Tech Forward:

I met the Make Mine Pink ladies (the Pink People) while speaking at the Country Living Magazine Entrepreneur Conference earlier this year in Chicago.

It was love at first sight for me and for them.

They just interviewed me about social media, and I’ll be keynoting their private retreat in September.

I say some smart stuff about social media and offer some great advice. Check it out!

These are some of the questions I was asked by Jim Kukral while he interviewed me for his Daily Flip podcast.

Interesting conversation; and it’s amazing to see how fast 10 minutes can fly by when you’re running your trap!

Head over to Jim’s blog and take a listen….

OK, OK. I’ve been promising the results from the Communitelligence Social Media Resistance survey, which were released at the Executing Social Media Conference in Pasadena, California, with the help of USC’s Marshall School of Business.

Here they are. Don’t say I never gave you anything (opens in PPT)

I think the results are interesting and telling. I love how the larger a company is, the more it thinks podcasting isn’t useful for its branding. Nope, bigger companies think RSS feeds are all the rage for branding. (Are they serious?)

However, the scrappy small businesses know that online video is where it’s at. For all the small business owners reading this, don’t feel bad–you “get it” more than corporate at this point. Good on ya’!

And of all the respondents, a full 89 percent of companies think their social media adoption is below average or average. Whooty whoot! That means more business for my company!

What are your thoughts about the results?

Well, two possibly new clients and two new speaking invites later, I made it home from the Executing Social Media conference in lovely Pasadena. (I could so totally live there!)

We all had a great time, and what was most important to me, I think, was that all the attendees finally realized that they’re not “losers” for not being fully engaged with social media. There are multibillion-dollar brands that can’t yet use social media effectively, so no one should feel bad.

Social media has such a “keep up with the Joneses” element to it that companies with perfectly good marketing strategies and strong brands sometimes feel like they’re doing a horrible job.

Take that energy and put it into getting started. If you don’t have the resources or interest (or are just too leery) to launch your own social media initiative, use what I call O.P.S. (Other People’s Social) to dip your toe in the water . . . comment on other blogs and connect with people through offering advice and guidance in online communities. Never forget that you have to give to get.

And if you don’t want to be that active, just listen. Set up a Google Alert for your name, the name of your company, products, services and other phrases or unique words associated with your brand. You might even set up a Google Alert for the name of your industry–commercial construction, for example–to find out what’s being said about your industry overall.

The point is to start.

P.S. I’m still trying to get my hands on the social media resistance survey results from the Executing Social Media conference. When they’re uploaded, I’ll link to them. Thanks for your patience.

Well, I arrived safely here in Los Angeles to speak at the Executing Social Media conference tomorrow. I could have done without the toddler who screamed all the way from Kansas to Los Angeles, though. Someone should have told her that’s not the kind of social media we mean.

I read on Peter Shankman’s Twitter feed that he’s arrived here, as well. If you don’t know who Peter Shankman is, find out by subscribing to his Help A Reporter Out (HARO) service. It’s real, legitimate, free leads for media coverage. My company has received some great coverage by responding to some of the queries that come through his mailing list–and no, it’s not just tech stuff.

I took a nice walk around Old Town Pasadena today and I really like it. I can live here, but lately I’ve been saying that a lot about everyplace but New York. Hmmm . . . maybe there’s a small change brewing?

Pasadena is great, relaxed and the peeps are really friendly. You can wear flip-flops in just about every fancy restaurant. I collect art and I try to pick up pieces from my travels, so I asked a few local Pasadenans what Pasadena is famous for and they all said the Rose Parade. Soooooo . . . since I missed that, I’ll take a few pictures of the gorgeous architecture and leave it at that. Maybe I’ll have a fewshots framed.

Anyway . . . the conference starts tomorrow. I’ll try to do some live blogging, but I have a session to lead and a roundtable to orchestrate, so I’ll do what I can to keep you informed of what’s going on here.

Stay tuned…

This year, I’m leading the Social Media Hot Seat Lab at the Marketing Profs’ Business-to-Business Forum in Boston on June 9and 10.

If you want to go and need a discount–and want to see my smiling face–here’s your code to save $350 on registration before May 19 and $250 after that date: ESPK08

Dillydally not.

I’m writing this from my my hotel in Sin City (Las Vegas).

I’ve been here for the past three days attending BlogWorld Expo and speaking at the PostieCon conference.

Yesterday, Mark Cuban delivered a rousing closing keynote at BlogWorld Expo. Mark was approachable, honest, real and generous with his time. BlogWorld Expo was an honest effort by the organizers to say something real about the current state of social media and where we’re headed. Admittedly, there were little snafus like the famous Mike Arrington no-show and Arianna Huffington canceling at the last minute…but, what’s news about that, right? And, every conference has something go wrong here and there.

Overall I thought BlogWorld Expo was solid–with great speakers like Jeremiah Owyang, Marc Harty, Jim Kukral and Dan Rua. Although I heard from some exhibitors who felt they were nickeled and dimed and that the attendance that BlogWorld promised them was not there–even though 1,700 people showed up.

PostieCon book-ended the conference today (Saturday) and offered some awesome speakers as well. I spoke on a panel with Jim and Shirley Frazier, and Dan Rua was our moderator.

PostieCon had a great fan-like energy to it and Ted was right in there with us…even during the cake plow!

It certainly was good to see Shirley Frazier again and I also ran into Mark Harty and met Dave Taylor and Nate Westheimer for the first time in person.

Many times people ask me why I attend these events. Well, mostly because I’m usually a speaker, but also because it helps to put faces to names. I have lost count of how many times I’ve met someone at a conference who I had previously only known via email.

It builds community, and that’s what this ’social media thing’ is really all about.

P.S. PayPerPost (now IZEA) has totally overhauled its platform. The developer, Pete, is a god among men. We all got a sneak preview of SocialSpark today–and all I have to say is that it turns conventional metrics and social networking on their heads. Wowie! Read more about it on Jim Kukral’s blog here.