Louis Pagan is a content producer and co-founder of Latinos in Social Media. As one of the first latino voices in the blogosphere with his blog Latino Pundit, Louis has now rebranded himself as an entrepreneur.

While he still blogs, Louis also owns a company called Lat3G Media and he has helped launched projects like the LATISM Heritage Tour. Being a Latin American guy myself, it was very fun to talk with Louis about the bond that unites all latinos and hispanics, as well as topics such as old and new media, and the “social” part of social media in the 25th episode of “The Social Nerdia Show!”

You can listen to the interview in its entirety on the Flash player below, and we would highly appreciate it if you check out our other shows by subscribing to the podcast on iTunes, and streaming it live every Thursday night on blogtalkradio!

Louis and I started the show talking about the fact that October 15th is the last day of Hispanic Heritage month, a tradition that has been around for many decades. Not many know this but Hispanic Heritage month starts on Septemeber 15th because it is the day of independence of many Central American countries, like my very own Guatemala. “It’s like a virtual month, right between the calendars,” Louis said as we spoke about the 4 weeks that have been designated to celebrate our heritage. “I don’t know if it’s the food, the culture, the way we look, the music, the way we dress, speak, we have a common bond and we connect on all different levels, it’s a celebration,” Louis expressed. (more…)

Bob Knorpp is the host of The BeanCast, a weekly round table podcast that gathers advertising and marketing thought leaders (aka actual ad experts) to discuss industry issues and current events. After many years in the ad industry, he started The Cool Beans Group, a marketing consultancy that provides B2B and B2C expertise in branding, strategic thinking, social media, and more. I had a great time talking to Bob on The Social Nerdia Show! and you can about our conversation, including 7 social media insights, below.

You can listen to the show in its unedited greatness using the BlogTalkRadio player, subscribing to the podcast on iTunes and/or streaming it on your mobile phone using Stitcher.

Podcasts are now everywhere and there is one for everything. Bob explained that “the competition (in podcasting) is really steep and there are so many choices… the chances of getting noticed are minuscule.” And yet, The BeanCast has made quite an impression on a lot of people in the ad industry. The show’s forward-looking slogan “The Best Marketing Podcast Anywhere,” is becoming a reality with every weekly show. With only a year and a half of being on the online airwaves, the show has gone from a water cooler experiment to an influential conversation that is a must-listen for anyone even remotely interested in marketing. As Bob told me, “you don’t need to build a huge audience to have impact, you just need to reach the right people.”

Reaching the right people is not enough though. To truly create an impact on a growing audience, Bob makes sure that The BeanCast is entertaining. “As much as I try to present a forum for smart people to present their ideas, my primary objective is to have an entertaining program.. that stimulates conversations.” The payoff of the show is a combination of information, entertainment and relevancy. And that’s probably why The BeanCast is one of my favorite podcasts: it showcases the thought-provoking views of experienced people in the ad industry, without being boring. (more…)

Carol Phillips is a Notre Dame Marketing professor, Millennial marketing expert, and Founder/President of the consulting firm Brand Amplitude. I had the opportunity to chat with her on “The Social Nerdia Show!” yesterday. You can stream the show in its entirety below, stream it on blogtalkradio, and subscribe to the iTunes podcast.

Carol started teaching Notre Dame sophomores in 2003 and she quickly realized that this generation, often called Gen Y, was “very different“. While she expected Millenials to be very marketing savvy, she realized that they did not know that much about marketing and that inspired an article she wrote for AdAge in 2007. It was that article about what college students don’t know about marketing that introduced me to Carol’s work and writings.

Her blog describes Millenials as the group that outnumbers Baby Boomers and is determined to change the world. The idea of “changing the world” resonates with me so I asked Carol to elaborate on this. “Globally, when they do studies of Millenials, of what’s most characteristic about them, the thing that comes back is the Obama optimism, a passion to want to make a difference.” (more…)

Facebook has finally done it. The company not only reached the 300 million user mark but it also achieved its positive cash-flow milestone last quarter (ahead of schedule), according to Mark Zuckerberg’s blog posting on Tuesday. Here’s a look at five smart things they did right  to get to where they are today.

1. Opening Up to Everyone

Facebook started as a social network for Harvard students in 2004. After signing up over half of the Harvard undergraduate population in one month, the site opened up to other Boston and Ivy League universities. The site continued to spread through schools around the nation (including my very own SMU) and opened up to High School students by 2005. Today, Facebook is not only open to anyone around the world, but it has also opened itself so that its users are searchable by nonmembers. More importantly, Facebook grew in both features and popularity by opening itself to others. Mobile web sites and apps are available on all major mobile OS platforms. Developers have created apps like iLike, Scrabulous and Fan Check. Companies like Apple and Microsoft have leveraged Facebook’s API to connect to the site through products like iTunes and the Xbox 360. Thousands of web sites like Hulu and blogs like Mashable have allowed users to leave comments using their Facebook accounts via the now multilingual log-in system that we’ve come to know as Facebook Connect. And let’s not forget that it was Facebook Connect that enabled the last push for Facebook to surpass MySpace’s traffic in the U.S.

2. Becoming the Anti-MySpace that Doesn’t Sell Itself Short

Michael Arrington once said that Facebook had become the “Anti-MySpace” by deciding to open itself up. Just as Facebook didn’t follow in MySpace’s paranoid footsteps (remember how MySpace was so threatened by PhotoBucket that it acquired it in 2007?), it also did not flirt with large corporation that would swallow it. With rumors of Friendster being interested to pay upwards of $10 million, the News Corp. acquisition of MySpace in 2005, and Yahoo!’s offer of up to $1 billion in 2006, Facebook must have felt a little tempted. Still, Facebook focused on its site and its users and Zuckerberg’s words on July 17, 2007 have been proven to be true: “We’re not really looking to sell the company… We’re not looking to IPO anytime soon. It’s just not the core focus of the company.” With 1000 employees and a predicted $500 million in revenue for 2009, it is clear that MySpace is history. (more…)

The Social Nerdia Show! Episode #20 is now available for streaming below, on blogtalkradio, or as a podcast on iTunes.

In this episode, @socialnerdia and first-time co-host @domineconcept talk about the latest..

Tech News: eBay finally sells a large portion of Skype, personalized in-videogame ads, Augemented Reality in your eyes with Wi-Fi in your brain, Wikipedia color schemes

Not-So Tech News: Disney acquires Marvel, Fox’s Twitter commentaries on re-runs, and Macaulay Culkin rumored to be real father to MJ’s “Blanket”

Upcoming Movie Releases: Gamer, Extract, Amreeka

Upcoming Music Releases: They Might Be Giants – Here Comes Science, Derek Webb – Stockholm Syndrome, David Bazan – Curse Your Branches, Andrew WK – 55 Cadillac, The Used – Artwork

Randomized Topic of the Day: Crowdsourcing (CP+B / Brammo, Fiat)

Announcement: Don’t forget!!! Today’s the last day to vote for SXSW panels… Please vote for “Here Come All the Latino Bloggers“ http://bit.ly/votesxsw

Gord Weisflock is a Marketing and Business Development Manager for Kodak in Asia Pacific. Working on the B2B side of Kodak, Gord focuses on demand generation and building relationships in the largest market on Earth. I was able to speak with him on The Social Nerdia Show! and you can listen to it below, on blogtalkradio, or as a downloadable podcast on iTunes).

I was excited about this conversation because China is going through an incredible shift from manufacturer to creator and designer, and because Kodak is a great example of a company that is thriving in social media. Gord, who called in through Skype from Shanghai, told me about doing business in China and about his role within Kodak. While most of us know Kodak for its cameras, film, and printers, the fact that 75% of the world’s newspapers use Kodak products is only one example of the impact that this company has from a commercial point of view.

Gord explained that “a lot of companies see China as a huge market, a huge opportunity, but there are definitely some unique challenges. You have to understand the market, you have to understand what it’s like to walk in the shoes of people that live and work in this country… The Olympics were a great experience for the world to see how China operates and also a great opportunity for China to show how they do things themselves.” (more…)

David Alston is the VP of Marketing and Community at Radian6, a software firm that helps remove the barriers to effective social media monitoring and analysis. I had a great time chatting with David on the 15th episode of The Social Nerdia Show! and you can listen to the conversation in its entirety on the player below or by subscribing to our podcast on iTunes.

I checked out a demo of Radian6 before talking to David, and I must say I was impressed. Their tool looks pretty slick and comprehensive. I particularly like the fact that it integrates with Salesforce and WebTrends, which many companies already use. And, as David told me, Radian6 is going to integrate with more CRM, Business Intelligence and Analytics systems in the future.

David shared about how the young company got started by being part of the online community. He also explained how their real-time web-based solution enables companies to interact online without having to manually go to every blog and site out there. ”Once you get all that data from all over social media, from all the YouTubes of the world, Flicker, all the blogs,Twitter, Friendfeed, news, all that stuff gets pulled into one big topic profile and once it’s there you can do all kind of drill downs and look for trends.”

(more…)