First off, I had a blast at Social Media Day that was thrown by Pinnacle of Indiana.  Michelle Hillaert rocks and you should follow her.  So does LaSalle Grill for letting us take over the Club LaSalle.  Very classy place.  BTW, if you go in and you give them the code word, “Irish”.  They will give you half price appetizers for the entire month of July.  Pretty sweet.

And if you head over to Pinnacle of Indiana or call them at 74.235.8100 and say “Irish” they will give you an hour’s worth of IT consulting or social media consulting.  That’s pretty sweet as well.

I would also like to thank everyone on the panel:

• Steve Smith (rock star) @orderedlist Don’t BS Steve on SM, he’s built his business on his reputation and it’s the same rep online.

• Kem Meyer @kemmeyer – Kem’s less clutter is great.  “All things are social.”  Because we are social people.  Love that!

• Elizabeth Cecconi @ViewFromSBN – I’ll be checking in on Foursquare and Gowalla at the South Bend airport just so Elizabeth will reach out to me.  Make sure you do as well.

• Tim O’Connor @oaknd1– Can’t say enough good things about Oak.  Super talented designer that I happen to be lucky enough to be friends with and get to work with here at AgencyND.  BTW, he wishes he could have said more at the panel.  Oak always wishes he could have said more.

• Edward Koczan –@edwardlife I love knowing cops and Ed is certainly a good one to know.  He’s helped me out more than he knows.  And I don’t think he understands how much more he’s going to know that I know he’s behind the blog and twitter profiles of the South Bend Police.

• Dave Woodson @davewoodson – Dave is a money maker.  He lives and breathes this stuff.  You should follow him because he’s a networker.  He can connect you with thousands.

I learned from them than I did at many panels I’ve attended on social media.  They were an eclectic bunch but all smart and very social people.

As I mentioned in my talk, it’s hard to get up and talk in front of a bunch of social media people.  They know what they are doing so what can they learn from me.  Probably not much but I tried to hit on a topic that I run into all the time, selling social media as a legitimate form of marketing.  It’s worth my time and their ROI on me to do it.

So how do you sell social media?

First, don’t try and force or say something silly like everyone else is doing it.  That may work but if things don’t start jumping right away or you don’t have 586,958 friends in the first week, they may change their tune. Continue reading