I almost didn’t quite make it on time to Third Tuesday Toronto (#TTT) at the Berkeley Heritage Event Venue on Queen Street East, Toronto. When I did, I entered a room of eager, glasses-wearing, social media crowd of people were waiting for it to begin.

Rewind. What is Third Tuesday Toronto? It’s a meetup.com group with over 3000 members that meet up on the third Tuesday of every month. Originally, it was a take on the Third Thursdays done up in the San Francisco Bay area. The typical format is a presentation by a guest speaker followed by networking. Topics focus on new media marketing and communications, so you’ll see a lot of social media savvy people here.

Today, they had two speakers.

Part 1: Justin Kozuch aka @jkozuch

First up, @jkozoch of @49pixels talked. His thing was inspiring a legacy in digital media. Do you know how many players are in the digital media? Do you even know what digital media is? He is working right now to answer these questions and more because Statscan doesn’t do a good job. Kudos to @jkozoch for taking on this massive elephant of a task.

Your take away from my recap is to take a look @49pixels. It’s part of a huge movement for everyone involved in digital media (ie. digital audio, cell phones, tv, e-books, video games, e-commerce…).

Part 2: Richard Binhammer aka @RichardatDell

Then, the microphone was tossed to the jeans-wearing @RichardatDell. He is one of the champions behind Dell’s social media; he was the guy that everyone came out to hear. A few years ago, he came out to speak at a previous Third Tuesday. This time around, it was sold out with a waitlist of members. Everyone wanted to hear what his take on social media given Dell Hell (super bad customer and technical service) and Dell being one of the first movers in the big, bad, and seemingly scary world of social media a whole four years ago.

While sitting on the stage with his ankles crossed and legs swinging, @RichardatDell told us 13 things that worked for Dell and other people can take away as nuggets.

1) Access for the customers is key. Dell is available 24/7 and in lots of languages.

2) Read all customer reviews to improve ratings beyond a 4 or 5-star rating.

3) Get cozy with 15 haters and 15 lovers of your brand by bringing them together and then talk and listen to them.

4) Fly to the top of social media platforms in China. Dell did this in eight short months.

5) Focus on business-to-business strategies.

6) Wow, this got lost in translations somewhere.

7) What 6) said.

8 ) Train all employees on social media. Dell trained more than 8000 employees.

9) Track daily reports and then pass them along to decision-making employees.

10) Do some ‘idea storm(ing)’ (brain storming) to refresh your product, service, and brand.

11) Lend an ear and hand to the technical side of the product in your idea generation for success.

12) Keep doing more social media every single day.

In the end, it turned out to be 12 points for @RichardatDell.

Ultimately, do I like Dell? Not really, they didn’t allow me to upgrade a laptop order that I got back in 2009. Is this a case of Dell Hell? As for #TTT, I’d go back next month. Next time, I’ll stay to mingle too. After all, I am one of those glasses-wearing (sometimes, contacts-wearing) social media types.

Not in the T.dot and wanting to take in some upcoming events?  Try Third Tuesday meetup.com groups in Vancouver (#3TYVR), Ottawa (#TTO), Calgary (#CTT), or New Brunswick (#TTNB).

Judy Lee

Judy has an orange bag. In it, she has her essentials including her MacBook, shiny iPhone, and Moleskine. They are her must-haves because she is always on the go. Living the Vancouver life, she is passionate about working out, eating out, and hashing out strategic plans for good marketing.

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