Masquerade Ball for New Year's Eve ringing in 2012!

With that said I’m very excited to host the first Digital Media Now Webinar of 2012! This month’s topic: Increase Sales with Social Media. By now you’ve probably heard over and over again that Social Media is not about the ROI. Social media is about community, branding, building trust and credibility. However, while it’s nice to be succeeding in the aforementioned areas, there ultimately needs to be a growth in your business. Otherwise you’re unsuccessfully using social media and therefore wasting your time unless you truly don’t have any business goals related to your marketing activity.

March 2012′s Webinar Topic:

How to Increase Sales with Social Media

Intention: In this webinar you’ll learn to leverage your social networks to attract new clients and strategic partnerships to increase sales with Social Media. We’ll discuss many ways to grow your business including:

• How to create a social media strategy that drives direct sales
• How to be a thought leader on social media in your industry
• How to get your business in front of people who are actively seeking your product/service

Follow Updates about Digital Media Now on Twitter @DigitalMediaNow. Webinar hashtag is #DMNWeb

I’ve been meaning to make my way up to LA for a while so when Jen announced that she was launching her very first live show: Talk Nerdy To Me Lover- The Dirty Truth About Nerdy Girls, I knew this was the perfect opportunity for me to make the trip up.

I love how even though I don’t get to see my TNTML friends in real life (IRL) often we still keep up with each other’s lives and know what’s going on thanks to social media and the community we’ve built! When I arrived at Jen’s place, she was hoping in the shower so handed me the remote. I immediately switched to the Food Network. She came out and said “of course you’re watching Food Network”. An hour later, Julie comes home and sees Food Network on TV, same comment “Ha, you’re watching Food Network”. Yep they both know I’m addicted to food porn just from reading my post. Oh and I was so excited to see the LIME GREEN WALL! I’ve read all about the lime green wall at Jen and Julie’s but got to experience it in real life!

Lime Green Wall, Food Network and @ItsMeJoolie!

Other highlights of my Adventures in LA include: Dinner at Grub with @MegCorbs, @iamrachelwho, @HeatherBorges. The food was great! Comfort food with a fresh twist! They have awesome potato chocolate chip cookies we enjoyed for dessert.  But better than the food was our conversations!

Veggie Burger at Grub LA

Dinner consisted of nerding out over Foursquare, Twitter, Social Media jobs and the Facebook page created by @iamrachelwho, Nothing Rhymes with Orange! We brainstormed some ideas on growing the community and taking it to the next level! But seriously if you haven’t seen this page, it’s one of my favorite humor pages.

Nothing Rhymes with Orange Facebook

After dinner we walked over to the Little Modern Theater to see Jen in her first live show! I’m so proud of her for making this happen. The show started with dramatic interpretations of OKCupid emails, then the dirty truth about nerdy girls! I can definitely can see this show taking off because it was such a great production that was real, raw, authentic and everything was created with passion!  Of course it was also interactive with a Twitter board for people to tweet questions during the show via the hashtag #nerdsunite.

@HeatherBorges @MegCorbs @iamrachelwho @MyMelodie

Talk Nerdy To Me Lover Live Show

I see Jen and Julie checking into Barney’s Beanery all the time, so told Jen that I definitely wanted her to take me there during my visit to see where all the magic happens. To my delight, she scheduled the after party there! A good time was had with everyone in the TNTML community!

Talk Nerdy To Me Lover at Barney's Beanery

Before leaving LA the next day I had an opportunity to take a yoga class with Julie! You guys all know that I’m extremely passionate about my yoga practice. Julie and I both nerd out over yoga all the time so we found a class time at her studio that worked out perfectly.

@itsmejoolie and @MyMelodie

I had such a great time during my short visit to LA. Hanging out with everyone just made me appreciate social media so much more since it keeps me connected to everyone that I can’t see in person all the time. I’m definitely looking forward to more adventures in 2012. So much greatness has already happened this year with social media fueling my awesome experiences!

Before creating and sharing What Social Media Experts Actually Do I actually created one for yogis. I use several memes within the meme as a fun way to describe What Yogis Actually Do! Although this is not entirely true, I personally find it quite amusing!

What Yogis Actually Do Yogis Meme

Please feel free to share, enjoy and if you’d like to see more memes, you can join my new Facebook Community, Social Media Memes.

The “Shit Says” Meme hit the internet by storm! In fact I’m still getting tweets about the Shit Social Media Experts Say video I created a month ago!

And since I already told you about all the Shit Social Media Experts Say, I figure it’s only appropriate that you know what we actually do! Thus I present you with What Social Media Expert Actually Do! Yep the “What (fill in the occupation) Actually Do” meme has caught on fire and I couldn’t resist the opportunity to create one!  Please enjoy and feel free to share! You can also join the Facebook community I created: Social Media Memes. I want this page to eventually be fueled by user generated memes.

“

What Social Media Experts Actually Do

Oh and please note, I in no way consider or call myself a “Social Media Expert”, everyone knows that I’m a Social Media Guru ! Ok all jokes aside this title is used for humor purposes! I’m a Marketing professional who has a lot of experience in Social Media and Digital Technology. I understand how to integrate these tools into your marketing plan to help you grow your business and sometimes people call me a “Social Media Expert”!

<Editor’s Note> I’m very excited to introduce you all to Stephanie Trinh aka @stef_funny!  She’s the newest member of my team here at Marketing Melodie. She’s an ambitious Business Marketing Student at SDSU, is filled with positive energy and is even a fellow marketing nerd! I’ll let Stephanie take it from here. HIT IT STEPHANIE! </Editor’s Note>

Digital Media Now November 2011

To ensure the knowledge I teach to businesses and students on marketing, technology and social media is up to date, I take the initiative to keep myself educated. This is crucial with the ever changing landscape of marketing in a digital world so I’m excited to once again be a part of the Online Marketing Summit (OMS) coming up in just a few days Feb 6-9, 2012 at the Hilton San Diego Bay front! I have received dozens on inquiries on “Are you going to be speaking?”. While I’m normally a speaker at conferences I attend, I’ll be at OMS as an attendee, eager to learn from others.  It doesn’t getting any better than learning more about the topics I’m most passionate about on the gorgeous bay! 

Hilton San Diego Bayfront Photo by: Port of San Diego

*EVENT HIGHLIGHTS*

• Online Marketing Summit is the premier educational event for digital marketing, focused primarily on educating marketers across all digital marketing disciplines and emerging best practices including social media, mobile, search engine media, eCommerce and website optimization.
• OMS hosts a keynote line-up of thought leaders. I’m personally looking forward to hearing Mari Smith speak for the first time! Mari and I are social media buddies, but I haven’t had an opportunity to learn from her insights yet so I was excited to learn that she is giving a keynote!

@MariSmith and @MyMelodie

• A first time Expo, featuring over 50 companies, showcasing the leading online marketing tools and solutions
• 1:1 Labs: Unique to the event program are expert labs, which offer a one-on-one consultation with experts in social media tools, web analytics, search, usability, email and more.
• New conference tracks: With 40% more content this year, OMS is featuring six tracks.  Two new tracks include: Mobile Marketing and Content Marketing for Social Engagement

<Editor’s Note> I’m very excited to introduce you all to Stephanie Trinh aka @stef_funny!  She’s the newest member of my team here at Marketing Melodie. She’s an ambitious Business Marketing Student at SDSU, is filled with positive energy and is even a fellow marketing nerd! I’ll let Stephanie take it from here. HIT IT STEPHANIE! </Editor’s Note>

By now, most of us have heard about Pinterest, the new social media network. Pinterest is a virtual pin board that allows you to pin, repin, like and comment on pictures and videos that your friends or others upload on the site. I know this doesn’t sound very fun, but trust me, it gets addicting. When you go on the website, you are bound to find pictures or videos of things that interest you. Consequently, you are then tempted to pin it to your board so that you may save it for later or just share with your friends. The content that you pin will always lead back to the source it came from, whether it is a blog, a retail site, etc.

Pinterest is also fascinating because you can’t just sign up for an account, you must be invited. You can sign up to wait for an invite or you can find a Pinner that will personally send you an invitation. Yeah, it’s like VIP status.  No worries though, just give me a tweet or a message on Google+ and I’ll invite you.

 

Remember: Pinning is winning!

You can connect with Stephanie on Twitter, Google+ and check out her blog, Marketing Nerd!

Hi everyone, I’m Stephanie! I’m a student at San Diego State University majoring in Business Marketing, specializing  in Integrated Marketing Communications. I consider myself a huge marketing nerd; everything about marketing intrigues me, especially social media marketing. Whenever I find out a new fact or tip about social media, I get excited and I feel the need to share what I just learned with everyone. My friends and family know that I’m all about social media, so whenever they have an issue with their settings on Facebook, Twitter or Google+, I’m the first person they come to. (So then… would I be considered a social media guru? #SSMES)

I am so grateful and ecstatic that Melodie is willing to take me under her wing and teach me what she knows. I am graduating from SDSU this summer and plan on pursuing my career in digital marketing where I can apply my strong organizational skills, creativeness and experience in marketing. As a full-time student that works part time at a bank and part time as a marketing intern, my life can get very busy. With any free time I may have, I always try to spend it with friends and family. I enjoy talking to people and listening to their stories, it helps me learn a lot about a person. I believe in positive energy and that laughter is the best medicine out there.

My favorite quote is from Henry Ford: “Whether you think you can or can’t, you are right.” When I feel like giving up, I repeat this quote in my head and it gives me the push to get back up and keep going. I also love to read. I’m on the last book of The Hunger Games saga, and it’s really interesting. I definitely recommend everyone to read this series!

You can connect with Stephanie on Twitter, Google+ and check out her blog, Marketing Nerd!

Although blogging is a great marketing tool, it’s not the reason I blog, it just happens to be an amazing benefit. I’ve been blogging for almost 10 years yet I don’t ever think of myself as a blogger. Blogging is really just me writing and since I now do it online, instead of saying “I write”, I say, “I blog”. In college I used to blog daily on Xanga.com. I wrote about my adventures, school, work and things I did and experienced day to day. Before blogging I used to journal. My parents had me journal as a kid to practice writing. I remember keeping a notebook and journaling as far back as kindergarten maybe even pre-school! (Even then I was an early adopter )

Now I write to educate other, share my adventures and inspire both myself and my readers. I started my current website and blog, Marketing Melodie in March of 2008 (I can’t believe it’s been almost 4 years). When I started it, I was working for a large media company doing sales and marketing. I created the site to be a resource for clients and to educate myself. It’s since evolved into the marketing company I run today specializing in digital technology and social media.

Whether it’s for your business (especially if it’s for your business) or personal I highly recommend everyone have a blog. I hear the excuse from so many people “But no one is going to read my blog”. So what if no one reads what you write? Write for YOU, write like no one is reading and don’t be afraid to put your thoughts down in a tangible place. By doing this you’ll receive so many benefits. So I present you with 4 Reasons to Blog Even if No One Reads Your Blog. 

1. SEO- The first reason is just practical so let’s start with that. Even if a single soul doesn’t read your blog, updating your site with fresh, new content (this is especially important if it’s a business blog on your website) will significantly improve your SEO. Search engines pick up on fresh, new content and place a higher value on sites that have been recently updated versus stagnant sites that have been sitting around for months or years. Within each blog post you can create links with keywords directing readers to other areas of your site. I won’t get too technical here, but just know that blogging will improve your SEO.
2. Blogging teaches you- I learn something new every day and much of it is attributed to writing. I find that writing stuff down often teaches me how to be more clear and concise with the thoughts I have racing through my mind. Because I’m able to clarify my thoughts, Ican see things in a different perspective which in turn teaches me more about the very topic I’m blogging about.
3. Blogging is cathartic- Sometimes you just need to get things off your chest. During these times, it can also difficult to say these things out loud. Well blogging is a great way to release any emotions you have stored up.  Not all blogs need to be public. If you write something but don’t yet feel ready to share it, there’s no shame in that. But at least you put it out into the world so it’s no longer just stored inside you. Putting things out there is also a great step in being able to let things go.
4. Reflection- I just read a bunch of blog posts I wrote back in 2008. Wow it’s really amazing to be able to read the YOU from 4 years ago. Reading old posts really allows me to reflect on things I’ve done in the past but also appreciate the present moment. It brings into perspective even more of how everything that’s happened so far has led me to where I am today. I do find it amusing though because reading back on some of the stuff I wrote the thought “Are you kidding me? I actually said that?!” does tend to pop up a lot. Live and learn. Live and learn.

As you can see, writing, blogging, whatever you want to call it has helped me in so many ways. Please feel free to share with me other reason you blog. I leave you with a quote from a famous writer that really inspired me:

 “And by the way, everything in life is writable about if you have the outgoing guts to do it, and the imagination to improvise.  The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt”.  ~Sylvia Plath

I am incredibly grateful for everyone who helped with the video,  watched the video, shared the video and left me comments and tweets about it. Here’s why I’m encouraging everyone to continue sharing this video: Even though the “Shit Says” phenomena can be seen as just another funny internet meme, it’s really demonstrating how powerful Social Media is as a tool to really spread your message. My video is intended to be funny and even a bit annoying but nevertheless, it emphasizes how important it really is to have a voice in the social space.

What I love about the “Shit Says” meme is all the creativity it’s bringing out in people! My Twitter buddy @jennhoffman said it perfectly and I agree with her 100%: “The whole “Sh*t (insert group here) Says” trend is really bringing creativity out in people. Almost all the different incarnations are funny.”

There were so many more lines in the first video I wanted to say! Many got cut and some are just new ideas I had after  making the video. Based on the great response I’ve gotten so, I would love to make a second one! And since we all know Social Media is about engaging your audience, user generated content and building community, I turn to you to help! Please submit your ideas  for “Shit Social Media Experts Say” Part 2. Many of you already tweeted me great ideas so please keep them coming!

Here’s how to submit ideas for Shit Social Media Experts Say (Part 2). It’s simple! Just leave me your comments in this blog post. Or tweet me @MyMelodie using the hashtag #SSMES2! Looking forward to hearing from you and your ideas!