The Social Path

Voting has begun for SxSW topics, including ours.

The massive South by Southwest Interactive festival is still a good seven months way, but organizers are already crowdsourcing the decision on which panels to include in the March 2011 event.

I try not to ask many favors of my friends, colleagues and fellow social media enthusiasts, but I would definitely appreciate your support in the form of a thumbs-up for my presentation with Dan Shust of Resource Interactive.

Our proposed topic is "Your Social Media Campaign Sucks. (And yours doesn't.)" This would be a sexier, updated version of our recent case study presentation at the Internet Retailer Conference, where we had a great response from a crowd of about 4,000.

To vote for us or any other potential panels, just create a Panel Picker account and then start sharing your feedback. You can click here to show your support for me and Dan. 

Here are some handy links to ours a few other presentations that, in my opinion, might be worth your vote:

David Griner and Dan Shust: "Your Social Media Campaign Sucks. (And yours doesn't.)"

Keri Maijala: "9 1/2 Months: My Affair with Content Strategy Consulting "

Leigh Householder: “Turn Your Head and Click: Practicing Digital Medicine"

Jeannie Walters: "X Marks the Spot: Mapping the Customer Experience"

Michael Krotscheck: "Toolkit Showdown: The Holy Grail of Software Development"

Andrea Phillips: "Hoax or Transmedia? The Ethics of Pervasive Fiction"

Alexandra Nicholson: "Cause 2.0 - Growing Cause Movements with Social Media"

Matthew Santone: "The Real World Wide Web – Digital & Physical Collide"

Do you have a presentation topic on the Panel Picker? Share it with me in the comments and I'll try to add it to the post.

David Griner is a social media strategist for Luckie and Company and contributing editor for Adweek’s blog, AdFreak.com. You can reach him by e-mail or on Twitter.

Birmingham Magazine features Luckie's social media team.

Apologies for the blatant chest-thumping here, but I was quite proud to see this writeup in the new issue of Birmingham Magazine. (Click on the picture to see a full-size version.)

The writer, Carla Jean Whitley, did a great job boiling down the recent conversation she had with me and my cohort Whitney Sides Mitchell.

One of the main points I hoped to get across was the fact that there is a vital place in social media marketing for full-service agencies like Luckie & Company. I think veteran agencies have a level of breadth, experience, strategic perspective and resources that can be hard to find with solely digital upstarts or consultants.

Don't get me wrong. I think there are some stellar freelancers and specialized shops out there. But it feels like mid-sized agencies like ours often get short shrift in discussions of "who should be doing social media marketing."

In the end, I think the only way you can tell who would be the right social media partner for your business is to look for marketing folks who share your passion and your vision for reaching out to customers in new, rewarding ways. Maybe it's a two-person shop that just launched last week. Or maybe it's a highly experienced agency that's been around since the 1950s.

But whomever you're considering, I'd give them bonus points if they have a giant picture of a guy's nostrils on their lobby wall.