On April 4, 2013, HootSuite hosted Vancouver’s media folk at our headquarters in Mount Pleasant. Among them, Grace Ke from Global BC stopped by for some live hits and a tour of our state-of-the-art offices. As you can see in this video, we caught up and discussed how HootSuite builds community through our HootUps and how the company played an important role in the Egyptian Revolution, among other things. Here are Grace Ke’s live hits from Hoot tour.
Back in January, my fellow community managers at HootSuite and I came together with mycmgr.com to produce a series of info videos called ‘Community Nuggets.’
Below is the one I appeared in using Tom Sawyer as an example of how to effectively crowdsource from your community.
Enjoy: Crowdsource from your Community the Tom Sawyer Way – Community Nuggets Vol.1
At SXSW 2013, i previewed a few highlights including the HootBus and swag and events planned for the festival. Video made by Brett Hodge and Chris Kelly in one take.
Aboard the beloved SeaBus, I share some handy tips for managing brand communities from wherever you are including insider tips about how i use HootSuite to build HootSuite #meta.
Originally appeared in the HootSource blog.
My squad at HootSuite wrangles all sorts of campaigns to inspire users to join and participate in our culture. User-organized HootUps are a big part of this community building. With over 100 HootUps in 2012 in 23 countries, we needed a wrap-up, roundup video. Voila, here it is:
I was a guest on the Renman Live show (@RenmanMB), a show about music and business, to discuss social media for bands and labels. It’s a brief segment but one i hope to do more of with them. The Host (Steve Rennie @Renman1) is very LA and i am very Canadian :) I appeared on video via phone with my pith-helmet-attired pic representing in absentia. Click to watch the video and have some laughs.
I recently presented at #SoMeT12 – a symposium about Social Media in the Tourism industry – held in El Paso, Texas.
On November 8, 2012 a day after the US election, plenty of stories and hugs were passed around to the delegates representing many countries, regions, cities and so on. It was great to connect with everyone and talk tourism and social media, plus enjoy some Tex-Mex food and a wee splash of sunshine in a historic park.
Read on for some fun highlights of my visit:
Mikala Taylor wrote a detailed re-cap of my talk – here’s an excerpt to set the stage:
One of these kids was doing his own thing: and at SoMeT12 that kid was HootSuite’s VP of Community, Dave Olson. Dressed in a burgundy jacket and sporting impressive mutton chops, Olson woke the bleary crowd at 8:30am with an energetic talk about sparking conversations, and how to create a social media journey.“I’ve been to destinations”, he joked at the tourism crowd, before reminding everyone that travel really is just about “making friends and sharing stories.” “Five years from now,” he said, “the tools will be totally different…Social media is just a weird term of convenience. It’s just about listening.”
Click here for the full article, HootSuite’s Dave Olson: “Social Media is a weird term of convenience. It’s just about listening”
Slides
Here is the slide deck I used during my talk made up of both personal and professional anecdotes including my experiences hitchhiking around Europe, Japan and elsewhere:
Bonus: Check out more DaveO presentations
Photo Gallery
With an audience of social media enthusiasts, no doubt the tweets and photos flowed on, catch a few below or more at Clemens Schuster’s Flickr Stream (who travelled all the way from Austria for the event):
Photo courtesy of SoMeT12
Snapshots
I also took a few snaps while out on a walk around town plus a visit to the Hoppy Monk bar on the Mexican border, out for a few tasty meals, and glances at various pawn shops and parks.
See, my tiny old hard shell suitcase with stickers all over it. I don’t travel without it!
Here’s my suitcase and Owly.
Photo courtesy of @vlpmeriposa
Check out Toque and Canoe’s feature, In the Suitcase with Dave Olson, for my packing secrets.
Visit my flickr set, El Paso Mission, for more photos.
A couple of highlights I enjoyed most were handing out some mad HootSwag and asking the social media savvy audience to tweet my mom (@manorbrooks) during my presentation.
Social artifact roundup with more tweets, blogs etc (some redundancy)
Audio Dispatch
After the conference, I sat down with Catherine Heeg (@catherineheeg) of Customized Management Solutions to talk about the #SoMeT12 conference and HootSuite’s features (we caught up at the airport of all places, and were briefly interrupted by the PA system as you’ll hear in the interview). Read the interview recap at Catherine’s Customized Management Solutions Blog and the interview with Catherine Heeg in podcasty goodness.
I was recently tapped to get involved with the Bootup Garage – “a new space dedicated to startup founders and technology hackers.” Initially, they wanted me to get involved as a Mentor – but I thought, why not host a series of social marketing talks instead.
Titled Social Marketing Kung Fu – the series went through four for belt levels.
White Belt: Marketing Tactics – January 26/2011
Startups need a great story and they need to understand their audience, so they can effectively reach, connect and learn from them.
Dave Olson is a master storyteller, Community Marketing Director for Hootsuite, and has been helping startups tell their stories on the Internet since 1996. On January 26, Dave will kick off a series of social marketing talks at Bootup Garage to help startup founders learn the art of effectively creating, telling and spreading their story.
Check out this summary Bootup put together on the event – including notes. A few notes I’ve put together can be found on my Tumblr.
Yellow Belt: Listening Everywhere – March 30/2011
Dave Olson’s first SMKF talk at Bootup was jam packed with a bunch of practical nuggets to help founders get started including the importance of listening in building your social marketing strategy.
On March 30th, get ready to earn your social marketing yellow belt! Dave O is coming back to Bootup to explain just what it means to “listen everywhere” and show us how we can use social media dashboards to connect with customers, build communities, and keep our ears on the competition.
Session notes on Tumblr.
Purple Belt: Release Day – April 27/2011
On April 27, Dave O will be back at Bootup to follow up on his Yellow Belt, “Listening Everywhere” workshop and share the steps to a successful Launch including:
- outreach to media
- positioning and messaging
- amplifying coverage and
- building on the success for your product launch.
Bootup also put together this summary. Find more notes on my Tumblr.
Green Belt: Building a Posse – June 29/2011
This session tackled the subject of Building a Posse.
Customers are part of your culture. By inviting them to participate in your campaigns and community, you can speed progress, gain candid market insight, and have some fun. In this seminar, Dave will share tips about wrangling your passionate users to help with specific tasks for mutual benefit. Tips and tactics will include: understanding motivations, providing rewards, and organizing disappearing task teams while avoiding “cat herding” and conflicts.
Find my notes from the talk on my Tumblr.
From the Bootup website:
The Bootup Garage is a new space dedicated to startup founders and technology hackers. Our goal is to create a space for startup founders to come together and work in an open and supportive environment, encouraging collaboration and networking that will improve and accelerate the development of new technology companies in British Columbia.
This isn’t just a workspace – it’s a club dedicated to helping founders accelerate their work. In addition to providing a space to talk and hack, we’re rounding up all of the mentors and investors we’ve worked with over the past two years, and convinced them to each hold regular office hours in the Garage, during which you can tap into their experience and networks to improve your project and accelerate your work. Check out the schedule of mentor office hours, and if you’re a Garage Member, you can schedule a chat with any of them.
Mike Edwards, SMKF Attendee, on the White Belt session:
Dave O’s talk was great. I have already implemented some of the strategies with my companies. Dave O is a wealth of information – entertaining with great practical application…..I can feel a book coming…
Janis Behan, Bootup Community Advocate, on the Purple Belt session:
Dave is always a joy to listen to – I’ve seen him speak at a few different conferences – so I was eager to hear what he had to say in session number three: Social Marketing Kung Fu, Purple Belt – Release Day. His talks are always full of interesting tidbits and useful information, and this one was definitely no different.
Overview: At NXNE 2012, Dave Olson discussed the democratization of communication and how civic/cultural changes are amplified despite attempts to thwart dissent. Practical examples of people spontaneously using these tools in emergency and disaster relief situations were highlighted, as well as the historical forebears of these methods.
Blurb:
NXNE Disasters and Revolutions
From rallying citizens in Egypt and advocating for civil rights in Saudi Arabia and Libya, to natural disaster management in Japan and the USA, social media tools and tactics are used for critical endeavours beyond business marketing and personal expression. However, tools like Twitter and Facebook are often brushed off as non-essential or entertaining playthings by media and society despite the proven ability to spread critical messages rapidly.
We’ll discuss the democratization of communication and how civic/cultural changes are sparked and amplified despite attempts to thwart dissent. Plus, share practical situations where the tools were used spontaneously by citizens in disaster zones, as well as in emergency management and relief agencies in crisis mitigation strategies. Finally, by delving into historical examples, we’ll seek social media’s true fore-bearers for democratized, civic messaging.
From Canada.com: HootSuite’s house of 100 owls
As a social media platform, Hootsuite has a front row-seat to the news of the world. When a natural disaster or social revolution takes place, users flood the service…other times, political unrest has presented Hootsuite with a sort of business Sophie’s Choice…“We need to be able to play both sides,” Olson says. “We have Occupy Wall Street using us on one side and major banks and organizations using us on the other.
As an experiment, my colleague Greg Gunn and I hosted a Google+ Hangout to share some ideas and test this broadcast and archive platform. Included here since there are some funny bits.
VP Biz Dev, Greg and VP Community, DaveO hosted our first live G+ Hangout. The two chatted about HootSuite’s recent G+ integration, upcoming HootSuite features and the state of social media.
I shared a few handy tips for using social media in general – and HootSuite specifically – for events including using lists, tracking hashtags, geo-location and so on.
As published in Vancouver Observer in Uncle Weed’s Dossier column – here for archival and reference purposes.
Bands, documentarians, photographers, social media makers onboard a VIA Rail from Vancouver to NxNE Fest in Toronto: what hijinks could possibly occur?
Nine bands, a documentary film crew, ace photographers, curious broadcasters and rengade storymakers leave Vancouver on Friday, June 8 aboard VIA’s Canadian special serive en route to to NxNE Music and Interactive festival in Toronto and carve out a wee bit of culture, fellowship, and adventure along the tracks.
Trains, sure they sound romantic to roll across the vast spaces sipping bevvies and perusing poetry… but just as easy train trips can turn into something cramped and rollicking in all the wrong ways. Just watch Dr. Zhivago or travel Eurail on a shoestring for evidence. Ideally, train trips should be a bit weird, evocative and creative, which is where this story begins.
Get on the Couch
A couple of good Canadian kids Michelle Allan and Johnathan Krauth grabbed hold of a vision and invented a plan which pulls out from our lonely train station Friday bound for Toronto.
The train’s manifest includes: nine bands of various genres, CBC Radio 3’s Grant Lawrence, the green couch film crew, social media makers, a few contest winners, and me. We’re riding in two cars attached to VIA Rail’s normal Canadian service and making stops for mini busking-style concerts along the way. Melville, Saskatchewan – beware and keep your beer store open!In between stops, the bands will perform on the couch, conduct interviews, play for unwitting patrons, and miscellaneous hi-jinks not to be disclosed (with Topless Gay Love Tekno Party onboard, this is a given).
Once in Winnipeg, the bands roll out for a half-day festival (ideal for the band called Portage and Main) before crossing the Canadian Shield and arriving in Toronto in time for the NxNE music and interactive festival. The bands will all play a CBC Radio 3 showcase and i’ll share my social media stories in a keynote spiel. Everyone happy, History made.
Festival Refreshed
A while back, I shared a dossier of ideas and backgrounders about a trip to refresh and respect the Festival Express, the freewheeling 1970 tour which failed miserably for the promoters but the bands loved the trek as they (tried to, at least) bring the music to the fans instead of bringing them all to Woodstock or Altamont.
The film footage survived in garaged boxes for decades before a recent release which shares mind-pleasing-chilling footage of Rick Danko, Janis Joplin and Jerry Garcia in hammered late night jams with Buddy Guy stepping in, juxtaposed with live footage of their bands at the peak of their velocity – The Band with all healthy and alive, Grateful Dead with dual drummers and PigPen and Janis owning each note.
This chapter, almost lost all but the most crunchy Canadians, makes me wonder – what would happen if Janis in full wailing grandeur had auditioned for American Idol?
But this isn’t about recreating that rollicking, gonzo train, but instead taking a wee slice of inspiration from it onto the late night cars careening o’er prairie, and see what magic we can draw from the tracks and scapes in our own way.
Story Making
As the un-ordained minister of miscellania and anecdotes for the trip, I’ve set out a few quests to earn my train scout badges, ergo:
I’m toting my old-timey suitcase filled with recent paper point slides to share “Fck Stats, Make Art” a soliloquy for creativity in the ephemeral digital age (see TEDXCapU for a reasonable facsimile) and, “Vancouver Counter Culture Anecdotes” as I shared at Pecha Kucha All-Star night at the Vogue Theatre.Social kung-fu: As my rock n’ roll dreams are long over, I can help bands by sharing my knowledge of blowing stories up with the social webs. I’ve surveyed the bands and prepping cold ones to share tactics for building audience, selling merch, and booking tours using all that Twitters and stuff. Also, intro to Marshall McLuhan since we are Canadian.
Canadian documentation: I’ve made a list of topics to discuss with Grant Lawrence who, between building Canadian indie music into a global cult, he’s promo’ed his book of uniquely left-coast stories. I have topics to riff to complement his banter including: our literary history from Mowat, Berton, Coupland; bio-regional music scenes; goalies and poetry; and what really went down in West Vancouver high school elections.
Bonus Ideas and humble suggestions: Yeah, I’ll be Tom Sawyering bands into schemes for posterity:
– Band collaborations for train-themed songs (imagine The Matinee playing Canadian Railroad Trilogy, or Maurice singing Train in Vain, or Sidney York performing Peace Train, Chris Ho sings Train I Ride… I have a list.
– Bands share tips: With many hopeful bands among the virtual audience, how about bands interview bands to share their tips for booking first tours, staying healthy on the road, avoiding the wrong deals, working through writer’s block, dealing with band dynamics? Send your questions via Twitter and answer right from Adaline or The Belle Game.If none of the above are accomplished, I’ll have at least for my part, return to my accidental birthplace of Saskatoon, Saskatchewan (which I’ve spent my life spelling for Americans) after hitchhiking and traipsing around 30 countries and 48 states.
Get Onboard
Transport Specifics: