Last Thursday and Friday, I escaped my humdrum SAHM days and entered the informative wonderland of Social Fresh.  The amount of cutting-edge knowledge related to social media was seriously mind-blowing.  Just when 1,862,421 people and I thought we knew it all, I learned it’s just the tip of the social media iceberg.

During the two-day Social Fresh conference held at the Double Tree Hilton Westshore, I sat alongside several of the Tampa Bay Bloggers and we had quite a presence.  Approximately, two dozen Tampa Bay Bloggers absorbed boundless amounts of information to help us inspire and create a presence in the virtual world of social media.

Create to inspire, Inspire to Create was more than clever graphic.  It represented the theme of Social Fresh.  Speaker Spike Jones urged us to not seek influence, but create it. “Influence can be created, but passion cannot.”

Having followed Ted Rubin for years on Twitter, I already knew him to be a social media guru.  When relating and creating for a brand (in my case Run DMT), it needs to engage.  With my Run DMT or my Tampa Bay Bloggers Twitter personas, I need to build relationships with key advocates as to foster a Return on Relationship, a clever coined social media term by Ted Rubin and reference to a familiar business term, Return on Investment (ROI).

There’s no secret formula to social media success and marketing.  Rather according to Edison Research’s Tom Webster, it’s about understanding data and having the capability to tell a story with the information collected.  “Big data is the future.  To say I’m not good with numbers means I’m not good with words.”

Furthermore, “The reason communicators become successful is by telling stories.  We need data storytellers.  There is way too much data repukery.”

Ian Schafer shared the four key cornerstones of effective mobile social content marketing:

• Produce
• Publish
• Propel
• Process

These four components can be developed by playing along with your audience.  Think about what you say and when you say it.  Feed you social media feeds with content that people will want to share, which is the measure of your success.

Ian’s presentation tied right into Spike Jones earlier message and why we should think about content differently.  People typically share content for three reasons:

• Ego
• Information
• Emotion

In my case, I am sharing my Social Fresh East experience for all three reasons.  My ego has been inflated by all the knowledge I acquired with some of the country’s best social media experts. The information was too good not to share.  The emotion I experienced was a direct response to the passion I feel for the world of social media and my role as a runner mother blogger.

Unfortunately, there were some downsides to my Social Fresh East experience.  Due to a registration error, my nametag wasn’t quite as fancy as some of my colleagues.  I also would have expected a QR reader on the nametags so we could use our smartphones to collect information.

For some unknown reason, we lost power as did most of the upper Tampa Bay.

SAHM duties called and I had to leave for a few hours on the second day for my daughter’s poetry reading.  As her smile demonstrates, she doesn’t care about my desire for professional development, which is very few and far between in my full-time career as a SAHM.

Sadly with my walnut allergy, I will never know the deliciousness of a Double Tree cookie, nor will I ever win a night in a Double Tree.

Apparently, my tweets aren’t inspiring or creative enough to win a social fresh mug.  At least, I learned the best way to improve my tweets to make them more inspiring and creative.

*Photo credit to Ballywho Social*

This August 22-23, experience Social Fresh West in San Diego.  To learn more about the Social Fresh West social media conference agenda, the speakers and the venue, or to register, visit Social Fresh online.