I was very honored to be recognized in this article with four other professional women who are recognized for their contribution to the DC tech community.

Thanks to Kim Hart for including me!

Around town, I often hear people referring to a tech start-up as just “two guys in a garage.” But that phrase excludes a gender that, some say, is too often overlooked in the technology industry. In Washington, a number of women are leaving their mark as entrepreneurs, social media enthusiasts and policy experts. And they’re trying to make room for more girl geeks. Here are five women who have established themselves as influential figures in the region’s tech circles and are worth keeping an eye on.

Larissa Fair, 26, has been president of the Washington chapter of the Social Media Club for two years, since shortly after it formed. Under her charge, the group now has more than 900 members (by Facebook‘s count, anyway) and meets every month to network and discuss trends ranging from cloud computing to mobile media campaigns. She’s done public relations work for local firms such as Platinum Solutions and Livingston Communications, and now manages Web communications for a nonprofit.

Fair’s main passion is expanding the reach of social networks among associations, educational institutions and government groups.

“The idea of it has gone much more mainstream,” she said. “People are going to be online anyway, so you need to find the way to reach them.”

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Today I attended the Women in Technology seminar, "The Intersection of Marketing and Technology" held at Viget Labs. Very excited to see it was a packed house!

Panelists for this event included:

• Katie Hanusik (moderator), Vice President, SpeakerBox PR
• Matt Goddard, Principal, R2 Integrated
• Susan Kearney, Former CMO, Voxant
• Jen Krupey, Director, Marketing Services, Viget Labs
• Brian Reed, CMO, Boxtone

Matt Goddard: The web is a buying engine, not a selling engine. You don’t own your customers, your customers own you. With social media, customers are controlling the process. Don’t fight it, understand the process – build your infrastructure, strategy, and technology around that. how do they want to purchase – not how do you want to sell.

Marketing is a digital ecosystem. Ask yourself the question – does your tactic make it easier for someone to buy a product?

Digital ecosystems are made up of three pieces. The user experience, tech/systems, social networks and social media. All contribute to an approach for ROI. Take a new view of your CMS and CRM. In the future, in a B2B environment with a sales cycle – you need to connect the dots between visual marketing and salesforce automation and CRM.

Digital marketing incorporates SEO, SEM, E-mail, social, and display (advertisements etc.). You must drive people to your ecosystem. This gives you a way to be engaged, have great technology, and bring people together.

RIA is the changing face of the web. Flex and Silverlight are changing experiences online, and allows you to connect databases.

This is one thing that is changing the engagement side. On the social side – we’re seeing movement beyond the curious passive and active users, we’re now seeing people search out relationships. This translates into customers. When you build a digital ecosystem (social engineer) – make sure you are reaching out to your customers to build these relationships.

Jennifer Krupey: Social media marketing can have an impact on business. The marketing landscape has changed. Audiences are fragmented and hyper-connected. Yesterday was TV, newspapers, radio, phone, etc. Today it’s on the web, e-mail, mobile, RSS, etc. – and now it’s social media. Through networking tools to share, communicate, and collaborate, communications is changing.

90% of consumers regularly or occasionally seek advice on products or services. 34% of internet users post opinions about products and brands.

Bottom line – nearly 50% have made a purchase based on a social recommendation.

The controversial Motrin Moms commercial. One well known mommy blogger caught sight of the ad, and the hours that followed showcased the power of Twitter and blogs. The YouTube video got over 7,000 views over the weekend and was the 3rd result for Motrin on YouTube. The story is being picked up across the blogosphere and then some. The Motrin website actually went down for a brief period, before they posted an apology.

The lesson – discover social media tools. Motrin could have identified this active group ahead of time and tested the ads accordingly. Listen – social media monitoring provides companies 24/7 access to what customers are saying. Engage – look for creative opportunities to share information and connect with your customers when they are online.

Matt Goddard: This is an example of a company trying to sell something online, and losing control. They didn’t make it a two-way conversation, and it came back to them.  Failing to ask how the product would impact the end user cost Motrin in the end.

Brian Reed: The silver lining to Motrin – is that awareness is very high of the company and product. The seven habits of highly effective (marketing) people):

Be proactive (go where they are), begin with the end in mind (model pipe & process), put first things first (no database, no deals), think win/win (what’s in it for me?), seek first to understand (buyer personas), then to be understood, synergize, sharpen the saw.

Buyers are learners. Learn your buyer personas. Increase your website traffic, increase your sales.

1. Impluse buyer – has to quickly solve the problem
2. Buyer needs to replace a product
3. Buyer learns and takes a long time to make a decision, gathers all facts

Links to buyer personas:

• Buyer Persona Blog
• How well do you know your buyer personas?

 

Flash demos and free stuff speed up the sales cycle. Buyers that can see results and how to use a product are more likely to buy if they can try. Make it free and useful, as well as something that people can easily pass on to each other.In a down economy, it’s important to show your buyer how your product will save them money.A cost saving tip? Partner on surveys. You get to share all leads and all results, at half the cost. Blogging, commenting, events, partnerships, PRWeb news releases, etc. – all contributing to BoxTone coming up in Google searches for key terms, "BlackBerry Management, BlackBerry Monitoring, BlackBerry Support, etc." Every quarter, your search engine hits should increase, you should move higher and higher up.

Susan Kearney: Voxant was seeking to syndicate news online – Reuters, AP, etc. We would then find bloggers and publishers to put that content on their site. We started with 1,300 registered with "no campaign" (did not come through Internet ads, viral ads, e-mail blasts, etc. – they were purely word of mouth), and almost 7,000 registered distributors.Breakdown of those registrants: Distributors were categorized by category.  For example, business, entertainment, and life were top categories. Knowing your users was key – news aggregators were a big distributor – they wanted a variety of news on their site. Topical sites were also important, and they anted news based on their specific category topic. 37% were personal blogs.

Word of mouth programs seemed to be the most effective. We used a variety of tools to get our numbers. We used Google Analytics, Quantcast, and so many more.

Sample of the Q&A

Katie: What is a technology that is changing the market?
Matt: Eloqua allows monitoring of potential customers who are engaged on your website, and then customize their experience. The salesteam is also armed with competitive intelligence as to what customers are looking at. Eloqua can be $1,000 – $15,000 a month, depending on the size of the organization.
Jen: Everyone rushes to things when they first launch. The bright shiny object syndrome. Be careful as marketers and technologists – make informed decisions.
Brian: Video is going to continue to grow in importance. But, be very careful how you use it.
Susan: Marketers are making the transition to a two-way conversation. Communities are a great example.
Katie: How are B2B and government marketers using social media?
Susan: Blogging is one. A blog can be terrific for a B2B company.
Matt: The big challenge with B2B is they don’t understand social network theory and social media. Social network theory is the behavior that people have – asking friends etc. for opinion before purchasing. The bigger the risk, the bigger the question. Social media are tools that unleash this behavior. They make it more scalable, make the message move at increasing speeds.
Brian: When you do buyer personal, you have to think about where people are reading things. Most buyers were reading on BlackBerry – so we had to change our methods to manage that.
Katie: What is the one thing people should invest in?
Susan: Whatever gets results. The top priority is the company. Think about your business goals.
Brian: Call 50 prospects and customers. Have the dialogue, figure out what they like about you – why they bought from you and why they didn’t. Marketers are the mouthpiece for the buyers.
Jen: In terms of online and what’s working – bottom line is that buyers are going to hopefully end up at your website. Make sure it’s operating at its optimal level.
Matt: Utilize free tools at your disposal. Part of the benefit of social media is that so much is open source.

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Last week I heard on the radio that over 35,000 people had signed an online petition to repeal Virginia’s new driving laws in just two days. On day one, this little blogger alone had received two emails and seen at least five Myspace bulletins posted about it. So, think about it…if everyone is emailing it, posting it on blogs, Myspace, Facebook, wherever – and generally just passing it along to their networks…then really, the number of signatures received should be no suprise. (By the way at last count it was almost up to 93,000.) Also note that the petition is linked and available to share on Blogger, Facebook, Digg, del.icio.us, slashdot, and all the other usual suspects.

Now, the real question is how many of those forwarded emails and postings do you see and dismiss? Yet, what about the ones that do matter to you, that do make a difference and call you to action. We’re bombarded with hundreds of messages a day, so it really is significant when something makes it through and your brain clicks and says hey, I’m going to jump into action (signing a petition) or pass it on to others. That’s the million dollar question for marketing professionals and public relations executives. How do I make my message heard? And, best case scenario, repeated?

Personally, I find social networking fascinating.

Many people shun it as a waste of time, too “stalker” like and unsafe (as far as posting semi-personal information, some post more than others). But, at its core, social networking is an important communications tool and will continue to be used as such. For example, it gives credibility to companies, brands and advertisements. Let’s say that you’re a company that creates a really great ad. It’s funny, hip and has a great tagline. (Think of the “priceless” MasterCard ads from a couple years ago. Or the Ford Model fashion/style tips I’ve seen recently on Youtube.) So, you post it on Youtube. Someone finds it and forwards it in an email. Someone else picks it up and posts it on their blog. Someone else posts it on their Facebook. It has a viral effect, and soon enough, your ad is being emblazoned across the internet, and your brand is being picked up. Your search engine optimization skyrockets, and your website hits go through the roof. All from posting one silly ad online.

It’s more than that too, there have been many articles over the past couple weeks about Facebook’s drive to become the “social operating system“of choice. Facebook could take over the world, so to speak. It has the potential, if they play their cards right, to actually compete with Yahoo and Google to become a credible internet resource. The newsfeed function on Facebook (and, to a lesser extent, Myspace bulletins) is especially interesting when mixed with the applications. I can now see which one of my friends liked what movies, are going to what concerts, and are reading what books. Other friends of mine can cross post their blog postings (though, since I try to remain anonymous, I prefer not to do that) and thus increase their blog readership and traffic. I see when people break up, get engaged and get married. I see when friends get a new job, are looking for a place to live, and where they like to vacation. What better credibility is there than word of mouth?

I think this sums it up nicely:
“The real value proposition of social media is that it connects people on a deeply human level with hundreds, thousands, even millions of networked people across time and geography. Social networks, empowering core constituencies of passionate users around targeted, niche market content, are emerging as a powerful media marketforce.”

However, social networking can be powerful in another way. It can also have a negative effect. Some people I know hate social media. They agree it has its place, but think that overall it’s not healthy for society and there’s a possibility that people are less social overall because of it. While you may come across random people or rekindle past relationships that you woldn’t have otherwise, on the whole it seems like social media sites make it easier to immerse yourself in social networks you already have and limit people from meeting new people outside those networks. A lot of people who are into social networks and are on them all the time also feel isolated, in a strange paradox. I agree with this, and of course online networking cannot account for an in person meeting. You don’t get your  “warm fuzzy feeling” and establish a good rapport after a meeting from reading someone’s profile. However, social networking can be utilized to maintain those good relationships after a physical point of reference has been made.

In addition, I think social networking is even changing the way we communicate with each other. People carry on entire conversations on Facebook walls that could take place on the phone. People instant message each other instead of talking face to face. A Myspace comment here and there can count as “keeping in touch” and a text message is a usually acceptable form for question and answer, even conversation. The nuances of real human interaction are lost. Of course, there comes a point when “real” communication needs to occur. But, I think there is a whole new hierarchy of communication, even in the dating world. OK, so he or she leaves you a Myspace comment, it’s not as personal as a text message, which isn’t quite as bad as an email, but that’s a step below a phone call. A one night stand has the potential to never really be a one night stand, if you’re friends on Myspace. Although the relationship can continue into nothingness and go nowhere, the fact that you can see what the other person is doing (and leave said Myspace comment/message) contributes to keeping the connection “warm” so to speak. Instead of the person dropping off completely, they are still there in the back of your mind, and in arm’s reach (or so it seems). It gives a false sense of intimacy, and creates a negative precedence for acceptable communication.

I could continue on in about a hundred different directions about this, but really I just wanted to say to keep your eyes open. Social networking is interesting, it’s exciting, and if the momentum keeps up, it will soon become a way of life. The real question is, does social networking have what it takes to last? Is this the top of the bubble about to burst? I wonder if, when there are kids age 15-23 who have “grown up” using Facebook and the like, if they will burn out by age 28-30 and tire of it. It can be exhausting to keep up with and maintain, and unless you are technologically inclined (or interested for that matter), it will be hard to stick with it. But, for now…social networking is, well…hott.

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