Announcing the Social Tools Summit

Welcome to maximize your social actionable 10 minute advice on how your business can maximize your social media presence. Now, the host of maximize your social, social media author, speaker, consultant, founder of maximize social business, and soon to launch Social Media Center of Excellence, Neal Schaffer. Hey, everybody, this is Neal Schaffer, welcome to another episode of maximize your social. I know I broke a promise to you. I went to New York City this week, met some fantastic people, and was having so much fun that I was just couldn't make the time for the podcast interview. I do want to tell you, though, that I had a chance to, in addition to teaching my class at Rutgers, had a great day met Aguirre, don't know if you follow him, but he was at Forrester. After that he's worked at several companies Prudential Financial USA, He currently works at American Express and one of these great social media thought leaders that you should be following. Also Dino Dogan of triber. And some other really, really great folks out there in the New York City social media scene, I'll throw up Susan Borst as another name, there are many others I was hoping to meet, it was really, really a great Well, I was only there for 36 hours. But really, really great time. And obviously those experiences that I have and what I learned, I roll out into everything I do, including these podcasts, so don't feel like you're getting don't feel like you can at the short end of a bargain. Now, if you listen to all these podcasts, my voice is just a little bit hoarse, ended up. As usual, I'm very energetic, and push the limits of my body and I sort of caught a little cold, but I'm getting over it, I feel really good. And back here in my home office, it's actually kids are in bed. It's a little bit later in the night, I thought I'd take the chance to share with you some really, really big news. Well, I think it's big news. It's the announcement of a new project, which hopefully by the time you'll listen to this podcast, it's already been published, you know, when I launched my company in January of 2010. And those of you that have seen me speak probably have already seen this slide that I do. But I'll talk about that I realized the need, you know, what, what do you want to do when you grow up? What well, how can I help companies and social media? What do I want to do? What am I passionate about? And it's really a combination of two things, strategy and education. And the strategy obviously, is the consulting work, I do the book, maximize your social, and that consulting strategy, consulting experience is really what gets rolled in everything else I do. The education comes in a lot of different forms. You know, when I started my career, I went into sales and marketing because I wanted to have the chance to meet people. I'm a very, I believe, I'm pretty outgoing person, but I just enjoy meeting new people meeting other people, you know, creating relationships with people learning from them, being stimulated by conversations, especially among different cultures, which is why I began my career in Asian and I speak, you know, Japanese and Chinese. But that, you know, is the reason why I really enjoy speaking a lot. I mean, I enjoy everything that I do. But speaking is one of my favorite things, because I have the ability to really interact with a lot of people over a little bit of time, and know that I'm helping people on scale, right, which with a one to one coaching session is just a different feel, although that's very rewarding and gratifying experience as well. But one thing that I've always looked into doing are events. Now, those of you that have followed me, from my humble beginnings here in Orange County, know that I used to do a lot of networking events. In fact, before maximize your social and before maximize social business. My brand was called windmill networking, and it was all about virtually meeting people online. But bringing those virtual relationships into the physical realm and getting people together face to face, and learning from each other. And, you know, seeing how we can help each other out. So I actually created a LinkedIn group here, windmill networking in Southern California called SoCal sushi. I also had a LinkedIn group in Japan, which was called the Izakaya club for some who remember, but it was based on the same concept of hey, let's get together regularly whenever I'm in Japan on a business trip or, you know, monthly, let's get together for lunch and have some sushi, and meet each other and see how we can help each other out. So I've always really enjoyed events naturally. And there are a lot of social media events which I have been honored to be a part of as well. Whenever I have a chance to speak at social media events and I think I've spoken once at almost every major social media event now from some that aren't as famous as they used to be or they haven't been around a while but you know from gravity Summit, a Blog World New Media Expo online marketing Summit, you know, Social Media Marketing World. I'll be speaking for the first time at social media strategy summit in Las Vegas. It's February spoken at ISE strategy. I mean, I can go on and on marketing profs recently spoke to in Boston at their b2b conference. But one thing that has always been intriguing to me is to run my own events. Now, it's something that's sort of been in the back of my head, nothing that I really plan to do. I've been, you know, all these other event organizers that I've been able to get to know, I've actually given them all my ideas that I have, you know, if I was going to run event, this is how I would do it. And I've spoken and attended so many that, you know, I think I have a lot of ideas. So it all happened when I was in Boston, at the recent MarketingProfs b2b Summit, where I spoke with Jason Miller of LinkedIn. And this is just two months ago, and I met up with someone that I knew before social media, someone that I used to work together with at a company called SPL, he was our former VP of Marketing, Brian Mahoney. So we've known each other for 15 years. And he said, you know, Neil, I've been really successful putting on events, he also does consulting, like I do, and he's, you know, a marketing genius in his own right. But we both came from the high tech world, he's been putting on these executive focused high tech events. And he's built sort of an infrastructure to do that. And he's already done a few of them. And, you know, the thought came to mind that said, Wow, it's really hard for me to do all this. But here's someone that already has done, it's in a similar industry, we know each other professionally. And he's a marketer and get social, right. So the combination of someone that can handle that side, and then myself where I can actually, you know, create the content, curate the speakers, engage with the sponsors, and create a one of a kind, albeit on a very, very small scale, a very different, but one of a kind, extremely valuable event for the community businesses that want to take their social media to the next level. And what we came out with, and this was really driven by my belief that I believe the market needs it. Now, there's a lot of other social media events out there. And the people that I know, and a lot of the companies, I know, they're not relying on one event per year, right, they're going to multiple events per year, because they're going to meet different people there, there's going to be different speakers learn different things. So first of all, I do not, you know, think this is going to replace any other event. And I look forward to partnering with other events, speaking about them, and continuing to provide any opinions or ideas that they would like to ask of me. But this event is going to be very, very specific. And it's funny, because one of the questions I always get asked, is, you know, Neil, what are your what is your favorite tool? And I think marketers in general, this is gonna seem weird, but I think marketers in general, concentrate too much on the tools, the tools, once you have the strategy in place, and you know, what you need to do organically, right? And you're doing it organically, then it's time to look at the tools to say, Okay, I already know what I'm doing, can I find a tool that's going to help me do it more efficiently, more potentially, authentically, any automation that I could add without losing any emotional bond with a final user, and what have you, right, because as we know, social media requires an investment, it's either going to be people, or tools, or in more more cases, advertising. So the tools is is an important part. And even though I think that sometimes some marketers just rely purely on the tools without realizing that you need to have the strategy, the education and the experience of working these platforms organically. To fully understand the value of the tools, the tools are still important, I use a variety of tools of shared some of these maximize social business. But my thought is that there are a lot of different types of speakers at events. But whenever and I have lots of relationships with lots of companies that provide social media tools, and whenever I talk to them, and I used to work for tool vendor, although a different industry, they have helped lots of companies and a lot of different ways. And sometimes the marketing message on your website does not speak to the value of what their tools provide. And if you are a company, you're trying to figure out what tools to use for any given function. It's really hard to figure out what to do. Unless you do a 30 day trial, you go to a webinar that they host, maybe you do a you know, a call with their salesperson, but it's really hard to get a feel as to what is the potential? What are the best use case scenarios for for for this tool, it's really hard to get that information in a central place. And that's really the information that I want to provide that to the event that I want to provide to senior marketers, executives, agencies, that they can either reassess the tools that they're currently using, or really understand these are the tools they should be using, by getting introductions to them through panels, case studies, not not vendors pitching tools, but in a unique way in which this is where I want to bring my own value of really sharing that user case scenarios, the case studies, the best practices in not only using their tools, but using tools in the industry as well. And this is the reason why, on May 12, in Boston, Massachusetts, we are going to have the first social tool Summit is going to be Brian and myself have staff. And we are looking forward to putting on a truly very, very small scale, but yet hopefully an extremely valuable event that will continue on. After we do that event. Obviously, Brian is a consultant nama consultants. So if companies need consulting, after they attend the event, and want to understand how to best utilize those tools, you know, with everything they also do in marketing, or with a social media strategy, they can also get that help. But more importantly, they can build relationships with a lot of these tool vendors. And I think from those relationships come, you know, access to beta has access to special things access to information, that in these days of virtual webinars, and you know, virtual Skype calls, it's very, very hard to get ahold of unless you actually go there. And because the subject matter is going to be of tools. You know, whenever I go to social media events, or any event, it's about education and networking, right. So you know, the people that you want to network with are going to be there. But the education is going to be incredible in two different ways, from the panels and the presentations themselves, I'm going to put my stamp of guarantee that they're going to be incredible. But on the other hand, everybody that's going there, and it'll be a one day event, right, but everyone was going there was just going to be focused on tools. So that's going to be the natural topic of conversation. And I think it's just going to be really eye opening and extremely valuable for a relatively small investment, to really keep your finger on the pulse of what is possible with utilizing tools in the enterprise for social media. And that's it, I love podcasts, because it's very, very hard to blog, this, I could vlog it. But you don't hear the personal story behind it. Even though I could try to share it in Word, it's just a lot easier for me to do it over the podcast, you can hear the emotion in my tone, even though it's sort of late at night, hear my voice is hoarse, I'm obviously really, really excited about it. And hey, as always, I always introduce it first, or I always introduce things deepest in my podcast. But I also want to send out an invite you all, you know, if you want to become part of it, and well, this is gonna be the first time it's going to be in Boston, I'm flying out the Boston snowing, no one's going to be paid for my airfare to fly to Boston for the event or for my hotel room. But so if you live in Boston, or live in the area, and you want to get involved, you want to get involved as a sponsor, a speaker, you want to volunteer for a chance to you know, attend the event, you want to help tweet about it, or help promote it, or in any way, hey, reach out to me, I'd love to have your help. And it would be appreciated. And I think those that know me know that I don't forget those that have helped me in my career in my life, and with my own social media. So that's it. This is a little bit of a different podcast, and that I'm sort of announcing the social tools Summit. And you're going to be hearing more about the social tools summit as we rev up towards that may 12 deadline. But if you go to social tools, summit.com, you should be able to see the details, we're still obviously trying to finalize a lot of the speaker positions, and allow the sponsors, that page will be updated pretty frequently over the next few weeks. But there you have it, social tools summit.com I hope to see you there may 12, Boston, Massachusetts. And that's it. We'll be back with our quote unquote, normal format and maximize your social next week. As always, I appreciate all the comments if this is your first time listening to maximize your social, this is like the 98th episode. So you have a lot of listening to play catch up on so make sure that you download all my previous episodes. Give them a lesson that can never be of any help to something you want me to cover you have any question? You know that I'm always here for you please reach out to me please, please, please. And all those, you know, ratings on iTunes and comments and comments and repost and SoundCloud, thank you so much. It's really gratifying that you are doing that. And it means that there is truth in what I say. And that people are listening. And that's that's my ROI, right when I know that people are listening, and my content is resonating with them. So that's it. I hope next week that my voice sounds a lot better. It should. But until then, until next week, hey, we're not the end of the year. So let's end on a strong note. That starts thinking about what we might want to be doing differently in social media next year. You know, at the end of the year, beginning of the year, we're going to let's walk through an audit and how to sort of reformulate our strategy for the new year. So be on the lookout for our next few episodes, which will concentrate on that and until then I'm going to end here. I have a time limit and that time limit I'm already over. So. Hey, wherever we are in the world, make it a great social day. We'll speak again soon. Bye bye, everybody. Thanks for listening to maximize your social. We appreciate your iTunes subscriptions ratings and comments. If you would like to appear on this show or recommend content, please contact Neal Schaffer at Neal at maximize your social.com. Please also make sure to check out Neil's new community, the Social Media Center of Excellence at social media ce o e.com. Thanks again and make it a social day.