February 23, 2012

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SocialVolt delivers enterprise social media management solutions for businesses and agencies

February 21, 2012 By Leave a Comment

We’ve been  pleased to have Kansas City-based SocialVolt as a new Social: IRL sponsor for 2012. They have been a great partner, already participating in Social: IRL events in Wichita and Kansas City, co-hosting a webcast with the American Marketing Association, and providing guests posts for the Social: IRL blog.

SocialVolt delivers enterprise social media management solutions for businesses and agencies. Its unified platform supports engagement across brands, while delivering accurate reporting from multiple channels. With SocialVolt, companies maintain control, minimize risk and empower staff at all levels to build profitable customer relationships in real-time. Check out SocialVolt’s blog and new website for more details, and connect with them on Twitter and Facebook.

SocialVolt brings structure, quality and control to your social media programs. You can publish content, manage workflow, listen across channels and report results all from one platform – so you can spend less time juggling tools and more time driving your company’s social media strategy.

With SocialVolt, you can manage social media across the enterprise, from marketing and customer support to sales and product development. Users can maintain control, minimize risk and empower staff at all levels while listening to and engaging in social media conversations across multiple brands.

Ideal for heavily regulated industries, SocialVolt bakes compliance and risk management into your social media program with detailed audit trails, prohibited terms, custom review dictionaries, approval workflow and access controls. You can securely enable staff and volunteers to spread the word through social media without giving up control of your brand identity while ensuring compliance with corporate standards and industry regulations.

SocialVolt is also ideal for agencies looking for a turnkey, centralized solution to manage social media engagement, listening, reporting and compliance across multiple clients and brands.

The SocialVolt social media management platform enables users to:

  • Publish across networks, accounts and brands
  • Ensure quality with content moderation
  • Listen for brand-relevant social conversations
  • Report the results of your social media strategy
  • Prove compliance and minimize risks

Social: IRL is now pleased to help SocialVolt announce their new Channels tool. Announced on February 22, SocialVolt Channels monitors Facebook, Google+, Twitter, YouTube and millions of blogs for brand conversations. Using Channels, users can create unique listening agents by setting tags to follow conversations about their brands and competitors, while tracking their share of voice in social media. Channels also includes a new sentiment engine. Based on a series of scientific algorithms, all posts are immediately classified as positive, neutral or negative, allowing users to gauge brand sentiment in real-time.

You can learn more about the new Channels tool in SocialVolt’s official press release and in these posts published today by Forbes and  AllFacebook.

The SocialVolt platform is available in the following editions: Team, Business, Professional and Enterprise. Visit http://www.socialvolt.com/product for more product details, pricing and a free-trial.

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Want beta access to the latest social and mobile apps? Check out BetaBait, a new website connecting startups with early adopters

February 14, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Today’s post is a guest post from Cody Barbierri, c0-founder of BetaBait, a new website connecting startups with early adopters interested in testing and being the first users of new web, mobile and social apps.  The post continues Social: IRL’s new series spotlighting startups in the tech, social and mobile space. Contact us to have your startup considered for a future post.

A while back I was having a conversation with a friend of mine about how there are so many startups out there that never see the light of day because it’s so hard to get noticed with today’s clutter online. To date, the only real way to get enough exposure to reach the early adopters who can help get a startup off the ground is by hounding reporters and spending countless hours within social media trying to engage people.

We wanted to remove the gate keepers making the decisions on who gets spotlighted and give that power to the early adopters – the people interested in testing and being the first users to many of these startups. With that, BetaBait was born. The service started out as a simple email service, spotlighting the latest startups looking for early adopters. Users could click-through on any startups that were of interest and be directed to their websites to learn more.

After just a few weeks, the response was incredible and we quickly ran into an issue – the email was getting too long with startups. We needed a place to house all of them and still give users a way to browse, share and test. We then launched an app directory online, which segmented the startups into categories, such as business, social, lifestyle and more. The email then only spotlighted the startups submitted from the past 24 hours.

Shortly after launching the app directory, we decided that we needed to give our community more of a voice. These early adopters have incredible ideas and can bring tremendous value to the startups looking to deliver a better product. We then shortly rolled out individual app pages for each startup, which gave additional information, sharing features and a commenting section meant to leave feedback based on the user’s experience and general thoughts on the idea.

BetaBait has been live now for almost 2 months and has close to 1,000 startups, 5,000 early adopters using the service, which remains free for both parties. We are currently generating revenue through email sponsors, which are able to create a welcome message to our daily email with a link to their website. Sponsors enjoy being the first thing our community of early adopters sees when they open the email.

In the near future, as the community continues to grow, we will be launching a redesign of the site to make it even easier to discover new startups, share them with friends and family, including a voting mechansim to push startups to the top of the page as well as leave feedback. In addition, we will be offering more sponsorship opportunities online for startups and other advertisers.

If you’re an early adopter or early stage startup looking to use the service, please sign up at www.betabait.com.

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Thanks everyone who joined Social: IRL in Wichita and Kansas City – Event recaps and key takeaways

February 13, 2012 By Leave a Comment

The last few weeks have been busy for Social: IRL, with events in Wichita and Kansas City. January 31, we headed to Wichita, KS, to host “No BS Social Media” with Social Media Explorer’s Jason Falls.  Then, on February 9, we were in Kansas City with “Conversation Agent” Valeria Maltoni for “Rethinking Business in the Age of the Social Consumer.”

We wanted to take a moment to thank everyone who participated in these two special events and to share recaps posted by several event attendees.

No BS Social Media:

Jason Falls with SocialVolt's Derrek Harter, Joe Cox, and Scott Oppliger

We were joined in Wichita by a great group of attendees – the individual business and organizations represented are listed in this earlier post.  Jason Falls delivered a powerful presentation focusing on three key areas of social media – planning strategically, driving business, and measuring success.

Thank you event sponsors Cox Communications, Andy McGinnis Public Relations, ColabDigital, Spredfast, SocialVolt, Expion, Spiral16, emfluence, and ManageFlitter.

And a special thank you to our hosts Junior League of Wichita, who not only provided a great event space but treated attendees to food from their new cookbook.

For a recap of the event and a special video interview with Jason Falls, check out this post “Answers to tough Social Media Questions,” by event sponsor Sprial16.

Rethinking Business in the Age of the Social Consumer:

A diverse group of local and regional business, and national brands and agencies, joined Social: IRL in Kansas City for “Rethinking Business in the Age of the Social Consumer.”  The full attendee list is included in this earlier post.

Spiral16 Interview with Valeria Maltoni

Valeria Maltoni started the day with the keynote “Rethinking Business” session, which challenged attendees to rethink, deconstruct, and reconstruct established business practices. Afternoon sessions included Garmin’s Jake Jacobson on adding personality to a brand, Armstrong Teasdale’s Jeff Schultz on legal issues surrounding ownership of online content and community, Appinions‘ Larry Levy on rethinking influencer marketing, Spredfast’s Austin Lytle who helped attendees answer the question “Do I Need a Social Media Command Center”, and Expion’s Kevin Magee on the opportunities for regional and national brands to “take social local.”  The day wrapped up with SocialVolt’s Joe Cox and Spiral16′s Eric Melin leading a discussion on key takeaways.

Thank you event sponsors Spredfast, SocialVolt, Expion, Spiral16, Appinions, emfluence, ManageFlitter, Garmin, and the Social Media Club of Kansas City.  Also a special thank you to our venue, the Crowne Plaza Kansas City and their representative Patrick Conroy who not only took great care of attendees but took additional steps to ensure we had a robust wifi network with plenty of additional bandwidth.

For recaps and key takeaways from the sessions, check out these posts from some of our attendees:

Spredfast - Rethinking Business in the Age of the Social Consumer: Social IRL Insights

Tony Faustino – 5 Takeaways from Valeria Maltoni: Rethinking Business in the Age of the Social Consumer

Katy Ryan Schamberger - Conversation Isn’t Merely An Art Form; It’s A Business Strategy

Sprial16 – How to Refocus Your Business in the Social Age (includes video interview with Valeria Maltoni)

Ashley Mahoney – Social: IRL Conference in a Nutshell

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Local and regional businesses, national brands and agencies, joining together in Kansas City for “Rethinking Business in the Age of the Social Consumer

February 7, 2012 By Leave a Comment

On February 9, a diverse group of local and regional businesses and national brands and agencies, will come together in Kansas City for “Rethinking Business in the Age of the Social Consumer.”

This special day long workshop is hosted by Social: IRL and features acclaimed thought leader and business strategist “Conversation Agent“ Valeria Maltoni. Attendees will be challenged to rethink, deconstruct, and reconstruct established initiatives and empowered to take their social media strategy and execution to a deeper level.

To promote greater learning, engagement and networking opportunities, the event is limited to just 70 attendees. At the time of posting this update, only 10 spaces remain.  You can learn more about the event here, or register direct on our Eventbrite page.

Registration for the event is just $145 for the entire day. This highly subsidized rate is possible thanks to the support of Social: IRL sponsors Spredfast, SocialVolt, Expion, Spiral16, Appinions, emfluence, and ManageFlitter.

Businesses, agencies and organizations participating in the event include:

  • AMC Theatres
  • Garmin International
  • Sprint
  • UMB Financial
  • H&R Block
  • Edelman Digital
  • MMGY Global
  • Bass Pro
  • Triple-I Corporation
  • Ameristar Casinos
  • Nebraska Furniture Mart
  • Kantar Health
  • Cerner
  • Boulevard Brewing Company
  • Intouch Solutions
  • Expion
  • Howerton White
  • National MS Society
  • Kansas City Aviation Department
  • Kansas Speedway
  • emfluence
  • Appinions
  • K-State Athletics
  • Salva O’Renick
  • Penton Media
  • Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City
  • Spredfast
  • Armstrong Teasdale
  • Sharp Connections
  • Kansas City Area Development Council
  • SocialVolt
  • Buzz New Media LLC
  • Social Media Club of Kansas City
  • V3 Integrated Marketing
  • Better Choices Consulting
  • Spiral16
  • Kansas City Public Library
  • O’Hara Marketing
  • Kuhn & Wittenborn
  • Ascend Learning
  • Go Local
  • Best Service Stores
  • Clayton CRM
  • Sound Products
  • HTK Architects
  • Spencer Fane Britt & Browne

You can also view a complete list of individual attendees on the Eventbrite registration page.

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Join Social: IRL in Kansas City on February 9 – A look at what you’ll learn and who you’ll connect with at this exclusive event

February 2, 2012 By Leave a Comment

On February 9, Social: IRL will be joined in Kansas City by acclaimed thought leader and business strategist Valeria Maltoni for “Rethinking Business in the Age of the Social Consumer.”

This special event brings a unique opportunity to Kansas City for businesses and agencies to rethink and reconstruct their social media initiatives, while also connecting with social media managers and marketing and communications pros from leading regional and national organizations – some of who are mentioned below. To promote maximum engagement at the event, limited registrations are available.

"Conversation Agent" Valeria Maltoni

Valeria Maltoni brings more than 20 years of real-world business experience, specializing in taking companies to “what’s next” in their business cycle by planning and building value creating systems that add momentum and performance to deliver strength, resilience, and endurance to the business. She has been responsible for overseeing engagements for companies including Anheuser-Busch, InBev, Allstate, and GE Appliances. During her career, she’s held senior business roles executing growth strategies at global Fortune 500, mid-sized businesses, and small start up companies in 5 industries. Her Conversation Agent blog is consistently ranked among the top 30 marketing blogs in the world on the AdAge Power150. You can connect with Valeria on Twitter @ConversationAge.

Joining Valeria and Social: IRL at the event will be an impressive group of attendees responsible for social media initiatives, marketing and communications at businesses and agencies including  AMC Theatres, Garmin International, Sprint, UMB Financial, H&R Block, Edelman Digital, MMGY Global, Bass Pro, Triple-I Corporation, Ameristar Casinos, Nebraska Furniture Mart, Kantar Health, Boulevard Brewing Company, the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, and Intouch Solutions.  Some local business and agencies, some regional and national. You can view the complete attendee list on the Eventbrite registration page.

This special workshop is intended for businesses, organizations and agencies already active on the social web. They’ll be challenged with fresh perspectives and empowered to take their social media strategy and execution to a deeper level.

The foundation of the day’s learning will be provided through the main interactive workshop session lead by Valeria Maltoni.  Valeria describes this session as “the conversation we never had about social media and desperately need to have to make sense of what works and what doesn’t. The prequel to the tactical implementations that have followed in the last couple of years.”  As Valeria takes an in-depth look at how to compete in the age of the social consumer, she will challenge attendees to rethink, deconstruct, and reconstruct established initiatives and look at potentially valuable missed opportunities. You can read about the session in this recent post on Valeria’s Conversation Agent blog and on the event page of our own website.

Additional sessions will include valuable advice from a leading social media attorney who will address important legal issues surrounding ownership of online content and communities.  We recently highlighted details of this session in the Social: IRL blog. Also sessions looking at the intersection of social strategy and social technology, including some of the latest innovations in Social CRM and influencer marketing.

The day will be highly interactive and engaging, both in terms of learning and networking . There will be many valuable  opportunities to connect and build relationships with local, regional and national social media thought leaders.

To promote maximum engagement, a limited number of registrations are available. At the time of publishing this post, just 32 registrations remain open.

The rate for attending the event is just $145 for the entire day, or just $85 for non-profits, educators or students.  These highly subsidized rates are possible thanks to the support of Social: IRL sponsors Spredfast, SocialVolt, Expion, Spiral16, Appinions, emfluence, and ManageFlitter.  Locally,we also very much appreciate support for the event from Garmin, Crowne Plaza Kansas City, and the Social Media Club of Kansas City.

Attendees will also have the chance to win some great giveaways from Garmin, ManageFlitter, and Kansas City’s Boulevard Brewing Co.

Visit our event page to learn more or click the link below to register now, while places remain available.

Register

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Social Media Club of Kansas City – A thriving community of more than 2,000 members in the heart of the midwest

January 25, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Social: IRL is based in the heart of the midwest in Lawrence, Kansas. We are proud of the game-changing innovation and  thriving online communities in our local area. In today’s post we look at the Social Media Club of Kansas City, a dynamic and fast growing group of social media enthusiasts who share Social: IRL’s values of advocacy, education, outreach and of using social media to make a positive impact both online and offline.

From six people getting together in a coffee shop in 2008, to a thriving community of more than 2,000 members today, the Social Media Club of Kansas City  is making an impact.  SMCKC has grown to become one of the largest and most active chapters of the national Social Media Club. To quote Jessica Murray, Community Manager for the national SMC organization, “We’re inspired by the activity and hunger in the Kansas City community around social media and have so much gratitude towards the leadership team.”  But beyond that the group has become a significant resource for the entire Kansas City area.  Not only reaching out and connecting Kansas City’s thriving social media community, but becoming widely recognized as passionate educators and advocates for technology literacy.

Social: IRL chatted with SMCKC President, Joe Cox, to learn more about what’s brought the group to this point, how to connect and get involved with the group, and what we can expect to see new or different from SMCKC in 2012.

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Could you share a little on the background of SMCKC – how the group started, the mission of the group, and how that mission has evolved as the group has grown?

 The group was started in June of 2008, by Ed Roberts and Zena Weist through an email to get people together to talk about what was going on with social media.  Beginning with a meeting of six people at a coffee shop, it was totally organic and was started out of curiosity and passion, traits that still give us strength as a group today with over 2,000 members throughout the city.
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The mission of the group at first was to facilitate conversations and best practices to help wrap our heads around what was happening with communication through social networks.  We were all having these conversations online, but needed somewhere to go offline to get that personal human interaction that we needed.
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Now four years later, we’re transitioning into a group that at it’s core is there to promote, educate & serve as an advocate for technology literacy for Kansas City and it’s communities.  We balance that with giving our community awesome events to attend with great speakers as well as a place where social media professionals can still get the content that they need to continue to learn of best practices and have conversations with peers.
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SMCKC currently has over 2,000 members and is one of the largest and most active Social Media Chapters in the nation. To what do you attribute that success?
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Growing up in the midwest, I think everyone remembers what it was like before social media.  It took a long time for trends & ideas to come from the coast all the way to the center.  It was months before we were wearing Hammer pants. Social media gave cities like Kansas City a voice and evened the playing field, allowing us to distribute our vision, ideas & messages outward. I think we really like having that voice and it shows through our membership’s interest.
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Who typically attends SMCKC meetings?
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Just like social media, our group is diverse when it comes to who attends our events.  We have professionals that work inside social media as well as people that just think Facebook is an awesome place to share their blog amongst family & friends.  Entrepreneurs to enterprise, and tech savvy to tech illiterate.  The trick is finding a way to serve everyone and create valuable content & events for all of the different folks out there that are involved.
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The foundation of SMCKC is the monthly breakfast meeting. What other opportunities are there to get involved with the group?
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As the group grows, there are tons of ways to get involved.  We’re shooting for at least 3 events a month in 2012, and that takes a lot of help coming up with ideas, organizing and helping us manage.  We’re always looking for help and you can get a hold of Aaron Deacon, our Events Chair, with any good ideas or if you’re interested in helping.
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We also love content and depend a lot on our community to help us write our blogs, keep the #SMCKC hashtag & Facebook conversation active, and help promote our calendar of events.  We’re always looking for people to help fill content roles and you can reach out to our Community Chair, Katy Schamberger, if you’d like to contribute.
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SMCKC breakfast with Ford's Scott Monty. Photo from smckc.com

SMCKC has seen some great accomplishments over the last year. From your perspective, what do you consider to be the most successful SMCKC projects (or meetings) from 2011?

Bringing Scott Monty into KC to talk about Ford’s strategy in Social Media was huge, but I’d have to say the biggest local impact we made was our GigabitCity event at the Kansas City Library & our continued efforts with the GoogleFiber movement here in KC.  Bringing some of the smartest people in Kansas City together for an all day ideation session on what gigabit speeds will mean to Kansas City’s communities & citizens was a huge win for us and really helped legitimize what we’re trying to do for KC.  A huge thanks to Mike Brown & Brainzooming Group, who facilitated that event.  Couldn’t have done it without them.
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As SMCKC continues to grow, how can you most effectively meet the needs of such a diverse membership? Have you considered more niche or targeted events for specific types of members?
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Being a social media club, our community is very vocal online and through monitoring our #SMCKC hashtag & other watercoolers around the internet, we can pick up a good amount of what is working, what isn’t & what we should do more of.  As we grow, we absolutely see the need to target more content & events at different parts of our group and just like our focus on our professional membership activation in 2012, we’ll continue to grow to those needs of the community.
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What else can we expect to see new or different from SMCKC in 2012? Are there specific goals set for the group you can share with us?
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We know how important offline & online communication is, and balancing both.  We’ll be taking a new focus on bringing great influencers, speakers, authors and thought leaders to KC from outside of the city to speak to our group. At the same time we’ll continue to emphasize & build out our online messaging to help reach out, promote, advocate & have better conversations with our membership more effectively.
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In 2012 our focus is on uniting and activating our advocates and continuing to provide the best and most valuable content & events to our members.
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For someone who hasn’t yet attended an SMCKC meeting, where can they find details of upcoming events and what would you say to encourage them to attend?
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We’re a really open & fun group and wherever you are with your knowledge on tech or social media trends, you’ll get something from our speakers, events or networking. Another cool thing about us is that your able to stalk our events and group online to see what we’re all about and make some connections online before you ever set foot into our events.  This way, you never have to worry about not knowing anyone when you walk through the door.
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Another thing that I love about our group is it’s networking for people that hate traditional networking. People lead with conversations, not with their business cards.
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A good place to join the group and the conversation is by heading to our website at smckc.com.  Once you’ve signed up and checked out our calendar of events, hop on twitter and follow our #SMCKC hashtag to see what’s going on with us in real time.  Somebody is always on and it’s a good place to get questions answered by our members.
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A special invitation to SMCKC members:
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Social: IRL are proud to be active members of the SMCKC group and have appreciated support from the groups leaders and membership.
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On February 9, Social: IRL is hosting a special full-day workshop in Kansas City, “Rethinking Business in the Age of the Social Consumer.”   The event features “Conversation Agent” Valeria Maltoni and a diverse group of local, regional and national businesses, organizations and agencies, who will spend the day in an interactive discussion that goes well beyond the typical social marketing dialogue. We are grateful to SMCKC for supporting and participating in the event.
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SMCKC members are invited to register for the event using discount code SMCKC and can secure a special registration rate for the day of just $95 ( standard registration rate of $145.)
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The seven whiteboard sessions every social strategist needs to have in 2012

January 24, 2012 By 1 Comment

We’re excited to be able to share a valuable new resource – “7 Whiteboard Sessions for Every Social Strategist.”

Click to Download

This dynamic new whitepaper discusses seven key areas that all social media practitioners and organizations should be thinking about to help businesses continue to grow and thrive their social media programs throughout the year.

The paper was produced by Spredfast, a leading provider of Social CRM software for social media monitoring, engagement, coordination, measurement and integration.  Spredfast is also a  Social: IRL sponsor.

In preparing the paper, Spredfast spent a great deal of time talking with customers, partners and industry leaders from organizations such as Altimeter Group, Edelman Digital, MarketingProfs and Social Media Explorer to identify the biggest areas of opportunity in social media for enterprises and agencies. From those discussions, seven key areas of opportunity emerged:

1. Gaining Insight About Your Social Customer
Your customers are at the heart of everything you do – or should be doing – in social media. How are you learning about their preferences, activity and interactions to help inform your decisions?

2. Adopting Social Media Company-Wide
Social media has moved far beyond just social media marketing.  How are you planning to help roll out social media beyond just Marketing efforts to achieve business goals in departments throughout the business like Sales, R&D, Customer Care, HR or Public Relations?

3. Operationalizing Social Media with Workflows and Processes
Expanding social media throughout the your business is complex. How are you planning to operationalize social media with internal processes, communication standards and workflows to make the activity seamless between teams and people?

4. Getting the Most out of Your Great Content
Content is at the heart of everything you do in social media. But that doesn’t mean it has to be all new content or that it should exist in a vacuum. What content do you have that should be used across you social channels and how can this be used in an engaging way?

5. Delivering Better Customer Experiences
Creating good experiences is the key to successful social media programs. What do your customers want or need to experience to make their interactions positive and unique with your brand?

6. Integration
Social media initiatives are one part of a greater business initiative. And because of that, they need to be integrated into greater systems and reporting dashboards so that they can add context to overall goals.

7. Showing a Return on Social
What are your social media programs yielding in terms of social impressions, activity from your internal teams and engagement from your target audience?

Regardless of where you are in your social planning and strategy efforts, these seven areas are key to hone in on from a social media perspective. They can help make your current social programs richer and also ensure you are planning with an eye toward future social business success.

In preparing this whitepaper, Spredfast took a creative approach in presenting each area of opportunity as a “whiteboard session”, with ideas on how to approach planning and assessment and an action plan to get started. Importantly, the “whiteboard sessions” can be used as the foundation for a series of meetings designed to foster discussion and secure the buy-in needed to make your efforts successful.

For a brief overview of the whitepaper, check out the Executive Summary embedded below.

To access the complete 36 page whitepaper click here. You’ll just need to complete some very basic registration information and will then receive a free PDF download.

Kudos Spredfast. A great resource with a practical, fun and creative approach.

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Who owns you? Content and community in an interactive world

January 23, 2012 By 1 Comment

On February 9, Social: IRL will host a special interactive workshop in Kansas City, “Rethinking Business in the Age of the Social Consumer.”  We’ll be joined by a strong group of both local and national businesses and agencies, including AMC Theatres, Nebraska Furniture Mart, emfluence, Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, Intouch Solutions, Boulevard Brewing Company, UMB Financial, Sprint, Howerton White, Ameristar Casinos, Bass Pro, Edelman, and H&R Block.

The foundation of the event is a half-day session lead by “Conversation Agent” Valeria Maltoni, who brings a wealth of experience overseeing engagement and executing growth strategies at global Fortune 500 corporations, mid-sized businesses, and small start up companies in five industries.

Jeff Schultz

The event also feature sessions looking at the intersection of social technology and social strategy, including some of the latest developments in social CRM, monitoring, and influencer marketing.  Also a valuable session taking a pro-active look at how to protect your online content and community, with Jeff Schultz, a leading social media lawyer with Armstrong Teasdale joining us to discuss potential legal issues both brands and agencies are facing on an increasing basis.

With these type of legal issues becoming more prevalent, the need for a pro-active approach is critical so we’re especially grateful to Jeff Schultz for joining us in Kansas City, and are taking the opportunity to highlight the valuable content he will be sharing with attendees.

Join us in Kansas City on February 9 to hear from Jeff, Valeria Maltoni and our other speakers, and for a valuable day of learning and networking. For a limited time attendees can register using discount code IRLNEWS and receive a specially discounted registration rate of just $95.

Who Owns You? Content in an Interactive World

Businesses and individuals alike are utilizing social media to develop their “brand” and connect with others. Today, almost everyone has a book, blog, podcast or video format which spews content (and also generates content from third parties). And every day, it seems, new online tools, platforms and advances introduce new opportunities to build your virtual footprint. But while they say that possession is 9/10 of the law, that may not be correct in the social media world. The answer to who “owns” content and community is not clear cut and the law in this area is not well developed. Users often overlook the legal ramifications that could arise. Armstrong Teasdale social media attorneys will discuss the legal aspects of content and contacts, including non-compete and fiduciary duties. Tying the presentation to the most active social media platforms, they will show you how to make sure you know who owns your work and community, and how to avoid potential legal problems.

 Jeff Schultz, Partner and Chair of the Social Media Practice Group, Armstrong Teasdale

Jeff Schultz is a business and commercial litigator and chair of Armstrong Teasdale’s Social Media Practice Group. Much of his practice focuses on counseling individuals and organizations through complex disputes involving the misappropriation of trade secrets, computer tampering, non-disclosure agreements, non-compete agreements, commercial contracts and social networking law. Mindful that one of the primary assets of any business is the proprietary information that makes it unique, Jeff helps clients develop and implement programs to safeguard against employee theft and defection and to minimize risks that arise when hiring employees from competitors. With the explosion of social media, social networking and online sharing, such as the use of blogs, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, YouTube and texting, Jeff advises companies regarding efforts to protect their brand online. Although social networking can be beneficial to maintain personal and business relationships when used properly, it can quickly become a legal minefield for those who are unprepared.

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