Posted by Ellie Mirman on Thu, Aug 05, 2010 @ 10:06 AM
Earlier this week I flew down to sunny (aka sweltering hot) Orlando, FL to speak at the Online Marketing Summit. It was a great event (sadly I had to miss the second half, but the first half was fantastic) and I wanted to share my presentation with those who couldn't make it.
I had been wanting to talk about the role of content and how central it is to every marketing activity. Content is a key part of our (HubSpot's) marketing strategy, whether it's for getting found online by more prospects, converting more of those prospects into leads, or converting those leads into paying customers. This presentation reviews each piece of that marketing process and how content fits in at each stage. Enjoy!
Posted by Ellie Mirman on Fri, May 21, 2010 @ 03:38 PM
Today I had the great pleasure of speaking at the National Small Food Manufacturer's Conference in Omaha, Nebraska. It was my first time visiting Omaha (it's surprisingly cute!) and also my first time being around food manufacturers.
It was a fantastic time - I particularly enjoyed dinner the first night where I got to chat with some attendees who were true entrepreneurs, building their own businesses and launching their own lines of food products. I hope they learned from me as much as I did from them! (And I hope they take some of their expertise and start blogging!)
Below is my presentation. I have the audio as well that I will hopefully add to the slideshow in the future.
Posted by Ellie Mirman on Wed, Dec 16, 2009 @ 10:16 AM
I'm happy to announce that in just over a month, I'll be heading down to Miami for the MarketingSherpa Email Summit 2010. I had a fantastic time last year, but I'm ten times more excited about this year's event. Why? Here are my top 5 reasons:
1. See My Old Email Marketing Friends
Last year I met so many fantastic people. I got to finally meet some long-standing twitter friends, and meet a lot of new folks. Coming from an organization where I was the only email marketer at the time, hanging out with all email marketers was a dream come true. I've come a long way since then and can't wait to geek out all over again about email marketing.
2. New B2B Track!
The new B2B track is reason alone to go to the summit this year. The one thing that would have made last year's event better was more B2B content. There will be no less than 8 specifically B2B sessions this year, delivered by MarketingSherpa folks and real B2B marketers.
3. Could I Be Winning an Email Marketing Award?
I am up for a few of the MarketingSherpa Email Marketing Awards this year. It would be quite exciting if I actually won - considering usually the winners are very big name agencies producing B2C email marketing campaigns. An award going to a small B2B company that does all their email marketing with ~2 people? Amazing!
4. Keynote Speaker: Joseph Jaffe of crayon (and Free Book!)
This year MarketingSherpa is bringing together their usual group of fantastic speakers, plus a fantastic keynote speaker: Joseph Jaffe, President of the marketing agency crayon. His session, "Flip the Funnel: How to Use Existing Customers to Gain New Ones - Email's NEW Critical Role," is based on his book - which all attendees will also receive.
5. Miami in January? Yes, Please!
Of course, if the summit were in freezing cold Minnesota, I would surely still be going. But on top of everything, the summit is taking place in warm, sunny Miami, Florida. So in the middle of the ugliest, coldest time in New England, I'll be heading down to geek out in the sun.
I will surely be blogging and tweeting (hashtag #sherpaemail) about the event in the coming months, so stay tuned. Or, join me at the 2010 Email Summit (and just for reading this, get $600 off the ticket price).
Posted by Ellie Mirman on Fri, Sep 25, 2009 @ 07:31 AM
Last night I finally made it out to my first DartBoston Pokin' Holes event and I was on a panel of three critiquing Launch Into Boston.
Overall, it was a great experience - met some great people and got to talk about a really interesting business. Full video is below, but here are the basics:
DartBoston: DartBoston is a community of young entrepreneurs and professionals in the Boston area.
Pokin' Holes: DartBoston holds a live weekly video podcast and event called "Pokin' Holes" that evaluates and provides feedback to young entrepreneurs starting new ventures.
Launch Into Boston: This week we evaluated Launch Into Boston, a service for recent college graduates and young professionals to transition into life in Boston.
Panelists: Jason Evanish, Neha Patadia, and myself, and moderated by DartBoston's Cort Johnson
Big thanks to Cort and DartBoston for inviting me to join the panel. It was a great time and I'm sure I'll be back!
Posted by Ellie Mirman on Fri, Jun 12, 2009 @ 08:00 AM
Yesterday I did a presentation on How to Promote an Event with Inbound Marketing for the Lower Colorado River Authority (LCRA) Social Media Marketing conference. Since I'm here in Massachusetts, and the event was out in Texas, I did the presentation via a live webinar and recorded the session.
Here is the full presentation video, plus the slides below. Enjoy!
Posted by Ellie Mirman on Thu, Apr 30, 2009 @ 06:48 AM
As perhaps the unofficial official blogger of my family, and also a well-intentioned member of society, I feel it is my duty to share this wonderful read. The Will to Whatevs is the ultimate self-help book for dealing with all of life's twists and turns, from school to marriage to death. Perhaps in that order, but perhaps not.
This guidebook comes from the very funny Eugene Mirman. I won't dare try to compete with Eugene's hilarity, but instead will share some of my favorite bits from his book...
The purpose of this book is clear.
"Our grandparents may have had twelve-hour workdays in dangerous, filthy factories, and limited medicine, but they can't imagine how hard it is to list your favorite bands on a social networking site in a way that maximizes what strangers think of you. Some of our parents may have gone to college, but did they temp at a weird PR firm or software company?"
This book provides very practical tips, including ideas for college essay topics, including:
- How old people and young people are the same in so many ways, except age.
- A concert or reading you went to that had a powerful affect on you.
- How you overcame adversity (and tricking someone slightly older into having sex does not count).
- How people are animals, but shouldn't be hunted.
- Reasons it's wrong to be racist even though it makes sense to you.
- Pearl Jam.
- How your parents met their new spouses.
- The perfect murder.
- Your favorite places to throw up.
- An essay title, "If I Were Eric Clapton..."
On explaining family relations, these words of wisdom may have held true when I was younger...
Good Uncle, Bad Influence: "Being an uncle is like being a rock star no one but your niece or nephew has heard of."
If you plan on coming out as gay,
"The best place to tell your parents you are a homosexual person from now on (no changing your mind back after college, okay?) is at a fancy restaurant... In the middle of the meal, show them a Vogue magazine (if you're a guy) or a Popular Mechanics (if you're a lady) and go, 'This is me now, and you have to accept it.' If they are confused, whisper, 'I'm gay.' The point of this roundabout exercise is the joy of deduction. Giving your parents clues and making them figure out that you're gay will give them a sense of accomplishment that will balance their initial shock."
And, of course, some wise career counseling.
"A new job is like a new glove. You are excited, but it's just a glove. Still, maybe it will fit well?"
And I can't help but have a soft spot for this section:
The Internet: How to Harness the Power and Reach of New Media: "Make a music video of all your friends fighting in a forest with animals. Make sure the animals are dangerous, but not too dangerous. So no one gets seriously hurt. Put that footage to your catchiest song and post it on YouTube. Then just wait. I forgot to add that everyone (including the animals) should be in their underwear."
Also, a while back I went to New York for the book release party for The Will to Whatevs. Brooklyn Vegan had a good recap of the event.
Posted by Ellie Mirman on Thu, Mar 19, 2009 @ 07:24 AM
I've been meaning to write about this for a while, and what better time than just after a great trip to Miami for a marketing conference. I think traditionally marketers are seen as outgoing, social people who can strike up great conversations with whomever they meet. That is not me. I'm the shy girl at the party, who might hang out by the food table in the hopes of striking up a conversation about vegetable dips with an unsuspecting hungry guest.
When I first interviewed at HubSpot, I remember getting the "inbound marketing vision" from Dharmesh, our quiet genious of a co-founder. He told me how the Internet gives us opportunities to interact with people in new ways, on their own time and comfort level. While at a party, you might find him quietly standing alone on the sidelines, online he finds it much easier to write and interact on blogs and social media. There's something - and this is my $0.02 - freeing about writing your thoughts versus saying them aloud. Similarly, there's something freeing about interacting with people online versus in person.
But here's where we can take it to the next level. What I find so cool about the uninhibited social media interactions is that by the time you meet a social media connection "IRL" (in real life - social media speak LOL), you already have a relationship with them and you can jump past that awkward hi-my-name-is stage. By the time you meet in person, you're already long-time friends.
And that's exactly what happened to me this week, at the MarketingSherpa Email Marketing Summit down in Miami. At first, being the shy marketer that I am, I was a little anxious about going to the event and socializing with folks. But then I discovered that my long-time twitter friend, DJ Waldow, was going to be there. Of course! How could I forget that DJ worked for an email marketing company. From there, I discovered even more social media connections.
With the designated event hashtag, #emailsummit, all the event twitterers created a pseudo chatroom for the event on twitter. I would be sitting in a session, essentially chatting with the other twitterers about the content being presented, or about plans for that evening after the conference sessions. What was an event of 500 strangers turned into a friendly group of about a dozen twitterers.
I got to hang out with some great people this week, while of course learning all about email marketing, including: DJ Waldow, Adam Covati, Brandon Wilkins, Lucas Weber, Justin Premick, Erin Malone, GregoryNG, Big Jason, Karen Talavera, Luke, Jeff Rohrs, Judith Soto, and more. Unfortunately, there were even a few more tweeps at the event that I didn't get to meet. Hopefully at the next event.
So with all this said and done, I maintain - social media is not (just) for the social marketer. Social media has allowed this non-social marketer - in multiple ways - to make great connections with people whom I might otherwise never have met.
Photo by nereski
Posted by Ellie Mirman on Fri, Mar 13, 2009 @ 07:44 AM
There's nothing like a great conference to really get lots of thoughts and ideas jumping around in your head, just waiting for a blog post to flush them out. Yesterday I drove down to Randolph, MA for Geek Girl Camp Boston to talk to women about how to use inbound marketing and, specifically, Facebook, for business and afterwards I was so energized with blog post ideas about marketing and Facebook and social media newbies.
But that's not really what this blog post is about. I'm actually pretty new to the conference speaker role, and I was excited to get some experience at this event. Feedback was great (thank you all!), but of course I want to improve. I'll be the first to admit that I have a tendency to be a bit wordy and confusing when I try to explain things that I know too much about. I definitely fall victim to the Curse of Knowledge and need to work on better explaining things I know a lot about, like Facebook.
So when I got home last night, I pulled out (one of the four books I'm currently reading) Made to Stick to pick up where I left off (months ago... I really need to focus on one book at a time). Made to Stick has been one of the best business books I have ever read, really helping me with this Curse of Knowledge that I so easily fall victim to. Something that occurred to me - both in observing the authors' writing style and also the section specifically on Concrete ideas being "sticky" - was that concrete examples or case studies can be a huge help in delivering your idea in an effective way while also overcoming the Curse! By using real life examples of what you're explaining, a reader or listener can more easily remember your story. Also, by using case studies, you paint a picture that is worth a thousand words - your audience can fully experience what you're talking about, draw their own conclusions, and all at the same time, you make a lot more sense by not being so abstract.
Uh oh, I'm falling victim to it again. I'm being too abstract and not using concrete examples! So let's try this again.
In my presentation at GGC, I spent a lot of time talking about the news feed, about business Pages, about Facebook applications. Sure, I was giving step-by-step instructions for setting up a Page, but I still got a lot of questions like, "What if I don't want my clients to see my friends' kids' photos?" or "Should I use my real name?" -- questions more easily answered by just jumping in and seeing how Facebook works from a user's perspective.
Here's what I could have done: logged in to Facebook. Shown the news feed. Look! My friend Dan posted a link to his latest blog post. Mike uploaded a video of his son. Ashley became a fan of Flight of the Conchords. From there, we could go look at the Flight of the Conchords Page on Facebook. We could look at Ashley's profile, that shows she's a fan of that Page. And we remember that her action of becoming a fan actually showed up when I logged in. That's pretty cool.
That's one idea. By making it a lot more concrete, people can see exactly what Facebook is and how it works and will (hopefully) be better able to jump in using it.
What I especially like about the case study approach is that I can still allow myself to be wordy... But in this case, my words are used to describe a story. They add color and texture, and at the end, the listener can get a fuller experience of the picture, instead of me throwing a thousand words at them to describe the picture. I'm hoping from now on I'll try to paint more pictures... and not write any more dissertations.
Posted by Ellie Mirman on Thu, Mar 05, 2009 @ 08:01 AM
Next week, I'll be heading out to Randolph, MA for Geek Girl Camp Boston to speak on How to Use Facebook for Business.
Geek Girl Camp is an unconference specifically for women who want to learn how to use different forms of technology for business.
I'll be speaking on something I know way too much about - Facebook. Specifically, how to use Facebook to market your business. That includes: an introduction to Facebook, how to create a business presence, how to market your business on Facebook, and what and how to measure your Facebook marketing efforts. I'll also be speaking with Rebecca Corliss on the basics of inbound marketing. (Also my coworker Karen "Katie Couric in training" Rubin will be speaking at the event too. We're going to have quite the crew there.)
Got a specific question about using Facebook for your business? Leave a comment below. I'm happy to answer all sorts of questions, either in the presentation (which we'll hopefully record) or on my blog. And if you're going to be at Geek Girl Camp, be sure to find me and say hi! Will be nice to meet some blogging / social media friends.
P.S. Hear about all the changes coming to Facebook Business Pages? If you want to hear more, I blogged about them over on the HubSpot blog.
Posted by Ellie Mirman on Sun, Feb 22, 2009 @ 11:28 AM
It's been a crazy week for us over at HubSpot - and I swear this time it's crazier than usual.
HubSpot 1K Customers Celebration
First up, we had our HubSpot 1K Customers Party, at which we had probably 200 HubSpot employees, customers, friends, and family join us in our new office to celebrate our 1,000 customer base.
We had HubSpot TV live, SWAG and temporary tattoo stations, tarot readings, foosball, RockBand, and, of course, food and drinks. It was a rockin' time, as the photos will illustrate.
MC Hammer Visits HubSpot TV
And the very next day, just to top the biggest company party ever, we had a surprise visit from - are you ready for this - MC HAMMER. Yup, he just happened to be in town and decided to visit our little ol' internet marketing startup.
Really, what happened was another twitter success story. He tweeted that he was in Boston, a number of HubSpotters responded, saying he should stop by... and he did! As my fellow HubSpotter, Rebecca Corliss, said, twitter really does level the networking playing field. Could you ever imagine our little software company getting a celebrity like that to come to our office?
View a short clip from his visit to HubSpot TV:
World Wide Rave Video
Now, just to top it all off, today David Meerman Scott posted a new video that features over 100 people who have created World Wide Raves (triggering people to spread their ideas and share their stories for free). Watch carefully for my cameo at about 1:12 (right after John Hodgman). David was very nice to even credit me in his post - thanks David!
P.S. - David's new book, World Wide Rave is pretty awesome (I got an advance copy - thanks again, David!) and it officially comes out at the beginning of March, though online sales have already begun.