OLD Tony Veroeven's Blogarithm

Are Social Media Just Fads?

2009-08-19T12:14:00.008-05:00

Pretty soon you won't be able to say, I'm too old for social media. The Boomers, Gens X, Y, and Milennials are all active in social tools and the cloud. Pretty soon we will be the old people.

Still think social media and to ols are a fad ? Watch this.

New Sheriff in Town Part 2 of 3

2009-08-15T23:25:00.000-05:00

There's a new way of servicing attendees:
* Facilitating interaction of/with all conference participants, before during and after the conference.
* Helping people network before the conference, solving the "wallflower" syndrome
* Making better use of time at the conference, and learning more
* Extending the conference to months before and after the conference dates.
* Acknowledging the need to give more value to sponsors/ better ROI
* Providing social tools and handouts, education and learning under one roof

Attendee Satisfaction

Make higher quality connections with the right people before, during and after the event
Meet more people
Able to contribute ideas, knowledge and resources to the topics being presented by speakers
Single place that aggregates handouts, social media and networking

Your Benefit

Increased renewals
Increased referrals

Social Media Marketing

Attendees can tweet links to profiles
Aggregates blogs and tweets
Part of your social media marketing plan

Your Benefit

Increased awareness
Increased attendance
Earlier registrations

Sponsorship Satisfaction

Improved exposure to engaged community
New marketing channel to reach their audience
Easier to engage with attendees

Your Benefit

Increased package sales
Higher-tiered sales

Conference Wallflowers Part 1 of 3

2009-08-13T10:30:00.001-05:00

I love going to conferences. I love the fancy foods, traveling to new places, and meeting cool people. What I don't like about conferences is getting to networking receptions a bit late where people are already talking, and I feel I'm butting in.

I'm no introvert, but if anybody says they don't feel awkward at a networking social...they're lying. I also feel like I didn't get to talk to enough people.

This is the old way of experiencing meetings and conferences. I'm tired of it.

Thankfully, conference organizers are becoming more and more aware of the old way of doing things:

One way education
Not being able to connect with other attendees
No interaction with the speakers
Not meeting the "right" people (hey, for spending $1500 to attend a conference, amongst 1000 people I need to be choosy!)
Great ideas in the hallway and after sessions are lost forever
The conference is only a 3 day experience.
Relying on social media tools that only serve to fragment information across web 2.o.

Make The Logo Bigger!

2009-08-06T07:55:00.002-05:00

This is a funny video that is the biography of every creative services, web design and graphic design person in the world: Make The Logo Bigger!!!

I vow to never say this phrase again.

Developing New Relationships

2009-08-05T08:28:00.005-05:00

Developing New Relationships

There is no such thing as a first-time, low-ball, trial price that ever migrates to higher prices. If you want to get the value you deserve, start by asking yourself a few questions:

Is this the right customer? Will they appreciate the value we provide? Do I really want them as a customer?
If so, do I truly know what is of value to this prospect? Did I listen?
Have I done the best job I can in articulating and demonstrating the value the prospect will receive?
Did I discover how important this assignment is to the prospect and his company? In other words, do I know the impact of this assignment on the prospect?
And last, but not least, do we (everyone in our company) understand and believe that we do provide a service that offers more value to our customers? Can each of us articulate it? Are we really selling the filet or just tacos? After all, it is just cow, right? (Watch the video again!)

Maintaining Existing Relationships

Unfortunately, we too often take existing customers for granted. We assume that because we have worked with them for months or even years, they understand the value we provide. But ask yourself:

Do I truly know what my customer thinks of the value I provide to him? When was the last time I asked? Is there a legitimate service hiccup?
Have I sat down with my customer to walk through what we are doing? Have I made it clear how we are adding value?
Is there a missing person (CEO, CIO, CFO) who is looking only at my invoices and does not feel or see my value? How can I be certain s/he is getting the full picture, before the invoices show up on his desk?
Is there a new dynamic that has developed since I began working with the customer, e.g. a new, cheaper competitor?
Am I doing only the work that needs to be done? Are there activities, tasks, or parts of the project that made sense three months ago, but no longer are what is best for the customer?
In the end, whether we are talking about a new customer or an existing one, it all comes down to, "If I were the customer would I feel that I was getting value for the product/service we're providing?"

Content Credit given to Jill Konrath-"Selling to Big Customers" newsletter

Facebook & Farm Town Addiction

2009-08-03T08:03:00.001-05:00

My wife Rhonda is addicted to Farmtown on Facebook. I can now freely give her a hard time because this woman that I love used to give me a hard time about playing video games, especially ones that were strategy and hours and hours of building (a la Starcraft).

My son is also playing quite a bit; but so far I have resisted the temptation to plow, harvest, and grow.

Please. help.

Publish Post

me. resist......

Whistler, BC

2009-08-01T23:05:00.000-05:00

Thinking about going to Whistler, BC or Jackson Hole, WY for a ski trip next year. Anybody know anything about those places. As you may know we went to UT last April and had a blast!

Looking forward to taking Brendan on a men only trip again!

Pretty soon Andrew can get on some skis too!

How to Sync Goldmine with your iPhone (or any phone that syncs with MS Exchange)

2009-08-01T07:07:00.003-05:00

Since 2002,I've been syncing my personal calendar and contacts from Outlook to my Palm OS PDAs, Window Mobile OS phones, and now iPhone. It wasn't until the last few months that I cut the Outlook "cord" and put all of my info in the cloud.

However, ever since my new job, I've been more and more tied to my work calendar which we have in Goldmine. This isn't convenient though, as I'm rarely in office to manage my appointment. Since I live by my iPhone, I was looking for a solution to sync my work calendar (only) with my personal calendar.

I wanted to avoid any monthly fees that normally come with such software and services. A while back I figured how sync my Google Calendar with Nuevasync, an MS Exchange service. I synced my Google calendars (Mine, wife's Son's, etc all through Google Calendar) This is great as we can all edit, view & manage our calendars either on our phones or on Google Calendar itself. What was missing was bringing in my Goldmine calendar in amongst my personal ones.

After much research, I purchased CompanionLink Pro, and I am able to avoid a monthly sync fee. Even the people at CompanionLink were impressed at my connection. Admittedly, it's a bit hodge podge, but it works, doesn't cause duplicates and is pretty much instantaneous.

Disclosure: I don't work for any of the companies mentioned. I don't sync contacts from Goldmine, only my calendar. So there's my back-story.

Here's how my data flows:

This article assumes you have Google Calendar already in action. (some do use Outlook at work for email at work but we do not.) CompanionLink can sync and route data through many programs, but this is how I use it.

I highly recommend that you create a "work calendar" in your Google Calendar for goldmine and companion link to sync to. I tried bringing my appointments into my personal calendar but ended up with duplicates.

If you have questions on actual step by step set up, I will be happy to publish another article with screen shots. Please email me or leave a comment!

Follow me on Twitter!

2009-07-31T23:00:00.000-05:00

I am on Twitter and you can follow me. I mostly talk about work stuff so unless you are really interested in social media and social technology, you might be bored stiff. Fair warning!

Bobby McFerrin is still cool. Don't Worry, Be Happy!

2009-07-31T15:54:00.002-05:00

Bobby McFerrin is still cool. Don't Worry, Be Happy!

World Science Festival 2009: Bobby McFerrin Demonstrates the Power of the Pentatonic Scale from World Science Festival on Vimeo.

2009 ASAE Annual Meeting Tweetup

2009-07-31T15:05:00.004-05:00

#ASAE09 Annual Meeting Tweetup!

While at annual meeting in Toronto this year consider gathering with us on Sunday, August 16, 2009 from 2:45 - 3:15 in the Online Engagement Lounge. It is a great opportunity to meet face to face with your fellow tweeters or to find out who is on twitter. It is on the education session level – level 700. The room number is 711. See you there.

Don't forget to bring your Tweet Up Badges!

Follow me at @tony_omnipress!

Sanibel the kitty cat

2009-07-29T22:58:00.001-05:00

We now have 3 cats back again. We moved 3 and one of them didn't take too well (Sanibel) to the move. She finally came out from under bed/behind the drywall board/from the basement Monday night. Now she is very snuggly and can't get enough. I can barely type right now because she is laying on my arm and all over me.

I guess I'll manage!

The corridor of uncertainty: Conference 2.0

2009-07-29T09:48:00.000-05:00

The corridor of uncertainty: Conference 2.0: "conference. Participants are usually so enthusiastic that you could probably just put them into groups and let free discussion flowaround a chosen topic or two. I once went to a conference where we actually did this for one session per day. Each group went to a room with coffee and"

I'm lovin it.

2009-07-21T08:02:00.002-05:00

I'm really loving my job. It's a different kind of hard work. I've been used to having tools handed to me to use like sales scripts, fully vetted documents, etc. Now, I am the one recently who has been creating them. That's actually harder than you would think, because you are not sure what they are supposed to look like, or sometimes what they are for.

I'm having fun also organically & virally encouraging word of mouth about our new product, Conference 2.0 via blogs, wikipedia and wiki spaces. Linked In Groups.

We are going live by the middle of August!

Every time I come to...

2009-07-08T21:58:00.002-05:00

Every time I come to Washington DC it's always interesting. Now I just witnessed 5 cops chasing down a guy that right past me. Welcome to Washington DC!
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Singing Like a Canary

2009-07-01T11:48:00.003-05:00

I've been using Twitter to connect professionally with colleagues around Social Media and Marketing. If you are interested, follow me at http://www.twitter.com/tony_omnipress.

Subscribe to my blog!

2009-06-26T19:33:00.002-05:00

http://feeds.feedburner.com/TonyVeroevensBlog

Have you heard the BUZZ?

2009-06-26T10:44:00.001-05:00

I'll be attending this one day conference in Washington, DC on July 9th!

Get this badge.

iPhone OS 3 is really cool!

2009-06-17T21:20:00.003-05:00

Too bad that I can't actually install it. I have a prediction: That there will be lots of people blogging about either installing OS3 for their iPhones, or not being able to install because everybody that is installing!. iTunes is seriously crippled. Actually crippled would be good. Actually it's non functional. Service Time Out is more like it. Wait. let me check again. Nope.

Poor little o me!

I want to copy/paste too!

Shall We Play a Game?

2009-06-10T22:20:00.005-05:00

Today Brendan, Andrew and I were driving home from the mall after hearing Kid Rock's "All Summer Long". In the song he says something about 1989 and no internet. It got me thinking about where I was in 1989 and what I did without internet.

Then I remembered how cool it was when we were at my high school's library to connect with MSU's (Mankato State) library catalog. To do this, we would put a telephone receiver on a modem, a la WarGames/Matthew Broderick Style. Brendan seemed less than impressed, but he's 14 and has never known any different.

He has a video ipod, I had cassette walkman that had auto reverse, with an fm radio!

I know, I know. I also walked up hill to school...both ways.

Promoted to Product Manager

2009-06-01T13:06:00.005-05:00

As of Today, I've been promoted to Product Manager of my company, Omnipress. We are rolling out a new product that will change the way people attend and speak at conferences. We'll have other milestones at 30 & 60 days from now with more info!'

I will be in charge of managing the needs of the customer, and listening to them on new features. I'll also be the chief barker of the product and the go to guy on knowledge of it. I am very excited for this opportunity I've been given. Thanks for your interest!

Just wanted to put a...

2009-05-29T17:23:00.002-05:00

Just wanted to put a quick post up to let everybody know that our offer was accepted at another house (the 1 that we wanted), and we accepted the offer on our house, so we'll be moving in July.
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Attending ASAE in Toronto, ON

2009-05-26T14:25:00.001-05:00

On the Market

2009-05-20T20:37:00.004-05:00

Well, after many, many hours of organizing the house, we are officially on the market. We've decided to stay in DeForest because we can get so much more house for the money We are hoping our house goes quickly!

It is weird to see our house online! Must be an out of house experience!

Ski bums

2009-04-08T20:48:00.004-05:00

My friend and coworker Dan, Brendan and I just got back from skiing in Utah. We went Friday 4/3 and returned Monday the 6th. Alta was my favorite ski resort...It was truly amazing. From Deeeeep powder to snow covered evergreens, it was both a blast to ski and picturesque.

We also went to a resort called Solitude, which was also great. It was quite warm that second day, and the snow got a bit slushy. It was also more of a traditional ski place that had groomed snow.

Alta was partially groomed but had plenty of untouched powder. some of it was unskiiable though! 5 feet of powder sound good until you get stuck it :)

One time I wiped out and my ski broke loose. I was buried in 6 inches of snow. Once I was able to get up, I had to search for my missing ski about 5 feet back with one of my poles. I found it about 2 feet down! I don't think it would have been found until August had I not found it!