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events howardgr marketing meetings

Slides from my TIMA talk

I’ve posted the slides from my talk on the Top Ten Trends in Interactive Marketing for 2008 at Slideshare.com.

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howardgr meetings NYSIA speaking

NYSIA Panel 2/11/08 – Henry Blodget interviewed by Howard Greenstein

Last night, I was privileged to host the NYSIA event at Chase. Henry is currently the co-founder and Editor of the Silicon Alley Insider.

This video clip courtesy of Michael Pinto of Very Memorable who has kindly showed me that I say “um” a bit too much. Something to, um, work on.

[youtube]http://youtube.com/watch?v=07dV9w7vXRY[/youtube]

More coverage and video via Center Networks
NYSIA February Meeting Recap – Discussion With Howard Greenstein and Henry Blodget
and thanks to Allen Stern for posting it so quickly.

Pictures and video on Facebook:  NYSIA State of the Industry.

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blogging Business facebook howardgr marketing meetings social media social networks

Business Development via Social Networks

Several people, including my wife, have asked me why I do things like Twitter, update my Facebook status, and blog about where I’m going and what I’m interested in. I always believed it was a combination of sharing with my friends (who might learn about a conference, event, or topic from my posts), “eating my own dogfood” (how can you learn about Social Media without fully participating), and, of course a small dose of ego. But at least three recent happy incidents have proven to me that there is business value in doing what I’m doing.

Keeping Loose Ties Active
At a recent holiday party thrown by Larry Aronson, I ran into a person I’ve always liked but never spent much time with. We serve together on the board of NYSIA and he’s a VC (I guess this narrows it down). He came up to me and my wife, and, after the usual greetings, said “I haven’t seen you in a while but I feel I know what you’re up to because I follow you on Facebook. I see your twitters, your blog posts, and pictures, and I feel like we’re in touch.”
Well, my wife’s jaw dropped. Here’s someone who has lots of money to invest, works with companies I admire, and just by participating in Facebook I’m keeping him interested. This hasn’t lead to a direct lead, but it validates my strategy.

Shared Interest Leads to A Pitch
Recently I stated I ‘might attend’ the “Graphing Social Patterns” event put on by Dave McClure and O’Reilly. It’s certainly something I’d like to do, but I’m not sure I will be able to swing it due to scheduling. However, it showed in the Facebook news feed of a college friend who I had connected to, but haven’t spoken with in about seven years. He messaged me on Facebook and asked if I was interested in Social Media, as he had been tasked with looking into it for his company. Through a series of messaging exchanges, it has led from a phone call to an opportunity to pitch his company on Social Media Consulting services from my company, the Harbrooke Group. While the contract is still not signed, I never would have had the opportunity to pitch without updating my social status.

LinkedIn Links a client with a Fortune 500 in 4 hours
Recently I was able to do small bit of consulting with the excellent Truman Company from the Boston area. They are working on behalf of a Fortune 500 client who wanted a connection with, of all companies, LinkedIn. After leaving the call, I used my own LinkedIn network to find Mario Sundar, LinkedIn’s excellent community evangelist. Via Mario we got to the correct person at LinkedIn, and had a conference call scheduled in about half a day. It seems obvious, but the networks we build by connecting to people can and should be used to create connections that create value for our clients, our friends, and ourselves.

How have Social Media networks and connections improved your business? Comment or send me a note.

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blogging DocSearls facebook howardgr marketing social media social networks socialmedia VRM

Facebook making people angry

In case you were too busy preparing Turkey last week, I’ll give a basic review of the issue. Facebook’s Beacon program (already questioned as a possible “Privacy Nightmare” by GigaOm) lets users share their own data about what they like and dislike with other facebook users. An example might be Fandango or other movie service letting everyone know I bought tickets to “Enchanted” this weekend. I did, take the kids, it was adorable. But that’s not the point. I’m sharing this because I choose to. A bunch of people are finding out that stuff they didn’t realize was being shared, is.
Jason Calacanis clearly summarizes The wonderful horrible life of Facebook users and their data (or, “data hogs get slaughtered”) noting the 3 major things making some customers of Facebook feel, well, icky:

Facebook has done three things that are at once extremely innovative, extremely rude, extremely helpful, and extremely disconcerting:

1. They are collecting and republishing user data on a level not before seen by users.

2. They are allowing advertisers to use this data to reach these users.

3. They are not giving this information–information that has put their value at $15 billion–back to their users.

Doc Searls summarizes one possible set of responses in these two articles.

Time To Write Our Own Rules And Making Rules, II where he notes:
What we need instead is to make tools that work for us, and not just for them. We need to invent tools that give each of us independence from vendor control, and better ways of telling vendors what we want, when we want it, and how we want to relate — on our terms and not just on theirs.

For my clients and friends trying to understand the current bru-ha-ha going on, the above articles are must-reads.

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a chat and a song fun howardgr Podcast

A Chat and A Song, Halloween Edition

Direct Link to Media File

Or, Check it out at AChatAndASong.com.

In this episode a chat from me, and 3 count ’em 3 songs, to keep you in the Halloween “spirit”

Episode Notes:

Episode 17 – This is a show for my friends, and friends I don’t yet have…

The extra spooky Halloween show, featuring songs that are theme-appropriate! A chat from me about what I’ve been up to, and these 3 songs for the holiday. So, bring out your dead, get into the spirit, and tune in to the message from the other side:


Mean_gene_kelton_and_the_die_hards: Ghost In My House

Fishing for Comets: Halloween

Hollow Horse: Ghost www.hollowhorse.co.uk

Thanks to the Podsafe Music Network – music.podshow.com – Please buy the songs and support the artists in this podcast! It’s 99cents, and 90 cents goes to the artist – better for the artist than itunes and you get unprotected MP3s!

FYI: The theme song for the show is from No Plastic Inside: Arround the World {spelling is theirs.} Contact me- AChatAndASong at Gmail dot com!