social media posts

Where's the one place that journalists, advertisers and hilarious Internet memes gather each Spring? Internet Week New York, of course! This year's conference will be held May 14-21, and in the spirit of the open web, IWNY is putting the power in the hands of the people.

As part of their extensive schedule of programming, IWNY has held 8 panel slots open allowing industry experts to Make The Stage by submitting their own panel ideas in the following areas: Advertising, Entertainment, Fashion & The Arts, Impact, Mobile, Social Media, Start Ups and Technology.

This year, AOL has submitted two panels that are up for voting:

• "Building Social Content & Taking It Places" - A look at how AOL is uniquely positioned to create social content by mixing premium content and conversation with AOL's Senior Vice President and Head of Sales Strategy, Marketing and Partnerships Janet Balis.
• "True Tales From The Interest Graph: Big brand perspectives on how to leverage what people like" – Join AOL's Social Media Director Matthew Knell, along with Katie Richman from ESPN, Katie Morse from Billboard Magazine and Katy Kelley, VP at Cohn and Wolfe, for a panel called focused on how big brands are starting to use the new generation of interest graph sites (such as Pinterest, Tumblr, and Instagram) to focus their communications on things people like.

Now, we'd love YOUR help to make these panels happen! The panels that receive the most votes will secure spots on the Stage at Internet Week NY.

To vote for "Building Social Content & Taking It Places", click here.

To vote for "True Tales From The Internet Graph", click here.

Please note, you will be required to create a login/password and users are allowed to vote only once.

Learn more about Make the Stage and Internet Week 2012 here, and stay tuned for more news about AOL at Internet Week NY in coming weeks.

Help @AOL "Make the Stage" at Internet Week aol.it/HusycN

- AOL PR (@AOLPR) April 9, 2012

It's that time of year again when thousands of the world's most creative digital minds descend on Austin, Texas for networking, inspiration, and a little bit of BBQ. I'm talking, of course, about SXSW, the conference that brings like minded people from the worlds of digital, music and film together each March to commiserate over thousands of panels, screenings, and live performances covering a whole wealth of different topics.

I'll be joining a small team of AOLers who will be in Austin for the Interactive portion of the conference, and we'll be posting dispatches from the event here and on our Advertising blog as well. (We'll also be hosting an Artist Showcase for AOL Music on March 15th, but we will share news around that event soon!)

Before we get started, if you're lucky enough to attend, I'd recommend that you utilize a scheduling tool like Sched's Unofficial SXSW Guide, presented by our friends at MapQuest Vibe, the native SXSW Go App, available for iPad, iPhone and Android, Blackberry and Windows Mobile 7 or Lanyrd, which helps you figure out which panels your friends are attending. All of these apps will help keep track of where you need to be, and when, as you bounce around all 15 different SXSW campuses spread throughout the city of Austin. If you're attending for the first time, check out SXSW's First-Timer's Guide to SXSW, and buddy up with someone who has gone before. It is extremely helpful!

Without further adieu, here are my suggestions for panels to check out to get you started (all require a SXSW Interactive badge unless otherwise noted)!

March 8th | March 9th | March 10th | March 11th | March 12th | March 13th


March 8th:

• All day: I will be attending the Dachis Group Social Business Summit, featuring among others Jeremiah Owyang from Altimeter Group, David Armano from Edelman and B. Bonin Bough from Kraft Foods. (You must request an invite to attend here)

March 9th:

• 2pm at the Radisson Town Lake: About.me Co-Founder Ryan Freitas, will join design professionals from GE, Method, Intuit and Bolt|Peters for a workshop called Designing for Context, at 2p at the Radisson Town Lake.
• 3:30pm at the Austin Convention Center: Join Huffington Post Comedy Editor Carol Hartsell as she takes the stage with comedians and guests from The Comedy Store, and The Daily Show for a panel on political humor called Political Humor 2.0: Teh Internetz R Leaking.
• 3:30pm at the Austin Convention Center: Vic Gundotra, SVP of Social Business for Google, will be joined by Guy Kawasaki, Co-Founder of Alltop for a fireside chat about the past, present and future of Google+
• 5pm at the Austin Convention Center: Dave Morin, CEO of Path joins Ade Olonoh, CEO and Founder of Formspring and Brian Wong, founder of Kiip, for Why Happiness Is the New Currency, discussing how emotion is driving more of our actions online.

March 10th:

• 3:30pm at the Omni Downtown: Huffington Post Tech Editor Bianca Bosker, Huffington Post Women Editor Margaret Johnson and Jaime King, President of Beau and Arrow Productions will be hosting a panel discussion called How Women Present Themselves in the Digital Age.
• 3:30pm at the Austin Convention Center: Foursquare CEO Dennis Crowley is joined by MG Siegler for Making the Real World Easier to Use.
• 3:30pm at the Sheraton Austin at the Capitol: David Carr of the NY Times is part of an all-star panel discussion on the future of content curation in digital publishing called the The Curators and the Curated.

March 11th:

• 9:30am at the Hilton Austin: Instagram Founder & CEO Kevin Systrom anchors a panel called Is Our Photo-Madness Creating Mediocrity or Magic?, discussing whether the easy access to mobile photography is affecting our creativity.
• 5:00pm at the Austin Convention Center: Experts from The Digital Beyond, Library of Congress, Mashable, and Edelman Digital will be discussing what our digital legacy in a discussion called Digital Immortals: Preserving Life Beyond Death.

March 12th:

• 11am at the Austin Courtyard by Marriott: AOL VP of Consumer Insights, Carla Borsoi joins other research professionals for Online Personality Disorder: Resumes & Profiles, a panel discussing how best to use web services to present yourself online.
• 3:30p at Austin Convention Center: Biz Stone, co-founder of Twitter, and COO of The Obvious Corporation, joins Huffington Post SVP of Social Impact Brian Sirgutz for Content As a Means for Social Change, a panel discussing the role of web content in social change movements.
• Through March 13th: Tony Conrad, Co-Founder of About.me and Partner at True Ventures, joins judges from a wide array of tech companies to judge the SXSW Interactive Accelerator Event for startups.

March 13th:

• 11:00am at Sheraton Austin: Media professionals from The Week, New York Observer, Ad Age, and Slate discuss a key question of our time: Is Aggregation Theft?

There are tons of other events that are worth attending (I am still filling up my calendar), so I encourage you to view the full SXSW schedule by clicking here and adding your favorites!

Stay tuned to updates from SXSW Interactive 2012 by following me on Twitter, following #aolsxsw, @AOLAdvertising and @AOLPR on Twitter for the latest content updates from panels, and daily updates during SXSW Interactive on this section of the blog. Hope to see you there!

What to Watch at #SXSW 2012 Interactive by @matthewknell aol.it/wn87I9

- AOL PR (@AOLPR) March 6, 2012

On Justin Isaf's first day at the Huffington Post, the reality of living under AOL's roof became an actuality- literally. Justin's first day aligned with the official move of The Huffington Post to the 770 Broadway offices of AOL. Staking a small cluster of desks in the sprawling newsroom on the 5th floor - Justin got right to work.

As Community Manager for the Huffington Post Media Group, Justin has one of the most challenging jobs online - leading the team responsible for cultivating the Huffington Post commenter communities. In fact, the Huffington Post generated over 50 million comments last year alone.

"I fell right in the middle of the acquisition. But since we had dedicated developers, design and management resources, it was an easy transition because we just got down to work. Since then, we're approaching 100% growth in comment volume," said Isaf, a ten year veteran of the community management space, most recently at change.org, before his move to The Huffington Post.

"The Huffington Post is the place for people to come to talk about anything in the news. Our goal is to ensure a safe space for people to comment. We have a quality standard that we hold comments to through moderation. But moderation is like roads, necessary, but not sufficient (and certainly not sexy) to growing a good community, so we do a lot more on top of that as well."

Managing a community of this size and scale can present a unique set of challenges. So can merging the commenter communities of two traditionally very different brands and audiences.

"There is one rule in community, don't talk about religion or politics, and at Huffington Post we do both heavily. As Huffington Post, being bought by AOL, politics is an especially contentious issue. The visitors have opposing view points, and very adamant ones at that. It's been a big challenge to manage. Combine that with global expansion, comments in other languages and it's easy to say growth has been 'interesting'." Justin and his team are also focusing on nurturing the smaller communities at HuffPost and they are looking for two more community managers to help curate these audiences.

Isaf's favorite thing about working at AOL is their "willingness to put resources where their mouth is; putting tech time in, and allowing the entire team to push the boundaries of community at scale. I get to play around with a lot of stuff I normally wouldn't be able to try at another company."

When asked about his greatest accomplishment, Isaf immediately cited his team. "I'm so proud of what we've done inside the moderation team. It's a family of people who go to bat for each other, which has enabled us to scale up quickly and results in increased capacity, accuracy, speed, retention - and happiness."

Isaf believes the future of social and community is user led and curated verticals. "If you like fly fishing news, you should be able to comment, aggregate and link out through The Huffington Post."

"I see Twitter losing ground, because its all about me listening about what you want me to hear, instead of listening what I want to hear; There will be a move towards networks and sites that help you listen to information at the scale of Twitter, but filtered for your interests, instead of your connections."

In terms of the future of our profession, Isaf was clear, "We will see an increase in separation of job titles for social media managers and community managers. More people are starting to understand that a social media manager is not a community manager. They are very different skill sets, and businesses will start to realize that. A social media manager's job is talking to as many people as possible - a community manager's job is to get as many people talking to each other as possible."

And what's next for Justin? He is focusing on how to increase network density in communities at scale and trying to figure out ways to apply the team's knowledge of community and the tech that powers it to new products and services.

And sleep. Lots of sleep.

Follow Justin on Twitter at @justinisaf.

(Photo courtesy of Justin Isaf)

Talking Community with @justinisaf, Huffington Post Community Manager aol.it/xqsj9B by @matthewknell

- AOL PR (@AOLPR) March 1, 2012

Mads Holmen, Planning Director at goviral, took the stage with a full house at Shoreditch Studios yesterday to explore the area of branded video distribution and discuss the ingredients that make content social.

Having worked at goviral since its early days, Holmen gave Social Media Week attendees (a mix of media agencies, publicists and bloggers) a background on goviral, and explained the growth in the video market place since the launch of goviral in 2006.

Mads then launched into a full-fledged interactive session with the audience sharing some examples of great branded content from around the world to establish best practices. This included strong recurring campaigns such as Gatorade Replay, and videos from leading brands such as Samsung and Nike.

Some of these best practices include:

• Always aim at creating instant attraction. The first 10-15 seconds should create curiosity and interest!
• Make sure you are telling a story. Be creative or original but make sure the video has a flow and don't drop in to periods where users could be tempted to look elsewhere.
• Don't give away everything first and leave users with a flat feeling in the end! While remembering to engage users try to build up your video as if you were telling a story

And what other factors contribute to making great content you might ask? Spend time and effort defining your production and format. Do people know it is you just by the touch and feel of the video alone? Answer this question and you can provide a great user journey.

Video & Social: The Perfect Soul Mates via @madsholmen of @goviral aol.it/wIwEyk

- AOL PR (@AOLPR) February 17, 2012

Jim Norton, Head of AOL Sales, recently sat down with Katie Bronnenkant of "The Makegood" to discuss his new role. The interview covers a range of topics including Norton's predictions for 2012 advertising trends, the power of the social platform, and the reasoning behind his transition from traditional to digital media. Here are some selected highlights from the article:

The Makegood: Jim, you have spent about 20 years in sales and marketing roles, working in both traditional and digital media for companies including WLVI-TV and Google. What motivated you to make the move from traditional to digital media?

JN: I made the switch in 2006 from traditional to digital. What I kept hearing from customers on the traditional side was a call for metrics and measurement and the "ask" to justify every advertising buy. It was clear that even traditional media buyers were beginning to look at their business through a digital lens.

I decided to take the customer service aspect of traditional and marry that with the analytics and heavy metrics of digital. It was a good combination for me personally. It was clear too that digital was seeing year-over-year gains and TV was not. So ultimately digital was the place to be.

The Makegood: Are there any new initiatives that you can tell us about that marketers can expect to see coming from AOL in 2012?

JN: We are focused on the priorities that we have messaged consistently over the last 2 years: Creating high quality content experiences for consumers as scale. We are going to continue to invest in premium formats (Project Devil) and you will see that available at greater scale; video and mobile will continue to offer robust targeting capabilities and across higher quality content experiences; and we remain committed and enthusiastic about the local opportunity that Patch offers to marketers as they try to move users from pages to parking lots. This is the year we will unleash the power of the social platform that is the Huffington Post.

Learn more about Norton's expanded role and video strategy here.

.@AOL's New Head of Sales Shares his 2012 Advertising Expectationsaol.it/ywif6x

- AOL PR (@AOLPR) February 14, 2012