Takeaways: Triangle AMA Social Media Boot Camp

Today’s Triangle AMA’s Social Media Boot Camp was ripe with great speakers and information. While I won’t list all of it here, I will give you the top two points that come to my mind as takeaways from today’s event.

1. Always be learning. Expert/guru? Whatever. There’s always more to learn, especially in such a rapidly-changing environment. Jim Hazen humbly made this point by introducing himself as a learner (although he knows a whole-heck-of-a-lot).
2. There is such a tremendous amount of activity that falls in to the social media category. There’s room to have a niche specialty within the social media world. For instance, Gregory Ng is very knowledgeable about YouTube and video, Angela Connor about community building and Wayne Sutton about location-based services (be careful! Location-based marketing is NOT the same thing as social-media marketing!)

From my personal notes from the event, these are some nuggets I’m walking away with and sites/tools that I want to take either a closer look at or visit for the first time:

• Free monitoring tools: SocialMention, IceRocket & Trendpedia. I have not visited the 2nd two, but the 1st one I tested about a year ago. I wasn’t impressed, so I haven’t been back. Fortunately, I have had the privilege to use mostly paid tools since. However, it’s worth another look, since tools are improving so rapidly, and since people are frequently asking for advice on where to begin monitoring if they don’t have the budget for an agency or paid tool. I’ll do a bit of researching, testing, comparing and let you know what I think. Credit to speaker Nathan Gilliatt.
• Learn to Triage: Use a FireFox plugin called SearchStatus to tell you PageRank, Alexa & Compete — this will help you to determine which people you absolutely must respond to and which can be ignored. Credit to speaker Cord Silverstein.
• ConvoTrack is a free plugin that tells you who has blogged, tweeted, etc. about the URL you’re looking at. Credit to speaker Cord Silverstein.
• Research communities on Boardtracker & Boardreader. Credit to speaker Angela Connor.
• Search Omgilli.com
• Use the word “video” in your YouTube video title. Surprisingly enough, people searching within YouTube search for: “video of….” Credit to speaker Gregory Ng.
• Adding an annotation that says “Subscribe to my channel” at the end of your YouTube video can significantly increase your subscriptions – that CTA (call to action) really impacts user behavior! Credit to speaker Gregory Ng.
• Even though YouTube won’t admit it, the name of your video file actually helps your rankings — even though the audience doesn’t see it. -Greg Ng
• Tentpole programming – What are current events? Do a video based around that event. -Greg Ng
• Try Twitalyzer -Jim Hazen

To take a peak at the slideshows from the presenters, visit: Slideshare.com/TriangleAMA.

Thank you to the Triangle AMA for organizing this event. As a warning to readers – this recap is by no means all-inclusive. These are just a few things that are top-of-mind for me personally. There were many great points made during the event that I did not capture here.  If you are looking to see more of the conversation from today, follow the hashtag: #SMBC2010.

Please leave comment & tell me what YOUR takeaways were.

UPDATE:

Some links to some other great recaps & liveblogs from the event:

• Social Media Boot Camp: 9 Experts Share the Latest Tips and Trends, via the Triangle AMA by Karl Sakas
• Live Blog: Triangle AMA Social Media Bootcamp 2010 by Angela Connor
• Social Media Training Camp Recaps and Videos from Triangle AMA blog

I’m sure there are many more already as well as many more to come. Leave a comment here for me so I can add those in!