Sarah Austin was one of the first live streaming, life-casters popularized on Justin.TV and she is the founder of Pop17, “a collaborative blogging platform and web show that covers and tracks emerging web trends and tells the stories behind what’s going in social media.” 

Sarah and I have a SXSWi 2011 Panel Proposal with Brandon Prebynski, Joel Cheesman, Christopher Kahle and Ryan Paugh. We’d really appreciate your votes and comments at http://bit.ly/howtogetajob by August 27th, 2010.

Listen to this entire 38th episode of “The Social Nerdia Show!” with Sarah Austin on the Flash player below. You can also subscribe on iTunes, stream from your phone on Stitcher, and listen to upcoming shows LIVE on blogtalkradio. Some show highlights and quotes are below. Enjoy!

Brands on Social Media

 ”When brands become a part of the community, it really feels like the brand is like your friend. You really love them, like you would a real person. In social media, they take on attributes of people because there are personalitieis behind the brand making tweets, answering questions, customer service, and establishing relationships with people, connecting with people on their interests, and offering something back to the community.”

“Ford’s really great. I had such a time doing the Ford Fiesta Movement. I got to drive a car around and go on all these adventures. It was also a competition. I got to do interviews with Ford designers. It’s interesting to see them being really progressive. Ford used to not appeal to the Millenial demographic. Ford’s really changed and become hip.”

“Companies like Virgin America are doing a really good job. They appeal to a tech demographic and people in social media really like flying on Virgin America. I was able to meet with them and interview Richard Branson. They are really involved in social media and they value people in tech. They syndicate shows like “Wine Library TV” by Gary Vaynerchuck.”

Facebook and “The Social Network” Movie

“Facebook has taken over the world. They own everything but China and they have all the conversations and connections all over the world.”

“To some people, things aren’t official until it’s on Facebook.”

 ”Movies are starting to document a real movement, a social media revolution, and it’s really hitting the mainstream.”

Foursquare

 ”I use Foursquare and have been using it for a while. I have a lot of friends there. If I want to know where my friends are right now, I’ll get on Foursquare. Facebook Places hasn’t quite reached that with me yet. I’m still on Foursquare and plug that in to Facebook.

” It will be interesting to see how developers use Facebook Places and do something cool with it. I don’t think this means Foursquare is over. I think they have to create more relationships with businesses, maybe small local business, so they can provide value on Facebook and stay on there.”

Live Streaming Platforms and Privacy

“Each of the platform has its advantages. There’s just a lot going on. It will be interesting to see how it all plays out when YouTube starts to get into the picture.”

“These sites are going in different directions so what will make them stand out for the long-run will be withstanding all the legal issues that they’ll have to go through, and making the sites safe and guarding by age, demographics, and region. The content and making these sites as secure as possible will be some of their most valuable developments.”

“I use Justin.TV  and I have a lot of information on there. I’ve had 10 million video views and 27,000 followers there. These are people that have a lot  access and have know me about 5 years. I dont really know the informationa bout the people watching me. Having more peripherals set up and have security on my broadcasts. Privacy is a big issue and whichever of these companies can tackle that will have a huge advantage over the competition.”

Word of Mouth

“Word of mouth is one of the most powerful communication tools because people believe that more than anything else. That is the most convincing element.”

Sarah the Geek

“I’m a geeky filmmaker. That’s what I’ve been doing for 13 years. Anything about film making I love to geek out on.”

Interviewing Others

“I think the secret to a good interview depends on whether you’re trying to get a person’s story or trying to get a story out of them. There’s a web of six degrees of separation… everyone is very accessible and the more people that become accessible it opens a lot of doors. What I really wanted to do is capture a positive angle of growth and success, not only contributing to one personal success but also to what they are doing for their communities.”

“I feel like everybody in social media has something to give back to the community and my way of giving back is providing media, documenting and doing interviews.”

Acting

“I took a theater class once. I did act in an indie film that was about a video blogger, it was a horror film. I dabbled in it a little bit, but nothing serious.”

Alternative Careers

“If I had to do something else, it would be something sporty. I’d like to do something where I’m physically active. This might sound silly, but the career before I was thinking about before before was being a park ranger. I hike a lot. It’s beautiful here.”

Our SXSW 2011 Panel Proposal

“We’ll provide a lot of information about how to get a job using social media and how to leverage social media for your career.” http://bit.ly/votesxsw2011

Brandon Prebynski is an Emerging / Social Media Strategist at FKQ Advertising and Marketing and the host of a live USTREAM show called Web Trends. Brandon is one of the first people I “met” on Twitter; you can follow him @Prebynski.

Brandon and I have a panel proposal with Sarah Austin, Joel Cheesman, Christopher Kahle and Ryan Paugh for SXSW 2011 so please vote for us at http://bit.ly/howtogetajob before August 27th, 2010!

Listen to this entire episode of “The Social Nerdia Show!” with Brandon Prebynski on the Flash player below. You can also subscribe on iTunes, stream from your phone on Stitcher, and listen to upcoming shows LIVE on blogtalkradio.

Brandon recently joined FKQ so I asked him about his new role as a strategist. “It’s been great because within a set of guidelines I’ve been able to shape what the position is,” Brandon told me. He is helping clients create long-term strategies around marketing, customer service and product development.

He’s also been working on tracking, analysis and metrics. “We have this big myth out there that it’s really difficult to measure social media and there are many who say you can’t measure the results especially when it comes back to revenue, and that you can only look at trends over time, but frankly with the correct tools implemented correctly, you can sometimes measure it directly.”

Brandon and I agree that the best place to start is with the business’ goals and objectives in mind. If you’re already measuring simple things like the number of followers and Facebook ‘likes’ and comments, “you need to see how it helps you meet your objectives.”

While measuring the size of your community and the level of engagement within it is good, “if you don’t determine what your objectives and make your roadmap according to it, you’re going to be measuring engagement without knowing what engagement means.”

“Companies right now have to define what engagement is. Avinash (Kaushik) has said this many times: ‘the word engagement is an excuse.’  So what is engagement? It has to come back to your objectives as well. If you have lead generations as your objective and you have 500 leads generated over 3 weeks as your goal, then you could say that a user submitting their email address is engagement.  If you produce an online video and all you want is brand awareness, then a view can be engagement.

The word engagement overlaps a lot of times with conversion. We had x amount of conversions and that can be revenue, but isn’t always creating revenue; it could be someone submitting their email, loading a page, or making a purchase.”

Engagement is important when building community. iI you’re starting to build an audience that didn’t exist, then you can consider engagement the number of times that people communicate with you and each other within the community.”

The size of a community and the engagement within it build on each other, and they often demand a deep understanding of the context in which such connections and conversations occur in order to really understand what is happening and where people are coming from. The fact is that a lot of the tools available today can get expensive despite the fact that they often provide vague information like 90% neutral sentiment on a sentiment analysis and they often can’t even provide information (such as Twitter ReTweets). So we talked about context.

Brandon told me “thinking of context… if I’m driving down the road and I see a billboard that has a political message and I repeat that or if I even think about it in my head, i could compare it to a ReTweet.  Does that mean that I agree with that message? Do we even have the tools to crack that anywhere outside of social media right now? It’s a huge issue that requires a lot of work.”

Brandon and I talked about several other topics including the end of Google Wave, the rumors about Google Me, and his live show Web Trends (which is coming back to USTREAM soon!) so listen to The Social Nerdia Show! for much more.

I’ve often said that if I could live in “SXSW Land,” I would.
I’m only joking when I say that, but where else in the world can you find such a cool gathering of people creating and changing the future of music, film, and all things interactive?

That’s why I’ve put together two SXSW Interactive panel proposals for 2011 that I believe people will find interesting and valuable:

1. Samsung’s Social Media Journey Towards Customer-Centricity  with Cosmin Ghiurau @cosguru

2. How To Get A Job Using Social Media with Sarah Austin @pop17, Brandon Prebynski @Prebynski, Chris Kahle @chriskahle, Joel Cheeseman @cheezehead, myself @socialnerdia @samsungesteban, and moderator Ryan Paugh @paughginney 

It would be great if you created a SXSW PanelPicker account to vote for and comment on both of them. Your votes make up 30% of the decision. SXSW has already told me that they like both topics so your votes are extremely valuable.

To help us spread the word, click here to retweet on Twitter and click here to share on Facebook.

While I created this blog as a creative exploration of the convergence of tech, marketing, and social media, I also had two secondary goals in mind: To speak at SXSW Interactive in 2010 and to work full-time in social media within one year. Speaking at SXSW Interactive earlier this year was a great experience and Social Nerdia was definitely the platform that enabled me to join Samsung USA as Social Media Manager. I’ m very grateful for the many opportunities that have come from this tiny spec of Internet data called Social Nerdia. Thanks, as always, for reading. I hope to see you at South By next year.

I had the very cool opportunity to speak at this year’s SXSW Interactive as part of the Future15: Diversity series, which was organized by Glenda Bautista. The presentation, titled “The Online Latino: A New Digital Native,” was all about Latin Americans and the web. 

While it is a myth that Latin Americans are not online, only 30% of them are. The presentation went into the challenges (poverty, inequality, censorship, and the social/economic/digital divide), as well as what is changing (tech hubs, encouraging governments, businesses rolling out infrastructure, and a rapidly growing online community).

If you’re interested in learning more about what is happening online and offline in Latin America, including Streisand effects, citizen journalism, social networking, innovative start-ups, and stories about the people that are converting ideas into movements, check out the slides and videos below. Feedback (through email or comments) is appreciated

Thanks to Diego Contreras (aka Diegoliath) for helping me with the design, Jon Gipson for recording the video, and Kara Andrade for writing the original proposal with me and helping out with ideas, insights, and stats.

If you’re not on Foursquare… You should be.

Location + Badges = Utilitarian + Fun.

Here’s an informal SXSW Interactive session featuring Dennis Crowley (Foursquare), Christopher Barger (GM), and B. Bonin Bough (Pepsi).

There are two apps that make most of the other apps on my phones (I have both a Samsung Moment and a Palm Pre) seem almost useless. One is Stitcher (which lets you stream podcasts) and the other is Pandora. This is because audio is essential to me. Without something to stream on the way to work, while walking in Manhattan, or simply while relaxing at home, I would go a little crazy.

I’ve heard some people say that some of this year’s SXSW Interactive presentations were too “101.“ All I can say is that I attended some presentations/sessions/panels that were solid good. Some were technical in nature and others were more about the stories behind-the-scenes.

One of my favorite stories was that of Pandora, as told by their CTO Tom Conrad.

I opted not to go to Gary Vee’s presentation, the live Buzz Out Loud (I’m a huge fan), and many other ones at the same time because I wanted to learn more about Pandora. It was worth it.