I had the opportunity to interview John Morgan, author of Brand Against the Machine: How to Build Your Brand, Cut Through the Marketing Noise, and Stand Out from the Competition (affil link) and get his candid opinion on some of the most popular questions I get asked from Social Media Managers on branding.  

A bit about John: John Morgan is known as the Chuck Norris of branding. With his popular blog (www.JohnMichaelMorgan.com) and being an in-demand public speaker and consultant, he is a globally recognized authority on branding and digital marketing.

I hope you have as much fun listening to the interview as we did recording it! That being said, we have a couple of disclaimers before you click play:

• This video is not yet rated. If you are challenged in the sense of humor department, don’t like the term WTF or are easily offended, this may not be the video for you. Just don’t say I didn’t warn ya!
• This video has been edited to fit your attention span. (Trust me, I like to hear myself talk. It was loooonnnng… so please excuse the rough cuts.)

STEP 1:  Buy the book

STEP 2: Email your receipt to john@johnmichaelmorgan.com to get access to all the goodies!

STEP 3: Go enter our Twitter contest by heckling someone and use the hashtag #batm (You should probably mention me in your tweet @katebuckjr so I know you were entering our heckling contest!) I’m picking a winner on Wednesday afternoon!

More on Facebook Fan pages

Since I am a SXSWi expert/celebrity/goddess (you get the picture, right?) I’ll generously share my reply and then some:

I could have a LOT of tips for you – First, it’s a massive conference. Expect overwhelm.

Then: Plan as best you can, and then throw the plan out the window.

Here’s a comprehensive list of events.
–> RSVP now for everything you know you want to attend, and even the stuff you are on the fence about attending. (Most events are badge &/or RSVP only).

You will not get to everything. Don’t even try. (As Lucretia Pruitt said, “SXSW is like a surfing competition – you can train all you like, but you ride the wave you get.” She was right.)

(No SXSW post from me would be complete without a message from the following sponsors. Namely, Me.)
I have an event on March 15: http://techkaraoke.eventbrite.com
I speak on March 14: http://outsourcingsocialmediaprofessionally.com

You might have fun playing the Meet-Meme SXSW scavenger hunt: http://meet-meme.com/sxsw

Down time & a good place for networking will be the Tech Set Bloggers Lounge (where you’ll want to find Derek Overbvey and ask to borrow his earbuds. Tell ‘em KBJ sent ya!) at the convention center.
But you’ll actually find out that cool kids will be here: http://bloungeatx.eventbrite.com

Connect with people you want to meet now & put them on a Twitter list and then follow them on Foursquare (this is the best way to find people).
You could follow the #SXSW or #SXSWi hashtag, I find them overwhelming now (and create my own for folks to follow… who remembers the Adventures of #KOZi?)

Bring backup power supply for all your electronics…

Take lots of PICTURES :)

(Starting to sound like Baz Luhrmann’s Sunscreen Song here. Well, you might want to do that, too.)

That’s all I got!

You could also ask smarties like:

Field Guide to South by Southwest Interactive (SXSWi)

20 Tips for SXSW

hmmm…. what else? tips? links? share ‘em!

UPDATED: Crapola! I almost forgot. Hug @SugarJones. Get a picture with @Unmarketing wearing these bad boys :) That last one might be just for me!

Or, all you have is fabulicious (has that word been coined already?) content on your site and you don’t wanna mess with a bunch of Facebook and Twitter plugins or configure tag clouds.

I’ve got a solution for you! No coding necessary.

Help your readers connect to you with the amazingly simple Wibya toolbar.

http://kbjonline.com/wibiya (affiliate link)

It’s so simple, even a monkey can do it. And it works on many of the most popular sites.

Best of all, rather than cluttering up your page with Facebook this and YouTube that, the Wibya toolbar is incredibly visible yet out of the way of the things that are important for your viewers.

Get interactive the right way and see more benefits by checking out the Wibya toolbar here:

http://kbjonline.com/wibiya (affiliate link)

I remember what some of them were and I’m really sad that I didn’t read them.

Others, I’m sure I’d be seriously disappointed that I didn’t read if I could remember what they were.

And I have no links to share with you today.

But on some level, it felt good.

I’ll likely forget all about it by Monday, and the process will start all over again.

Between browser tabs, email labels, bookmarks, social bookmarks, hard drives, books, paper files, etc, (oye!) information starts to pile up and get disorganized!

Sometimes, you just have to close them out. I did today, and I liked it.

Added bonus: my machine runs much faster and so does my brain!

Not anything earth shattering, here, but sometimes, you just gotta let ‘em go!

Ever happened to you?  If you’ve spent much time working with social tools, you hear what I’m screaming!

Today, I saw a tweet from fellow community manager Jenna Langer:

Does anyone know of a tool that creates a Twitter list of users that tweet with a specific hashtag? Would be great for #cmgrchat

I offered up BlastFollow (which allows you to follow users of a certain hashtag)*** and we also tossed out Formulists, an application with a robust suite of List functions (which blows the Conversationlist app way outta the water!) that I am VERY excited about!

Of course, while we’re on the subject of twitter lists, how could we forget TweepML?

You’d think with all of these solutions, there’d be at least ONE that collected users of a particular hashtag and converted them to a twitter list, right? WRONG!

This is about the time I had a thought and went to work to see if I could make it happen! Here’s how I did it (and for the record, it worked!):

1) I went to What The Hashtag and searched for #cmgrchat http://wthashtag.com/Cmgrchat

2) Click View Transcript, and Export as HTML

3) Created a new list on TweepML, and in the “Find users on this link” field, I entered the URL from the What the Hashtag transcript.

Still following me right? It was about now that I was getting ready to give up, and almost tweeted that, but after having done that much work, how could I?

4) a.  Because I was doing this as a test, and didn’t want to use my twitter account, I created new twitter account for the cmgrchat test.

4) b. I followed everyone on the TweepML list from the new twitter account.

5) I created the cmgrchat list and added each person to that list.

(This last step, was the only manual part, but was still fairly quick.)

For other chats looking to do this – and in particular to keep it up from week-to-week, I think someone would need to repeat steps 1-3. Obviously, you can skip 4a.

In step 4b, you will still follow all in the list (of course, TweepML will skip anyone you are already following). When the following is done, you just need to go back and add each new person to the list. The first time this was time intensive, but in future updates, it should be quick to just add the new folks to the list.

The only real issues I see here are for larger chats the initial set up could be time consuming (this took me about 10 minutes for a chat of 115) and when the chat list reaches 500 people, you won’t be able to add anyone else to the twitter list. However, I’m thinking that creating the new twitter account to “host” the lists is a great solution to this problem because then you could simply create a new list (like cmgrchat2) and take up too many of your available lists on your personal account for your chat list.

PHEW!

That outta tide you over until someone fixes this problem… and STAT!

***UPDATE 9/9/10: Blastfollow.com no longer works.

Mind if I start with the personal mentions? (Don’t mind if I do!)

I sit down with none other than Bill Glazer for an episode of NoBS TV: http://kbj.me/bzdi0n

An Excerpt from my presentation at the Social Media Money Magnet Event (click the Kate Buck tab) http://kbj.me/9G18j8

5 Commandments for Community Managers (Thanks to Andrew for the shout-out!) http://kbj.me/anN6vW

Have you had the chance to meet Mr. Kate Buck Jr? He’s otherwise known as Chef Morris Buck, and Community Impact sits down to Interview him:  http://chefmorrisbuck.com

========
Community Management:

Though there’s no silver bullet to being a successful community manager, for those aspiring to become one, we’ve gathered some tips from community builders on what it takes to land a job and be effective at cultivating community. http://kbj.me/9pyOW6

8 traits you should look for in a community manager http://kbj.me/bKz2gr

12 steps to hiring a social media manager http://kbj.me/9n1KK6

Influencing the Influencer http://kbj.me/9ogwvx

Facts & Figures:

The best time of day to Tweet and how often to post on Twitter http://kbj.me/cpGeth

Visual Content Flow ( LOVE THIS!) http://kbj.me/cDldkY

Why People Follow Brands on Facebook http://kbj.me/cJH4RG

Social Media and Executives Don’t Mix http://kbj.me/9btBzZ

How CEO’s will use social Media http://kbj.me/bLslY4

Consumers active on twitter are 3x more likely to impact a brand’s online reputation than the average consumer http://kbj.me/bdHqJN

Let me know if this was helpful! And feel free to share your finds in the comments!

Location based services are big conversation pieces in cyberspace and the mobile world. Thus, it makes sense that Facebook jumped on the bandwagon introducing Facebook Places. Despite initial privacy concerns, Facebook places will have advantages for business. The limits for your business will be your own creativity.

If you’re already using FourSquare, or Gowalla; Facebook Places will seem very similar. Here are a few ways you can boost your online visibility with this new tool:

1. Whether you have a brick and mortar office, work remotely or are attending an event, use Facebook places to let others know where you’re at, add a description of your business, tag friends (clients are good, pending their approval) and increase your visibility.

2. Make sure to declare your business “place.” The geo-location features will pull nearby places. However, you most certainly can add your place via name and description.

3. Always a good idea to express what you are doing. For business, use it just like you would any other social media tool. Engage, educate and entertain.

4. Get creative. Offer incentive. You might offer discounts, free schwag (I love that word) for coming to your place of business and “Checking In”, calling you or just being a part of your business by paying attention to your Facebook Place through comments and testimonials.

Remember, like any other social media tool, it’s all about visibility and content. What you can do with this new tool is up to your imagination.

To access Facebook Places, use the Facebook app from your mobile device or login at touch.facebook.com via your browser.

Well, here’s a good start (at least a part 1 to tide you over until the next post!)

Twitter Revolution,  Warren Whitlock & Deb Micek

Social Media Marketing in an Hour a Day, Dave Evans

Get Seen, Steve Garfield

Naked Conversations, Robert Scoble & Shel Israel

Groundswell, Charlene Li & Josh Bernoff

Trust Agents, Chris Brogan & Julien Smith

Social Media 101, Chris Brogan

The Social Media Marketing Book, Dan Zarrella

If you’ve got others to share, post in the comments!

(Oh, and be sure to give each of these fine folks a follow on twitter. Just search twitter.com: NAME to find them… it shouldn’t be too hard!)

* The Links posted above to Amazon.com are affiliate links, and I will receive a commission on any purchases made from clicking on them. Think of it as a nice way of saying, “Thanks for sharing!”

Simple face-lift #1 – Choose one of Twitter’s ready-made themes and use “as is” (takes one minute!)

1. Log in to your Twitter account

2. Go to the “Settings” link in the top right corner of the web page

3. Go to the “Design” tab

4. You will see 12 images (“themes”) that Twitter has displayed for you to use. Click on one you like and then click “save changes”

5. Voila!

Simple face-lift #2 – Choose one of Twitter’s ready-made themes and customize the colors (takes 2-5 minutes)

1. Log in to your Twitter account

2. Go to the “Settings” link in the top right corner of the web page

3. Go to the “Design” tab

4. You will see 12 images (“themes”) that Twitter has displayed for you to use. Click on one you like and then click “save changes”

5. Click “Change design colors”. Here you have 5 boxes that allow you to customize the colors for the background, text, links, sidebar, and sidebar borders. You’ll be able to see how the changes you make look as you make them. Click “cancel” to start over. Click “save changes” when you’re done.

More customization /Branding #1 – Have an image of your own to use that includes your logo, photo, URL, and your tagline/slogan? (takes 5+ minutes)

1. Log in to your Twitter account

2. Go to the “Settings” link in the top right corner of the web page

3. Go to the “Design” tab

4. Choose “Change background image” and click “Browse” to locate the image you want to use on your computer. Remember, your image needs to be 800k or smaller and in a GIF, JPG, or PNG file format. Upload your image and click “save changes”. (Make sure the “tile” box isn’t ticked or your image will repeat.)

5. Once you’ve got your custom image uploaded, you can customize your text, links, sidebar, etc to complement your custom look by selecting “Change design colors”.

6. Voila!

Later, I’ll post some tips on creating your custom image so it doesn’t overlap with the Twitter posting area.