Thanks to April Guzik, president of AIGA Houston, the Schipulites got to honor our fearless leader Ed Schipul as only we know how – through quirky video creation and hilarious Powerpoint presentations.
Aaron Long led the roasting charge with an animated discussion of crucial Ed-isms and Schipul office elements, such as:
Attending events that connect you to great ideas and people is even more satisfying when you get a really good look at the people and communities connected by them. For instance, at SchipulCon you probably hung out with folks from NASA, a local robotics team, business leaders and the founders of both WordPress and Drupal – how’s THAT for networking!
Sure you can stare at nametags and your stack of post-conference business cards, but sociologist and data analyzer Marc Smith‘s (from the Social Media Research Foundation) visual data set is even more satisfying!
He took a look at SchipulCon-related Tweets and content to provide us a cool data set to stare at, trace and make mental associations. Find yourself and ogle the fascinating communities that came together through SchipulCon – many thanks to Marc!!
With SchipulCon starting in only one day, we have our most exciting announcement yet!! Matt Mullenweg (founder of WordPress) will be sharing the Friday luncheon stage with Dries Buytaert (founder of Drupal) – for the first time ever!
Their discussion, moderated by Schipulite David Stagg, will cover the two enormous open source communities’ growth, development and future direction.
Learn how both geek-preneurs have cultivated their very unique development and user communities, as well as what the future holds for open source in general. THIS is not a discussion to be missed.
Join us for an amazing look at two of the brightest minds in technology today! With Drupal, WordPress, Facebook, NASA and so many other great speaker organizations stepping up to share their brain candy – you’ll grow your brain as never before at SchipulCon.
We’ve been talking about some of our amazing speakers, awesome keynotes and other business-savvy takeaways at SchipulCon 2011, but let’s not forget the FUN we’ll have too!
The SchipulCon crew believes that learning goes best with fun activities, extra cool brain candy and neat people to share it with. Check out some of the neat stuff we have in store for you:
Participate in our Robot Drawing Contest for cool prizes (yes, you read that right)
Our SchipulCon tickets are still on sale – including Day Passes if you cannot make the entire conference. We’re holding our fun SchipulCon Conference Party at The Yard House on Thursday evening from 5:30 – 7:30pm. You’ll need a SchipulCon ticket to join us, but believe us – it’ll be a blast no matter when we get to connect!
Our SchipulCon 2011 event is October 6th and 7th here in Houston, TX. Sure it’s a Web marketing conference – but a Web marketing conference x 1,000,000!!!
Be there for the great Tendenci 5 unveiling!
As a Tendenci software all star, you’ll learn about the new Tendenci 5 platform with an exciting unveiling on Day 2 of our great conference. You’ll get special access to a free beta invite where you can play around with a new Tendenci 5 website of your own – how cool is that!?
Learn the ins and outs of ‘Smart’ Tendenci websites
Join programming manager John-Michael Oswalt for a neat look at how to build ‘smart’ websites that communicate to your visitors more efficiently, make your website management life easier and create an exciting new way for your community to interact with your Tendenci website.
Sign up for FREE support time with our ‘Ask A Geek’ sessions
Do you have a Tendenci, blogging, Facebook, Search Engine Marketing or other Web-related question? Sign up for one of our FREE 20 minute support session slots and access the collective Schipul brain. We’ll help trouble shoot, brainstorm and show you new ways of doing the great work you’re already doing on the Web.
But of course there’s way more business and brain building content than cool Tendenci discussion and training happening at SchipulCon this year, check out some of these great sessions too:
With our SchipulCon 2011 event just around the corner – one more week!! – we love seeing the variety of attendees that are making their way to Houston to grow their brains, bottom lines and connections with us!
But with so much amazing and varied information and sessions, who can benefit from attending SchipulCon? Well, what a great question 🙂
Business Owners get profitable
Business owners, managers, nonprofit executives and entrepreneurs are excited about our Profit track at SchipulCon this year. With a focus on growing your organization, building a stellar sales team, finding online metrics that matter and using Social Media to do competitive due diligence – we want you to walk away with actionable ideas that will make a noticeable difference in your business world.
Nonprofits get their marketing and community building learn on
Nonprofit organizations face big challenges with limited resources. SchipulCon’s focus on world changing technology, best practices for offline meets online community building, tips from seasoned association leaders and exceptionally cool video and photography training can help you make a splash in whatever nonprofit capacity you serve.
Marketers grow their online tactics to-do list
You’ve probably been to a million online marketing conferences that cover the same fluffy content, time and time again. We don’t do that here. Expect to go out of your comfort zone and pick up unexpected skills and tactics to help you rock it out.
Tech geeks revel in open source and tech nerdiness
The Schipul crew are all geeks at heart and part of what makes this SchipulCon event so special this year is our incorporation of some hands on demos you’ll get to enjoy. Learn how to fly an RC helicopter, revel in local robotics groups’ innovation, pick up some basic Processing and Arduino skills, discover how to create a secure Google Chrome browser plugin and leverage open source collaboration tools.
Are you ready for SchipulCon awesomeness?!?
Be sure to grab your tickets while you still can for our October 6th and 7th SchipulCon 2011 event! With keynotes from visionaries like Dries Buytaert, the founder of Drupal, and Steven Gonzalez, Director of Innovation for NASA, and speakers from around the country – you’ll leave with a better understanding of what’s next and an inspiring mix of new technologies, tactics and future collaborators.
With our focus on exciting technology and cross-industry connections (okay… and laser beams and space ships – we dig those too), we are honored and excited to announce our Day 2 keynote speaker Steven Gonzalez of NASA (and currently an ‘Executive on Loan at the Houston Technology Center‘).
He will be taking us to the stars and back as he discussed the motivations of some of the world’s most innovative technologists in the aerospace world and fills us in on the future of the space industry and the awesome tech that comes with it! How excited are we!?!?
You can check out more of our tremendous speakers and lovely schedule – lots of great minds discussing design, business and tech to help you advance your business and personal development in all the best ways. Join us on October 6th and 7th – use this discount code for $25 off your registration: tothestars
Working in social media, I have to say that one of the most rewarding things to see is a client’s campaign flourish with ‘likes’ and re-tweets. In our line of work, our client’s goal is our priority and with Facebook insights and other tools, we’ve been allowed to see the demographics of users that interact most with our page and can custom build a campaign to fit a client’s niche. This feature has definitely allowed us to gain a stronger handle on how our campaign is doing; however, Twitter hasn’t given users an inside view into their twitter statistics…until now.
Twitter recently announced that they were implementing a Web analytics dashboard. The dashboard will consist of four tabs:
Traffic: this tab will correlate information between the number of tweets linking to a site against the number of people actually clicking those links. There will also be a graph that measures this information with the following options; one day, the week and the past month.
Tweets: this tab will display all tweets containing links to a site, including any tweets sent from the site’s embedded Tweet button.
Tweet Button: this tab displays interaction and engagement a site gets from its Tweet button.
Content: this tab compiles the site’s top-performing pages.
It will be nice to be able to see how this is being shared in the Twittersphere, the amount of traffic (or Twaffic) being referred and measure the amount of interaction a Web site generates with the Tweet button.
Since we will be waiting a few more weeks before the release of the new dashboard, third-party applications like HootSuite will still be of great use in measuring tweet data and scheduling tweets ahead of time, which is a magical feature that has allowed us to release tweets during certain times of the day that draw in more interaction.
Another cool thing about this announcement is that Twitter is planning to release an API for Web Analytics, allowing users to integrate this data into other analytic applications like Trendly. If you have had a chance to play around with Facebook Insights, there’s the option to download the data into an excel sheet. It will be interesting to see how Twitter will present the data as a deliverable for clients and marketing coordinators, since we all understand the importance of getting a return on investment.
Garrett will be conducting a free Facebook Security and Privacy webinar on Oct. 26th
Great IS Conference 2011 presentation by Michael DeHaven of Bazaarvoice (@stormseo) on ‘Leveraging User Generated Content for SEO and Conversion’.
Top 7 tips for SEO work around User Generated Content:
Don’t forget SEO fundamentals – you have to start with the fundamentals (h1 tags, keyword targeting, great writing)
Search engines get bored – ‘static sites are so 2005’, search engines crave something new (keep it exciting)
The Primanti Principle – Primanti (a restaurant in Pittsburgh, PA) is one of the best places to get a corned beef sandwich. Traditional ingredients with the exact amount of french fry additions. Not too much, just enough to be interesting and dynamic. Web pages are the same – you start out by building with foundational elements but add in the ‘meat’ of the webpage and layer on 8-10 pieces of fresh, User Generated Content (your french fries) to give to Google to devour.
Beware of dilution – be strategic. The average review, user question or answer is about 100 words long. Average product description is 300 words long (fully search optimized, written by professional marketer). Given the amount of text, be sure you don’t dilute your hard work around content optimization by putting in too many user reviews – it will blot out the work you’ve done. Figure out the math.
Unlock the potential of the archive – Tap into your treasure trove of reviews from the past.
Ask for content at relevant times – Timing on requests for UGS is crucial. Software product, solicit requests an acceptable amount of time after using it.
Convert reviewers into advocates – allow your current customers to play a role in other parts of you
What should you expect from UGC?
For many communities, they receive a steep increase in Google traffic (15 – 25%) – with keyword targeting a steady but slower growth. Make sure that your reviews can actually be viewed by search engines (not hidden or in java script).
Googlebot crawled (Bazaarvoice client) Cabela’s site 200% more often when constantly updated product reviews were included on product pages – without them, Googlebot showed less interest.
Review readers act differently – where to buy up 82% / add to cart up 125%. Do people who use Q&A convert more often? 45% converted more often than those who didn’t. When you find an answer – you buy! And also call less, 3 answers on a page resulted in 81% fewer customer service calls.
Offline testing (adding rating in print coupons for newspaper inserts) worked too — Rubbermaid coupons with reviews were redeemed 10% more often.
We’re having a great morning at the OMS Houston / IS Conference today at the lovely Hotel ZaZa. The HIMA team has partnered with OMS Conferences to bring great online marketing training to the masses.
Watch the Twitter hashtags: #omshou and #isconference for an in-the-moment look at what’s happening.
Check out our lovely IS Conference photos (thanks to Schipulites Brian Potter) on our Facebook album.
Our first speaker of the morning is Elise Neel of Comscore
Brand that hates parents and thinks torturing kids is fun – Crayola. At least according to Amazon review for Craylola Washable Colored Bubbles – some bubbles re-created, may require repeat washings. Social Media is awesome
Total minutes on SM sites increased 38% year over year
73 Billion minutes a year spent on SM sites
Who visits – everybody (even 65+ is 96% penetration)
Almost half of visits on Web are to SM properties
Tumblr is at 210% growth year over year, LinkedIn is at about 100% year over year. Some networks might not have Facebook’s numbers, but are kicking butt in growth.
Google+ wordwide reach is massive and growing significantly – 25 – 34 ages (traditional early adopter profile) are quickest to jump in. Austin, SF-Oakland, Minneapolis, Pittsburgh are top adoptive cities of Google+.
4 reasons Google+ Brand Pages will be better than Facebook:
Better Search opps
More customization
Better analytics
Google can learn from Facebook
Heineken – of 48M impressions in May, 68% were socially enabled. Kraft received about 21% of their campaign from socially enabled platform.
Facebook branding awesomeness
Facebook is hugely powerful – brand pages are the new microsites — nearly 6 out of 10 Facebook users over 18 liked a brand in April 2011. Profiles, newsfeed and other are top time spent. Vast majority of brand exposure happens in the Newsfeed and on Profile pages.
For Starbucks, every one visit to fanpage means 156 impressions (free, awesome and amazing), Southwest Airlines gets 42 and Bing gets 45 impressions per pageview of fanpage.
1.7 Million fans on Facebook = 232 Million Friends of fans for Bing on Facebook – this is AMAZING.
Exposed Starbucks fans tend to spend more at the store and go more — spending per buyer = 8% increase / transaction per buyers = 11% increase
Internet seisometer showed social media buzz around earthquake
Internet traffic that occurred during and after the earthquake on the East coast – the Tweets reached New York from DC before the tremors actually made it (through CNN iReports, Twitter and more – THAT’S social media).
Putting it all into business perspective, Social Media is here to stay, monetized (‘do sh*t for free, it’s FREE money’). Learn more about speaker Elise Neel and follow her on Twitter!
Since we will be waiting a few more weeks before the release of the new dashboard, third-party applications like 
