Last week, I had the chance to participate in the latest installment of the Houston Technology Center’s educational seminar series - Blogging for Business. The seminar’s focus was the use of social media in a business environment. The panel consisted of myself, Steve Latham and Katie Laird and Kelsey Ruger. Sounds like overall we got good feedback. I included a link to my presentation hosted on Slideshare.net. (This is the updated version that I presented at the PKF University this week).
In true social media fashion if you have any feedback, you can comment here, Join me on facebook or LinkedIn and of course follow me(Kelsey), Steve and Katie on Twitter.
Teaching children to be entrepreneurial is a task that should be taken more seriously. I have 3 children and I’ve always pushed them to try and educate themselves on other things that they may be interested in. I try to make them believers of saving money and being economical. It wasn’t until I met one of the producers from the Biz Kid$ show that I realized I should also be encouraging them to think of new ways or improve older ways of making money.
Biz Kid$ is a show dedicated to the entrepreneurial kid. They feature successful kids and teenagers who are business owners or done something worthwhile that was lucrative. They also teach proper methods of starting and running a business. Some of things they have done are remarkable. This is more than your front yard lemonade stand. Working on their next season of episodes, they decided to include the internet as a medium of making money and starting a business. How can you present proper website building, search engine marketing and social media consulting in an entertaining way? Duh…you find the SEO Rapper!
The producer contacted me and shared her vision about what they wanted to accomplish. How could I resist? I love kids, rapping and the internet. They are based in Seattle Washington and she offered to fly me there for a few days if I was willing to compose a Biz Kid$ focused instructional rap about using the internet to start a business. Interesting task. I was glad to do it. I contacted Dre Dubb Entertainment, one of my favorite music production teams (also produced Design Coding) for a track to the rap I was writing. I received the track, completed the rap and went to the studio to record it. A few weeks later I was on a flight to Seattle. I finally met some others from Biz Kid$ who showed me a great time. The video shoot was awesome. It went a little longer than expected but I had a blast doing it. Touring Seattle was great. I had a chance to walk around and take lots of pictures and next time I’ll remember that if you walk down a hill and you parked at the top of the hill, you have to walk back up the hill. The Biz Kid$ episode is supposed to air on PBS sometime in January. Stay tuned…
On April 22nd and 23rd Search Engine Guide will be hosting the first Small Business Unleashed Conference here in Houston at the Northwest Forest Conference Center. Pop Labs will be sponsoring Charity Speed Networking Unleashed! which will be held on Sunday, April 20th - 6pm to 9pm the night before the conference starts. The event is open to the public with proceeds going to the Youth Development Center. There will also be a silent auction with some awesome items to bid on. If you would like an opportunity to meet the speakers before the conference starts come out and join us.
I am really looking forward to this event because it’s one of the few times a conference that wasn’t planned by someone in Houston, was held in Houston. I first met Jennifer, the Editor-in-chief for Search Engine guide at Got Social Media in January and I know first hand that she has been working really hard at making this an event that you will want to attend. The sessions all look really interesting.
If you would like to attend the conference there is still seating available so register today. Friends of Pop Labs can get a discount by using the code POPLABS.
Check out the Youtube video for more information on the conference.
What is social media? Is it a conversation? Is it web PR? Is it YouTube or Facebook? If you work in this industry you have your own ideas on how to describe social media, but if you’re one of our potential customers it may be a bit more of a mystery. This is where I usually go into my description of what it means to leverage human assets.
Everyone has people, customers are people and employees are people. These “human assets” have talents that should be tapped into for social media. You’ve probably done this to some extent by asking your customers for referrals and then posting them on your website or touting your employees’ education/background. While this may have been a good start, we need to go a step further and leverage specific talents for the sake of social media. For instance, Pop Labs employs a search marketing specialist by the name of Charles Lewis (aka The SEO Rapper, M0 Serious, Poetic Prophet, Chuck). Chuck has the ability to rhyme, to flow—if you will, and has turned this ability into a way to get virally marketed content viewed online, resulting in branding himself and Pop Labs as experts in our industry. Chuck has developed very good content on topics such as link building, design coding, and conversion closing, to name a few. The important part to remember is that he’s transferred this content into something that people actually want to pay attention to: rap videos delivered through YouTube. Probably not the best for every target audience, but you have to work with what you’ve got.
While Pop Labs could have deposited this very same content onto our company website as its very own page or maybe even into this blog, we looked to take it a step further by getting creative and leveraging Chuck’s talent as a rap artist to produce something entertaining and fun that was appropriate for our goal: brand Pop Labs and get exposure from other well-known entities. Sometimes you just have to throw it out there, but you have to be prepared for the feedback you’re going to get… the good and the bad. Transparency is crucial for social media… which is why Chuck not only delivers these rhymes, but he writes them as well—not a hired gun.
Not every company has an aspiring rap artist to utilize and that’s okay. What you DO have is experiences and relationships and other talents that set YOU apart from everyone else, from your competitors. Once you have those figured out, the creative way in which to deliver your message should start to become clear. Good luck!
This week is the first week we have had to run a booth at two conferences simultaneously, so it has definitely been a whirlwind around here. Guliz Sicotte and Melissa Howse will be doing some live blogging and twittering when they aren’t manning (womening) 
the booth for Pop Labs. You can follow the Pop Labs Twitter stream or just check back here for live updates from the conference. Not expecting any “earth shattering” news from the Las Vegas International Restaurant Show where Gene, Audra and Silver are, but the stories should much more interesting.
