While going through some audio files this morning, I discovered I had a few audio files I forgot to post from BIG Omaha.

Here is Ben Rattray, founder of Change.org, talking about using social media for social good.

Though it’s not easy to make every single thing you do count toward the greater good, Rattray shared his ideas on solving world issues through technology.

“The best and brightest minds we have, in many cases, are working on problems that don’t matter,” Rattray said during his presentation.

A few weeks ago I connected with Tim Patterson (@tradeshowguy) through HARO (Help a Reporter Out).

Tim works for Interpretive Exhibits, a company that helps design exhibits and trade shows for museums and visitor centers.

Tim also has a blog and wrote an e-book called “Twittering Your Way to Tradeshow Success.”

He interviewed me for a recent podcast on the same topic.

Take a listen and let us know how you’ve used Twitter at any live event.

Did it add to your experience? How did it help you find information? Did you meet new people?

Also, be sure to download his e-book. It’s FREE, and I’m featured on p. 38!

In my experience, one of the toughest things for companies to grasp when building a social media strategy is that they need to write the definition for their own success.

When it comes to social media, objectives are different for everyone. That’s the point. You can take your message to your audience in a way that fits what you want to achieve.

We’ve talked about this before on the blog (see Three Steps for SocMed Solution Shopping), but it’s becoming more important as more companies create legit strategies.

So, if we come to a demo and ask what you are looking for when it comes to social media monitoring, take a second to think it through. Define your own goals and objectives.

If you have no idea where to start, head to the whiteboard and have an old-fashioned brainstorming session. Bring a representative from every department (sales, marketing, HR, etc.) They will all have different ideas and voices on the value of your results. If they (or you) need a better understanding of why social media and monitoring matters, check out our recent presentation given at Magnet Interactive.

Also, if each department with a valuable interest has access to your data, it can keep your company on the same page while satisfying individual needs. Sales can identify potential clients, marketing can form strategy around results, communications can respond quickly to crises, and HR can police potential problems with employees. All these different departments can get these insights from the same data set.

Ask the group questions like…

• Do you respond to your audience online?
• If yes, are you satisfied with your response time?
• Do you want to improve customer service?
• What about sales?
• Do you want to increase your brand loyalty?
• Should you monitor specific campaigns or just your overall presence?
• … Or both?

The list goes on…

Make it clear what you want, and your monitoring software should be flexible enough to give you what you need.

What are some of your goals? What are suggestions you give to clients when it comes to developing strategy?

If there are any movie studio marketers who think that near-realtime social media monitoring still isn’t an essential part of their campaign at this point, then they clearly aren’t paying attention to the scores of controversies brewing already over some of this summer’s upcoming new releases. (Altogether, around 765 movies are slated for release sometime in 2009.)

Listening to online conversations allows marketers to identify trends and gather information that is crucial while devising and morphing a media campaign, especially one surrounding a tentpole flick that has a budget around the $300 million mark.

Ron Howard’s Angels & Demons, based on the best-selling book by Dan Brown, is released Friday, but it’s not coming out without a heavy helping of controversy. (My review of the film is here.)From the NYTimes: “William Donohue, president of the Catholic League … has accused Mr. Howard as well as Mr. Brown of ‘smearing the Catholic Church.’ Mr. Donohue is now two months into an extended anti-Angels & Demons campaign, whose centerpiece is a pamphlet titled ‘Angels & Demons: More Demonic Than Angelic.’”

In a shrewd move, Howard himself responded to the charges on The Huffington Post, saying: “I guess Mr. Donohue and I do have one thing in common: we both like to create fictional tales, as he has done with his silly and mean-spirited work of propaganda.”

This week, the official Vatican newspaper called the film “harmless entertainment.”

Terminator Salvation (opening next week) had its own controversy in February when star Christian Bale was caught in an angry, profanity-laden tirade from the set that was leaked to the Web in mp3 form. The recent revelation from director McG that the movie would be rated a wimpy PG-13 rather than the R rating that was originally talked about has generated considerable fan controversy as well.

When asked if he thought the incident changed how people viewed him, Bale responded by saying: “I don’t even think about that. I don’t really have an awareness of what anybody’s perception of me is, I don’t like to. I like being oblivious to that because it allows me just to get on with whatever project I’m doing.”

That is probably a healthy statement for an actor who wants to concentrate on his craft, but for the movie marketers that create multi-million-dollar ad campaigns, leaving these things to chance is probably not a good idea.

Are there any examples of movie studios reaching out through social media and engaging the community that you can think of?

Do you classify your online strategy as “transparent?”

How so? What elements go into your version of transparency?

I think of a few elements when it comes to being transparent on the Web. Honesty. Openness. Humility.

Jeffrey Kalmikoff from Threadless gave a great presentation at BIG Omaha on what it means to be transparent online. Listen to the audio of his speech and follow along with the slides from SlideShare. They are posted on Flickr, too.

As a bonus, I included the panel that preceded Jeffrey. It was a Q&A with Jeffrey, Jason Fried, Gary Vaynerchuk and Micah Baldwin.

Warning: These podcasts contain graphic language that some may find offensive.