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 Tue, Apr 06, 2010 @ 08:30 AM
Last week I had the fun opportunity to fill in for the oh-so-provocative Karen Rubin by co-hosting HubSpot TV. It was a pretty perfect week in marketing for me, with lots of news on Facebook and email marketing! Check out the full episode below or on the HubSpot blog.
Posted by Ellie Mirman on Thu, Sep 03, 2009 @ 10:23 AM
Sup dawg, I heard you like The Office, so I put The Office in your office so you can play The Office in your office.
The [Marketing] Office: How @HubSpot Learned Twitter ("The Office" Spoof)
Credits
Director, Producer and Film Editor: Rebecca Corliss (@repcor)
Cast
Mike "Michael Scott" Volpe (@mvolpe)
Dan "Dwight" Zarrella (@danzarrella)
Rick "Jim" Burnes (@rickburnes)
Ellie "Pam" Mirman (@ellieeille)
Karen "Angela" Rubin (@karenrubin)
Prashant "Oscar" Kaw (@prashantkaw)
Dan Tyre (as himself)
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 Tue, May 19, 2009 @ 02:38 PM
Recently I made my radio debut on Career Life Balance Radio as part of their "Marketing Minutes" segment. My segments are focusing on "How to Use Facebook for Business". Listen below for my surprisingly high-pitched Facebook for Business Tips.
Part 1:How to Use Facebook to Market Your Business
Part 2: How to Get More Facebook Fans
Part 3: How to Get the Most Out of Facebook Ads
Photo credit: foraggio
Posted by Ellie Mirman on Thu, May 07, 2009 @ 12:26 PM
I won't even attempt to deny I'm not a marketing geek. One of the things I loved about Kyle James' blog post "Jokes: 36 Reasons You Might be Addicted to Social Media" was "#6: You own the Google search results for your name." That definitely held true for me.
Here are all the top results for my name - x right in a row.
- My blog
- My blog "about me" page
- Twitter
- Facebook
- FriendFeed
- MITX
- LinkedIn
- Twitterholic
- SEMPO Meetup
- AMA Boston
- Amazon.com
- RSSmeme
- one of my recent tweets
- BoardReader
- one of my flickr photos
- my comment on a blog post
- Digg
- FriendFeed (again!)
- Tweetree
- another flickr photo
- Twitter mobile
- a mention on another blog
- BackType
- Insightory presentation I did on Twitter
- HubSpot blog article I posted
- my comment on a blog post
- a reposting of one of my articles from the HubSpot blog
- my comment on a blog post
- SlideShare presentation I did on Inbound Marketing
- my comment on a blog post
- my listing as a speaker for Geek Girl Camp
OK, I'll stop there. The results actually go on and on - and rightfully all about me. I actually made it 12 results pages deep before giving up on finding that first non-me-related result! Of course, I understand that there aren't a lot of Ellie Mirmans out there (if any!), and that even my first or my last name separately are not very common. But, damn, that was a lot of content!
Some things I realized:
- It's easy to create a lot of bits of content. I don't consider myself to be such a prolific writer / content producer (at least for the public web). Most of the results were either profiles on different social media sites, blog comments, presentations I had posted on sharing sites, or blog posts themselves.
- I've got a lot of social media profiles. Set up, not necessarily in use. Funny enough, they're almost ranked in the order in which I use them the most. First Twitter, then Facebook, then LinkedIn... In any case, social media profiles rank very well because of the reputation and optimization of the sites, and this actually serves as a good way for helping people connect with you online even via a Google search.
- What do your search results say about you? At first I was going to say, no one searches for your name (most likely) anyway, so who cares. But really, there may be a few who do, and they are probably either (1) trying to find/connect with you or (2) trying to learn more about you. Getting found in these top search results ensures that you're enabling connections. And producing more content ensures that you have good results (instead of potentially damaging results) at the top. What do my search results say about me? Well, that I work at HubSpot, and I'm pretty active in social media.
Of course, for those folks out there with less content or more competition for their name on the web, the Google profile gives everyone a good opportunity to get prime real estate on the first page of search results for their name.
Photo by silvery
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 Wed, Feb 25, 2009 @ 12:59 PM
Scott Kirsner of the Boston Globe came by our offices to talk to Brian Halligan, HubSpot CEO, to talk about how people can find a job (in or out of a recession, really).
In short: use blogs and social media to build your personal brand and expertise online so that companies find you and know who you are before you even send in a resume.
Watch the video:
Posted by Ellie Mirman on Mon, Feb 23, 2009 @ 08:15 AM
I love Twitter for a lot of reasons. One is that I get great links to articles and stories and all sorts of interesting things to read and think about. That's exactly what happened to me today, when I was checking out some of my new followers.
I was directed to this article about using social media for personal branding. This is a classic topic, but this article, though short, had some nice tidbits.
Do some pre-social media soul-searching before starting 
Most articles about using social media for personal branding jump right into the listening, participating, and publishing aspects. Few actually make the point to step back, figure out who you are and what value you provide, before jumping into the rest.
Some time ago I tried to figure out what I was going to do with this blog. So far, it's been a crazy mix of posts on anything from rants about facebook to funny YouTube videos to updates on what I happen to be cooking in the kitchen that week. Yep, not focused at all. Part of the reason is I haven't figured out who I'm writing for. Is it my friends and family who want to know what I've been up to? Or is it my marketing community where I live and interact all day every day on a professional level. This is where I really start to understand the whole business vs. personal social media dilemma.
So it's time for me to take a step back. Figure out who I'm writing for, and why. This is a hugely important step when you're going to use social media for personal branding.
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.