Over the past couple of years we have been bringing you insights and updates from a variety of events including New Media Expo, Affiliate Summit, ad:tech, and of course SXSW. We have spoke with many of the thought leaders in social media, brand design, advertising and technology. Well, it’s time that we step out from behind the camera and up onto that stage. Scott Parent, MediaTrust’s VP of Emerging Media, and our resident expert in social media and social influence marketing, will be presenting a discussion surrounding a look at the social media strategies for the enterprise. As you know by being a viewer here, social media has had a tremendous impact in C2C and B2C interactions, but many think the Holy Grail is the efficacy of social media in the B2B marketspace.

Scott will be joined by Christopher Smith on this panel, and they will share with you strategies for success including brand management, channel development, meaningful interactions and impact on revenue with social media for the enterprise.

You will need to vote for this panel here. You will also need to sign up to vote, but that is a pretty simple process, and one that would be greatly appreciated. Voting ends August 29th, so please vote early, and tell your friends to vote as well.

We just returned from Las Vegas after attending the New Media Expo. We were lucky enough to talk to the conference’s founder, Tim Bourquin, the day before it began about all the changes around the NME - including it’s controversial move to Vegas.

What goes on last-minute behind the scenes at a big tradeshow? What are the hot topics at this year’s event? How does Tim plan for a show like this a year in advance? We covered it all in our interview.

Check out Relevantly Speaking in Hi-Definition Video

Christopher and I chat about the New Media Expo and some of the trends we noticed during our many conversations with individuals and companies here.

We’re seeing a big trend here at the Expo: How do I monetize my content? Obviously one of the key factors we’re hearing about is quality. Producers and show creators are trying to take their craft to the next level so that they can compete for the ad-dollars of larger companies. UGC of the YouTube variety is not cutting it anymore and this industry knows that it needs to step up and produce great looking and sounding content.

Below is a picture of our interview with Personal Life Media’s Susan Bratton. She talked to us about the lengthy process for her to get an advertiser on her network. Look for that interview here in the coming weeks.

Today was the first day of the New Media Expo and it’s been incredibly productive. We interviewed the Founder of the New Media Expo, Tim Bourquin, yesterday. Then today we shot interviews with Gary Vaynerchuk of Wine Library TV, Michael Geoghagen of the Disneyland Podcast, and Suzanne Norman of Emma. We also talked with some interesting companies including mDialog and Podcast Tuneup.

It will take us some time after the Expo to edit and produce the final interviews, but be sure to look for them here on Relevantly Speaking in the coming weeks.

We’re here in Vegas at New Media Expo and having a great time. So far, we’ve interviewed Tim Bourquin, Founder of the Expo and Internet phenom Gary Vaynerchuk of Wine Library TV. Our photographer, Manuel Sanvictores, snapped this photo of our interview.

If you’re in Vegas, please reach out to either @groovemonkey or @americancliche to say hi.

It occurred to me the other day that many of you may not understand the relationship of how MediaTrust, RS, and Advaliant go together. I thought I’d take a minute to introduce the family and tell you about our new little brother, the Advaliant Blog.

MediaTrust is the parent company of Relevantly Speaking. This blog/podcast started out as an experiment to see if we could create a legitimate voice in the digital marketing space. Our mission was that we would write and talk about nearly anything relating to doing business in a changing digital world. With the steady growth of our audience each month, you’re telling us that we’ve succeeded!

Advaliant is our pay-for-performance platform. If you’re interested in affiliate marketing - either as an advertiser or an affiliate, then Advaliant is the place for you to be. Over the next couple months we’ll be redesigning that website, but for now, feel free to hang out in our comfortable well-worn home.

The newest member of our family is the Advaliant Blog. Before we launched last Friday, a few of you had asked me what the difference would be between that new blog and RS. I think its fairly obvious now - Advaliant is all about pay-for-performance marketing and RS is the kitchen sink of digital business.

What can I expect on the Advaliant Blog? Well, I’m glad you asked! First, we’ll be writing about trends and happenings we see going on in the affiliate industry (as you see here from Mike Carney). Second, we want the blog to be a place where newbies can come and take the intimidation out of getting started with affiliate marketing. So, to that end, we’ll be offering tips and tricks. You can see Richard Okolo’s excellent advice HERE. Finally, since it is OUR blog, we’ll be pimping our own stuff. For example, did you know we have an insane series of contests going on? For August we’re blowing our several prize packages of the Ultimate Gaming System!

In a nutshell, Advaliant’s here to make money. That is the name of the game in the pay-for-performance space. We think we can help you make money too. Along the way we’ll show you how to do it efficiently and ethically - ’cause that’s how we roll.

Stop in and say hello!

You can’t read a tech blog this week without hearing the buzz around the new search engine Cuil (pronounced “cool”). The promise was that it would be something unique that returns results in a different way than Google does. Interesting, I thought. I can get behind a search engine that filters queries a different way to return useful information. Well, I wouldn’t call it “different” as much as I’d just call it “wrong.”

When I searched for “Relevanty Speaking” I got 11 results on the first page. Not a single one actually directed me to relaventlyspeaking.com. Instead, they provided links to video sites that host our content, and in some cases link dump sites that pull in content for the purpose of trying to bring in ad traffic. Another peculiar result is the images that it pairs with it’s results. They seem to be totally random and not-at-all associated with the pages they find. To make sure this wasn’t some sort of anomaly I tried several other searches and got surprisingly similar, and inaccurate, results.

Besides the fact that Cuil just flat out doesn’t work, the bigger question is why get in the search engine game now? Google has swallowed nearly every other competitor - Yahoo and Microsoft are hanging on for dear life. It just doesn’t make sense to me to show up at the field with your bat and glove after the game has already been called.

Is this purely an an acquisition play? Are the folks at Cuil hoping that they’ll get enough attention that Google will snap them up just to keep the road clear of debris? What am I missing here? I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments.

There’s quite an uproar today over people discovering that many of their followers have disappeared. In some cases it is hundreds of people. Twitter is claiming that it because they deleted spammers. That may be true, but I know for fact that on my accounts many of the legitimate people that were following me are gone. For example, we just started a Twitter feed for Relevantly Speaking a week ago. Our numbers were still small, but you can see what’s happened overnight:

This may be the last nail in the coffin for Twitter. You work so hard to build up a community, then literally overnight, Twitter breaks something and erases it. For some people Twitter is a fun service they use to kill time or keep in touch with family. But for some of us this is a business tool. I’ve spent literally hundreds of hours working with various people and companies helping them to build a meaningful and relevant community. Now, poof! It’s gone overnight.

I am holding out hope that Twitter will fix this and recover whatever data they say they didn’t lose, but I am skeptical. They can’t get their capacity issues worked out after all these months, what makes us think they can recover lost data?

Sprint is my current mobile carrier in Santa Barbara California. For much of my area their coverage is pretty decent. In my enclave, the coverage is awful. The neighborhood I live is in an established one, about a mile from the ocean and the tourist areas, city college, and downtown. With the greater-Santa Barbara population somewhere in the range of 200,000 people, I should have adequate coverage. I don’t.

About six weeks ago I started working more out of my home office. Because my wife and I’s mobile phones are the only household phones, it meant more conference calls, more phone meetings with my boss in New York and with my partner in crime, Christopher, in Grover Beach. Suffice to say, the service is awful. Calls are dropped. Some never ring through to my phone. Others are unintelligible because of the “Luke, you know I’m your father” Darth Vadar voice.

So, I called Sprint. Oh wait, the service is so bad that the call kept dropping. Wait, maybe if I hold onto a sheet of tinfoil in my backyard with my right arm raised at 45 degrees above my head I can get a signal…nope. Ok, I’ll email them. I get the automated “Thank you for contacting Sprint Online. Customer E-Care has received your email and will respond to your request within 24 hours.” Ok, fair enough. I wait two days and never receive a response. I write again and get the same automated response. 25 hours later I get an email asking me when this problem started, was it just on my phone, and was it just at my home or everywhere? I responded to the questions and waited another 22 hours for a response. This time “Harold” called me. He asked me the same questions the previous person had asked me in email and said he would have to consult their technical team and call me back in 15 minutes. I waited for his call and after two hours received a voicemail stating that he couldn’t get through to me (no signal) and that I should call their 800 number for support. Again, because I can’t make a decent call from my house, I email again explaining the problem. Wash. Rinse. Repeat. This goes on and on for 10 days and 15 emails.

I finally reached my breaking point and asked to be let out of my contract. I have a year and half left on a service plan that I can’t use 99% of the time. They have conveniently ignored that request and have continued to promise me tech support and resolution of my issue within 24 hours.

We all have horror stories with companies we deal with everyday. So why do I bring this one up? I think Sprint is missing a customer relations opportunity and one for positive branding. Here’s what I think Sprint has done badly in this situation:

1. They impose a deadline on themselves of getting back to you within 24 hours. In the flurry of emails that have been sent, they’ve only honored that timeframe twice. The rest of the time I had to send follow-up emails asking when I could expect to receive support. Don’t set an arbitrary goal that you can’t reach. It makes your service look bad and it gives customers a false sense of hope.

2. After a customer has exchanged 15 emails with you, offer a direct line to a supervisor instead of the general service pool. I’ve already spent 3 or 4 hours of my time answering questions. Don’t make me waste another hour sitting on hold. This is especially true in my case where I may have to drive to a park or somewhere that I can find a signal to make the call. Respect your customers’ time.

3. Assign a service rep to a complaint and let them own it. If that’s not possible, at least keep better records of the interaction thus far. Every time I emailed I was assigned a new case number and a new rep that asked me the same questions. This meant I had to respond to them and then wait 24 hours (or more) for someone to get back to me. We’re now 11 days into this mess and I’m not a single step closer than I was after the first email.

4. When a customer is in limbo for a long period of time with unusable service, offer them a refund or significant credit. When I asked for something like that I was given 40 bonus minutes. Seriously? I pay for 2000 minutes a month, unlimited data, text messaging, and my service is dead in the water and you offer me 40 bonus minutes? I was beyond insulted.

5. No carrier wants to let customers out of a contract, but if you can’t resolve a customer’s service issues, let them out of their contract. I realize in the fine print they have every legal right to make you pay a termination fee, but that’s not ethical (especially since I paid nearly full retail price for my phone, not the subsidized promo rate). Plus, there are really only four major carriers in the U.S. With number portability there is a good chance that you may see this customer sign up with you in the future. Don’t make a bad situation worse by holding them hostage and insuring that they’ll never do business with you again.

How will this all turn out? I have no idea. I do know that the economy is in a downturn and businesses are hurting everywhere. You need every advantage you can get to position your brand in the best possible light. Handling a situation so poorly so that it ends up on a blog is certainly not helping Sprint in the eyes of potential consumers.

In the end, I believe that if companies just did the right thing and acted in good faith, the rest would probably take care of itself. Sprint, do the right thing.