Its not every day that one of the big five automakers comes to Madison WI. Our friends over at Social Media Breakfast Madison have asked and been rewarded with the presence of Scott Monty, Ford’s Global Digital Multimedia Communications Director, coming to Madison on January 18, 2012 at the Monona Terrace. RSVP on Eventbrite – no walk-ins day of.

Sponsors

With the sponsorship of Ford, presenting sponsor Shoutlet, and new kid on the block Engaging Social helping out, the Madison social media professional community as well as  business owners, and people who like a great presentation will be able to attend for free.

Additional supporting sponsors are Lands’ End Business Outfitters with a very cool canvas bag to house other donated SWAG items from local businesses.  A regular contributor to SMB Madison is Suttle Straus who makes a mean decal for your car or business front door.

RSVP

Get in on the fun and education if you are an early riser. Unlike our Madison SMC events that happen at night, SMB Madison gets up at ungodly hours of the morning, supplies hot and steamy coffee and food for your belly.

They do require you to register for tickets for this event, but guess what, its free so humor them and RSVP at Eventbrite. This event will not allow seating for people who just show up at the door due to space limitations.

At the time of this writing, over 200 people have registered and a wait list has been started.  We expect additional seats will be released in the next week so get your name on the list.  Let’s make sure to show Scott Monty how Madison’s business community can fill a room!

If you have questions about the event you can email smbmad at gmail dot com.  Or give them a shout out on Twitter @smbmad

It’s time again for the annual Social Media Club Jingle Mingle! To make this year even brighter, we will be joining forces with Social Media Breakfast Madison for more jingling and mingling!

Twitter this event: @madisonSMC is holding another holiday #jinglemingle!If you’re in the #Madison area, you should come! http://bit.ly/vqSloz

Get your gear ready! Use a flip, camera, your phone, or an Ipod. We don’t care.

We could use some additional sponsors so if you, your company or someone you know is interested in sponsoring the club or the event, please contact madisonsmc@gmail.com with “I want to be a sponsor” in the subject line  – there are still sponsorships available!

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• Let’s Get Bombed: Guest Bartenders at AJ Bombers – October 25 (madisonsmc.org)
• Suds N Sun – Social Networking with AD2 Madison for Toast of Tuesday! (madisonsmc.org)

Facebook-Email

Today, I got a message on Facebook from someone that wanted to use my services. Actually, I got an email on Facebook, then got a message to make sure to check my Facebook email. Only problem is – I don’t check my Facebook as much as I do email. It begs the question: do I need to be more attentive to my Facebook email over regular email? Will I miss an important message because they sent it via the social network?

I know what you’re thinking when I say email – junk, junk, junk, junk, nigerian email scam, junk, junk… But for me, email is my primary communication in this online world. The best part about email is I can keep important messages in one spot. Most people now have a email account, so contacting someone is not a problem.

But now with Social Network Direct Messaging – or as Facebook likes to believe “Facebook Email”, you can message someone in the social network over your conventional email. It does have advantage, like not having to know their email address. But is it a secure way to do business?

I get really concerned when it comes to conducting business over Facebook email. Not as much privacy (even though that is a big issue), more of the fact that I might forget about their email, or worse, if you need to pull that information later in life, will you find it?

Facebook is now on the kick of holding everything you can throw at it. If you post something in Facebook, expect it to stay in Facebook for years to come.

Connecting with someone on Facebook, or even LinkedIn is a great idea. It can even give you contact details that you can use to connect with this person. It’s always a good idea to make sure those details are populated so a person can get a hold of you.

Cleanup You Website

This month is National Blog Posting Month (NaBloPoMo). This is where you get a little more serious about your blog and put up content for the month. We at Social Media Club Madison are trying to do the same. But it’s not only about posting new blogs, it’s about realizing the blogs that keep people coming back and improving on them.

Yes. You can improve on an old blog post. I do it all the time. Just today, I was re-editing a post on Geekazine about Blockbuster. If something changes, or if a small addition is needed that doesn’t need a new post, then I’ll clean up my old posts and add content.

Watch your Stats for Trends

The first thing I do is go into my stats pages and see what people are reading on my website. If you do not have a stats page on your blog, you should really get one. I suggest JetPack for WordPress.

There are 3rd party site programs for those who are on other content management systems. Something like Woopra will give you an idea who’s coming to your site, where they are from and what pages they visit.

Read and Correct

I am not an English major. I make grammatical mistakes all the time. However, when I re-visit a post, I can see it with “fresh eyes”.

I like to read the post aloud. When I stumble on a point, I review it. If I see redundancy in the post (ex: if you see “…that the…” in your writing, you have redundancy. Take out one or the other. It will depend on the situation of which one, however, you will not need both.), I remove it.

A new reader will not know I had mistakes on my site for so many months (or even years). I can also add SEO and other links as they become relevant.

Turn Spellcheck into a Learning Tool.

Here’s a little trick: If you get a word you misspelled, don’t rely on the computer spellcheck right away. Delete the word and re-spell it. Try it a few times, then when you are stumped, let the spell checker do it’s magic. You might find that your spelling will start to improve because of your attentiveness to the words.

Adding Content – Adding Edit notes

Some people will add a footnote saying something was edited after the post was published. This is a great idea if there was a correction. It’s even better if someone calls it out and you correct, referencing that person’s Twitter, Website or Facebook profile. You never know if someone will re-tweet an article if their name shows up as an editor.

You never know when an old post can become new again. I have had posts re-surface because of a news article, or a special on a product (in which they read the review I put out months ago). Cleaning up the post grows your SEO and could gain fans to your site. It’s not cheating – it’s rectifying a situation.

Jeffrey Powers Questions on this article? Feel free to twitter me @geekazine or email me directly at geekazine@gmail.com. Jeffrey Powers is a Video Content Creator, and Social Media Life Coach at Geekazine.com. He has been working in social media for over 5 years. He is also an IT Administrator for over 15 years and a Madison native.