In an effort to stay abreast of trends in the social media landscape, I enrolled in the Marketing via New Media course through UCSD Extension which is taught byBecky Carroll, author of the CustomersRock.net. The objective of the online course is to “examine interactive marketing opportunities beyond websites, including blogs, vlogs (video blogs), forums, e-mail campaigns, social networking, communities, podcasts, mobile computing, and even virtual reality.” For individuals whose day to day activities are usually fast-paced, this is a great way to learn and embrace the new marketing opportunities within social media on their own time.

I first heard of the new media marketing course in 2008 when the company I was working for at the time, Brickfish®, was invited by Becky Carroll and her students to speak. We presented what Brickfish was and how companies could use our platform to launch a social media advertising campaign. In fact, I blogged about my first encounter with Becky’s class which you can view here: Marketing via New Media Meets Brickfish.

Since 2008, I’ve always wanted to enroll but there was always an obstacle (i.e. work life balance, other extracurricular commitments, etc.) that prevented me from doing so. Now that I’ve finally enrolled in the class and I’m definitely looking forward to what the course has to offer as well as meeting other students in the class that are as passionate about social media as I am. I’ll keep you posted on how it goes.

Related posts:

1. Marketing via New Media Meets Brickfish®
2. Guest Bloggers on HeyStephanie
3. HeyStephanie’s Social Map

Last week I met up with my old colleagues at a Happy Hour 2.0 in La Jolla. It was the perfect opportunity to catch up with them since I recently started a new job and to mingle with other marketers, developers, and other web people. The only drawback was that I didn’t have my new business cards or any moo cards to hand out. Fortunately, HeyStephanie.com was easy for my new friends to remember and I was able to get by with giving my email address.

Meanwhile, I still don’t have any new business cards so in the interim, I had to find a solution to my business card dilemma. Luckily, I stumbled across MyDropcard.com which lets you easily share your contact info with your phone—for free!

Once you’ve registered and entered all of your contact information at the site, you’re good to go. As if that wasn’t cool enough, you can create two separate profiles; one for business and the other for personal contacts.

When you meet someone new, simply text “drop” and their email address to “41411″ and Dropcard will deliver your contact info directly to their email. You can even add your social network profiles on your dropcard (i.e. LinkedIn) or your blog.

Dropcard also has convenient text messaging shortcuts so you don’t have to waste so much time texting. For example, you can replace the “@” symbol when typing your friend’s email address with a space and Dropcard will know what you mean. And if your friend’s email is on Gmail, even better! Text “drop” and their email address without “@gmail.com” and you’re done. For more ways to cut your text time, check out more Dropcard shortcuts here.

Not only is this handy, it sure beats carrying 100+ business cards to hand out at a conference. On top of that, soon they’ll be offering users more features (i.e. personal logo, attachments, statistics, etc.) for $4.99 a month. That might be helpful for the hardcore networkers.

So what about you? Is there a different service that you use to send contact info to colleagues through your phone? What would you do in this type of situation?

Related posts:

1. Brickfish Gas Card Design
2. New Google Profile Cards Arrived

Special thanks to Ashley Futak for her post on Brickfish at the Web 2.0 Expo that was held in New York City last month. To get more information on where Brickfish will be next, contact Ashley at AshleyFutak@brickfish.com.

The Web 2.0 Expo in New York was filled with firsts for Brickfish. It was the first time, as a company, that we were an exhibitor for an event of this scale. It was my first time attending an Expo, let alone orchestrating the whole thing (you would be surprised how much work goes into putting an exhibit together!). It was also the first time we were able to explain Brickfish to a crowd of people who were intimately familiar with Social Media and all that Brickfish has to offer.

We were surrounded by companies that live and breathe Web 2.0, and engaged with people that truly welcome this “new media” and speak in those terms. We were overwhelmed by the number of companies and people anxious to learn something new, and to apply their learning’s to their business models or to their everyday life.

That said…our booth was packed! From the moment the Expo opened until the moment it closed, we were busy sharing the Brickfish experience with anxious listeners! If we weren’t giving demonstrations, we were walking visitors through the Brickfish site, or handing out our new marketing materials.

It was so exciting to watch this start-up company from San Diego emerge onto the playing field with some of the biggest names on the Web today, and to establish ourselves as the leader in Social Media Advertising.

Related posts:

1. Brickfish Gas Card Design
2. Brickfish has been SuperTagged
3. Marketing via New Media Meets Brickfish®

Thanks to the Twitter Photoshop template available at Boinblog, personalizing your Twitter profile to promote your personal brand just got easier. Most tweeps upload a background for their Twitter profile while others take it a step further, like Problogger, and include links to their other social media profiles.

Inspired by Problogger, Boinblog’s easy to use template, and armed with a copy of Adobe Photoshop, I took the leap and updated my Twitter profile. You can follow me at @HeyStephanie.

After getting the hang of editing layers, I offered to help customize backgrounds for my colleagues at Brickfish®—in exchange for Starbucks of course.

Rachel Kay is the founder of RKPR and is an award-winning public relations expert. Check our her new site when you get a chance.

Ashley Futak who is a part of the Brickfish public relations team and just recently came back from the Web 2.0 Expo in New York (stay tuned for her guest post on Wednesday, October 1, 2008), also let me update her Twitter background. For her avatar I went to PosePrints then used my digital scrapbooking elements from Keri Schueller’s Organica collection.

To view other Twitter backgrounds that I helped co-workers with, check out @mphillips4ku and @ssultar.

Have fun with your backgrounds and feel free to leave your Twitter link here so we can check them out.

Related posts:

1. Splitweet Is Perfect For Twitter Power Users
2. Now You Can Post to Multiple Twitter Accounts
3. 12 Seconds: the Twitter for video

This has to be my favorite Brickfish campaign simply because it’s easy to enter and the prizes are fantastic! Who doesn’t want a $500 gas card?

Check out the prizes listed below but don’t forget to read the complete rules, regulations, and legal notice:

(Photo Credit: Brickfish)

Related posts:

1. The Mysterious Mr. X Design Challenge Part Deux
2. Design the New 20SB Header Contest
3. Marketing via New Media Meets Brickfish®

I know shameless plug… but I’m seriously floored by the quality of entries in Mr. X’s Design Challenge. Who knew so many people were into vintage rock posters? This is the second design challenge sponsored by Mr. X and he has 7 more challenges lined up until January 2009. Check out his other campaigns here.

Related posts:

1. Brickfish Gas Card Design
2. Design the New 20SB Header Contest
3. Meet Danny Brown & The 12for12K Challenge