The Apt Marketer

If you work in marketing in any capacity, you've probably heard of Sysomos. Travis Bradley from the Sysomos team was kind enough to spend a few minutes chatting about some of the innovative ways companies are using social media listening and analysis. What You’ll Learn From This Interview: Hear how companies are using social media listening in for insights and innovation Hear how companies use social media listening to improve products and marketing assets

Bhavin Parikh is co-founder and CEO at Magoosh, a company that creates online test prep products. He received his BS in Economics and Computer Science from Duke University and his MBA from the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley. Bhavin loves advising startups on growing their ideas and crafting great user experiences. What You’ll Learn From This Interview: How can I use an expert in my field to grow my digital audience? How can I use keyword search drivers to shape my content? How can I survey my users to create better, more relevant content? How can I integrate email into my social media program? How can I use ebooks to extend my social media content? How do I get an audience for my ebooks?

Steven Place earned a degree from the University of Central Florida in Electrical Engineering with specializations in Signals Processing, Stochastics, and Random Processes. After a brief stay in the defense industry, he founded investingwithoptions.com and used Twitter and other social media funnels to make a name for himself. What You’ll Learn From This Interview: What other sources work in tandem with social media to funnel prospects and sell your services? How do you move prospects to sales after introducing them through social media? How do you manage social media content? What is the difference between B2B and B2C in social media marketing?

David Cohen is an award-winning producer who began working with Writers of the Round Table, Inc. as Director of Publishing and Client Relations. Since then, he has taken on roles his big-picture perspective was made for: VP and Chief Strategist. After appearing in dozens of films, commercials, and television shows, David graduated from Rollins College in 2002 with a degree in theatre. Eager to put his entrepreneurial spirit to use, he founded 1421 Productions, producing and co-producing more than 17 films ranging in format from DV to HD to 35mm. He produced Gretchen Brettschneider Skirts Thirty with Elevation 9000 Films, winning the Best Short Film Award at the San Diego Film Festival in 2003, among other awards. David also launched LA Film Lab Entertainment, a filmmakers’ consortium, with which he developed and produced two original screenplays, formed and taught courses on the business of production and artistry, and directed a documentary for The Make-A-Wish Foundation© of greater Los Angeles as a wish granted for a child; Fox News featured the film’s premiere. Venturing away from the film world in style, his last project was working with Academy- and Emmy Award-nominated director Peter Spirer, producing the documentary Notorious B.I.G. Bigger Than Life, with Rugged Entertainment (released by Image Entertainment [DISK] in September 2007). The same year, David was featured in the book Millennial Leaders as an emerging leader in Generation Y, and had the pleasure of speaking on a panel at the 2007 International Coaching Federation (ICF) conference in Long Beach, CA. Read more about David on the Round Table Companies website, or check out his bio as a comic (a great example of the creative work his company is doing). What You'll Learn From This Interview: How does Round Table Companies engage location independent staff through social media? How does staff engagement through social media help with marketing efforts for the company as a whole? How does the team combine external social media communications with internal communications? How can my company start engaging the internal team through social media today? What other companies are doing this well?

I first met Ryan Schram back in 2006 when I was a senior at Michigan State University and he was working at ePrize. The company had a book club, and Ryan loaned me the book he had just finished, Life After the 30 Second Spot by Joseph Jaffe. The book led me to start listening to podcasts and start my own over the next few months. My first podcast ended up shaping my career. It landed me a scholarship to be a part of the International Advertising Festival in Cannes, France, it led to my first job with Burson Marsteller, and it helped me land an incredible role within Edelman's digital department in 2008 (which subsequently led me down the path I'm on today, running my own social media monitoring and research company, Loudpixel). It was only natural that I should go back to the source for an interview after all of these years. Ryan is now the CMO for Izea, the pioneer of social media sponsorship. He was kind enough to take the time to share a few specific case studies with us. What You’ll Learn From This Interview: What does a social media sponsorship look like? How do we measure the success of social media sponsorships? Hear specific case studies How does Izea work? How do they find influencers?

Thursday Bram is the founder of Hyper Modern Consulting, a company that provides content creation and content marketing services. You can find Thursday on Twitter. What You’ll Learn From This Interview: What is the difference between creating online content versus print content? How do I research my niche audience before I start writing? As a writer, what tools can I use to organize my research and thoughts? How can I use content creation in niche markets to market myself or my brand?

Jeff Widman has been quoted as an expert in Facebook marketing by CNN, The Wall Street Journal, Advertising Age, Wired, Mashable, TechCrunch, Inc Magazine, Entrepreneur, InsideFacebook, AllFacebook and others. He helped YouTube become the fastest growing fan page in all of Facebook, and he has advised companies such as Microsoft, Washington Redskins and Mint.com. Jeff couldn't find a tool that provided the information he needed to be a better Facebook marketer, so he co-founded PageLever the Facebook analytics tool for marketers that care about results. Currently PageLever measures more than 1 billion Facebook fans for customers like MTV, Mashable, and Intel. PageLever is a Facebook Preferred Marketing Developer. 4 of the 10 largest Facebook pages rely on PageLever. What You’ll Learn From This Interview: How can I use Facebook analytics to create more relevant content for my Facebook page? What is EdgeRank, and how will it influence my Facebook marketing? What new opportunities has Facebook developed for marketers to reach highly relevant audiences? Resources: How to Educate Bosses, Colleagues and Clients about Facebook Marketing (PDF Whitepaper) Learn more about EdgeRank

Chris Kelly is a serial entrepreneur who has twice been recognized in Inc. Magazine’s “30 Under 30” for co-founding Sentry Centers and evoJets. Unique in contrast to other young entrepreneurs, Chris focuses on capital and human intensive "brick and mortar" businesses where there is long-term opportunity for achieving sustained competitive advantage and market share. Chris co-founded Sentry Centers with partner Ryan Simonetti in 2009 to capitalize on converging trends in real estate and workplace collaboration by re-purposing commercial office space into full service conference centers. In 2011 Sentry served over 50,000 attendees and 64% of NY's Fortune 500 Companies in two locations totaling over 70,000 sq.ft. of real estate. The company and its 60 member team are on track to exceed $14mm in revenues in 2012 and expect to more than double capacity in 2013. What You’ll Learn From This Interview: How does Sentry Centers generates organic web traffic through SEO? How does Sentry Centers use content and social media to market the business? How does the team staff for social media marketing? How does the team measure success in order to tweak its marketing approach?

Steve Rappaport is the Knowledge Solutions Director for The Advertising Research Foundation, responsible for creating the knowledge resources, tools and services which help members build brands. His book, Listen First! draws upon his decades of experience in listening for market research and for creating listening-based business strategies, services and companies. Steve had the good fortune to train under a number of distinguished professors who pioneered media content analysis. He advises companies as diverse as Campbell, Toyota, Warner Bros., and Kaiser Permanente. What You’ll Learn From This Interview: Why is listening to social media conversations important for companies? What is an insight? How do we staff for listening? What is the difference between social media monitoring and social research?

Ryan Paugh is a community-building expert with a track record for building organizations that help people connect, learn, grow and have fun. He’s one of the founders of Brazen Careerist, a community where ambitious young professionals come to learn and grow. In 2009, Mashable called Brazen Careerist the number one social network for Generation Y. Ryan is the Chief of Staff for the Young Entrepreneur Council, which he co-founded with Scott Gerber. What You’ll Learn From This Interview: Hear how Ryan Paugh and Scott Gerber grew an invite-only community from zero to hundreds of targeted active members Learn how the YEC grew media partnerships with top tier media outlets Hear about best practices for community management Find out what marketers can learn from entrepreneurs Find out the most important factor for a successful social community