email from Matchstick, this time about a portable iPod charger. I thought this was perfect, right up my alley and I would definitely review it for my blog. I had a great talk with the helpful rep from the company over the phone although only a few hours after confirming my shipping address I received an email:

“Due to the fact that you’ve participated in a Matchstick program within the last 12 months. Once we enter into the fall of 2008, we would be more then happy to include you in a new Matchstick program.”

Now this isn’t a matter of “I can’t get free stuff anymore,” because if I really wanted a portable iPod charger, I would probably just head over to Future Shop and buy one myself. The fact that I was emailed, given the survey, had the interview and was approved stings a bit as well but that’s not even the kicker. What gets me is that over the six months I have been emailed by varying Matchstick representatives a total of four times, and other bloggers have emailed me about Matchstick’s promotions at least a dozen times.

I would simply like to ask that if I am on a “disqualified” list, that I not be emailed, called or contacted in any way by this firm. I feel like a real sucker for writing about the Dove campaign (after being emailed and filling out the survey - not once told I didn’t qualify) because I gave them a lot of promotion to thousands of readers across the country meanwhile little did I know, I was ineligible.

I’ve defended Matchstick since 2006 (even mentioning them in my panel at Massive Tech Show) and I have to say that in the last few months they really blew it with me. I know there may be some people who just milk the free stuff, but given the readership of my blog and that it’s an Apple iPod accessory they’re wanting to promote, I know it’s definitely their loss (and their client’s loss) not mine.

- Miss604: Vancouver Girl’s Guide to the iPhone
- Miss604: Mac vs PC series
- Miss604: iPod Lightning Bolt Message Help
- Miss604: iPod Disk Mode

If you would like to know about this latest campaign, please talk to me offline as I refuse promote the product publicly due to Matchstick’s policy and their handling of this situation.

I have no plans on dealing with them again in the future, unless my inbox gets inevitably spammed by their team about promotions in which I cannot participate.

Update: After reading email communications between one of the account reps at Matchstick and me, I received a phone call from the Senior Accounts Manager at Matchstick. Here are a few items of note:

- They were truly concerned about my experience and wanted to get my feedback on their processes.

- Just to clarify, the campaign this month would have been for a competing product of the Samsung T10 I already received so that was another conflict. Usually bloggers can participate in two campaigns a year.

- If you do fill out a survey for a campaign this does not mean you are getting the product. They will review your answers and contact you based on the results to ask a few more questions then confirm if you will get the product or not.

- They are aware of the benefits of having a steady database or pool of bloggers with which they have had successful campaigns.

Matchstick read all the comments on this blog post and already has plans to smooth out some of their communication kinks. I appreciate that they took the time to call me back and address my concerns. If they’re willing listen to the voice of the bloggers - or “influencers” as they call them - and take our advice to heart, I’ll certainly be willing to give them another chance. We’ll just have to wait and see if the phone rings (and how many times).

No, I was not paid off to write this and I did get permission from the company to post this update

I was up at 5:30 today to prepare for a seminar I was to attend for my “day job”. The theme was “Social Media for Marketing” and was put on by SMEI (Sales and Marketing Executives International). There were many non-members in the room, including myself, and already being well versed in the social media realm I wasn’t too sure what to expect. I already know what a blog is and how it can help build a two way communication between clients, potential clients, and my company so I was hoping this would serve a good purpose and make my early morning worthwhile.

There were many interesting professionals sitting at my table and we talked a bit over a nice hot breakfast supplied by The Butler Did It Catering. Short side story - yesterday I wrote a Twitter about how much I love whiteboards and got reply from J Karen Parker about participating in a survey about whiteboard usage. Well at my table today was a women who works for an A/V company and they’ve just picked up these fancy new whiteboard that use infrared technology to transform your notes, tasks and scribbles into pdfs and documents.

Photo Credit: Darren Barefoot on Flickr
Original by Robert Scoble - As seen in the Social Media Marketing Handbook

Back to the seminar, the three panelists were James Wells from BCIT, Rob Duncan from BCIT, and Justin Kestelyn from Oracle. The presentation started out very slowly for me, with all the basics being covered including a glossary of terms, “what is RSS?”, although I can imagine it was very helpful (albeit foreign) to those in the room.

A common thread was ‘trust’ and having a blog, podcast or making a company Facebook page does not take away from your business or its credibility. It creates an open forum to engage your clients and for them clients to become your spokespeople.

I also ran into Mhairi, who sat in on John’s Podcasting 101 session at Northern Voice. She has her own internet marketing firm, out-smarts, and asked some really great questions for the panel.

It was my first time attending an event like this as I’m used to the unconferences where there’s people in jeans with laptops and cameras, there’s beer afterwards, a conch worked in there somehow. The panelists reached some good topics, and it proved to be a rather productive morning.

Tonight I’ll be at the Lamplighter in Gastown attempting to live blog an event that’s new to me. From my understanding it’s like DemoCamp meets marketing, but there’s much more to it than that. Every presenter will get a few minutes to talk about their product and present a case to the group.

For presenters so far I believe we have Marqui, Radient Communications, Smak, WiderFunnel, 99directions, and Donat Group.

CaseCamp is an unconference for marketers. Following in the footsteps of BarCamp, and building on the model of DemoCamp, CaseCamp brings together people interested in marketing-oriented activities to learn from their peers via case study presentations. CaseCamp is structured on purpose. The goal is to create an independent forum for for great dialog. Typically, a presenter presents a case (good, bad, ugly, lessons learned, etc.) and then a lively discussion ensues during a Q&A period. [CaseCampVancouver3]

The lighting is pretty low in the venue so I’m unsure any photos will turn out right away via my iPhone but I’ll attempt to have a live blog going on this post’s url. Things kick off at 5:45 and will run until about 7:00pm at which time mingling will be encouraged. The website isn’t currently working for me, so check out the Facebook event for more details.

5:58pm: I’m here, I have wifi. First Case will be at 6:15pm, stay tuned.

6:15pm: Quick show-of-hands survey to find out what kind of audience we have tonight: bloggers, social media enthusiasts, photographers, web designers, PR folks, marketers, and a ton of other professionals. (more…)

It was two years ago that I came across the Social Media Press Release and Newsroom template. At the time it was innovative and truly the standard that businesses and news organization have should strived to achieve at the time. Making your news searchable and even news-worthy is key, it’s also crucial to engage your audience and allow them to share and become a part of what they’re reading.

The NakedPR posts I linked to back then still hold water today. One of my faves is, “Your Target Audience Hates You, Here’s Why“:

Are you a fun, hip, and trendy online business? Then why does your site look like something that predates my grandmother? Again, it’s all about image. Forget about marketing for a minute, and worry about how you look in the eyes of others, especially in regards to the target audience’s expectations going in. You’d better meet… no, exceed, those expectations if you want your target market to love you, keep coming back, spending money, giving you traffic, clicking your ads, etc.[NakedPR]

I admit, that’s mostly about content and image but it works in many other ways that news delivery services should attempt to follow. I wrote a post a year ago about how PR professionals and newswires just didn’t seem to “get it”.

By “it” I mean using social media tools to help engage your audience, distribute your news and get the most exposure. I once worked with a group of PR professionals and was rather willing to share all of my knowledge on the topic, but it fell on deaf ears. Now years later, newswires are realizing how valuable these practices are, however instead of embracing the technology and admitting they’re jumping on the bandwagon, suddenly they’re the innovators. (more…)

Bloggers have the power to publish their opinions and information to the internet and with a good following and decent readership traffic, they have a lot more influence than you’d imagine. They can promote causes, spread news like wildfire and even catch a thief so why is it that it’s super tough for a respectable blogger to find a corporate sponsor for a contest or event?

First things first, not all bloggers are created equal. For instance if a “monkey knife fight blog” wants to get the SPCA to sponsor an event, that may not be the best idea. However when a Vancouver blogger wants to promote restaurants and businesses in the city, what does it take to get a company to hop on board? For example, I’ve personally been told by at least thirty people that my (unsolicited) blog post recommendation to visit a certain butcher shop/deli turned them into faithful regulars of the establishment - score! Blogging equals links equals customers.

Photo credit: Roland Tanglao on Flickr

Recently I’ve been asked twice about finding a sponsor for an event. The first being CaseCamp, which you’d think would be an advertising exec’s DREAM. A packed house of marketing professionals all dialed into social media? What better way to get visibility. The second is Duane’s StartupWeekend. Dozens of tech-minded, career-driven entrepreneurs getting together to build a product or even a new company - why wouldn’t you want to have your business or product showcased for these people?

I know I had a heck of a time finding sponsors for my blogiversary contest. Without going into too many details about my site traffic per month (let’s just say it’s probably close to the population of White Rock), why wouldn’t companies want to get their name in there? It would be FAR cheaper than placing an ad in a newspaper and you’d get a) instant traffic to your own website and b) new customers, should people enjoy the product. Also if it’s as a part of a contest, we all know the benefits of a gift card or gift certificate; you get that person in the door and spending and they’re likely to come back and spend.

I’m grateful to Mount Seymour and the Vancouver Giants for embracing this and their openess to sponsor my past contest. Because of such, I feel even more encouraged to go to Giants games and to carve up Seymour. A positive experience with an organization can go a long way.

Now I don’t know the legalities of some situations - I don’t claim to know much about anything, really - and I personally don’t have any contests going on so this isn’t a plea for my own gain. This is pretty much just to find out… why not ? Why are companies so hesitant to sponsor anything to do with blogging when it could mean hundreds or thousands of hits to their website and have the potential for so many new customers (which we all know equals $$).

Leave your thoughts in the comments below. I’m looking for a little enlightenment and a bit of a discussion here although maybe we all just need to sit down and read the Social Media Marketing Playbook.

A little while ago local blogfather and marketing sensei Darren Barefoot approached John and me (along with a handful of other lucky social medialites) to see if we wanted to test drive a Brother printer.

It’s no secret that we’re pretty much product whores so if you want to give us free things in exchange for reviews, blog posts, our thoughts and feelings, then we’re game.

Here are the specs for this hefty piece of printing machinery.

Technical name: MFC-9440CN
Plain English name: Colour Laser Multi-Function Centre Beast

It should be pretty fun to discover what this sucker can do so we’ll see how much use we can get out of it. Scanning and printing wedding photos, finally, is at the top of my list.

As I alluded to yesterday with my MPFR3DOM post, John and I will also be given a Brother Printer to test drive, taste test, sample, and play with for a little while. Here’s how marketing guru Darren Barefoot approached us.

See other comics sent to Jordan, DaveO and Tanya. If you’re a blogger and would like to participate in the printer taste test, just contact Darren.