This morning I had the opportunity to do a live spreecast with Katie Lance, who is the Social Media Director for Inman News (and wears a lot of other hats as well).  You can watch the record version here, attend the Reboot Tweetup tomorrow night at Blue Martini at The Bravern in Bellevue and the Inman Agent Reboot conference at Meydenbauer Center on Wednesday.

I’m hoping that Jenni and some of her guests will be joining us for the Live Spreecast, but I have not heard back yet.  It would be great to get an inside view of what they are trying to accomplish with the show, if it is going to be a regular show and how it might fit in with the national CBS Network.

I’m predicting right here that the show is going to be a smashing success that that Jenni will soon be lured to NY, LA or possibly San Francisco to host and star in a national social media show.  I’m not sure that it will be on Network Television though – even though I think Jenni would be able to get her own show on any major network, I strongly believe that many more of her  true fans and viewers all over the world can be reached via the Internet.  I could see Jenni having her own highly popular show on Hulu or even (my personal favorite) Spreecast.  Jenni Hogan has the personality to easily create a show that could buoy a complete platform, much like Howard Stern did for Sirius …

Please tune into Spreecast Thursday morning at 10am to participate in the conversation and let us know your thoughts on the future evolution of network television and social media.  We will try to get as many people on camera as possible, so if you would like to share your thoughts, please make sure to do a prior test on your webcam and microphone.

BONUS:  All participants to this Spreecast will be eligible to win a pair of tickets to see the King of Sales, Mr. Jeffrey Gitomer at events right here in Bellevue Thursday afternoon ($398 value) or Friday morning ($199 value).  Make sure to show up and tune in tomorrow morning for details.

KIRO7′s own Paul Bacarek, who runs their Facebook and Twitter accounts, wrote a great post about the experience of putting their groundbreaking show on the air.  He’s also been invited to the Spreecast tomorrow morning and I hope he can join in.

Throughout the 22^nd of March, viewers will be able to log onto www.kirotv.com at 10:00 p.m. to capture raw moments and extensive interviews with guests as they prepare to go on live TV at 10:30 p.m. on KIRO 7 Eyewitness News.

“We decided to bring this opportunity to our viewers because we are excited about being on the forefront of new ways to interact with the community and provide them with accurate and impactful information and resources delivered to them in the best way possible,” said Todd Mokhtari, KIRO 7 Eyewitness News Web Manager.  “Viewers now have the opportunity to engage with newscasts in real time, and can truly impact the direction the show goes by sharing what they’re most interested in, asking questions, or making comments.”

KIRO 7’s Traffic Anchor, Jenni Hogan, was recently recognized as the ‘most followed local female TV anchor in the nation’ on Twitter, and currently has more than 120,000 Twitter and Facebook followers.  Hogan is passionate about sharing with viewers the opportunities and resources that social media can provide.  She will focus on topics aimed to inspire viewers to improve their lives and those around them through the power of connecting online.

The show will begin online with a livestream conversation, and then move to primetime TV.  The audience will be encouraged to interact online throughout the primetime segment by following hash tag #KIROConnect on Twitter, helping to create what the next generation of combined television and social media will provide.  The show will also highlight:

• Top Apps that can help save time and money;
• Ways to use technology to improve your life;
• Local celebrities and how they interact with their online communities; and
• The faces behind the online voices of your favorite brands.

Featured guests:

Josie Bissett, starred on Melrose Place

Ben Huh, CEO of Cheezburger

Blake Cahill, President of Banyan Branch

Porter Gale, Chief Evangelist of Kred

James Sun CEO of Pirq and former contestant on The Apprentice

Jean-Sun Hannah Ahn, Miss Seattle 2012.

“This is a show that can’t be done without the viewers and I’m excited to have them join us,” said Jenni Hogan. “They will be as much of a host as I am, adding their comments and helping to shape the direction as we explore the best ways to connect with each other during live broadcasts, using tools such as our mobile devices and laptops.”

Publisher’s Note:  I’m so happy for Jenni Hogan and hope that this turns out to be a very successful and weekly show.  You can join our Future of Network TV in Social Media Spreecast on Thursday morning at 10am PDT to hear more about the show and to contribute your opinion about the future interaction of television and social media – and potentially be invited to be part of the Live Spreecast.

“Traditional CRM systems fail at relationship management and that’s why people don’t use them for engagement,” said Jon Ferrara, Nimble CEO and previous founder of GoldMine, a pioneering CRM product. “The era of customer engagement is now, and it starts with listening. You can’t just snap social onto legacy CRM platforms and expect it to be effective. Nimble was built from the ground up for active social listening and engagement. We’re putting the ‘R’ (relationship) back into CRM, and with Nimble 2.0, we are disrupting the old CRM ways of doing business.”

Nimble has recently surpassed 30,000 registered users at more than 2,800 companies — a significant achievement for a start-up SaaS business application. The average Nimble user spends almost 3 hours a day managing business contacts. Nimble has seen phenomenal global growth in its VAR partner channel, having signed up more than 250 resellers worldwide, 50 of which are in Europe.

What Other People Are Saying

“What I love about this product is the user interface,” says Michael Brito, Senior VP, Social Business Planning, Edelman Digital. “It’s very easy to find relevant information when I need it. The integration with contact management, activity management, sales and marketing automation, traditional and social media communication tools and collaboration features into one web-based solution makes it very convenient for people like me to get a pulse of what’s going on in my network.”

“Social media is rapidly moving from a form of communications that could be monitored by marketers and PR to one where it has to be tightly integrated into all aspects of customer relationship management (CRM) in a manner similar to telephony and email,” said Carter Lusher, Research Fellow and Chief Analyst Ovum. “Established CRM vendors are rushing to ‘bolt on’ social media integration onto existing products, which is necessary but not sufficient. As a consequence, there is a market opportunity for a social CRM (sCRM) suite like Nimble that was developed from the beginning to have a tight integration with an expanding number of social media.”

What’s New in Nimble 2.0?

Nimble 2.0 takes Social Business to the next level, adding social notifications and discovery and empowering socially aware companies to stay top-of-mind with customers. It also contains key new user enhancements and marketing features to boost outreach. Screenshots can be found here.

Social Discovery

Nimble extends its Social Business platform with key social engagement features, including support for Facebook business pages and Google+ support. These features are designed to enable companies to listen and engage their customers while tracking and capturing real-time data when fans interact on social streams. Nimble’s new unified social notifications consolidates all the likes, comments, friend invites and other social interactions from LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook and Google+. Now users don’t have to go to five separate tabs to engage. These powerful new features combined with alerts on birthdays, promotions and job changes in a daily email notification keep Nimble users more connected than ever to their contacts.

Usability

At the heart of Nimble is the contact record – the embodiment of the relationship with the customer. Nimble contacts have an all new improved user interface which effortlessly pulls together all related messages, activities, and deals, and includes the contact’s live social stream. Nimble has also added custom fields and tabs to support the unique ways our customers relate to their contacts. In addition, Nimble has boosted usability throughout the application with improved navigation and better data importing tools.

Marketing Integration

Nimble now makes it easier to capture information and interact with customers through integration with HubSpot, a leading Social Marketing platform. The combination of Nimble and HubSpot allows closed-loop marketing. Now sales teams can contact the right lead at the right time with little or no effort and see significantly improved marketing ROI.

Pricing & Availability

Nimble is free for standalone personal users. Business and multi-users can sign up for Nimble at $15 per user per month. Nimble is available online at www.nimble.com or via our network of solution partners worldwide.

About Nimble

Since its initial launch, Nimble has quickly established itself as the leading Social Relationship Manager. Influencers around the world have recognized Nimble as a revolutionary Social Business solution. The platform has been awarded PC Magazine “Editors’ Choice”, “DEMO God”, Gartner “Cool Vendor” for Social Software and Collaboration, Red Herring Top 100 Global Finalist, and “Company to Watch” on Paul Greenberg’s “2011 CRM Watch List” & “2012 CRM Watch List” published by ZDNet.

Nimble was founded in 2009 to help small businesses transform their communities into business opportunities. Nimble opens a whole new channel for businesses to engage customers in a two-way dialogue, leveraging the power of traditional CRM and social media with its web-based social CRM platform. Located in Santa Monica, Nimble is in the heart of the Southern California tech community. Please join the conversation on Nimble’s Facebook page at www.facebook.com/nimble, LinkedIn and on Twitter @nimble.

A good cure for this problem is to be linked to and from by other sites – especially sites that rank well for your desired keywords.  For instance, if it would be important to you to be ranked highly under the keywords “Bellevue Business”, it would probably be very beneficial to you to be linked to the Eastside Business Directory at BellevueBusinessJournal.com (which is consistently the #1 organic ranked site on Google for the keywords mentioned).  Once you have a link from us (we’ll probably want to share you on Twitter and Facebook too), you might want to share the love with a link back to our site from yours – and you might even decide that you would like to write a regular (or semi-regular) column for us.

The price of this online marketing help is normally only $100 for an entire year!!!  For a very limited time and only the first 50 businesses, the price has been slashed in half to $50 for 12 full months!  Get your business listed in the Eastside Business Directory now – before your competitors do!

Here is some more information about the directory:

Who should list their business in Eastside Business Directory?
(there are 180 categories – if we don’t have yours, let us know and we’ll create it)

• Anyone who sells a product, whether it’s a physical product or a digital product like an e-book
• Anyone who provides a service, like graphic designers, web designers, nannies, cleaning services, and bookkeepers
• Anyone who owns a store, whether it’s a bricks & mortar store or an online store
• Anyone who has a blog, website or other online presence they want noticed
• Anyone who wants increased sales, more exposure, and improved SEO.

Why should you list your business in Eastside Business Directory?

Here are just a few good reasons I can think of:

• It’s an extremely affordable way to market your business – it’ll cost you just $100 per year or $0.27 per day.
• It offers maximum exposure – something you definitely need. Well, at least for your business.
• It will help you increase your sales all year round.
• It will boost your SEO by having your URL link on a Google Page Rank 4 site
• It will get you on the #1 Googled site for Keyword “Bellevue Business”
• It will support your new business, product launches, promotions, specials and more

What will my Eastside Business listing look like?

Your Bellevue Business Journal Listing will look awesome. No, really…check out our current Eastside Business Directory

“Use of social media sites by businesses to communicate with customers and the public has grown significantly,” Breard says.  “But there are all kinds of hot button issues in this area and it’s very important for everyone in the financial industry to understand their liability.”

Entitled Understanding the signals in today’s regulatory environment, the seminar will also focus on new fidelity bond rules, professional liability exposure, and RIA custody rules among several other subjects. The event will be held at the Paramount Hotel from 9 AM until Noon, with a continental breakfast beginning at 8 AM.

All communications must be monitored

Regarding communication around trading activity, “broker-dealers need to be monitoring their employees’ transmissions via everything from phone calls and email to IM and Facebook chats,” Breard explalins.”

“As a broker, you’re responsible for everything your agents do.  And that can be a whole range of communication formats – from phoning to texting to blogging.”

In fact, according to FINRA rules, firms are required to retain records of all communications related to the broker-dealer’s business that are made through social media sites.

“You can’t plead ignorance anymore — the SEC won’t listen to that,” Breard emphasizes.  “If you don’t get your policy on this in shape, the fines can be horrendous.”

At the seminar, Breard will explain how firms can develop policies and procedures to train employees on separating business and non-business communications, and to enable appropriate compliance.

On October 14, 2011 Social Media for Nonprofits conference series will be coming to the Microsoft Conference Center in Redmond, WA to help connect hundreds of nonprofit professionals and organizations with leading nonprofit social media experts and their peers. The event will provide practical tips and tools for fundraising, marketing, and advocacy, all delivered by dynamic experts in keynotes, workshops, roundtables, and panels. Several of the prominent keynote speakers that have volunteered their time and expertise for the event are Charles Porch, the head of nonprofit relations at Facebook, Claire Diaz Ortiz, VP Social Innovation and Philanthropy at Twitter and Bryan Breckenridge of LinkedIn.

The conference will be followed by a networking reception and launch party for the newly released book, Nonprofit Management 101: A Complete and Practical Guide for Leaders and Professionals. Edited by Social Media for Nonprofits Co-Producer and MC Darian Rodriguez Heyman and featuring practical insights from 50 leading experts across 35 topics, the handbook is designed as a compass for the social sector.

Social Media for Nonprofits is a young organization started by former Executive Director of Craigslist Foundation, Darian Rodriguez Heyman, and events producer, Ritu Sharma. Since its inception in June 2011, the conferences have brought social media trainings to sold out crowds in San Francisco, New York, Los Angeles, Chicago and Washington DC.

This program is tailored for non profits, agencies, community organizations and small businesses, and anyone else who wants to understand this new form of media. One important goal of the program is to provide valuable information on how to work with these interactive media sources to increase visibility, publicize events and more effectively reach target audiences. Topics covered will include how to write an effective press release, how to submit content, elements of a good news story and how to be a community journalist.

Confirmed panelists include Travis Mayfield – Executive Producer, Fisher Interactive Network , KOMO Communities, http://www.KOMOCommunities.com; Venice Buhain, Editor of Bellevue Patch, http://www.BellevuePatch.com; a representative from 425 Magazine, http://www.425magazine.com;  and Joe Kennedy, Publisher, Bellevue Business Journal,  http://www.BellevueBusinessJournal.com. Event moderator will be Maya, radio host at WARM 106.9 FM- http://www.warm1069.com.

To RSVP, please contact volunteer@bellevuewa.gov. If you have questions about the event, contact Khenry@bellevuewa.gov. This program is sponsored by the City of Bellevue Volunteer and Cultural Diversity Programs of the City of Bellevue.

Community-Based Media Panel Discussion, June 9, 1-3:30 pm, North Bellevue Community Center, 4063 148th Ave. NE, Bellevue, WA 98009, Phone: 425-452-7681. http://www.bellevuewa.gov/north_bellevue_community_center_programs.htm

Founded by Charles Merrin, a gaming industry veteran who previously held executive positions at RealNetworks and Smith & Tinker, and Anatoly Tikhman, a technology industry luminary who led multiple companies to acquisition such as Symantec and Microsoft, Playteau is designing games with today’s rapidly evolving social gamer in mind. Playteau’s flagship title, Fortune Stones, is the first in an expanding portfolio offering players a fun, content-rich gaming experience that is completely accessible from any social gaming platform.

In Fortune Stones, players match three or more stones to score points and advance to higher levels. Unlike other “match 3″ games, Fortune Stones features two distinct game modes: Frenzy and Strategy. While Frenzy mode expands upon the arcade-style play of “match 3″ games, Strategy mode offers a different challenge for those interested in a more puzzle-oriented experience. In either mode, players earn exclusive bonuses and collection items that can be used to expand game content. The more people play, the more items they collect and the more personalized each gaming experience becomes.

“Fortune Stones is just the first of a growing portfolio for Playteau,” said Charles Merrin, President & Co-founder of Playteau. “Being avid online gamers ourselves, it’s been our goal since day one to produce entertaining games with features never before seen in the social arena. Following this mindset, future Playteau games will be built around unique personalization elements, innovative game play, and original socially-oriented features.”

Playteau plans to release Fortune Stones on additional social sites and platforms, including the Apple® iPad™, iPhone® and iPod touch®, in mid 2011. Learn more about Fortune Stones at http://playteau.com/games/

About Playteau

Playteau is creating a multi-platform portfolio of innovative and entertaining games for today’s rapidly evolving social gamer. While their initial games are designed specifically for the popular social sites, Playteau is keenly aware that the social game phenomenon is expanding everywhere, and believes a number of new social channels hold great promise for the right games. More information is available at http://playteau.com

Would you rather deal with @Comcast or @ComcastBill?  I know I would always rather know the name of the person that I’m dealing with – how about you?

After a recent experience, I am going to start demanding it!

Not too long ago, a local company had contacted me about something I had written online and wanted to meet.  I was very happy to hear from them and schedule a meeting.  When I showed up on the designated day at the promised time, neither of the people I was supposed to be meeting were available.  It was like the meeting had never even been scheduled.  After waiting 15 minutes, I finally started to leave before an unfortunate underling was forced to wave me down before I exited the parking lot.  The person was very apologetic, but she had no idea what the meeting was supposed to be about at all.

It turns out that somehow this meeting was arranged by this company’s “social media consultants” who “do” their social media on sites like Facebook and Twitter.  It turns out that I know, like and thought I was friends with these consultants – but how could they be so deceitful?

The end result was time wasted for both of us.  I’m sure she had better things to do with her time and I sure could of been out selling some real estate rather than trying to give them help they obviously didn’t want.

The bottom line on this for me is that I will no longer deal with, “like” companies or organizations online unless I know exactly WHO I am dealing with.

What is YOUR policy?  Does your business or organization hide behind a DBA when using social media or are you about openness and transparency?  Why do you choose to take that direction?

Are you really making all those posts across the social media platforms?  Or are you having an assistant doing it?  If an assistant is making the posts, do you give them credit for them – or take the credit for yourself?  (Don’t you think your customers and potential customers deserve to kn0w?).  Just how honest do you need to be online ….?