Moving From Traditional to Social Media:
Easy Ways to Integrate SEO, Social
Networks & PR 2.0 Strategies for Success
With Lonnie B Hodge, Des Walsh, Brian Solis, Alvin Chiang, Omniture, Xiaonei and others

April 8th 2009 from 9 AM-5 PM

Bi-Lingual: Chinese and English

MARCH SESSION SOLD OUT

All dates and Times=China (EST +12)

For full details and sign up info go to: PR 2.0

A hands-on workshop to be held in Guangzhou, China and Broadcast Worldwide. It will teach you what you need to know to begin conversations with customers in online marketplace. Hit the ground running with several of the web’s best-known social media practitioners. Special technical skills will not be needed to to learn how adopt and employ social media: blogging, micro-blogging, SEO, social media news releases and social networks. You will begin to master cutting-edge tools essential to brand
and reputation enhancement especially needed in tough financial times. Joining this hand-on- your-shoulder class, led by two world-class coaches, who practice what they preach, will guarantee that you return to your company with real-world skills that will improve your bottom line through market engagement.

Professor Lonnie Hodge and Executive Coach Des Walsh will give you an international perspective no other global teachers can: An authentic, international view learned by experience and practice. Economies are inter-connected and authentic cross-cultural dialogues with existing and potential customers will give you a competitive advantage. Leaders Walsh and Hodge will teach you to build alliances in foreign markets.

Special technical skills are not needed as your learn how to engage customers through social media, while understanding the underlying terms, tools and practical applications for learning to speak to, not at, your customer. You will develop, in class, usable social media PR releases, use social media interfaces, write SEO best practices compliant HTML (if you can use MS Word you can do this!), and optimize visual and written content for releases, ads and websites to increase your bottom line.

Who Should Attend?
• PR And Advertising Staff
• SEO Professionals
• CSR directors
• NGO/NPO leaders
• HR Personnel
• Senior Executives
• Online Marketers
• IT Supervisors and Programmers
• YOU

Listed below are some of the topics that are to be covered at this one-day seminar:
• Social Media: The most powerful global sites where customers and brands interact: Twitter, Xiaonei, Facebook, MySpace, which platforms to engage and who to follow into those spaces.
• Free and inexpensive tools, including Alpha and Beta releases, foroptimizing sites and news releases to reach a larger audience: Powerful services like Pichengine, Involver, Seesmic that are not yet in general distribution…
• Social ROI: Groundbreaking Social Web Measurement tools that teach you the who, what, where, how, and why of visits
• Success and the Art of Listening: Moving from disruption strategies to engagement while overcoming the fear of transparency
• The Future of Blogs, Video Sharing and Social Networks

You’ll receive a free newsroom on Pitchengine.com and a month’s worth of unlimited and archived online social media press releases. You will,before you go return home, have a release indexed on the world wide web–worth the price of a seat. web–worth the price of a seat.Before the day is over you will create a real press release that will appear in major search engine news before the day ends.

Shel Israel, author of “Naked Conversations”, calls on businesses to respect social media spaces; Social Media Pundit Seth Godin labels that approach, Permission Marketing and Hubspot views it as Inbound Marketing. We refer to it simply as Conversational Marketing and it is essential in a world where the power of marketing now relies on two-way communications.

Benefits
Together we will:
• Easily create online news releases with the use of free and inexpensive tools to broaden your internet reach
• Demystify techno-jargon with a Do It Yourself kit for social media marketing and increased search engine rankings. You will easily understand how to use keyword selection, inbound links, anchor text, universal search, photo tags, url selection
• Learn to internationalize messages with intercultural communication strategies in advertising and PR copy
• Master the use of digital conversation tools: Social Network Platforms, Viral Videos, Social Bookmarking Sites, Corporate Blogs, and Professional Networks
• Actionable Analytics: Discover how to use measurement tools that will illustrate the effectiveness of your web marketing and PR efforts and guide future advertising and marketing decisions
• Develop an understanding of how to listen to customers and their feedback and to articulate brand-building messages that establish trust and confidence…

Workshop Leaders

Brian Solis, author of Social Media Manifesto, the Principal of FutureWorks, an award-winning PR and New Media agency in Silicon Valley.

Alvin Chiang, former VP of NetEase and Alibaba Group , Currently CMO of Oak Pacific Interactive Group that runs the largest Social Network in China, Xiaone.com

Des Walsh, the author LinkedIn for Recruiting and Seven Step Business Blog, business coach and social media strategist.

David Li, application developer of the most popular Facebook applications such as Growing Gifts and Hatching Eggs, has been involved in social media for more than 10 years and has built several social networks sites.

Omniture, a representative from Omniture–a world leading search management, online digital optimization, web analytics provider.

There used to be a British radio show that called people and and tastelessly handed out the “Richard Cranium” award to folks nominated by co-workers or employees You can’t imagine how many people fell for the ruse and were thrilled to get such an honor. Well, I am going to be more transparent: I am going to get Ryan at Dao by Design to make me a snazzy award for an intermittent “Useful Idiot” award. In the interim you can visualize your own trophy.

Today’s dubious honors go to:

New Zealand’s Stuff news online. One the eve of an historic free trade agreement and a visit by NZ leader Helen Clark, with China that will abolish tariffs for NZ exporters Stuff has genius advice–archived stuff from the Cultural Revolution–for Kiwis looking to do biz in China in an article titled, Business in China Will Never be Easy:

*Choose your local partners, go-betweens, staff and translators carefully. The Chinese notion of relationship is complex. Do it well and reap the reward, get it wrong and you are almost bound to fail.

*Have plenty of cash, suppliers in China do not give credit to newcomers but expect it from you.

*Be prepared for a frustrating time with Chinese banks, they are bureaucratic and inefficient.

*Make sure contracts are clear and the English version is compatible with the Chinese.

*Get a good lawyer, there is every chance you will need one.

Early in the article they talked about economies bleeding red ink in some sad warfare metaphor just as the NZ chief spoke of a 5% increase in imports to China over the last year as NZ is now China’s 4th largest trade partner. Then there was the horrible failure of Dunkin’ Donuts in China (in 2000!!) that somehow missed that they are back and planning 100 shops in the next ten years. I have it on good authority–Marc–that DD in Shanghai is doing well. And Marc’s consumption alone could finance the operation of a small store.

The section on the recent failure of Lionsbridge Breweries (2003!) is also a wiener. The company–promise not to laugh–spent $170,000,000USD on a joint beer making venture to create more booze in a country where there is already 600+ breweries. D’oh.

These guys obviously don’t listen to the podcasts about doing business in China at CBN.

The next award goes to Anthony Marx (no relation to Groucho or Karl) the prez of Amherst College in America.

CCTV 9 (CCTV 9 is to TV stations as Macau is to Las Vegas) interviewed Tony today. If you turned down the sound and just watched Tony it looked like Bush reading Horton Hears a Hu to hearing impaired kindergarten children and if you left the sound on it just sounded like Bush.

He got trapped into being an apologist for the racial and economic disparities in American elite schools. Were it a parliamentary debate the resolution” America is racist, snobby, expensive place to get educated–especially at our school” then the government (CCTV–ironic, huh?) won the match. In a country (China) where a qualified student can attend a top ten school for $750 USD a year he spoke to how Amherst is graciously offering the same tuition rates ($45,000 with room) to International students as they do to the kids in their recovering gang members from the Bronx affirmative action program.

I woke up and caught a few sound bites I liked like that alluded to the fact that market forces will lower “elite” school tuition. He said that Harvard and Yale would likely follow his lead to stay competitive. I am guessing that Duke and MIT recruiters also stay awake nights wondering what Marx will think of next to steal the best and brightest.

And then he went on to say that some recent innovations actually allowed his admissions team to actually read more applications submitted and more of of the ones they actually did inspect. So, I will do some recon’ on the prelim screening, but in the interim be sure not to use a hotmail address as they go right in the dumper and for god’s sake use the watermarked paper!

Congrats guys!!!

Sorrow makes us all children again….

~Ralph Waldo Emerson

Yesterday, I judged applicants seeking a place on the college debate team. All of them risked a memory of failure and gave of themselves in earnest to become better as scholars, speakers and friends of their own success. And I was tasked with deciding which of these students, all of whom I admire and unavoidably care for, would be asked to sit out their desire.

I don’t agree that learning through failure is a required part of any student’s curriculum. They are not employees, they are children orphaned to astonishment, passion and fear. They begin their short orbits in a new life surrounded by teachers–who can, with a single touch or softly spoken word, change their paths forever. Sometimes.

I can remember hundreds of my students; I can tell you where many of them sat in classrooms that may no longer even exist. I can tell you how lightly or heavily my pen fell upon names on the final grade report and why I judged them as I did…

I remember most, those students who replenished my love for teaching when I had lost the courage to further their goals or provoke a hint of change. Tonight, I am at an intersection of rage and bewilderment because one of those precious few chose to fall away from us so fast that no one could react in time to catch her.

A thespian, scholar, and delightful master of the ascerbic, she was one of the original founders and ideas makers for the Blog of Dreams. She was accepted to study in America, but denied a visa because of the immigration status problems inherent in acceptance to the Disney Internship Program  where she spent a summer. She was subsequently denied a visa to attend Cornell, but kept her suitcase packed with dreams of travel and learning. I don’t know what changed or what could have tempted her to change her plans.

Dear Defiant Chennie,

I am a child again tonight. I want so much to believe that I misunderstood the news of your death. I want to wish your awkward avalanches of laughter back to invoke the best in me again. I want you to give us all another chance to raise your inner landscape high enough to break your fall.

Your teacher knows nothing, but this: You are now without passports, beyond borders And I hope you are on to some new opportunity, guided now by accomplished, and enduring angels.

.