Roll Up Your Sleeves: See It. Hear It. & Do It. With The Leaders In Social Media
Jason Falls 
Social Media Explorer is the online home and blog of Social Media Explorer LLC, which is my consulting company. I’ve been called all sorts of things by folks around the social media, public relations, marketing and communications industries. I shy away from self-aggrandizement, but you’ll find some quotes about me from others below.
I see myself as a social media educator, a social media strategist and a public relations professional. I help companies understand the social web and show them how engaging consumers online can help their business. I’m also a writer, both of blogs and other materials, and try to spend much of my spare time doing that.
If I have a unique perspective it would be the result of having lead a national advertising agency’s Interactive and social media efforts, working with Fortune 100 brands as a social media strategist and serving as an independent consultant in the social media industry. I have advised major, regional and niche brands including Jim Beam, Maker’s Mark and Knob Creek bourbons, NASCAR driver Robby Gordon, Humana, Purely Products, SHPS, Sun Tan City, Mighty Dog, Louisville Slugger, Bionic Gloves, The National Center for Family Literacy and WeSeed.com.
My work has resulted in social media executions deemed “innovative” and industry firsts, particularly in the spirits industry. One project I was involved in won a 2009 Sammy Award, the main honors given to work in social media. Paul Gillin, Tamar Weinberg and Kyle Lacy have written about my work in books, which is really flattering.
Perhaps the most fun I have is speaking and conducting seminars for conferences, groups and even private corporate events. I’ve spoken in three countries and on two continents, unless you count my late night soliloquies at the hotel bar in Cancun on vacation.
SocialMediaExplorer.com, the blog, gets a fair amount of recognition, of which I’m very grateful. The most notable of which is probably listing in the top 20 or so (it changes daily sometimes) of the Advertising Age Power 150 Blogs. For a few weeks in 2009, I was actually ranked No. 1. (Not sure why.)
I maintain a handful of professional affiliations and memberships, including serving as president and co-founder of the Social Media Club Louisville. I am also a member of the Public Relations Society of America, International Association of Business Communicators and Greater Louisville Inc., (the Louisville Chamber of Commerce).
A recovering .NET programmer turned tech evangelist who provides strategy for social media, brand development, and Online PR for forward-thinking companies and individuals. Giovanni designed, developed and deployed online communities when MySpace was no one’s space, has used a Mac since before the “i” anything, and created vertical search engines when Larry and Sergey (Google’s co-founders) were still undergrads.
Look for Giovanni’s upcoming book entitled “The Social Media Operator’s Manual” and “Facebook: An Hour A Day”published in October 2009. The nexus of Giovanni’s online universe can be found at gallucci.net. Giovanni is a keynote speaker who presents at national events like ad:tech, FlashForward, Macworld, and Search Engine Watch Live! and has been covered in a variety of media outlets including AdAge, AdWeek, The Dallas Morning News, Fox Business News, The Houston Chronicle, Inc. Magazine, InfoWorld, NBC, The New York Times, The London Telegraph, USA Today, and Wired Magazine among others.
Giovanni provides social media marketing services through Simply Interactive and other top-tier interactive agencies and public relations firms.
Duncan Alney, President, Firebelly Marketing
Duncan Alney is focused on configuring and integrating social media marketing strategies to help companies build emotional relationships and build value for both brands and their audiences. His clients include QDoba Mexican Grill, United Way, American Cancer Society, YATS, and J.C. Hart – and he works with his team to develop and measure conversations, content and community.
Duncan has worked in the brand communications field for 17 years, and holds degrees from Hanover College, USA and St. Xavier’s College, Calcutta, India. He’s an award winning short film maker and a voracious writer, blogging for Digitalia, a social media marketing blog, and publishing Passionati, an online magazine on music, film, travel, food, and life. Duncan is also an avid traveler, chaser of food experiences, photographer and film maker. He’s completed 5 marathons and several triathalons.
It wasn’t supposed to be like this. You launched a new blog or maybe you created a Facebook Fan Page, thinking that you’d tap into these amazing social media tools as a way to connect with your customers and create raving fans and passionate evangelists for your business. Now it’s 4 months later and you have 12 fans on your Facebook page, and virtual tumbleweeds taunt you as your blog struggles to reach 10 visitors a day.
What happened? Many companies find themselves in this exact situation, and this workshop will show you how to think like a rockstar. Rockstars don’t have customers, they have fans. And this doesn’t happen by accident, rockstars have a very special connection with their customers that makes them become raving fans for them and their products. Some companies are finding that they can use social media in many of these same ways to build vibrant online communities that are passionate about them.
In the “Think Like a Rockstar; How to Build Fans and Community Around Your Social Media Efforts” workshop, you will learn:
· The four key things that Rockstars do to create fans for their work and how you can do the same with your social media efforts
· The keys to building a vibrant community around your social media efforts
· The importance of ‘fishing where the fish are’ when you’re trying to build awareness
· How to create content that taps into the ‘Bigger Idea’ that’s more relevant and exciting to your customers
Mack Collier is a social media consultant, trainer and speaker that specializes in helping companies use social media to better connect with their customers. He has been actively immersed in social media since 2005, and in that time, has helped businesses of all shapes and sizes better connect with their customers via these amazing tools and sites. While being passionate about the social media space, what truly excites Mack is the human connections that can result from the proper use of these social tools. His motto is “Don’t focus on the tools, focus on the connections that the tools help facilitate.” His goal is to help his clients create those connections with their customers, and nurture them into relationships that help grow their bottom line.
His social media ‘homebase’ is The Viral Garden, which in 3 years time Mack has grown into an influential marketing/social media blog with a monthly readership of over 200,000. He is also a frequent contributor to the website Marketing Profs, as well as the marketing blog Daily Fix, and small business blog Search Engine Guide. His thoughts and writings have been referenced in several mainstream publications and websites, including The Washington Post, MSNBC.com, Ad Age, CNET, and The Boston Globe.
Mack is also a requested speaker and has presented at some of the top social media conferences and events, including South By Southwest Interactive, Marketing Profs Digital Marketing Mixer, and Small Business Marketing Unleashed. He is also passionate about teaching companies how to use social media sites and tools more effectively, and offers training and seminars privately to companies, in addition to his public speaking schedule.
Mack wrote this bio. The third-person thingie is just for fun. If you need to reach him/me, please email me.Jan 29th
John Jantsch is a marketing and digital technology coach, award winning social media publisher and author of “Duct Tape Marketing – The World’s Most Practical Small Business Marketing Guide” published by Thomas Nelson, with foreword by Michael Gerber, author of The E-Myth and afterword by Guy Kawasaki.
After working with small business owners for over 15 years and growing increasingly frustrated with the lack of a systematic approach to small business marketing, including online and social media, Jantsch decided he could make his mark on the small business world by creating the perfect small business marketing system.
He has made it his mission to bring the simple, effective and affordable Duct Tape Marketing approach to the millions of struggling small business owners all over the world through workshops, the Duct Tape Marketing small business marketing system and the Duct Tape Marketing Authorized Coach network. His Duct Tape Marketing Blog was chosen as a Forbes favorite for small business and marketing and is a Harvard Business School featured marketing site. His blog was also chosen as “Best Small Business Marketing Blog” in 2004, 2005 and 2006 by the readers of Marketing Sherpa.
What Others Are Saying About Duct Tape Marketing Speaking Appearances
“John Jantsch was a fantastic keynote speaker for our eMarketing For Entrepreneurs Conference. Working with John was a pleasure, as he not only served as keynote speaker, but also as a breakout session facilitator. His vast knowledge and experience in the area of marketing — and specifically eMarketing — showed throughout the day. There is no doubt that John contributed to the conference’s incredible approval rating, with 97% of polled participants stating they would recommend the conference to others.”
-Brad Kleimann, Corporate College Cleveland, OH
“John Jantsch is one of the best resources available today for small business owners looking for real-world marketing ideas that actually work. Duct Tape Marketing proves that there are REAL business benefits to a disciplined approach to marketing!”
-Anne Plese, Marketing Alliance Manager, Sage Software
“Your presentation at our annual conference was informative, right on point and clearly targeted to our audience of independent information professionals. You provided practical insight on the topic of small business marketing that should be shared with all small business owners. You presented in a manner that was thoroughly captivating with just the right balance of humor. Our members left wanting more and anxious to put into practice the tips you provided. Thanks for the inspiration! “
-Jodi Gregory – President Association of Independent Information Professionals
“I thought I’d let you know that we thought the PRSA workshop yesterday was fantastic. We got a lot of great ideas from it. We have already set up our own blogs to practice our blogging skills.”
-Plattform Advertising
Mark Roberge, VP Sales, HubSpot
Mark Roberge is VP Sales at HubSpot, an Internet marketing software company based in Cambridge, MA. He oversees HubSpot’s entire sales function, having grown the department to 40+ sales reps and approximately 2,000 customers in just over two years. Prior to HubSpot, Mark founded and held executive positions in startups in the social media and mobile sectors. Mark started his career as a technology consultant with Accenture.
Mark holds an MBA from the MIT Sloan School of Management where he was a semi-finalist in the 2005 MIT $50K Business Plan competition and was awarded the Patrick McGovern award for his contributions to entrepreneurship at MIT. He holds a bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering from Lehigh University. Mark has been featured in the Wall Street Journal, TechCrunch, and other major publications for his entrepreneurial ventures.
Mark is a regular speaker at MIT and various industry conferences on the topics of inbound marketing and sales 2.0.
John Pozadzides is the CEO of iFusion Labs (the parent company of Woopra), host of the popular Wealth Nation podcast, former Chief Marketing Officer for Layered Tech, founder of HTMLHelp.com, and former Vice President for SAVVIS Communications. John is also co-organizer of WordCamp Dallas 2008, WordCamp Dallas 2009, and likely the most prolific WordCamp videographer on the planet.
His site HTMLHelp.com was one of the first 3,000 domains on the Internet and was founded to teach people how to do Web development in the very early days, when John was also contributing to the development of the HTML language and the original CSS specifications. He was later named to the W3C’s Hall of Fame on the 10th anniversary of CSS (see Web Design Group).
You can also learn more if you simply Google “John P”. He is #1 out of about 188 million results! As a prolific author, he has published over 1,600 articles on his blog, which according to Alexa is about the 30,000th most visited site on the Internet (out of 500 million registered domains).
John routinely lectures on blogging, social media and web development and has been published and quoted as an industry expert in magazines, books and other periodicals around the world. In addition to being the CEO of his own start-up, he also acts as an angel investor and adviser to other start-ups.
John’s favorite quote:
A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, and die gallantly.
Specialization is for insects.
—Robert A. Heinlein from The Notebook of Lazarus Long
V. Scott Ellis
Scott Ellis has been on the cutting edge of web technology since 1997 building websites, e-commerce engines and on-line marketing strategies for corporations and clients such as CSC, Vignette, IMB, Verizon and others. After a 2 1/2 year stint in Management Consulting with Risk Management Firm Protiviti, Scott co-founded BlackBox Technologies with partners Martin Wind and Victoria Wind who had been colleagues for the past 10 years. With a focus on Web 2.0 technologies and websites, BlackBox was established to provide technology guidance to all sizes of companies from start-up’s to large corporations interested in taking advantage of leading edge web technology.
With a background in web content management and design, Scott’s expertise has enabled him to build a practice around a philosophy of helping clients build technology into their business while keeping their business goals and ROI at the forefront rather than putting the technology first.
Scott holds a Bachelors in Psychology from Purdue University and currently resides in Dallas, TX.
Chief Officer of Awesomeness for The Marketing Spot in Woodway, Texas. A small business marketing coaching and consulting firm he founded in 2001. He is a marketing coach, consultant, speaker, and blog author. He specializes in building remarkable local brands with his 4-Spot Marketing Model.
Jay authors The Marketing Spot small business marketing blog and hosts and produces the Power to the Small Business podcast.
Jay is a frequent speaker at conferences and industry association events. He is a featured speaker at the 2010 National Golf Course Owners Association annual conference. In addition Jay has been a featured speaker at South by Southwest Interactive, the National Continuing Education Association Marketing 2.0 Conference, and the Houston Small Business Development Center. In November, Jay was a featured speaker at the premier Global Golf Marketing Conference in Seoul, Korea.
Jay is a media apostate and a social media antagonist. He doesn’t believe you need to cast your lot exclusively with traditional media, new media, social media, or whatever media term crops up in the next year. Jay believes in the doctrine of Straddling the Fence because the grass is greener on both sides.
Website: www.TheMarketingSpot.com
At the Dallas 2010 Optimization Summits, you’ll experience learning by doing. You’ll build your own two-day curriculum out of flexible full-day, half-day, and two-hour component workshops on topics ranging from Social Media to Revenue Management, all of which are carefully planned to build upon each other progressively, and expand your understanding and skill set exponentially. The knowledge you receive will be continually reinforced by hands-on interaction to make certain you have not just the knowledge, but the know-how!
