Boston Social Media Workshop With The Boston Arts And Business Council
May 11, 2007
The Greater Boston Arts and Business Council invited me to participate in their National Arts Marketing Project Workshop held at the law firm Foley Hoag LLP today. I was invited a couple of months ago. A colleague of mine on the American Marketing Association had previously introduced me to the organization when she used to work there. I had given a presentation on Arts blogging back in November of 2005 when I was President of the Boston Chapter of the American Marketing Association, and Director of Blogging Strategies at Backbone Media in Waltham. Here's a post about the previous presentation on nonprofit blogging.
It was a busy day at IMO Independent Mobile, finishing up vendor calls, and chatting with my boss before he want away on vacation, so I arrived at the workshop after the main speaker had started. I had also forgotten my lunch this morning. So I asked Margaret Moore, the organizer of the workshop if the council was serving any food. A few cookies Margaret told me, but at that point we spied the Foley Hoag LLP cafeteria. And I headed in that direction, they have a really nice cafeteria, all I had was a turkey sandwich and a cup of clam chowder. But if you like sushi I saw they had a great selection.
After lunch I headed into the workshop and listed to Stephen Warley, a digital media strategist and trainer at 602 Communications give a presentation about online marketing, search engine optimization and social media. Stephen is a really good presenter and I thought he did an excellent job. The audience really participated and asked a lot of questions, especially one lady, who almost gave the audience a running commentary on her son's antics in social media and MySpace.
Once Stephen had finished the audience split into groups to 3-7 people and sat down at one of eight tables where seven other Internet marketing and social media practitioners and consultants sat down for a one and half hour of social media speed dating advice.
I got to meet 15-20 people out of the audience, and had a great time answering everyone's questions, from the basics of search engine optimization, to forums, to blogs. I also brought a copy of my book along and told everyone about that.
I have not been doing too much on social media this past week, so the event was a real great event for me. It was a pleasure to meet so many people in the arts who were interested in using blogs and social media in their organizations, my thanks go to Margaret Moore for inviting me, I had blast!