Online Marketing Blog

Online Marketing Blog continues sharing Minnesota-based social media expertise with the next installment of our MiNterview series.

Connie Bensen is a key voice amongst online Community Managers. Her blog is recognized as a leading resource for cultivating online communities and providing best practices for this emerging role. She also provides mentorship and inspires individuals to explore this new career. Connie is the Director of Social Media and Community Strategy at Alterian, which provides leading marketing products for the enterprise.

Please describe your personal evolution in becoming a community strategist and explain what that role is?

Dan Zarrella, a self-described “social media marketing & viral marketing scientist” lives at the intersection of social marketing and web development.  He’s known for conducting experiments with Twitter, compiling data behind the social web, creating interesting web applications and blogging.  And now, he has released a book.

Dan’s book is called “The Social Media Marketing Book” and is aimed at helping those who are new to social media marketing learn the basics.  The content is well-written and outlined into clear sections.  Those just getting into digital marketing will find it to be a good starting point in their journey.

To learn more about the topics discussed in the book, Dan was nice enough to answer a few questions for Online Marketing Blog readers.

Minnesota is home to a tremendous amount of digital marketing and social media talent. The local Social Media Breakfast events are notorious for “selling out” in minutes and attracting upwards of 300 – 350 attendees.  There are over 1,200 members of the group’s SMBMSP social network. The founder of this group is none other than Rick Mahn.

Officially, Rick is the founder of Social Media Breakfast – Minneapolis/St. Paul, Social Media Strategist for Land O’Lakes, blogger, podcaster and author for Personal Branding Magazine. As part of Online Marketing Blog’s continuing effort to showcase social media movers and shakers in the Midwest, I connected with Rick for the following interview.

You’re a technology guy that now works as a Social Media Strategist at Land O’ Lakes. Can you tell us about the journey to that position?

Albert Maruggi

Minnesota is home to one of the most vibrant social media communities in the country, with attendance at Social Media Breakfasts exceeding 300+ (more than NYC or San Francisco).

With all that local interest and talent, I thought I would do a few interviews with some of the Minneapolis social media set that I’ve come to know.

Albert Maruggi is a 30-year communications practitioner whose career spans journalist, public affairs adviser in national politics, global marketer for technology companies and founder of Provident Partners. Through PRSA & Media Relations conferences—as well as through hair-raising driving in the hills of San Francisco—I’ve had the chance to get to know Albert and his keen insight into the future of digital marketing and PR.

Social Media Smarts: Interview with Lee Aase, Social Media Manager at Mayo Clinic

By day, Lee Aase is manager of syndication and social media for Mayo Clinic and by night, he is chancellor of Social Media University, Global (SMUG). I first met Lee at a media relations conference in San Francisco a few years ago. He was kind enough to sit in on a presentation I gave to the public relations community on search engine optimization for news content. It was a pleasure to meet another Minnesotan at an industry conference and Lee’s savvy with social media was immediately apparent.

In the Q and A post below, Lee Aase provides insights into social media within the Mayo clinic, offers advice for other companies on his “MacGyver-style” testing , developing a strategy, winning management approval, measuring social media ROI and his work with SMUG.

If you’ve exhibited, presented or moderated a Search Engine Strategies conference, it’s more than likely that you’ve had the opportunity to meet Stewart Quealy, VP, Content Development at Incisive Media, parent company to Search Engine Strategies, Search Engine Watch and ClickZ. Stewart (L), along with Mike Grehan (R) were recently named co-chairs of the SES Advisory Board, which is charged with shaping the future direction and ongoing growth of the SES conference.

The SEM legend, Mike Grehan, is global KDM officer with New York based Acronym Media. He’s been involved with online marketing since 1995 and is recognized in the industry as an expert in the search marketing field. He’s programmed many SES London events and has written multiple books and white papers on search marketing.

Katie Delahaye Paine is a renowned expert on public relations and social media measurement.   She runs an award winning PR Measurement consultancy KDPaine & Partners, blogs, Tweets, speaks at numerous conferences and writes both a newsletter and contributes a column to PR News and other PR industry publications. 

Measurement is inherently core to many forms of digital marketing but has been a bit more challenging in the PR and social media space. Katie is a measurement pioneer who has demystified and provided much needed innovation to the world of measuring public relations and the social web.

 This interview with Katie covers quality vs quantity measurement, building a business case for measurement investment in a down economy and she also answers a few questions posed by @leeodden followers on Twitter.

Last weekend SXSW Interactive was abuzz everywhere you looked from the sessions to the halls, to the Techset blogger lounge and certainly the after conference festivities on 6th Street.

Out of all that buzz came new connections, insights and renewed connections such as the one I had with Ogilvy 360′s Senior Vice President of Digital Strategy & Marketing, Rohit Bhargava. I’ve known Rohit online and off for a few years and finally had a chance to capture a conversation on video.  Watch the interview below regarding the opportunities of attending SXSW including knowledge and networking as well as a few thoughts on his popular book, Personality Not Included, which TopRank has reviewed in the past.

Social Media Smarts Interview with Dave Evans, Author of Social Media Marketing An Hour A  Day

Recently I came across the new book by Dave Evans, Social Media Marketing An Hour a Day. It’s one of the few marketing books I actually purchased in 2008 because it seemed thorough (as far as a book can be on a fast changing topic) and since so many publishers send us free copies to review.

The notion of taking a slice of time per day to conduct social media marketing activities is such spot-on advice, that I wanted to bring more insights from the book author, Dave Evans, to our readers.  

In this interview Dave talks about the genesis of the book, thoughts on social media strategy, innovation, building a business case, practical examples and measuring success. Enjoy!

Social Media Smarts: Interview with Tac Anderson, Social Media Man of Hewlett Packard

One of the great things about the social web is the opportunity socialize offline as well as online. That is how I finally got the chance to meet Tac Anderson from HP during BlogWorldExpo.

Tac currently leads social media activities across Hewlett Packard for both internal collaboration and external marketing. Tac is also the Entrepreneur in Residence for Highway 12 Ventures, an early stage venture capital firm, where he advises them on potential investment opportunities in the social media space. Tac blogs regularly at www.newcommbiz.com.

Social Media Smarts: Interview with Richard Binhammer from Dell – @richardatdell

Photo Credit www.briansolis.com 

Of all the companies known for making advances in the realm of social media, Dell holds a place that reaches both ends of the spectrum. References to “Dell Hell” are less about something wrong and more about one of the most popular examples of a major corporation that “gets” social media listening and engagement.  One of the key people at Dell responsible for the successful social media presence so many have come to know is Richard Binhammer. 

Richard has enjoyed a career that has taken him from Canadian politics, lobbying and election campaigns to public relations in the Midwest to Corporate Communications in NYC and then public affairs, now social media/blog outreach at Dell.

Social Media Smarts Interview with Shonali Burke

I first ran into Shonali Burke right before she presented with Katie Paine at the PRSA International conference, “True Tales From the Social Media Measurement Trenches”. We had not met in person before but were connected on Twitter. Social media will do that – facilitate real world connections.  Based on her PR and social media metric savvy, I thought it would be interesting to do an interview as part of our Social Media Smarts posts.

Shonali Burke, ABC, is an award-winning communications consultant and self-confessed measurement fiend. She was formerly a vice president of media and communications at ASPCA. She and her husband are owned by three shelter dogs and live in the Washington, D.C., area. You can also find her on Twitter.