Come To A Social Media Day Meetup On June 30th!

Our friends over at Mashable have declared June 30th International Social Media Day, and frankly, I couldn't be happier!

There are meetups happening all over the world; 91 countries, 571 meetups working towards 10,000 people according to @mashSMday. I have to say, this is truly an amazing time in our existence where a company can declare an international day for something and it just starts happening around the world. It's not just the geeks either, the city of Victoria, British Columbia has dedicated the day to the cause officially as well. Check out the hastag #smday on Twitter if you want to join the conversation!

I hope by now you are asking "How can I participate"? Well, start off by heading here. That is the link for the Toronto meetup at The Madison Pub, sponsored by Netfirms. However, even if you aren't in Toronto there is a little box on the left side that will show meetups near you.

Personally, I'm going to have a few drinks, and meet some of the people I've been interacting with over the past few months since I've gotten heavy into the social media world. I know for a fact I want to find Will Pitcher over @empirebuilding and find out how he has been building his share price so consistently in my favourite new online stock game.

Whether you are into Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, FourSquare, Gowalla, Empire Avenue, or just want to learn more about marketing or social media, this is a great way to network and learn something!

PS: Don't forget to join coreytyhurst.com on our Facebook page. We're launching the new website/blog soon! I promise!

The coreytyhurst.com Journey Continues- With the Help of Empire Avenue

So I'm still struggling with trying to drive traffic to my Facebook fan page. I think perhaps once I get a beta version of the website up it will be easier to solicit info from people than just a pdf mockup. Luckily for me, my readers are not swayed by a mere $25. This tells me I have classy readers! Whining aside, I've signed up with a new service that I have already began seeing results on; Empire Avenue.

Check out the YouTube video below explaining Empire Avenue in more detail... It's a little bland, but a hell of a lot better than I would do!


Essentially the game is a stock market program where you or your company is a stock that is measured on the value of your influence on the web. You link it to your Facebook, Twitter, RSS Feeds, and Flickr so that it can measure your influence and allow other influencer's to buy shares in you.

I've already met some very active, influential people through the service, including William Pitcher (RZR), who is a philanthropist turned Empire Avenue guru at http://empirebuilding.tumblr.com/. I highly recommend you check him out, as he's leading the thinking on Empire Avenue strategy, and definitely a stock to watch.

I think the site has obvious potential for the professional blogger/influencer, but the average joe can find value in it too. I'm probably not going to be pushing my stock price up over 20 because I just don't have enough time to spend posting and blogging (although I really wish I did!), but I've already found a ton of cool blogs to check out, and am quasi-networking with people who are clearly interested in the web and social media. I've even seen people send out advertisements of "Buy shares in me and I will help you with any problem you are having on the web". An Interesting premise!

Stay tuned for my next post I plan on talking about why platforms like Empire Avenue are not a fad, and are a new reality of the connected world.

Personal Marketing Plan Fail- I Probably Need Better Content!

Well, my first attempt of getting people to give me and kaitsouch.com feedback on the design for coreytyhurst.com hasn't gone very far, but I am staying resilient! To be fair, I haven't really been around to promote my $25 reward for helping Kait and I design my new personal website, but I thought for sure someone in my network would have at least liked my fan page and made a snarky comment. I probably overestimate the amount of time my friends actually spend online compared to me.

Luckily for me, this lack of traffic has allow me to notice that when I post something to my personal Facebook as well as the coreytyhurst.com page it will send out dual news feed updates. This would be uber annoying for anyone who has actually liked the fb page and has me in their news feed. What I'm not sure about is what to do about this...
On one hand, I could only post somethings to my personal page so I know my friends will see them... but then my fan page doesn't get updated. The other option is to only post to my fb page, but then all of my two fans will see the updates... I guess for now I just have to be choiceful and find a more convincing way for people to join my fb page than offering cash and interesting commentary!

One of the good things is that this gave me an opportunity to play around with Facebook ads. I put in a bid of $0.50 per click and a maximum of $2/day during the promotion (till the end of June). So far I've gotten 2 clicks, no signups, and a bill for $0.92!! Hardly successful, but this is an experiment more than a true ad campaign, so I'm not that upset by it.

Another interesting thing that I learned is that until you have 25 1000 people as fans, you have to have an obscenely long URL (mine is http://www.facebook.com/pages/edit/?id=107132832663434#!/pages/coreytyhurstcom/107132832663434). Once you hit the magic number of 25 1000, you can set up a custom username/URL so it's easy to find and search for your fan page.

June 10 Update: Apparently Facebook just changed the threshold to 1000 people for a custom URL. Gonna need a whole lot more likes!

I think it just speaks to one of the truisms of the net: CONTENT IS EVERYTHING!! I guess I have more work to do! :)

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