Atlanta Web Entrepreneurs - May 15

I'll be taking part in a Meetup event tomorrow, May 15, for Atlanta Web Entrepreneurs called "Ask the Experts."

The AWE group is intended for anyone interested in starting or running their own web-based businesses, especially those who are currently running successful web-based businesses and want to find, get to know, and learn from their peers.

For this month's meeting, there will be six or seven tables with four 20 minute sessions each where attendees can ask questions of and have peer discussions with “experts” in various fields regarding web entrepreneurship.

I'll be covering email marketing, but there will be people there to cover SEO, social media, branding, e-commerce, legal issues, video and much more. The list is way too long for me to include here, so click this link for the entire rundown.

• Thursday May 15th, 2008 at 6:45pm to 9:00pm (dinner afterwards @ Gordon Biersch)
• Ga. Tech ATDC, 3rd Floor Hodges Room (Parking North Side of Building)
• $10 prepay, $20 at the door
• RSVP at Meetup.com (RSVP by 12 noon on May 15th is REQUIRED)

Thanks to Mike Schinkel for the invitation to participate.

Look Kids, Big Ben, Parliament

Big Ben
Originally uploaded by sandi_karchmer_solow

In my first real foray into using Flickr to share photos after a vacation, two of my photos were located by a writer for NowPublic.com, a Canadian news sharing organization. I went to London over this past weekend and took some shots of Big Ben, which can be found at right and here. Neither are anything spectacular, but they fit into a story she wrote on the 150th birthday of Big Ben.

I am just amazed that in all of the photos on Flickr, mine were located and I was contacted about them. (Not that this is anything new, as Hyku would tell me.) I guess it just goes to show that the right tagging and description can help separate your work from the rest of the online clutter.

Reaching an Audience of 8

Here's a story that caught my eye:

To woo academic recruits, college makes them stars Philadelphia Inquirer 03/27/2008

Gone are the days when a simple acceptance letter was enough. Now Wilkes University in Pennsylvania is courting eight high school seniors into matriculating at the school by making them rock stars through TV ads, commercials and pizza boxes all featuring messages tailored specifically to these eight students. So far they're undecided on where they will go to college and Wilkes is hoping this tactic will be enough to sway these students into enrolling. Maybe the ads on MTV will do the trick.

Not only is Wilkes trying to reach these students, but the tactic is intended to raise the school's profile among other mid-level Pennsylvania schools. Interesting.

I appreciate their creativity, but I really hope this method doesn't become the norm.

How not to follow-up to SoCon08

I went to SoCon08 this weekend and had a wonderful time. It was a fantastic gathering of people from a variety of backgrounds that all have an interest in social media. I was able to meet a lot of interesting folks, and see some old contacts, such as Josh Hallet, Dave Coustan and Grayson Daughters.

One person I did not meet, however, sent me a follow-up email yesterday (Wednesday) morning to pitch his services. I knew something was up when it came to my personal gmail address and not the business address on the cards I handed out at the conference. I checked the other recipients of the note (which were not hidden – shame on the sender!), and sure enough I was one of a dozen or so – listed in alphabetical order – whose names had been lifted from the conference registration sheet (which is where my personal address is listed).

Here’s what the email he sent said:

It was good meeting with you at the SoCon08 Conference. The Sales Group is a sales performance agency – focusing on sales recruiting and sales training for businesses. We are sending you separately our latest newsletter, “Driving Profit,” which we hope you will find beneficial. We would like to speak with you if you feel your company would like to increase its sales productivity.

P.S. Please visit our website at COMPANY URL HERE – no link love from me, sorry

Since I hadn’t met him, I sent him the below:

Hello Jack --

Thank you for your note, but I don't believe we talked to each other at SoCon. However, I can appreciate your business outreach effort and would like to reciprocate with an offer to talk with you about my email marketing consulting business and help you avoid future communications that could be construed as spam.

Regards,
Sandi Karchmer Solow
http://isendyouremail.com/default.aspx

Despite his advance warning, he signed me and the other 200+ SoCon08 attendees up for his eNewsletter. I never asked for this message and consider it the dumbest thing he could have done for his brand. I haven’t gotten a response to my email back to him – no surprise.

In the course of writing this post, I found others – Josh and Lance Weatherby (not Lancy) to name two – who have done a great job of taking this man to task. The comments to each of their posts are worth reading.

Don't discount a 140-character message

We've been away far too long from this blog, but out of sight doesn't mean out of mind. It was the holidays, New Year, yada yada

Anyway, I found an interesting gem as one of the links of the day on Micropersuasion. A NY Times story on how some media outlets are using Twitter to microblog from the presidential campaign trail.

It's worth a read.  But ever since reading the story, I've been thinking about the comment below from Josh Tyrangiel, the managing editor of Time.com, whose site is promoting its reporter's Twitter and Flickr feeds from the campaign trail. Is a 140-character limit really the best way for someone to follow the presidential race?

“If you tell people how to consume their content, they will ignore you,” he said, a truism that experience had taught new-media executives. “Let people do what they want to do and try to be in their circle of choice.”