Please, please, please take a minute to vote for these panels  and comment :
Managing the Corporate Social Media Program : http://cli.gs/smedia
Panelists:

Tony -Frosty- Welch (HP) @frostola
Michael Brito Intel @britopian
Arie Ball Sodexo @arie_ball
Mario Sundar Linkedin @mariosundar
Shashi Bellamkonda Network Solutions @shashib (moderator)

Social Networking is King: Are Websites Dead http://cli.gs/webdead

Panelists :
Ramon Ray : Smallbiztechnology.com : @ramonray
Jay Berkowitz : Tengoldenrules.com : @jayberkowitz
Kelly Harman : z3strategy.com : @z3kelly
Melanie Mitchell : SVP Search Mktg @ Digitas.: @melanieMitchell
Shashi Bellamkonda : Network Solutions : @shashib
and

Lawyers Need Social Media Too! http://cli.gs/smlaw
Raj Malik @rajmalikdc
Raj Malik was on a 2009 SXSW panel “A Hard Sell? Social Media & Your Boss” His bio is at http://2009.sxsw.com/interactive/talks/panels?action=bio&id=205433

Gayle Weiswasser @gweiswasser
Gayle is Vice President at TMG Strategies,where she counsels corporate clients on the use of social media in rapid response, crisis communications, reputation management, and long-term communications strategy.

Brian Winterfeldt @bjw72
Brian Winterfeldt is a partner at Steptoe & Johnson LLP specializing in Intellectual Property, the Internet and New Media; Brian is an active member of the International Trademark Association on its Internet Committee and is involved in ICANN’s Intellectual Property Constituency.

Dallas Lawrence @ DallasLawrence
Dallas Lawrence Chairs the Global Social & Digital Media Practice for Levick Strategic Communications, the nation’s leading crisis communications firm
Thank you and please pass this along to others who may be interested in supporting as well.

Many of us decided to go to this year’s South by Southwest (SXSW) interactive conference to learn what’s happening in the world of the web. Whether it’s database applications, marketing tips, how to tips, case studies, or gain some serious insight into what others are doing and what new things can be done to improve our web presence. But while you were probably busy doing some work or listening to some of the speakers, one thing probably remained true: you never got to meet everyone you were hoping to meet. Going to a conference like SXSW allows one to actually meet in person the folks that they are friends with or correspond with online.

But 100 Interviews is here to change all that. Started by three friends in California, 100 Interviews is focused on bringing short video clip conversations to the public with some of the movers and shakers in the web industry. It’s nothing fancy, just a regular conversation between friends asking simple and thought-provoking questions about what’s going on at the event, where the trends are leading people, what success stories they have and how did they get into social media. But before you think that it’s all the “A-list” folks who don’t understand who you are, here’s some folks they have interviewed:

- Lucretia Pruitt - talks about working with WalMart
- Whit Scott - Producer at Seesmic
- Nicole Jordan – handles public relations for the Rubicon Project (an ad publishing network)
- Elliott Ng – Co-founder of Uptake.com
- Ann Bernard – Founder of Yut Media
- Mike Prasad – Founder of Girl Gamer & CEO of Koji BBQ
- Tony Hsieh – President of Zappos
- Pete Cashmore – Founder of Mashable

and many others.

So what’s the point? Each one has a different story to tell about their views on social media. If you’ve ever wanted to be in a room with all the people who “get it” when talking about things like Twitter, Facebook, Myspace, blogs, social bookmarking, public relations, communication, etc., then your best bet would be to start with 100 Interviews. It’s a great way to hear what these specialists have to say without spending hundreds of dollars to register for a conference where they’re going to speak for only 30-45 minutes.

But wait, you’re probably thinking that it’s all videos from SXSW, right? From my conversations with the 100 Interviews crew, they’re on the hunt for more people to talk to them about what they think is going on with social media. So be on the lookout for these folks with their Flip cameras as they’ll be looking to interview more people. It’s all about the conversation.

I used to write for B5 Media a few years ago for about three months at their entrepreneurship blog, Startup Spark, and I had a great experience along with helping the site triple its traffic and double its subscriber base in 90 days.

During that period, blog networks where a really hot topic and many were feeling their way through business models trying different things to see what worked for them. B5 Media was no different and over the last three years tried a variety of business models to scale their business and recently B5 Media went through a consolidation of their blog network of a few hundred blogs to just a few large blog properties.

Jeremy sees this as “going narrow and deep” as opposed to “wide and shallow” which can produce similar revenue results but the overhead and costs can be dramatically more that necessary. Moving to what I have termed a “newspaper section” model B5 Media seems poised to grow and scale up even more in the near future.

Last week I was at South By Southwest (SXSW) where I caught up with Jeremy and he was gracious enough to give us a few minutes of his time to explain B5 Media’s new business model and some lessons learned as an entrepreneur.

Below is the full interview:

You learn more about the book here and download the first chapter for free.

We talked about the current economic downturn and how many people have been put in a position they never thought they would be in and now have to transform their careers. Jonathan believes this the perfect opportunity to do that regardless of where you are in your life. Check out the full interview below and listen to how his book is very different from a “What Color is Your Parachute”.

Greg is CEO of Blue Sky Factory, a leading email marketing technology company. And while many people think that email marketing is an older (if 10 years is older in your mind) channel where everyone deletes email newsletters, Greg’s platform, Publicaster, is extremely powerful and shows you how you can tune your campaigns so that never happens.

He was here at SXSW and we had an opportunity to chat and discuss the launch of the new version of Publicaster, version 7.0, and how it is evolving into a Social CRM platform and their recent partnership with BatchBlue.

The full interview is below:

For those who don’t know Alex, his blog is Dangerously Awesome and his Philadelphia-based coworking space, Independents Hall or Indy Hall, was one of the first to formalize the coworking space.

The core conversation was an informal roundtable to discuss the current and future approaches to coworking. There are many evolving business models that range from the capitalistic to the altruistic. After the session, we had the opportunity to catch up on how Indy Hall is growing, their graduation labs for coworking attendees.

Here is the full interview:

Since it seems like every social media type in the Western world is currently over in Austin for South by Southwest Interactive, I thought it would be a good time to catch up on a few things. Especially things that don’t involve Twitter, as all the attendees, in their attempts to try and find the best parties, will probably be doing their level best to turn the Twitter server farm into a smoking hole:

* Content Sanity Check: For my part, I haven’t been discussing many small business-specific items of late (my recent entries on networking notwithstanding, though those apply to everyone). I’m going to try to get back into that groove, though I’m looking for ideas, so if you’ve got a question or topic you’d like to see regarding how small business folks can use social media to improve their bottom line, please give it here.

In the meantime, my fellow bloggers have had the small business beat pretty well covered — don’t miss Sian Simon’s series on local search marketing, as well as Steve Fisher’s ongoing 2009 Marketing Plan series, and Jill Foster’s posts over at Women Grow Business.

* Publishing Housekeeping: On the publishing side, looks like this here Solutions Are Power blog has finally taken the plunge and upgraded to WordPress 2.7. I’m getting used to the new interface as we speak. Native photo uploading has also been restored, so you should be seeing more pix in entries. Your blog consumption experience should remain unaffected, though I guess now would also be the time to fix my neglected (actually, nonexistent) blog author profile page.

* “About” Quick Tips: Apropos nothing, it really helps orient your visitors if your blog has an “about this blog,”  “about [this business],” or “about me” entry permalinked from somewhere prominent on your blog, like the nav bar, side bar, or header. That way people, especially people who come to an entry directly from a search result, can see what else you’re about.

* Popularity: Eyeballing the numbers, it looks like my item on 5 Stories of Twittering Gone Bad has been pretty popular over the past 30 days. To that list, I would add: If you’re a reporter, Twittering in court may be okay; however, if you’re a juror, well, that’s a completely different story.

Maybe I should keep updating it as a living entry. Then again, it’d probably do better as a wiki — say, the “Twitter Mistakes wiki.” I’m guessing that’s the only possible way it would scale.

Anyway, if you’ve got other comments or suggestions, for me or for the blog team as a whole, please feel free to leave a comment.

Speaking at SXSW on Saturday is Shashi Bellamkonda (Social Media Swami) and Raj Malik (Master of all things legal) and they are going to talk about our experiences here at Network Solutions and how our social media strategy was incubated and was sold up the chain.

Here is a session description:

Session: A Hard Sell. Social Media & Your Boss.
Moving your boss from ‘No’ to ‘Go’. Are you frustrated that your company is not engaged in social media? The panel will provide actionable steps to convince your boss of the value. We’ll cover how to: become a champion, creative ways to recruit internal proponents (including lawyers), gather & present compelling reasons. Sell your social media ideas!We’ll make your social media plan an easy sell!

Session Time and Date: Saturday, March 14, 3:30pm, Room 19B

This is going to be a great session and we look forward to seeing all of you there.

In the center of all of this is PBS headquarters here at WETA in Arlington, VA is Kevin Dando. I met Kevin about three years ago when we both attended the Interactive portion of the popular South by Southwest (SXSW) conference. He is currently Director, Education and Online Communications at PBS and is helping keep PBS on the cutting edge by promoting the interactive content and, working with others, pushing social media at PBS in the broadest sense.

Recently I was able to catch up with him and talk about how things at PBS have evolved over the last two years and discuss the future of social media and its use in a place like PBS. Here is the transcript of that interview:

Steve: The last two years have seen the movement to include many aspects of social media like blogs and podcasts. What was the motivation that finally got PBS to utilize these social media tools?
Kevin: We’ve actually been using social media for years — more than just the past few — and I can’t point to one particular moment, or one person or show that was the tipping point for PBS and our local stations to get in this arena — and social media is an organic part of what we do and who we are.

No major project is conceived of here without taking it into account, and thinking what will be the best way to reach out to audiences, and talk directly with them. In fact we have a major initiative called PBS Engage, whose sole purpose is to help bridge the divide between PBS viewers and PBS itself. Engage has a smart team, which is thinking about different, clever ways PBS and public media can engage in social media, and they also counsel our local stations and producers in the same area. They’re highly in demand – our stations are eager to learn more and do more – and the Engage team provides significant help.

Our producers are enterprising about this, too. You look at any of our major programs, and you’ll see some aspect of social media woven into its either is Web site or other activities in some way.
Social media is also reflected constantly in the work being done by PBS Interactive, which oversees all the Web sites on pbs.org and pbskids.org — both of which get millions and millions of visits each month.

Three major recent launches show where we’re at: PBS Teachers just launched its PBS Teachers Connect community site, to help educators more efficiently use digital media. PBS Parents just underwent a massive relaunch, which includes what I think is one of the best parenting blogs on the Web (yeah, I’m biased), written by three real sisters – it’s called the Supersisters blog. The newly-launched PBS KIDS GO! broadband player allows a little older kids a chance to view their favorite programs online, and vote on the ones they think are best.

I’ve been fortunate because the executives and staff at PBS have embraced social media and strategies like word-of-mouth marketing, from the very beginning, and it’s had a tangible effect on our thinking, and, not coincidentally, on the traffic to PBS.org. (see accompanying stats for more detail).

Steve: To close our interview I would like to get a “Top 5” from you. Since you did rollout a strong social media strategy for PBS, what are the Top 5 things you would recommend to the non-profits out there in the middle or considering rolling out social media to enhance their organization’s message?
Kevin: This question seemed a natural for the experts on the PBS Engage team to tackle, so here’s their response.
(From the staff of PBS Engage: www.pbs.org/engage)
1.) Know your audience and know yourself. As a non-profit, you bring something special to the table. Explain what it is and why should people care about know more or supporting you? Remember, social media is not about a one-way dialogue. You have to be willing to participate and not fear what the audience might say.
2.) Find online spaces — like YouTube, Facebook or Twitter — where people passionate about similar content are already congregating. Create and populate social media platforms with your message. Almost 200 million registered users can’t be wrong. Also, no matter the source or the destination, target your content and message to your users – but (and this is critical) be careful to not be overtly promotional or you’ll drive them away.
3.) Make time to connect with your users, both new and existing. Often people who work in non profits are stretched — it’s important to know you can do a lot with just a few minutes a day.
4.) Don’t start a social media project just because you feel like you have to. Think of a strategy that makes sense for you and your content.
5.) Set realistic expectations for yourself. It takes time to do this well.

Previous Posts:
Part 1: Kevin on PBS
Part 2:Kevin on Being an Early Adopter