On a day to day basis our work at Converseon touches on a number of marketing disciplines and draws from widely different areas of expertise. This diversity is on show this week as our team speaks at three events with varying backgrounds and audiences

Search Engine Strategies – Chicago

Constantin Basturea will appear on a panel ‘Meet the Bloggers Who Can Make Your Cash Register Ring!’

There is a significant difference between popularity and influence. And it is important to find out which bloggers generate editorial coverage, influence your existing and potential customers, and drive traffic to your ecommerce or merchant site. While building relationships with these influential bloggers can be very time-consuming and resource-intensive, this session will help you to get started.

PRSA event: Social Media 101: What Every PR Practitioner Should Know – Pittsburgh

Social networks and online communities are transforming traditional PR strategies. The old broadcast system is on its way out. In this interactive session with nationally renowned digital marketing expert, Rob Key, learn how the social media phenomenon is rapidly changing the practice of public relations. In this session you’ll learn about the latest digital tools available to today’s PR practitioner as well as strategies for incorporating social media tactics into your organization’s marketing mix

SNCR Research Symposium

Constantin Basturea will appear on a panel on online communities and virtual worlds discussing our multiple award winning Second Chance Trees project.

The SNCR Symposium & Awards Gala will feature the latest research and winning case studies from around the globe. Learn, discuss and have fun with your peers, industry experts and the most notable thinkers and practitioners in the world of new media and communications.

The Unbiased Opinion is Trusted Around The Globe

eMarketer reports that more than three-quarters of consumers surveyed worldwide find that consumer opinions are the most effective form of advertising, according to a Nielsen study.

MySpace Platform to Launch Next Week

TechCrunch has the story that MySpace is planning to mimic Facebook by opening up their platform to outside developers. On top of rumours that Google is aiming to ‘out-Facebook’ Facebook by making themselves ‘100% open’.

Some of the smartest brands around are opening themselves up to passionate users – is this on the radar of your C-suite?

YouTube to Unleash Adsense Video Syndication

According to early reports from the Associated Press and Variety, Google is set to make a major announcement tomorrow concerning YouTube integration with AdSense. Selected YouTube videos will be available to AdSense publishers and will appear wrapped in banner ads.

Virtual World Interoperability

A group of 23 companies and institutions has set out to search for ways to make content and identity transferable between virtual worlds.

Converseon had the pleasure of receiving the OMMA Award on Tuesday night for the “Best Use of Virtual Worlds.” Hosted by our building brethren Mediapost, the event recognized the best and most breakthrough creative in online advertising and media.

Our Second Chance Trees project beat out some formidable competition, specifically Coca-Cola’s Virtual Thirst Project and Pontiac’s Motorati island. I admire both of those programs because they begin to tap into what we see as the real value of current virtual worlds — an open source platform to allow users to experiment, co-create and innovate in collaboration with brands.

The Second Chance Trees project was a bit more modest in scope (and likely budget), but fully dipped into what we see as among the most fertile areas for breakthrough innovation in social media – utilizing virtual worlds to impact the real world, and vice versa. In our view, virtual worlds are not meant to exist in isolation, but as an extension of our own world, albeit in a dimension where we can poke through to innovate, experiment and experience with tools and environments that extend beyond our mortal powers. We intend to dig more deeply into exploring the virtual-to-real world potential and, of course, continuing to utilize SCT to promote tree reforestation around the world. So more to come on that over time.

We would, of course, like to thank all our avatar and RL friends who have supported the effort including Andy Beal, Lee Odden, Peter Himler, Stephen Davies, Lee Hopkins, Luke Armour and Amalthea Blanc.

If you would like to learn more about the Second Chance Trees project and our approach to virtual worlds, please take a listen to the attached audio file of a presentation I delivered at WOMMA’s Learn It, Do It event in New York city last week. As always, your comments and questions are welcome.

Good news today as we learned that our Second Chance Trees project has been selected as one of three finalists in the ‘Virtual Worlds’ category of the 2007 OMMA Awards.

OMMA describe their Awards thus:

The OMMA Awards honor the brand marketers, agencies and content providers who continue to push the potential of online advertising creative. The OMMA Awards celebrate the year’s most innovative and brilliant creative work in 20 categories.

The online medium is the most fertile canvas for innovation and creativity, and the OMMA Awards will salute the stars that shine brilliantly among us.

The goal of the OMMA Awards is to offer insight and vision on what is truly possible using the online arena and to illuminate those who continue to stretch the boundaries of online advertising creative. The OMMA Awards will set the gold standard for creative excellence in the interactive industry.

It’s great to see further recognition for the project on top of its selection as the only social media project among the American Express Members Project finalists and other success to date. We’re in good company alongside Pontiac’s Motorati Island and Coke’s Virtual Thirst; we’ll find out if we are adjudged the best entry at the OMMA Awards Reception on September 25.

Today at 1pm I’ll be speaking on the Bulldog Reporter’s PR University  ‘Guerilla PR and Word of Mouth Marketing‘ Audio Conference, joining some of the industry’s leading thinkers.

My main focus will be on explaining the ins-and-outs of the Second Chance Trees project, our own recent success story with word-of-mouth marketing on a tight budget. As today’s media audience shifts smart communicators can have great success engaging respectfully with online communities. Today, we’ll try to show you how.

What
Bulldog Reporter’s PR University Audio Conference – ‘Guerrilla PR and Word-of-Mouth Marketing: Innovative Practices for Nontraditional, Brilliant PR on a Tight Budget’

Who
Paull Young, Converseon

Mark Hughes, Principal, Buzznation Studios; Author “Buzzmarketing

Paul Rand, President & CEO, Zócalo Group

John Bell, Managing Director/Executive Creative Director, 360° Digital Influence Team, Ogilvy Public Relations; Member, Word of Mouth Marketing Association

Andy Sernovitz, CEO, Gaspedal; Author, “Word of Mouth Marketing: How Smart Companies Get People Talking”

When

Thursday, 30 August, 2007

1:00pm-2:00pm

Where

Your Telephone

TO REGISTER: Click here or call 1-800-959-105

Cost: $289 per dial-in site

On the weekend Seth Godin said “The art of marketing is not finding more money to do more marketing. It’s figuring out how to tell a story that spreads with the resources you’ve got”, in doing so he unwittingly summed up the Second Chance Trees American Express Members Project campaign.

Our goal here was to utilize social media to raise awareness (and votes) for the Second Chance Trees project. The tricky part: no budget and virtually no time.

After a week of online chatter, the results look like this:

• The Second Chance Trees machinima video has risen to the top of 4,120,000 Google search results for the term ‘American Express Members project‘, while a related image in the Converseon Flickr account ranks third.
• CNN featured the project prominently with their Future Summit program
• The machinima video has been viewed over 2,600 times and received six ’5 star’ ratings on YouTube
• There have been over 100 blog posts referencing Second Chance Trees, including leading Second Life, Environmental, PR/Marketing and SEO blogs
• Second Chance Trees Island has had its most successful week to date, with the planting of over 140 endangered rainforest trees

When reviewing those figures, it’s important remember that this all happened in 7 days on a shoestring budget.

Unfortunately, despite all the buzz we fell short of recording enough votes to make the final 25. However, the similarly titled ‘One Million Trees – Global Reforestation’ project gained several hundred votes over the past week. While some of those may have been confused by the difficult voting process at the American Express site, it’s good to see an identical reforestation effort (even without the innovative educational experience offered by Second Life) moving forward on the back of popular opinion.

To all our supporters who voted, blogged, commented, viewed or planted – thank you very much for taking the time to support a good social media cause. While we might no longer be in the running for the $5 million American Express Members Project, we are committed to the Second Chance Trees project for the long term and we’ll continue to look for corporate sponsors and other methods to expand the projects influence.

Be sure to continue to support your favorite American Express Members Project!

Some of you may already be familiar with our Second Chance Trees Project.

It’s been an amazingly interesting initiative that has let us experiment with new and innovative approaches. It’s also a good demonstration of the power of social media to do good. Utilizing Second Life as the center of gravity for the project, supported across other communities including Flickr, Digg, Newsvine, among others, shows how a meme truly interconnects across social media venues.

One of the more interesting outcomes though has come from Google.

When we talk about social search strategies, we advocate content optimization in various forms – text, audio and video – across different platforms. This is especially important in the wake of Google’s Universal Search initiative. We know that social media is becoming increasingly visible in top search rankings.

The Second Chance Trees project is an incredibly interesting case in point. To promote individuals to vote for the project in the American Express Members Project, we created a machinima video and uploaded it to YouTube only 4 days ago. The initiative has really taken a life of its own with many bloggers (thank you!) embracing the concept and linking to the video.

Today, the listing went from nowhere to number 2 for the “American Express Members Project” (out of more than 4 million indexed pages) in just four days, outranking even the Scorcese advertisement. If there is ever a need to demonstrate the power of social media to impact top rankings rapidly, one need look no further.

Thanks to all for ongoing support of the initiative. Success really goes far beyond Converseon and spotlights the power and potential of the entire social media industry. It’s the industry and those pioneering social media strategies that have the most to gain from each and every successful case study.

Social media has the power to change the world. People can connect around the world in ways that were never possible before. Geography is no longer a barrier to meaningful relationships and individuals everywhere now have the power to share their voice with the world.

We would like your help to put this power into action. With a few moments of your time you can help take a step towards planting millions of trees in endangered rainforest regions and providing a powerful example of social media in action in the process.

First, please watch this machinima video, filmed at Second Chance Trees Island:

As explained in the video, our non-profit partner Plant It 2020 has been chosen as the fulfilling organization for one of the 50 finalists in the American Express Members Project, with a first prize of $5 million up for grabs. If successful, the
Second Chance Trees project would be able to plant millions of trees in endangered rainforest regions throughout the world.

Here’s the trick: We only have until this Sunday July 15 to get as many votes as possible in order to make it to the final 25. We’ve got a long way to go at the moment so each and every vote is extremely valuable. Time is of the essence – so please help us now!

Second Chance Trees is the only Members Project finalist based in Second Life. It is also the only finalist with a strong social media focus. By supporting Second Chance Trees you can not only help to plant millions of trees, you also make a statement for the power of social media. We are using social media to promote our social media cause – if successful, this would form a powerful demonstrative example of the power of social media to create positive societal change.

How You Can Help

Most importantly, you can help by voting for the Virtual Forests Project. If you are a US-based American Express cardholder please click here to register and vote.

(Note: Please follow the direct link above and be sure to vote for the ‘Virtual Forest Project. One Million Trees. Easy.‘ concept. There is a similar initiative on the site that has been confusing some people)

Once you have voted, you can lend your support using all the social media tools at your disposal:

• Share the machinima video – embed it on your blog or social network page or email it to a friend
• Blog about it – You can get more information from our social media release or by emailing me at pyoung@converseon.com
• Visit Second Chance Trees Island in Second Life and plant your own tree
• Embed the Members Project widgets on your blog or social network page
• Add Second Chance Trees as a friend in Flickr or MySpace
• Tell your friends wherever they may be – Facebook, Twitter or any of the other myriad social media venues out there
• Remember email – we’ve all got friends who are yet to climb aboard the social media bandwagon, send them an email pointing out the project and they might get enthused!
• Learn more at the Second Chance Trees website

Please leave a comment below letting us know how you’ve supported Second Chance Trees and it will be our pleasure to plant a tree in the honor of each and every one of you.