A Marketing Blog (and other stuff)

Write a caption to this photo, win a free t-shirt.

This photo of me (Mike Volpe) and Ann Handley just seems weird/funny and deserving of a humorous caption.  So, let's have a contest!  (Photo credit: Bob Collins).

How to Enter: Enter by Tweeting your caption along with the hashtag #mvolpe-pic, or for those of you not on Twitter you can leave a comment on this blog article below.

Rules:Caption must be less than 140 characters long (for Twitter compatibility).  Winner will be chosen by Mike Volpe, maybe with help from Ann Handley based on humor and cleverness.

Prize: The prize is any t-shirt from the HubSpot Gear store, including free shipping to you.  (There are some pretty cool/funny shirts there if you ask me - "I'm kind of a big deal (on Twitter)." and "I love f*cking with Google." are my favorites.)

Sample captions (bad ones, hence the reason for the contest):

• "Big or small, marketing loves them all"
• "On Twitter, we can all be 7 feet tall, even @marketingprofs"
• "Clearly, Twitter followers are not proportional to your size in real life"

This morning I attended a breakfast meeting for the marketing VPs at the portfolio companies of General Catalyst (they led the HubSpot A round investment).  The major topic of discussion was what was on our minds.  The GC folks were trying to get a feeling for what speakers and panels would be good to include in a marketing event aimed at helping their portfolio companies.

The general consensus around the table was the following top topics:

• Getting more with less - What are best practices on using viral marketing and internet marketing to generate more inbound leads at a low cost?
• Getting more out of your database - How can you use lead nurturing and other practices to convert more leads into opportunities?
• Finding good vendors - How can you easily get honest reviews and pricing information on services companies for web design, PR, advertising agencies, etc.?
• Product management for web 2.0 and Saas - How do you find good people and what are the best practices for product management for software as a service and web 2.0 products?

What's on your mind?  Leave a comment below.

I feel like I have been attending social media events non-stop lately... is it becoming too much?  Not yet.  :)

BosUp08

This was a very fun Tweetup event held at Jillians on Friday organized by @pprlisa (thank you!!!).  I have some photos on Flickr of BosUp08 (or see below).  It was great to connect with so many people I have talked to on Twitter, but previously had never met.

SMB10 

This morning I attended and live streamed the Social Media Breakfast panel discussion for SMB10 at Ryles in Cambridge.  It was a great discussion hosted by Bob Collins and featuring Brian Halligan, Andrew McAfee, and Matt Cutler, and HubSpot also sponsored the event.  There will be a video in the next couple days on the HubSpot Blog and in iTunes on HubSpot TV.

Much better coverage of the event than I could write is here:

• http://quiverandquill.com/2008/11/social-media-breakfast-10/
• http://www.hallme.com/blog/roi-of-social-media-and-putting-your-pants-on/
• http://www.thesocialorganization.com/2008/11/you-can-count-your-moneyand-you-can-count-your-leads.html
• http://www.limeduck.com/2008/11/12/social-media-breakfast-whats-the-roi-of-putting-on-your-pants/

Thursday Tweetup

For those of you in Boston there is a Tweetup tonight organized by Shel Holtz and John Wall as a "Pre-SNCR (Society of New Communication Research) tweetup". 7pm, Thursday, November 13, 2008 - Vox Populi - Map- Shel's blog has more info.

BosUp08 Photos

This graph from www.CNN.com I think tells the most interesting story.

I know little about politics, but I think this is the first time in a long time that the younger portion of society has basically picked our president.  It will be interesting to see if this is a fad, or if the new generation will be engaged in society and leadership.

Once I got to about 1,000 followers on Twitter.  I noticed that something changed.  I used to Tweet, and not get much of a response.  And if I did, it was from people I knew.

Just a couple days ago, I tweeted that I was in the Atlanta airport (with a link to a photo).  A few months ago nothing would have happened.  But now I got a number of replies and carried on a couple mini-conversations - all with people I have not met in real life.

I continue to be surprised by the entertainment / community / usefulness of Twitter as my network grows.  So, follow me on Twitter!  I'll follow you back.

This is quite creative.  It is a viral video campaign that you can use to create a custom video featuring your name (or a friend's name).  The way they did the video is quite clever, and the customizations bring it to a whole new level.  No matter what your political view, you need to respect the creativity of the idea.

Here is the "Mike Volpe" version of the video:

Ann Handley interviews me while we both try not to laugh. 

I had a lot of fun at the Marketing Profs Digital Mixer last week.  Similar to the Inbound Marketing Summit, they had some of the luminaries of inbound marketing talking about SEO, blogging, podcasting, video, social media, and more.  The cumulative knowledge at the event was huge and the feedback from folks I talked to was very positive.  (I think that the combination of Seth Godin and David Meerman Scott at the Inbound Marketing Summit just can't be beat as far as raw power of a speaker lineup, but hey... I'm biased!)

It was great to connect with old friends Chris Penn, Chris Brogan, Jason Baer, and host Ann Handley.  I also met lots of new folks including Frank from Comcast, CC Chapman, Rohit Bhargava,  Greg Cangialosi and Gary Vaynerchuk.  Gary V exudes a passion and energy that just can't be beat!  It was a lot of fun to see him present (you can watch the video of Gary V here).  Unlike the keynote from the day before by Arianna Huffington, who was clearly very smart but a little flat and perhaps used too many political insider jokes for the crowd, Gary V has so much passion and energy, he just can't fall flat.

Overall it was a great eventbecause of the people, especially.  But only because my personal appetite for even more sessions about inbound marketing is not too big right now since I live and breathe this stuff 24x7.  For others who lead a different life than I do, it was a solid event and worth going.  As the governator says... "I'll be back!"

I recently got an email from someone with a question about the difference between a hashtag (#) and a reply (@).  See my reply below in bold, and you can also follow Mike Volpe on Twitter.

Sent: Monday, October 20, 2008 11:57 AM
To: Mike Volpe
Subject: RE: Twitter

Mike,

Sorry to bother you but you seem to be a "goto" guy on twitter matters.  I noticed in your tweet last week regarding Seth Godin's book, you had a reference to #hubspot as opposed to @hubspot. What is the significance of the hash mark? Where did I miss that information?

What's the difference between #mvolpe and @mvolpe?

Check out http://www.hashtags.org/.  Basically, #hubspot indicates a threaded discussion on a TOPIC, while @hubspot is a directed message toward a specific person/entity.  Think of "#" as like "about" or "re:"  and @ as like "to".  Typically people will search on twitter for #hubspot to follow a conversation, but not as much for @hubspot.

[Apologies to the blog readers not located in Boston.  This is one of those 0.1% of my posts that are personal / local.]

Four years ago I co-founded the Boston Scholars Program which provides educational support to Boston high school students.  Our first class of scholars just graduated from high school, and 100% of the graduates started at a 4 year college this fall.  That makes me happy.

We're holding our 4th annual Halloween party fundraiser this Friday October 24.  Want to join me?  I promise it will be fun!  Learn more about Boston's best halloween party or buy tickets.

Here are some photos from past events: