Dennis O'Neil - Speaker & Author on Internet Sales, Marketing, and Social Media » Presentations

Effective Communication with Social Media

dennisoneil — Mon, 22 Mar 2010 06:30:29 +0000

On March 9th, I had the pleasure of speaking to over 200 new home sales and real estate professionals at SMC SalesCamp. My assigned topic was “Effective Communication with Social Media.”

The videos below contain my full presentation.

In this presentation, I was able to introduce the concept of Lead Curation – Creating an environment conducive to growing connections into prospects. I’m looking forward to digging deeper into this in the coming days/months.

I’ve also included my presentation, and the handouts made available to the attendees below. Please feel free to share this with anyone you think may benefit.

Part One Video:

Click here if you can’t see the videos, presentation, or handout

Part Two Video:

Effective Communication with Social Media on Prezi

SMC SalesCamp Spring 2010 Handout

Yes. A Camp for Us.

dennisoneil — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 17:30:42 +0000

BarCamp, RE BarCamp, PodCamp, WordCamp… any of these ring a bell? What about Ignite events, or TED talks? The last few years have brought on sweeping changes in how people gather to support a topic, idea, or purpose. Instead of days of grueling lectures and courses defined by the ‘hours’ for which they qualify, “Camps” are something completely different. Something much, much better.

While the rules vary a little for each event, a few consistent things remain:

Interaction and conversation is key. This is not an event where attendees go to spoken to, but rather to be spoken with.
Presentations are brief, but impactful. Sometimes as long as 45 minutes, but many as short as 10. Good news for the A.D.D. crowd.
Presentations are designed for inspiration. While a 6 hour course may also be inspiring, these short presentations dive right into the heart of a topic and are designed to ignite new ideas in attendees.
The attendees come voluntarily because of their passion for the foundation of the event. They are there to connect with like minded people.
They’re generally awesome.

I am fourtunate enough to be a part of the Sales & Marketing Council (SMC) of the Home Builders Association of Maryland. The council has organized a spectacular event in the spirit of the new conference trend, and has aptly chosen the name of SMC SalesCamp. I am also privileged to be speaking at this first SMC SalesCamp, and while yes, I may be a bit biased, I must say that the event is truly one worth attending. The speakers lined up by the board include the current President of the Maryland Association of Realtors, the head of home builder relationships for Trulia.com, two power-brokers, and many more. If you’re anywhere near the Baltimore area, you really need to be there. Its March 9th at the Sheraton BWI, 8:30a – Noon.

Did I mention its free?

Yep, thanks to awesome sponsors like MetLife Home Loans, Cindy Plackmeyer Marketing, and Forty West Builders (with more coming), the event costs absolutely zero to attend. However, space is limited (no joking here), so registration is required. Head over to SMC SalesCamp for more details.

Hopefully I get to see you there.

2010 is Going to Make You Cry

dennisoneil — Fri, 01 Jan 2010 18:40:14 +0000

If new media marketing was an onion, 2009 peeled away just the surface layer of potential. However, in 2010, we’re heading deep into that onion – get ready to cry… in a good way. Last year’s new media tools are maturing, and their business purpose is quickly coming into focus for more and more users. To that end, I’m excited about the deeper integration of these tools that I expect to see in 2010.

The opportunities that I recommend paying attention to in 2010 have not changed much from what I recommended in 2009. They have, however, become much more targeted. I think 2010 will be less of the “year of new“, and more of the “year of better.”

In February of 2009, I presented “Internet Marketing: Five Things You Must Know in 2009″ to the Home Builders Association of Maryland. In that presentation, the key items I outlined for builders to focus on were:

Website analytics
Search – SEO & Paid Search
Video
Mobile Internet
Social Media

Below you can see the slides I presented then:

Five Things to Know in 2009

View more documents from Dennis O’Neil.

Can’t see the slides? Click here

As I’ve prepared and reviewed marketing plans for 2010, many of the topics are generally the same, but in most of the categories, the specifics have gotten a lot more specific – AND the synergies [sorry for the buzzword] between them have all gotten stronger. Here are some examples of the convergences I’m talking about.

Search Engine Optimization – What shows up on page one of a Google search, now more than ever, is impacted by real-time social media conversations. Additionally, the opportunity to have video results appear on that page have increased. Clearly, any 2010 SEO strategy is fully integrated with the social media and video strategy.
Video - Moving beyond last year’s basics of high-quality and YouTube, in 2010, video will need to be a driver of traffic via search engines. It will need to be produced faster, and it will need to be available in more places – company website, YouTube, blog, Facebook, mobile friendly options, among others.
Mobile - The continued proliferation of mobile phones offering a rich internet experience has made mobile a more realistic and justifiable investment. The cost of developing iPhone “apps” are steadily decreasing, as is the cost of developing a mobile website. In 2010, the focus will go beyond just being mobile. The prizes will be found by making the mobile experience fast, relevant, and rich – This means including prices, photos, easy contact options (integrated with the phone), social media integration, and mobile friendly video.
Social Media – This year will bring out big evolutions in social media – Companies will focus on better integrating social activity into their own website, and everything else they do online, and many tools will simply mature to a level making it easier to recognize their business value.

So what will you be working on in 2010? Anything you think I missed?