One way in which Madison has grown his business is through embracing the social web to engage his potential clients and fans to grow his personal brand and business. Take a peek at what it takes to thrive in a business world where every social interaction is a high stakes make-or-break deal and how social media helped build his brand.

R2i: How did you first get into reality TV?

Madison: I was approached by the production team 5 years ago…just 6 months after getting my real estate license. I was asked to participate in one of 6 episodes along with 11 other Realtors.  After the first season, they changed the format of the show, and I’ve been along for the ride ever since.

R2i: Obviously, social media gives your audience and fans a more intimate view into your world…how do you feel about that?

Madison: Well, overall I feel grateful that social has become such a widely used tool by the public because I have access and control over what personal messages and personal experiences I can choose to share or remark on…while still keeping certain aspects of my life private. I’ve also found that over the last 5 years of being on reality TV, spanning the emergence of social, that my fans feel they are satisfied with the access that social media provides into my life and don’t need to call my office.

R2i: You seem so grounded, how do you manage the separation between Madison the brand and Madison the person?

Madison: Most importantly, I take time to remember that the Madison on TV is still me…but it is only a piece of me. The true Madison is who I am inside and out on a day-to-day basis. When the cameras are on, and the fans reach out, and the opportunities are presented, I just remember that TV has opened these doors, and for that I’m grateful.

R2i: So, how many branded social profiles do you currently manage?

Madison: If you can believe it-6, comprised of a Twitter page, a Facebook fan page, a private Facebook page, a LinkedIn account, a YouTube channel, and a Spotify account.

R2i: Do you maintain your social profiles?

Madison: I basically manage them myself along with the help of my office staff. There are also applications like socialmadesimple that I utilize on occasion.

R2i: Social media has had a huge impact on increasing viewership on reality television. How has it affected your show “Million Dollar Listing?” You all seem to have a very active following.

Madison: We do have an active following, and Bravo has made social a huge part of their fan outreach; doing things such as creating personal blogs on their website, providing fans with personal stories and photos of their show’s stars. It’s also a great way for me to personally remind my fans of my entertainment ventures so that no one that’s connected to me is left out of the loop.

R2i: How has social media affected business for you?

Madison: Social media has put me ahead of the curve among other real estate agents. When you look at the big picture, I’m one of the youngest in my field.

R2i: Has it made it easier?

Madison: It allows prospects to find me much more easily…so that I can help them with their real estate needs.

R2i: What has been the best social media outreach you have experienced? Any great fan stories or awesome home sales?

Madison: It happens quite often…business comes through some channel of social media. For instance, today, someone I went to school with 10 years ago, reached out via twitter with a real estate need. I immediately responded and potentially have a new buyer…all before noon today! I do have die-hard fans that contact me through social, commenting on nearly everything I post. It makes me feel like I almost know them personally.

R2i: Any tips for other reality TV personalities when using social media?

Madison: If you are on reality TV, and you aren’t utilizing social, you are making a huge mistake.

R2i: 3 pieces of advice you would give to someone trying to break into the reality television world.

Madison: 1. Make sure you have your head on straight and your feet on the ground before you are willing to share your life with the world. 2. Each year, I go into each season with a positive message or purpose that I want to emanate. 3. Don’t do reality TV because you’re desperate for attention or financial gain. If these are your reasons, you’ll find that you are susceptible to doing things you will regret.

Questions? Feel free to contact me @saminj58 or email us at info@r2integrated.com.

I find that generally there are two types of blog posts about Google Analytics reporting: Analytics 101 and Analytics 401. Analytics 101 posts explain the simple, out-of-the-box dashboard reports that anyone can generate without really learning too much about Google Analytics. Analytics 401 posts push deeper- explaining processes for looking for more customized, specific data. But what about Analytics 201 or 301 – things that you can do out-of-the-box, with just a little extra effort to customize the data for your specific business needs?

The purpose of this post is to fill that gap for those who want to dive deeper into Analytics, but aren’t quite ready to install specific code on their site or create custom reports with 15 different metrics. If you didn’t understand that last part – this post is for you!

1. IP Address Filters

IP Address Filters are a must! By using these filters, you can exclude all visits from a specific IP address or IP range. This can include visits from within your organization or from partners/agencies that you work with. Enabling this filter will allow you to get a clear picture of behavior solely from the online visitors you want to be tracking. Unfortunately, filters only start working once you create them.

Note: Always have one profile that has no filters whatsoever. This provides you with a back-up profile that is capturing all website activity.

To Implement:

- Create a new profile under your website account. Be sure to give it an appropriate name so you know which filters you have applied to this new profile.

- Under your new profile, create a new filter, which excludes the IP addresses of the traffic you want to segment out of this profile. There is the option to select a specific IP address under the Predefined Filters or you can create a Custom Filter to exclude an IP range using RegEx. Don’t worry Analytics 101-ers, here is a cheat sheet for creating RegEx.

2. Advanced Segments

Advanced Segments are a great tool when you want to look at the website behavior of visitors from a specific source. Unlike filters, Advanced Segments work within your existing profiles for data that has already been captured. For example, if you enable Google Analytics tracking on links within an email, you can then look at the most popular pages from that email, the time these visitors were on your site, and whether or not any converted. Other advanced segments include visitors from online advertising, visitors with conversions who do not come from paid search, and visitors who viewed a specific page on a website. These segments will help you narrow down exactly how users from various sources are behaving to better understand which sources are most likely to engage with content and convert.

To Implement:

- On the top of your Analytics site, find the drop down for Advanced Segments and create a new custom segment.

- Choose the appropriate include or exclude option – source, goal completions, landing page, etc. Use the “or” and “and” options to create a more customized segment.

- Give the new custom segment an appropriate name, and apply to your report.

3. Navigation Summary

The Navigation Summary allows you to track the most common paths through your website. The more segments you use this for, the more likely you are to identify the site paths your visitors travel. For example, try comparing the navigation summary for visitors with conversions against all visitors to identify the pages on your site most likely to drive conversions.

To View:

-  Start by choosing the Landing Page option in the left menu of Google Analytics, and select the top landing page on the site – which will most likely be your homepage.

- Find the Navigation Summary: in the old version, select Navigation Summary from the right menu. In the new version, select Navigation Summary above the main graph on the page.

- Track the top viewed pages from each page to create a diagram showing how visitors travel through your site. Move on to the second most viewed or third most viewed pages should you find cycles in your traffic patterns.

- I use a scratch piece of paper for this process using arrows to create a flow chart showing the most common next page, the second most common next page, and so on until I end up with a diagram that looks like this:

4. Branded vs. Non-Branded Organic Search

Organic search (non-paid visits from search engine results pages) is essential for reaching new customers who may not know that your business provides the solution they need. However, many times organic search traffic is visitors simply looking for the name of the company (branded). Therefore, by comparing the number of branded organic search visitors against the number of non-branded organic search visitors, you can determine the reach of your company to people who are not already familiar with your brand.

To Implement:

- Create an advanced segment that includes organic search visitors AND excludes all possible variations of your brand name. Be sure to have each exclusion under AND not OR to ensure you remove all branded keyword searches.

- Compare this segment against the total number of organic search visitors to find the number of branded organic search visitors versus non-branded organic search visitors.

5. Annotations

Annotations allow you to mark up your Analytics data with important dates, events, etc. so that you can correlate specific marketing efforts with changes in website data. If you are using multiple profiles, be sure to include annotations on each profile as they do not transfer from one to the other.

To Implement:

- In the main graph on any page in Google Analytics, highlight the date of the activity you want to track.

- Select “Create new annotation…” and title the activity.

- After saving, a small comment box will appear on your chart indicating an event happened on that day.

Questions? Feel free to contact me @mynameisarden or email us at info@r2integrated.com.

As we know, mobile device usage is continues to grow- fast. According to estimates from Juniper Research, global tablet shipments will reach 81 million by 2015, and in July IMS Research announced expected smartphone sales to exceed one billion by 2016. What does this really mean? The mobile landscape right now is at the edge of a perfect storm driven by the duel business / consumer mix.  The low cost combination of marketplace availability of smart devices, universal access to internet services everywhere, anytime and the standard feature sets– including social, media and geo-location– continues to support a growing influence in everyone’s daily lives. As a result, the appetite for more mobile features and analytics to pro-actively react to mobile behavior so mobile experiences become even more rewarding and personalized must be critical to an organizations mobile strategy.

Businesses are trying to solve the problem of keeping up with consumer demand while navigating the myriad of devices, on-going maintenance of apps, new enhancements, application certification and distribution.  Supporting a native app requires a specialized knowledge of the unique framework, device features and style guidelines; all need to be replicated per each native platform often with no re-usability. I liken this to a popular novel that must be translated into multiple languages and distributed to each country.  Same story but different dialect, grammar and languages are necessary to write each book.

HTML5 allows for standardized and faster development, along with multi-platform support, with more flexibility at a decreased cost. Since device feature sets such as geolocation, local storage, camera, video and audio are accessible via HTML5, the need for native development diminishes. This is a huge value proposition, not only in terms of cross-device scalability, but also in the post-deployment maintenance and support required for all successful apps.

Big brands are taking notice. Facebook statistics reported that the more than 350 million active users who access Facebook through their mobile devices are twice as active as non-mobile users. As a result Facebook announced the launch of the HTML5 Resource Center, giving developers tools to build, test and deploy Facebook applications using HTML5.

Everyday, news about the adoption and advancement of HTML5 within large software companies emerges. Recently appMobi open sourced a number of their HTML5 development technologies, and by now you’ve heard that Adobe announced it will discontinue development of Flash for mobile devices, putting its efforts instead towards HTML5; using HTML5, iPhone supports video without the need for Adobe Flash. Danny Winokur, VP and GM of Interactive Development at Adobe said recently: “HTML5 is now universally supported on major mobile devices…in some cases exclusively. This makes HTML5 the best solution for creating and deploying content in the browser across mobile platforms…These changes will allow us to increase investment in HTML5…”

While this all sounds great, there are still hurdles, specifically in B2B market adoption. HTML5 requires a browser capable of supporting its framework.  Older browsers may support some but not all the capabilities leaving organizations in a form of purgatory in terms of their ability to fully develop, and implement HTML5 apps.  All of that said, most agree it is a forgone conclusion that HMTL5 will be fully embraced as a universal solution, with the reality pointing to 2012 as when the tipping point occurs.

One way we stay on top of available talent is by visiting college campuses. In early December, along with Kevin Schreiner, r2i’s Chief Software Architect, I went to Pittsburgh’s Carnegie Mellon University (CMU), a top university for social analytics research and technical computer science curriculum. Their social analytics center has worked with a number of companies, including Tom’s of Maine, Microsoft and Yahoo, to develop a repository of unique data sets pertaining to user behavior in social information sharing.

This visit was a follow up to our participation in CMU’s Capstone project, a highly selective program that teams CMU’s Masters in IS, Marketing and Business Management students with outside organizations. As part of their graduation requirements and to give them “real world” experience, students complete a complex IS project for one of the partner corporate organizations. We were one of only six companies selected to take part in the fall 2011 event.

Our particular group of students –five wickedly smart and diverse engineers, marketers and business analysts — worked to develop Proof of Concepts for R2i Seemor & R2iSMASH™. Seemor is a social conversation aggregator and analytics engine aimed at the enterprise marketing team. R2iSMASH is a social media platform that drives brand engagement by aggregating conversations across social networking sites into one, highly interactive presentation window.

The objective for the Capstone project, as defined by r2i, was to have the students provide more insight and advanced analysis of social conversations focusing on the subject titles within a large data sample of online conversation source streams such as Twitter, Facebook, blogs, forums and user generated comments (UGC). Results would aid users by recommending better ways to identify the conversations organizations should participate in as well as the authors with the greatest influences.

The task was challenging and the students worked all semester under r2i guidance. The culmination of their efforts was showcased to a packed room of fellow students, professors and advisors. We were led through a very technical and enlightening presentation and subsequent Q&A. In the end, the students, working with very large database sets and advanced language parsing algorithms, gained greater insight into the world of social analytics. R2i received a set of artifacts that included the data model, research results, an in depth analysis and recommendations for implementation.

R2i mixed recruitment with the Capstone project review, by leading a lunch session later that day with more than 30 graduate students from the Heinz School at CMU. We have hired CMU graduates in the past and on this trip we were looking for candidates for several full time and internship positions as well as talking with students about new technologies and development language methodologies and paradigms taking hold.

The two-way discussion was flowing, lively and very relevant. This group didn’t disappoint, responding with well-thought responses and questions. We left very impressed with the students we’d met and with many resumes to review for our open positions.

For more information about the Capstone project and r2i recruitment efforts, please contact us at info@r2integrated.com.

Black & Decker’s Highly Customized Mobile App

R2i created a highly social Black & Decker site, specifically branded “Recharge Your Yard,” which aggregates conversations about electric outdoor tools happening in real time, promotes widespread interactive features, and makes use of a range of user-generated content.

As a large brand, r2i recognized the B&D app needed to be scalable and assessable from an end-user experience, and the best way to do this in a high-value manner is through an web mobile optimized app. The app was designed to leverage the web site and content management system (CMS) including social media, conversation and user generated content while creating a mobile user experience tailored for all smartphone and tablet devices.

The site, built using an open source CMS, had many community portal content types such as Twitter & Facebook, videos, ratings, surveys, videos, discussions, detailed product specifications and a store locator map. Calls to action were created to engage the users deciding what products to purchase and to encourage switching from gas powered to electric powered equipment.  This includes the “Should You Go Electric” wizard, which helps the consumer determine whether or not they would benefit from their outdoor tool. Widgets were also created that presented a real time Twitter conversation stream with integrated geographic tagging displayed on a Google map. R2i also created a B&D story submission section to showcase specific user experiences with the products.

View the B&D case study here.

Mobile Optimized Design & Development Best Practices

When developing a mobile optimized app there are a number of design and development best practices organizations should follow. First, design for the optimal mobile experience (UI/Design/Functionality) then, content decisions will fall easily into place. Here are a few key details to remember:

• Create re-usable business logic and data layer methods

• Use mobi/m.dot – with automated redirection

• Don’t just re-purposed your website- it needs to feel personalized & interactive, be populated with high value content, render quickly and have analytics/behavior tracking in place / SEO.

• Coordinate Your Resources- U/I Designer (for usability), developer/QA (for functionality), information Manager for content)

Template Considerations:

• Keep file size small – Consider the end-user’s bandwidth and data rates

• Keep server requests to a minimum – Keep files to a minimum: combine CSS files for skin, combine images into sprites, and combine JavaScript (JS) files

• Resist heavy script usage – Utilize CSS 3 transitions and animations for a smoother look

• Use a server side detection and redirection – This approach keeps device from loading the desktop version until it hits a JavaScript or meta redirection

Business Considerations:

• Information Architecture & Content  – Filtered to what is most needed

• Functionality First – keep the end-user experience in mind at all times; K.I.S.S. (Keep It Simple Silly)

• Differentiate – if the market is crowded with identical concepts, do something different

• But Learn from Others – check out similar/competitors apps, use what features and design elements works, change what doesn’t

• UI Design is Critical – clear and accessible to all potential users; screen size, resolution, “touch-ability” are critical; test wireframes and mock-ups with potential users

• Don’t Forget the Icon – your app and brand needs to stand out in both graphic and name

R2i understands that a mobile app is an extension of your brand, a platform connecting your target audience through a seamless online experience. We help with the vision, creation, and tracking of your mobile apps to achieve your marketing goals and functional objectives. Working together, r2i can help you leverage your brand by providing cross platform mobile apps. Learn more about Black & Decker’s “Recharge Your Yard” today or contact us at info@r2integrated.com for more information.

Well, thanks to our friends over at Tatango, they’ve created a timeline of the last 19 years of text messaging. Enjoy!

Source: Tatango SMS Marketing

I should preface this blog by saying that I’m a full-blown social nerd. So, you can imagine my excitement when @LIVESTRONGCEO Doug Ulman sent 2 tweets out mentioning my handle @samiNJ58. I know- you can’t control your excitement for me, right? Neither could I…those two tweets had me shouting (well, tweeting) from the rooftop about my social shout out from one of cancers biggest butt-kicking social CEO’s.

While it was a quick trip, which did involve an interesting night watching mechanical bull riding, R2i Chief Technology Officer, Chris Chodnicki and I had time for a serious conversation and workshop with the more than 140 member organizations who share the common (and obviously amazing) goal of improving the survival rates and quality of life for young adults with cancer, about the importance of social media and community building in the non-profit and association sector.

Challenges Facing Non-Profits and Associations

As we are all painfully aware, the current economy has created a challenging landscape for traditional non-profits. The sheer number of individuals needing access to information and services has increased, while fundraising to support the organization’s mission has become harder to achieve. The infographic below demonstrates a number of the overall challenges faced by these organizations, which need more effective, efficient and cost-effective ways to connect with current and potential members and donors.

Chris and I talked with the LIVESTRONG Young Adult Alliance about how social media marketing can help organizations better engage, connect and understand their audiences and get people they need (influencers, evangelists and stakeholders) involved in their organization’s mission to help build greater awareness.

We were clear with our audience: it’s not enough to set up a Facebook page or a Twitter account and hope for the best… #FAIL. That’s not social media marketing, and it certainly doesn’t qualify as a social engagement strategy. We encouraged them to keep four things in mind when developing a true social media strategy:

So, “Why does true engagement matter?” It’s more than increasing numbers and capturing an extended following; it’s about the development of stronger and more loyal community dedicated to supporting your cause. The importance of yearlong community building affects all aspects of the goals non-profits and other like associations have: Driving membership, fundraising, dues, and cultivating relationships with donors and sponsors.

As a result, the expanding community becomes a more intense, organic extension of planned message outreach. Cultivating these relationships allows for more efficient and effective disseminating of information, the recruitment of new members, and the outreach for donations and dues, becomes a much more fluid and welcome process. Another added benefit: the organization’s maintenance of legacy relationships and sponsorships becomes more targeted and much less time-intensive. #WINNING.

Social Aggregation and Community Building

The LIVESTRONG Young Adult Alliance is one of a number of non-profits and associations, including the Ulman Cancer Fund and the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society (Maryland Chapter) that are simultaneously using the combination of their branded social platforms and the social web to extend their brand and expand its community. How are they doing this? Good question. One key is using R2ISMASH™.

R2ISMASH™, meet reader. Reader, meet R2ISMASH™. Now that we’re all friends, let’s explain. An R2ISMASH™, page is a completely customized social media platform that drives brand engagement by aggregating conversations across social networking sites into one, interactive window. Still with me?

This customized screen and page design aggregates real-time social content from your online branded properties and digital campaigns. So, combining live streaming video, tweets, posts, texts, photos, conversations and blogs delivers a dynamically changing gallery of content and conversation, attracts additional online audiences, builds community and further engages. Not to mention, it gives your community a single access point to relevant content and a seamless platform to engage with each other. Could it be any cooler? Click on the image below to view the live SMASH instance now.

R2i developed a SMASH instance for the Young Adult Alliance, designing a highly interactive portal, which inherently promotes social community sharing and interaction. Talk about a good old fashion cancer-bashing butt-whopping by the masses.

The LIVESTRONG Young Adult Alliance SMASH site, links 1.5 million LIVESTRONG Facebook followers and over 153,000 Twitter followers to an abundance of relevant content all in one place. Followers can read intimate stories and engage with people who share similar interests, which in turn, drives new additional conversations and community building. The news section of the LIVESTRONG SMASH includes links to the LIVESTRONG blog, where bloggers regularly engage with each other related to the Alliance mission.

Social Media Monitoring: Begin with a Social Audit

We also discussed the importance of social media monitoring in terms of analytics and analysis. Sure, it’s great to have a large following, but have you really assessed who you are talking to? Are you talking to yourself? Are half your Facebook fans family members of employees? If you don’t know your community, you better start investigating.  A Social Audit allows you to see who is engaging with your community and who isn’t. Some key benefits of an audit:

• Evangelists & stakeholders are promptly identified and rewarded; the engagement process becomes more efficient & effective on owned & un-owned properties.
• You are able to identify content that’s working & where it’s successful, allowing you to create more compelling socially shareable content and your reach and relevance is much more highly targeted.
• Most importantly, community engagement becomes organic on both sides: your community does the work for you by sharing stories with each other and engaging with each other, and your organization is able to quickly identify trending topics and the best times to engage.

While we didn’t have time to walk through a full-blown social media analytics strategy, we did leave the community with a high-level baseline benchmark to get them started. Click here to view the presentation and recommended metrics and tools to start your social media analytics benchmark.

We believe our meeting with the LIVESTRONG Young Adult Alliance will push individual members to see that with a better understanding and application of social aggregation, marketing and community building they can increase audience engagement. They’ll give more visitors access to highly inspiring content and resources, as well as a place to talk openly with each other and with the organizations.

And if they remembered nothing else, we left them with the following:

• Get your house in order: Do an audit & make sure you’ve got the basics covered
• Publish audience-centered content that is valuable, sharable & supports your mission
• Engage members & build relationships with influencers & brand advocates throughout the year

Questions? Feel free to contact Chris (@cchodnicki) or myself (@samiNJ58) to learn more about @R2integrated’s social media strategies and R2ISMASH™.

There are a few changes that have been made specifically to Facebook Pages, and then there are some overall changes in the design of Facebook that will implicitly impact any business on the social network.

Changes to Facebook Pages:

• Facebook users can now comment on content posted in Business pages without actually “liking” the page – meaning a user doesn’t have to be a fan of the brand to comment on the post.

• Pages no longer have to have 25 likes to set up a custom vanity URL/username. (Remember: once you set a custom URL you can never change it!)

• The character limit on status updates has been increased from 420 characters to 5,000 – meaning that Pages will be able to share more in depth information via Facebook when necessary.

• Facebook Insights (analytics) will be more in depth & useful than ever before, providing per-post metrics which businesses can export to Excel for further analysis.

• The new News Ticker will show real time interaction between user’s Facebook friends and brands (Facebook pages) on the home page of Facebook. This means that businesses need to work harder to keep fans interacting and engaging with their brand on Facebook.

• Apps now require SSL, meaning that if a business has created an app on Facebook (including Welcome Tabs), any images/videos must be hosted on a secure server or they won’t display properly.

• The new “Are talking about this” metric on all Facebook Pages shows both how many people have liked the page, as well as how many people are actually talking about the page. This really shows the difference between awareness (gaining likes) and engagement (interacting with Facebook users), stressing the importance of engaging with those who like a brand on Facebook.

• At the end of October, Facebook removed 2 tabs on Facebook Pages: Discussions and Reviews. You will be able to archive these, but no more new discussions or reviews will be published after they are removed.

Overall Changes to Facebook that will Affect Businesses

• App Integration – With the ultra-integration of Facebook applications, users will now become more embedded within a brand, making apps a seamless part of the Facebook experience. Take Spotify for example, a music app, which has been so integrated into Facebook that users can move from Facebook to Spotify and back without ever really leaving the Facebook website. When a user finds value in an application – and links that application with Facebook and the open graph – the opportunities are endless.

• Larger Photos – Now that photos are even larger and more prominent on user’s Timelines, businesses will want to make sure that the photos they post are high quality and share worthy.

With these new changes, Facebook is attempting to make their social networking site even more embedded in the daily lives of your customers. If things play out the way Zuckerberg hopes, Facebook usage will increase and become a true hub of all social interaction (think about the integration of apps and personal data). Imagine, businesses running their entire operations through Facebook – just as they would in an online or physical store. If a business has been trying to avoid investing real time and money into Facebook – these changes will force them to wake up and start paying attention. Ignoring Facebook will be like a business owner ignoring the customers walking into their store. Facebook users want to connect with brands – in meaningful, relevant ways.

R2integrated is aware of these changes and keeping an eye of the latest & greatest in Facebook pages. If you need help with your Facebook strategy, or just want to talk about the latest changes, give R2integrated a call.

.Net is a programming model for building web applications. A content management system is a web application that allows organizations to easily manage all of their website’s content (think video, images, documents, links, brand messaging, etc.). Open source means the platform’s creator, Shaun Walker, released the platform including its source code to the community (community = IT geeks who like to tinker with new technologies in their free time). He did this hoping they would use it and improve upon his foundation which they did. In the fall of 2006 DNN Corporation was established as the steward of the DNN platform by its creator Shaun Walker and 3 others.

I only outline the history of DNN because for this blog post to make sense to those not familiar with DNN I need to go back in time and set the stage before I start my cautionary tale.

So from 2007 – 2011, I have slowly gotten to know the community of DNN users and the DNN Corp team. Since I am in Business Development, I don’t intimately use the platform, but I do encourage people to adopt the platform and have recently begun selling DNN’s Professional & Enterprise Edition (more on this in the next paragraph).

While at DNN World I saw many familiar faces including clients, other DNN partners and the DNN Corp team. It was great to see everyone. The conference kicked-off with Shaun Walker’s keynote. I was very impressed. Shaun was polished, the music was upbeat, the lighting was dramatic and the stage’s backdrop was ideal – clean, crisp and bright. Shaun spoke about the conference’s focus on Cloud, Mobile and Social (CMS – get it?) but he also spoke about DNN’s identity, DNN’s essence. He described it as Yin and Yang; both opposing forces yet both needing one another to be complete. The Yin and the Yang he was referring to are the two sides of DNN, the FREE community edition and the PAID professional edition. The community edition is free and supported by the community. The professional edition is sold as a paid license model. It offers some additional functionality and is supported by DNN Corp but also benefits from the community’s support. Shaun argued that while both are different models and seemingly opposing forces the Yin and the Yang of DNN’s model will, in fact, be the key to its success.

I think this went over well with attendees. For newbies it just made sense but for those old timers who have been around for 3-4 years it was the message they had been hearing from DNN’s founders for many years. Community is important and we will always support the community. This level of community commitment has been demonstrated over the years, as Shaun has rejected ideas that did not maintain the community model.

After the first 4 hours at the conference it occurred to me, DNN is growing up. They were organized, they were polished; the conference ran like a well-oiled machine I felt like a proud parent watching my child enter the business world. The only problem was something didn’t feel right. I couldn’t put my finger on it until I walked into lunch on the last day of the conference with Shaun and a handful of the DNN Corp team. I looked at the group of them and commented that they looked like a bunch of parochial school boys in their conference uniforms of khaki pants and white oxford DNN Corp shirts. And then it struck me, DNN was trying to grow-up too fast and they had lost some of their essence, their identity, their personality.

Shaun Walker has been the face of DNN since the beginning and Shaun is a badass (at least he dresses like one)! For those who have never met Shaun, he spikes his hair, wears a puka shell necklace and his daily uniform consists of a black t-shirt and camouflage shorts.

DNN Corp recognizes Shaun’s appeal and leveraged his look in the limited edition Shaun Walker Bobble Head which was given away to 50 lucky folks at the conference. (Malik Kahn from PointClick even jumped into the pool at night with his clothes on to win a Shaun Walker Bobble Head!) But, I’m worried that the badass Shaun will be reserved for the community, the Yin. From what I saw, the Yang, the enterprise Shaun and the rest of DNN Corp lacked some of that badass flair. Hey, I get it. You’re selling to the big dawgs now. You need to grow-up. But as you start to find your way, remember where you came from. I would argue that even the enterprise could use an injection of badass every now and then. DNN Corp stay true to your roots, DNN was built by a rebel with a cause. He is the face of the platform. Maybe next year at DNNWorld the team can wear khaki pants, white oxford DNN Corp shirts AND a puka shell necklace. Add a little Yin to your Yang – remember what Shaun said, the Yin AND the Yang will be the key to DNN’s success.

To view video, pictures, blogs, tweets, the Shaun Walker Bobble Head and the DNN conference uniform check-out http://www.dnnworld.r2ismash.com.

Lori Ulloa, R2integrated Senior Web Strategist and in-house SEO guru, recently presented “Mobile Marketing, SEO & Visibility: Why You Should Care,” to the Baltimore Chapter of the American Marketing Association. From the importance of a mobile strategy for your organization to best practices in structuring your mobile site for search, Lori covers it all. Click on the presentation below to learn more.

Questions about R2integrated’s mobile website and mobile app design?