Last week, I wrote a post on the New Streak (where I blog for work), on my participation on a panel at the Entrepreneurial Imperative 2010, a conference focused on entrepreneurship and hosted here in Knoxville, TN.  I’d highly recommend this conference as it’s one of the biggest groupings of entrepreneurial minded folks I’ve seen in Knoxville.

My session was wittily titled “Social Networking – Untangling the Web of Cutting Edge Technology.”  I talked about marketing for startups and particularly on if Facebook or Twitter was a better place to start your marketing efforts. Wondering where I suggested?  Check out the post for the full answer.

Related articles

• UT connects executives, students in new venture (knoxnews.com)

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My friend Mark Schaefer tweeted over the weekend that his awesome blog {grow} has been added to the Advertising Age Power 150 marketing blogs at number 148!  He joins other luminaries such Brian Clark at Copyblogger, Dave Armano at Logic+Emotion, Chris Brogan, Seth Godin, Jason Falls and many others (full list).  They are lucky to have him and if you’ve come across his blog you knew that his skill would be noticed.

Mark is a gifted communicator and his experience is on display with every post he writes, turning out post after post of helpful and insightful thoughts. A special congrats is in order since Mark is also the first Ad Age Power 150 blogger in Knoxville, TN a title he will hold until the end of time. Congrats Mark, the moonshine’s on me next time.

Over the weekend I had pleasure of speaking at the East Tennessee Preservation conference in historic Rugby, TN.  I’ve posted a recap of panel on using social media for historic and preservation tourism with slides and video over on the New Streak, where I blog for Moxley Carmichael.  Check it out.

Related articles

• Social media training specific to the tourism industry (drewsmarketingminute.com)
• Tourism meets social media at BlogWorld Expo (smallbizsurvival.com)
• Social media’s impact on tourism (news.bbc.co.uk)

Happy to be in the running for East Tennessee’s Best Tweeter with a couple others from the team at Moxley Carmichael, including Scott Bird and Cynthia Moxley.  (Cynthia’s also nominated for best blogger for The Blue Streak!)  Thanks for the nomination and your votes.

Please vote! Ends tonight Aug. 20!

Vote for Best Tweeter

Vote for Best Blogger

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Yesterday I had the opportunity to speak on a panel with my friends Chad Parizman and Lynsay Caylor to a class of very bright full-time MBA students at the University of Tennessee. Our topic was social media monetization, although we certainly talked more broadly then that in our time with the class. I enjoyed hearing their questions, and learning more about the challenges that Chad faces at Scripps and Lynsay at Pilot.

The most striking thing to me about the class were their answers to a few questions Chad asked about their social involvement.

How many of you have updated your Facebook status in the last week? 80%

How many of you have updated Twitter in the last few hours? 45%

How many of you only have a Twitter account to study it? 60%

How many of you use LinkedIn? 65%

(The room was also about 75% PC and 25% Apple)

I found these answers very interesting, particularly the LinkedIn stat. Facebook and Twitter stats are pretty consistent with what I’ve experienced, but I was very surprised that there were students who were not on LinkedIn. I don’t consider it to be the end all be all, but there are MBA students who have had jobs and are going back to school to further their career. Blew my mind that they weren’t on LinkedIn. The opposite take away  is that LinkedIn isn’t a go to for these smart saavy students, so either it doesn’t present a value proposition to them OR they are unclear how to make best use of it.  This will be an interesting one to watch.

I closed with the following advice “79% of the Fortune 100 currently uses social media in one form or another. Most of you expect to get jobs in the Fortune 500 and once hired they will expect you as a younger MBA to know social media. You don’t need to love every service, but you do need to use them and understand their application to business.”

I hope they jumped on and started experimenting. If you had a final statement, what would you have shared?

[UPDATE] eMarketer today launched some statistics on job sites used by HR professionals as well as the following quote, “The most helpful tools for career advancement were professional networks such as LinkedIn as well as best-practice communities, each named by about two-thirds of HR executives.”