I met Maggie Fox through Social Media Today, a collective we belong to. She offered to do a Social Media Success Story podcast with me, so I hope this is one of many such stories to come!

Maggie is working on a phased social media strategy for Yamaha Motor. She just completed a detailed analysis of Phase I, including what her company, Social Media Group, calls “engagement metrics.” (The engagement metrics for Yamaha Motor are double those of the “most popular” community in the same space). In this podcast, Maggie discusses this work and provides a really cool anecdote about how Yamaha Motor successfully connected with an influencer who’s active in a competitor’s community. Enjoy …

Social Media Success Story podcast with Maggie Fox – Yamaha Motor

About Maggie

Maggie Fox, a communications and content expert who has never met a medium she didn’t like, is the founder of Social Media Group, Canada’s first agency devoted exclusively to helping business navigate the world of Web 2.0.

Over the course of her career, Maggie has marketed, written and produced television and website content for companies like CHUM Limited, the Global Television Network, Do it Best, Deloitte, Sears and Disney. A longtime blogger (and dot-bomb survivor), she’s currently putting her unique experience to work for firms that want to engage their internal and external audiences through social media.

Please visit Maggie at www.socialmediagroup.ca for more info or join in the conversation on Social Media Today at www.socialmediatoday.com

One of the blogs that I admire most is the Influential Marketing Blog run by Rohit Bhargava. To truly understand the genius of it, you really need to look at the little things Rohit does. For example, check out his social media bio and how his blog titles are optimized for search engines.

He also wrote some great content on an emerging topic called Social Media Optimization (SMO), which I edited for my audience taking my inspiration from his original content.

I asked Rohit to do a podcast with me to better understand SMO and get his views on social media and what PR’s role will be. Enjoy …

Influential Marketing podcast with Rohit

About Rohit

Rohit Bhargava leads the interactive marketing team at Ogilvy Public Relations Worldwide in Washington, D.C., and is a founding member of the 360 Digital Influence team at Ogilvy. He is a frequent speaker at industry events and is a specialist in combining “traditional” interactive marketing efforts with innovative social media marketing strategy to help clients succeed in the new media landscape. His current list of clients includes Intel, Johnson & Johnson, Lenovo, and Unilever. Prior to joining Ogilvy PR, he was executive producer of the interactive team at Leo Burnett in Sydney, Australia, and he has worked internationally in several countries. He authors the popular Influential Marketing Blog and recently signed a deal to publish his first marketing book with McGraw-Hill.

The most informed buyer is one who can access the experienced-based knowledge of his or her peers. That’s the message of my podcast with George Krautzel, co-founder and president of ITtoolbox. George and his team have just released a new survey on the adoption of social media in cooperation with PJA Advertising and Marketing.

Some of the results might surprise you:

– IT decision makers spend on average 3.5 hours per week consuming or participating in social media.
– IT decision makers reference vendor websites more than user-generated content for making purchasing decisions, but trust user-generated content more than either vendor websites or editorial publications.

This is fantastic news. To hear more just listen to our podcast…

New Study on Social Media, a podcast with George Krautzel from ITtoolbox

About George

As co-founder and president of ITtoolbox, George Krautzel guides the company’s execution, overseeing daily operations, directing companywide implementations, and ensuring long-term business growth. Under his leadership, ITtoolbox has continually advanced its network services to meet the needs of both its expanding user base and its impressive list of advertising and staffing partners.

George directed the implementation of proprietary utilities such as a contextual matching engine and keyword ad targeting to help advertising partners realize the benefits of the significant volume of community-generated IT content at ITtoolbox. Prior to his experience with ITtoolbox, he held various roles at Accenture and co-founded an IT consulting company. He received a Bachelor of Science in Finance from Villanova University.

Copy of the Survey

Whitepaper on the benefits of advertising in social media

Last week, I had the pleasure of attending the World Innovation Forum by the HSM Group. Participants at the World Innovation Forum came away with new understanding of how businesses can pivot and become more innovative as well as plenty of insights about what the future holds.

As a blogger, and member of the virtual media, I was delighted to hear that I was welcome to interview 2 of the guest (my top 2 picks) Malcolm Gladwell and Clayton Christensen.

What follows is a very raw and unpolished podcast, because that’s the way it happened. You are getting the full experience I had at sitting down with the man himself. I hope you come away inspired by Malcolm’s view of Web 2.0 and his heartfelt feeling on how the blogosphere can act as a self regulating body.

Malcolm Gladwell discusses Web 2.0 in a podcast

About Malcolm

Malcolm is a writer for the New Yorker magazine, and the author of two books, “The Tipping Point: How Little Things Make a Big Difference” and “Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking.” He was born in England, and raised in southwestern Ontario in Canada. Now he lives in New York City.

Malcolm’s great claim to fame is that I’m from the town where they invented the BlackBerry. His family also believes (with some justification) that we are distantly related to Colin Powell. He invites you to look closely at his photograph and draw your own conclusions.

Dont miss my podcast with Clayton Christensen later this week!

I got a chance to interview Robert Scoble on the topic of “Communities, Social Media, Twitter and More.” I think his insights into how to get started with blogging are spot on. Just observing his blog and his Flickr and Twitter pages offers lessons in social media incarnation.

Scoble is setting a high watermark for all of us. So B2B marketers out there, let’s listen, learn and get busy!

A Podcast with Robert Scoble on Communities, Social Media, Twitter and More

About the Scobleizer

Robert Scoble is a technical evangelist, writer, and author of the popular blog Scobleizer. He is currently Vice President of Media Development at the Palo Alto-based video-podcast startup company PodTech.net, where among other things he produces the ScobleShow, a series of interviews and stories about, as the site puts it, “geeks, technologists and developers.” Scoble is a lifelong technologist. He grew up just blocks from Apple Computer and played in the garage with electronic gadgets his father brought home from work. Scoble worked for Fawcette Technical Publications, UserLand Software, NEC and TabletPC before landing a job in 2003 with the Channel 9 MSDN Video team producing stories about Microsoft employees and products. During this period, his Scobleizer blog became a favorite of technologists who valued his independence and objectivity. He is a popular speaker and coauthor of Naked Conversations: How Blogs Are Changing the Way Businesses Talk with Customers.

You asked for it, so you got it. The number one most popular podcast in my series of podcasts has been “How to Start a B2B Community” with Mukund Mohan, CEO of Canvas Group. So I shared this information with Mukund and asked who I should interview next. He pointed me to Sean O’Driscoll at Microsoft.

Naturally, I’ve been reading all I can about social media and communities. But honestly, I heard more new ideas from Sean than in all of the articles and blogs I’ve come across on the topic.

I conducted an interview with Sean O’ Driscoll to learn what it is like to have thousands of communities to listen to and manage. And I wanted to learn how you harness these communities for product launches as part of an integrated marketing campaign. Enjoy …

Communities at Microsoft, a podcast with Sean O’Driscoll

About Sean

Sean O’Driscoll is general manager of the Customer Service and Support Community and the Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP) Program at Microsoft Corp. He is responsible for developing community-based support models and leading the worldwide MVP Program. The MVP Program is designed to honor and recognize amazing individuals in technical communities around the globe who share a passion for technology and the spirit of community.

For more information on Sean please visit his blog or view some of his posts we discuss on the podcast:

Post with the 5 methods for convincing the unconverted on communities

Post on HD DVD

Post on JetBlue/Turner Apology