When you get to spend your day chatting with the likes of Amy Porterfield, Mari Smith, and Stacy Zapar, you know you have to write about it! This is not something that happens every day - at least not to me! But beyond this amazing story, there was a lot to learn and a lot to take away from Social Media Day San Diego 2013.

Sunday, June 30th was Social Media Day. A day recognized around the world by those who love all things social media. Fortunately for us San Diegans, we have a serious hub of social media leaders, adopters, and influencers. It's kind of unfair when you think about it, but, hey, I'll take it!

The day started off with 1600 registered participants! That's a LOT of people coming to one place to learn about social media. To be fair, it is San Diego, and I'm sure not all registered participants showed up. I mean it was a super hot day and I'm sure the beach and the surf steered a few people astray...

But for those of us that participated, we were not disappointed! The educational tracks started off with a Facebook panel with none other than Amy Porterfield and Mari Smith. If you don't know who these amazing ladies are, I've linked their names to their Facebook pages. I highly recommend you follow both of them. They are pretty big deals in the social media world. It was really cute too when one guest totally "fangirled" when she was able to ask these two ladies a question! Read down a little further to find their tips for Facebook marketing success.

The second educational track was focused on LinkedIn, Google+, and Instagram. Stacy Zapar is the most connected person on LinkedIn with 37,000 connections! Lynette Young is a Google+ advocate and Claudia Sandoval is the leader of the San Diego Igers. These three ladies were great and I learned a lot in this session. I actually used to think I knew a lot about LinkedIn but Stacy Zapar taught me so much in a short period of time! Read on to see their tips and advice.

Facebook

• Hashtags are now functional on Facebook and are a great source for generating new likes and traffic. Choose commonly used hashtags in your posts that will easily show up in common searches to get your content in front of new fans. Use unique hashtags to brand your posts and define yourself in the public arena.
• "Humanize your business" - Mari Smith. Use Facebook (and other sites) to include your personal side. Audiences love to see the personality of a brand or a person. Both Mari and Amy agreed that some of their highest engagements come from posts about their personal lives rather than business related posts. Remember, people are on Facebook to connect with friends and family. Positioning your posts in a personal manner increases engagement.
• The ladies also strongly encouraged us to monitor our page insights. This data can even be exported to spreadsheets for more in-depth analysis. You should be monitoring your page insights daily to determine which types of posts, and which times are getting the most engagement.
• Facebook ads are key! These allow you to get out in front of targeted audiences for whichever content you choose. You can target your page to new fans or target new products to existing fans. And these ads can be purchased for very reasonable rates ($25 a month even!).
• If you're using Facebook ads, try using the Power Editor. Amy highly recommends this feature! The Power Editor allows you to target your ads to the newsfeed rather than the right side bar. This is extremely important because ads in the right side bar get a click rate of 0.04% while ads in the newsfeed get click rates of up to 5%! Why, you ask? Two reasons, really. First, when was the last time you looked at the side bar? So what makes you think your fans and customers are? Second, the sidebar isn't visible on mobile devices. With so many people using Facebook on their mobile devices, you need to target the newsfeed to have your ads seen.
• You can also use a feature called Precise Interest in the ads function which allows you to target specific groups of people. This is very sneaky, and completely legal! The example Amy gave was for a supermarket chain. You can actually target local fans of a competitor supermarket with your ads! Imagine if you could drive your competitors fans directly to your page! Think of the possibilities. You can now do this using this feature.
• A final tip for Facebook advertising was to consider retargeting/remarketing. You can use a website (www.adroll.com) that utilizes cookies to determine an internet users search and click preferences. Then this information can be retargeted to them to show up in their Facebook feed. So, if you already have customers coming to your website, and you want to retarget them, you can try this method.

LinkedIn

• LinkedIn is not just for job searches. It is great for knowledge share and content curation. You can also customize the LinkedIn Today news posts to your ideal channels to ensure that you get the most relevant content in your news.
• In case you wanted to know, LinkedIn caps your connections at 30,000. You can, however, still send out new requests, you just can't accept new requests. This is how Stacy is able to have 37,000 connections.
• "Build a well before you're thirsty." - Stacy Zapar. The advice Stacy gave us was to start building your connections now. Don't wait until you are desperate, start networking now!
• Also, think of networking online like you do in real life. It's not networking if you're only connecting with and talking with the people you already know. Don't be afraid to reach out and connect with new people!
• As Stacy said, you might not want everyone from your LinkedIn account on your Facebook account, but you sure should want everyone from your Facebook account on your LinkedIn account! Apparently there is a new LinkedIn Contacts feature (I don't have it yet) that allows you to import ALL of your connections from not only your email accounts (which is the standard option for us common folk right now) but from your social media accounts as well, including Facebook and Twitter! You can sort your connections by site and choose which ones you want to add to LinkedIn. How cool is that?! Can't wait until I get this function!
• If you are required to enter an email address every time to ask to connect with someone, you are in LinkedIn jail! There are apparently various levels of LinkedIn jail and this is the first level and easiest to get out of. If you are in this situation, you can go to this link on Stacy's website to get yourself bailed out! There are numerous reasons why you might be here, and she explains them on this page. But chances are you are trying to connect with too many people and getting too many rejections. Consider including a brief introductory message when you connect with new people to ensure they know who you are, why you are connecting with them, and what you hope to bring to the relationship.
• You are able to be a member in up to 50 LinkedIn groups. If you're not in 50 groups, you're not maximizing your networking opportunities. Also, you can message fellow group members for free (with a standard LinkedIn account).

Google+

• If you have any Google related product or account, you have a Google+ account. This includes if you use YouTube, Google Places (or Google Local) or Gmail. If you have active accounts for any of these services, you have a Google+ account.
• Google+ communities (the alternative to LinkedIn Groups) are better moderated, and much more engaging. Spamming your links to these communities is not ok and will get you in trouble with moderators.
• If you want to start a G+ community, be prepared. They run quick and people are very chatty. You need to be committed to monitoring, administering, and moderating the community.
• If you join G+ communities, you may find that your notifications and Gmail are getting overloaded with notifications. You can correct this, and many other settings by going to accounts.google.com then go to the Google+ tab to change your settings.
• Google+ hangouts are great ways to connect but good audio is key. Visit www.purplestripe.com/extras for best tips on equipment and tools to achieve a great hangout. G+ is also working with various algorithms to reduce background noise (for example the sound of clicking on a keyboard is magically muted during a hangout).
• Vanity URLs are slowly being made available to certain people and will become more common in the future. The eligibility standards required to qualify for a vanity URL are not really known.

Instagram

• The general consensus was that Instagram videos are much better than Vine. Instagram videos allow you to add filters to your videos and enable a feature called "Cinema" that reduces shaking and camera movement to produce high quality videos.
• Instagram is a mobile based application and is not designed for use on your computer. The idea is that it is instant. You take the photos on your camera and upload immediately.
• There is a great site (www.statigr.am) that allows you to analyze your Instagram account and measure your statistics.

After all this great information, the day was followed up with a great networking event. I'm super excited to be able to say that I was able to meet many of the ladies I mentioned in this post. I was honored to share in their knowledge and conversations! It truly was an amazing day and I already can't wait until the next one!

Here I am with Mari Smith following the educational tracks.

Here I am with Amy Porterfield and Tyler Anderson (he is one of the people responsible for coordinating this entire day and event)!

**Disclaimer: These are the tips, advice, and opinions of the women from Social Media Day San Diego 2013 as listed above. The tips are repeated as per my interpretation. By listing these tips here, I do not necessarily endorse, validate, nor confirm the information. These tips are posted for my purpose only and are not specifically endorsed by the people mentioned in this post.