#SoFresh STL Wrap Up by @wbreaux

Now it's time to say goodbye to all your friends, well twitter followers at least.

Social Fresh 2010 in St. Louis was a wild success in my opinion. Yet, another opportunity to meet up with like minded people and discuss the ever-changing world of social media. Although I'm not a graduate from an Ivy League school on the east coast and no I don't operate a mutli-million dollar start up in Silicon Valley, my GRITS (Girl Rasied in the South) attitude proved well.

I would liken my experience at Social Fresh to my brain being put through a series of rat mazes and finished off with a grueling training session on the hamster wheel. Social Fresh successfully stuffed thousands of hours of research, study and practice into less than 12 hours. From corporate blogging to SEO comprehension and back round again to social media marketing.

I did win a free set of Griffin earphones by racing to the front of the room. I beat out @rshrum75, sorry girl!

My takeaways:

• "Discounts are the must sought after information when your audience visits you in Social Media." Some companies are using coupon downloads as a way to measure success in social media.
• I learned the term "c-suite!" Oh and "CYA" cover you badunkadunk! @ambercadabra
• "I'm the mayor of my pants" @jasonfalls
• 80% of corporate blog traffice comes from 1st time visitors. via JasonFalls with http://www.socialmediaexplorer.com/.
• "Social media emerged because marketers got out of hand!" @jasonfalls
• End every blog post with a question/call to action. Heard this more than once!
• "Zombies" @ambercadabra Zombies include: ROI, why should I be in social media, etc. very cool presentation.
• New ROI = earned-spent/# of leads = cost per lead!
• "With blog outreach, quality is better than quantity" @daniellesmithtv
• "Submit your blog info to Digg and other feed sources." Reem Abeidoh
• Shorten your "Contact Us" form and offer something useful for the consumer via Mark Roberge, HubSpot
• You're extremely stupid if you don't take advantage of http://www.websitegrader.com/ and http://www.twittergrader.com/. Both are great tools from HubSpot that gives on point advice to get your website higher search engine results!
• Get the whole low down by following the hastag #sofresh on Twitter. http://www.socialfresh.com/ will have video on their website from the conference on their website n June!

Somethings I'm sad I missed:

• The entire @JayBaer presentation!
• The #SoFresh Pre-Party @EnjoyMosaic
• The #SoFresh After-Party at Millennium Hotels RoofTop
• When Jay Baer said "Linkedin(wbreaux) is who you should know, Facebook (wbreaux) is who you've know in the past, http://www.twitter.com/wbreaux is who you want to know!"

Things I'm Looking Forward to:

• www.socialfresh.com/cruise! I've been saying all year I need a vacation and this will be it! Leaves out NewOrleans on my birthday December 2, 2010! Happy early birthday present Whitney.
• Following new and amazing people on Twitter and being friends with them on Facebook!
• Hope to see some faces at http://www.coastalsocial.com/ 2010 in BatonRouge September 29th! It's time for the DeepSouth to make its presence known in social media world! It's a loosen your tie and roll up your shirtsleeve kinda party. As we say in Louisiana, "we work hard and play harder

Shoutout to #SoFresh sponsors:

Blue Sky Factory (@blueskyfactory)

HubSpot (@hubspot)

Radian 6 (@radian6)
STLTweets (@STLTweets)

People I met at #soFresh that you want to follow:
@cnmoody @JasonFalls @bestofjess @CScottCrider @shawnmcpike @jaybaer @kristingumper @DanielleSmithTV

Check out http://www.coastalsocial.com/ for more info on the GulfSouth regional conference coming to Baton Rouge, Louisiana September 29, 2010.

Are you #sofresh?

WB