Social Media Maven or bust...

I know, I know, it's been a while since I posted. It's this time of year really - sunshine, warm weather, family parties every few weeks, trips up and down the Northeast, visiting relatives and friends, oh and work. All these things have hindered my ability and availability to post. Plus this has been sitting in my drafts for a bit. Oops...

Anyway.

Namely the past three weeks have been a bit crazier. For work, two weeks ago, I had to go to 3 conferences, one taping session for 2 video classes, one networking "party," a small business breakfast, a visit to a high school to ask for intern help (or rather if there'd be an interest for students to intern at my company), interviewing intern candidates and a breakfast business meeting with potential clients. I'm pretty sure I forgot something in there but you get the point.

I have to say, as tiring as all day conferences are, I really enjoyed all three for their extremely informative programs, unique topics and take aways (whether the connections made or new information learned.) The first was the RLTM NY'11, run by The Realtime Report, formerly TWTRCON. Next up was the surprising one, CAT - Creativity and Technology Conference, I didn't know what it entailed until it started, but wow- is all I have to say. While it attracted a slightly more tech-y crowd, the things will be coming in terms of technology... just you wait. Plastic printing printers. Interactive e-books. Random using car horns as a giant piano. If you like technology furthering creativity, you best check them out. My pathetic attempts at even covering what the event entailed do not capture it. Anyway, my non-tech brain was emotionally exhausted after that, partially because I feel like what I saw there means we'll soon be living in a Star Trek/ Star Wars world. Finally, the New York Times Small Business Summit, where I learned I might actually be interested in "Living Social" promos. Also heard about the backstory and evolving ideas of foursquare- which was started to get people OUT and ABOUT. I like this.

However the most important thing I learned was probably something very basic. At RLTM someone informed me of the amazing powers of bitly.com. For my company, knowing about these wondrous options makes me wonder, how DID I not know about this sooner!?

Bitly is a URL shortener website. With the capability to see who has tweeted the link. How many clicks the link has had. What time the link was clicked on AND which countries the viewers are from. The only way you know of if someone has tweeted about the link (say, article or video, etc) is if they use your link. So if someone changes the link to a google shortener, then it no longer can track it. I'm personally really excited about seeing which times are more productive for posting a link and which countries we're reaching.

I could probably keep writing about the things I heard or experienced, or even the different people I met. Not to metion, Poken could be a whole separate blog post - digital business cards that can swap another person's data (like handing a business card over) if you put two Pokens together. But I'll leave that funny little gadget to another day.

Hope you enjoyed hearing about my networking / social media learning forays. Now it's back to work!

That, is what a Poken looks like.