What was Bin Laden's Last Facebook post?

What was Bin Laden's Last Facebook post?

A week ago Sunday night my I-phone lit up with the following message from my son: "Bin Laden Should Not Have Been Using Foursquare". I had to laugh because of the incongruity of the world's formerly most hunted terrorist, sitting around checking in with his buddies via social media. For those that don't know, Foursquare is one of the many new ways people can communicate their whereabouts via mobile phones.

At the time I was attending the Home Furnishings All Industry conference with speakers and experts on a variety of topics including an outstanding agenda of social media topics. Monday afternoon as I sat in on a seminar on social media, Kevin Doran from R & A Marketing told the audience how he learned about Bin Laden's demise 30 minutes before the President told the country due to a tweet from CNN on Twitter.

In my opinion, the best presentation was done by Erik Qualman. Everyone should look up on YouTube Erik's highly viewed video entitled Socialnomics. Erik is the author of the same titled book, and gave a fabulous presentation at the Conference on the impact of social media.

It was evident to me how hungry those in our industry are to learn about all these new ways to communicate with the customer via social media. Many in our industry are by and large generationally challenged, but the customer is not.

For all reps that did not attend the Conference, there were over 85 retailers. More importantly, I sat in sessions that provided important information I can share with my customers back home through my newsletter and in person. Next year we would like to make this a truly all industry conference by getting more rep participation. Please let me know if a special rep track at the all industry conference would be of interest to you.

And if you want to connect with me let's do it via social media. Follow me via twitter (www.twitter.com/meroot), connect with me on facebook (www.facebook.com/mikeroot), or post a comment on my blog at www.mikeroot.com.

For those of you that connect in the social media world, my 24-year-old son and I share relevant marketing content about how to use these new media tools to grow your business. By getting on our list you can see how we do it. Emailing me or calling me on the phone is just so old school (unless of course you want to order a truck of furniture).

As always leave me comments on how you are using social media, what questions you might have about this new media marketing, or what your interest would be in participating in next year's All Industry Conference. Thanks

PS. See what everyone was tweeting about during the Conference with the twitter hash tag #hfic2011.

PSS. Before you give me some cranky post about why social media is not relevant for reps, please be aware that it is very relevant for retailers. By the very nature of a rep's relationship with a retailer, that makes it relevant to reps! Oh, and by the way, I just put a big deal together via Linked In so it's very relevant to me.

PSSS. One last tip: I used a current event in the title to capture interest in this article. How are you using Bin Laden or the Royal Wedding or any other current event to capture the imagination of your customers? And Bin Laden's last Facebook post "Someone's at the door, I'll be right back." (That's a joke folks)