Karen Rubin's Ramblings

I am off to San Francisco for the Marketing Sherpa B2B Marketing Summit. It sounds like it's going to be a pretty exciting event with tons of cool speakers and case studies. I am headed out there with HubSpot.tv to interview all the interesting people who are in attendance. 

If you can't make it out to sunny California, you are in luck because we are going to be live streaming a couple of the presentations on HubSpot.tv! You can watch the following presentations right here on Wednesday September 23rd!

• 8:50 -10 AM PST - More Revenue for Less Money-The Top Five Ways To Increase the Performance of Your Lead Gen Program
• 1:45 - 2:15 PM PST - Using Social Media to Create Lead-Rich Online Communities 
• 2:15 - 3:15 PM PST - Social Media Panel-Focus on Lead Generation
• 4:15 - 4:45 PM PST - Re-engage Inactive Customers, Grow Lead Flow, Win with Sales

The schedule looks fantastic, and I am very excited to see a ton of HubSpot.tv alumni including, C.C. Chapman, Marta Kagan, Chris Penn.

Mike and I are also heading up two conversations. The first is on Sunday at 11:15AM with Steve Garfield. We are going to be going over the equipment you need to know about if you are interested in video podcasting and it should be a very exciting discussion. 

The second conversation is on Sunday at 1:30PM and we will be talking about how you can use video podcasting for B2B marketing. I can't wait to hear everyones ideas on this one since there are so many different directions you can go in!

 If you haven't signed up and are interested in learning more, it's time to get going! Hope to see you there.   

This Friday is HubSpot.tv's 52nd episode! As expected, we will celebrate our "birthday" in the only was we know how...by throwing a party! Come join us for free beer from Harpoon, burgers from B Good, funky pan-Asian food from Meyers and Chang and of course a rockin* good time! Come on down to join us. 

In honor of our birthday, here are 5 little known facts about HubSpot.tv.  

1. Last summer I wrote a proposal for HubSpot.tv that Mike has still never read. 

2. Friday will actually be the 53rd episode. The first episode of HubSpot.tv was lost in a recording accident. It was watched by about 13 viewers, half of who were related to me. 

3. The first couple of episodes were not in front of a live studio audience. I didn't think it would work to have all those people watching us!

4. We shoot every episode with 2 separate cameras, a webcam for the live streaming and a higher quality camcorder for the iTunes podcast. 

5. We have only had one near death accident on the set when one of the lights exploded and shot hot glass all over Mike. 

An of course, a highlight reel!

(*The aforementioned rockin good time may or may not include a TV show, significant high five-ing, the debut of the HubSpot band, ping pong, a tiger, campaign showers, foosball and a general sense of merriment.)

I may have mentioned, once or twice, that every week I co-host a weekly marketing podcast with Mike Volpe. It's a really good time because the whole company comes together, drinks some beer and watches the show while we tape. Obviously I enjoy it, because I love being the center of attention, but seeing as the audience comes back week after week, I think they enjoy it as well.

We generally have 20-30 HubSpotters watching and 5-10 non-HubSpotters. The office is open to anyone who wants to come and watch, have some FREE BEER, and hang out for Ping Pong after.  We start taping at 4PM sharp, but some of the most entertaining commentary is the back and forth with the audience before the show. 

 Last week we had Scott Kirsner on the show talking about his new book Fans, Friends and Followers. Scott is super smart and interesting and we had a great conversation, which you can watch here. This week we have Chris Brogan joining us which is sure to be a good time. You should definitely watch to hear what he has to say, but better yet, come on down to 1Broadway in Cambridge and join us in person!

 P.S. Did I mention there is free beer?

*Photo courtesy of Steve Garfield

Girls in Tech Boston last night was a fantastic event. @just_kate did a great job of the preparation and execution, major kudos go out to her.

 I really liked how Kate included a couple of case studies during the panel. They were of two Boston companies, Generation Progress and Shoestring Magazine, who each had some great social media questions. They each explained their business and situation and got to ask the panel some very specific questions.

 The advice from @rhappe, @MikeLangford, @CappyPopp was fantastic and if you want a rundown of everything, check out @jmaver and his twitter stream from the event. Below are some of my suggestions.

Shoestring Magazine - Shoestring is an online magazine that has been up since the fall of last year. They offer the "good life for less" and are working on building their revenue model and readership through social media.

1. Join the conversation! - The two co-founders of Shoestring have been on Twitter since the early days, have a blog and utilize Facebook. My recommendation to them was to not just use social media to push out their content, but to engage in the conversation. They need to find the influencers in the budget and eco-friendly online communities and join the conversations. Comment on their blogs and interact with them on Twitter and Facebook. Doing so will get the influencers involved in Shoestring and their support will be invaluable.
   


2. Use the team - The full time team at Shoestring consists of just the co-founders, Melissa Massello and Meghan Udell, so having enough time is always an issue. I think they should leverage their freelance writing team to help them engage in the community more. All writers want their work to be read, so give incentives based on links to their articles, number of comments and visitors or other metrics that would encourage them to participate in the community and build a following of their writing.  

Generation Progress - GP is a political action committee that raises money through events to support political candidates. They are working to build their community and bring more engaged people to their events.

1. Twitter - GP is on Twitter, however I recommend that they expand the focus of their tweets. There is so much good content that would appeal to their target audience. They have the opportunity to tweet about all things political and appeal to the very people they are trying to reach. By building a content stream that is not so focused on what GP is doing, but focused more broadly on what GPs followers are interested in, they will gain more followers and hopefully more engaged attendees.
   


2. Community - GP has a great community that discusses political issues and encourages debate. Unfortunately this is all through a private email group and it's difficult to get new people to sign up. They recognize the need to open this up, but have struggled to move it to a different medium. I think they should come up with a number of different solutions such as a blog with open comments for discussion, a forum or a Twitter handle, and ask the community which they would prefer. It's important with communities that you don't force a decision on them, this would help them find where their users would be willing to move, to help have more people join the conversation.
   


3. Quality vs. Quantity - GP asked a great question about joining more online communities to expand their reach, or focusing on a couple and having higher quality conversations. I think the panel agreed that quality should definitely be their aim. The concern with spreading yourself to thin across a number of communities is that you won't actually engage because you don't have the time. If you don't engage in a community, you won't get the benefit of being on it at all! You should pick one or two to start with, where you know your audience is, and then expand if and when you have time to grow additional communities.
   

I am going to be speaking on the Girls in Tech panel about Using Social Media in your Organization on Wednesday evening. I am super excited about it because it's the first panel I have been on!

The other folks on the panel are all rockstars who, no doubt, will have great things to say. They include Rachel Happe of The Communiy Roundtable, Mike Langford of TweetWorks and Cappy Popp of Thought Labs.

If you are thinking about using social media in your organization you should sign up to come join the fun. If you aren't headed in that direction (first question, why?) you can still come along and check out the Microsoft offices at 1 Memorial Dr in Cambridge. I hear they are beautiful!

As you may or may not know, I am not a marketer at HubSpot. I am actually on the development/product team and spend most of my time working with our brilliant team of developers and talking with customers. With that said, since starting my job at HubSpot, I have learned oodles and oodles about marketing and now consider myself an amateur marketer.

Another thing you might not know about me, is that my father is an uber awesome artist! He makes crazy, kinetic sculptures that hang on the wall and move in ways that boggle the mind.  A while back he and I made a deal. In exchange for one of his pieces in our spanking new condo, I would consult on all things marketing for Wood That Works. This worked out beautifully for me when a couple of weeks ago he came and installed this amazing piece. 

As a result, it was finally time for me to put some of my marketing chops to use. First, I nagged him to finally figure out how to make screen savers of his animations. He explains the process in his blog, which is the result of another inbound marketing nag-a-thon. Once he had a couple ready to go, we decided to do the following comprehensive campaign.

1. Launch the screen savers on Sunday evening.
2. Coordinate this with new calls to action around the site,
   
3. a blog post,
   
4. some tweets,
5. an update to his Facebook Fan page and profile,
   
6. and a email marketing campaign.
   
7. We then topped that all off with easy Digg buttons placed strategically on the main screen saver page.
   

The goal is to have the screen savers spread far and wide and we are hoping that Digg becomes the vehicle. We selected Digg because the target audience that gets excited about my Dad's work uses Digg. They also use Stumble Upon, so we made sure that the pages that get the most traffic from Stumble Upon also had well placed calls to action.

 This is the first marketing campaign I have tried to launch, and I hope I am not missing anything! Please check out the screen savers and pass them along if you think they look great. I'll keep you updated on how the campaign goes!

Tomorrow afternoon I will be at the MITX Digital Combine for a couple hours helping to recruit ROCKSTARS for HubSpot. The Digital Combine is a place where

"Job seekers have the opportunity to attend a series of afternoon panels designed specifically to educate them with the skills they need to stay competitive in today's market and meet with participating companies who will be showcasing their capabilities and talking about current or future individuals in the digital industry."

It sounds like a pretty cool event. You can get help with your resume or meet people from a vareity of companies. There are also a vareity of sessions on managing your personal brand and interview tips and techniques. 

If you are looking for work in Boston, I would say showing up is a no-brainer. Come say "Hi!" while you are there as well.