Thanks to all of you who attended Wednesday's online seminar for marketers, The Marketing Benefits of Social Media. Our chief evangelist Anil Dash was joined by social media pro extraordinnaire Lauren Kozak, who directs social media for one of the most recognized and highly valued brands in the world: Britney Spears. Anil and Lauren discussed why companies should engage in social media, shared best practices they have learned over years of using social media, and illustrated how to successfully implement a social media plan with some excellent case studies of Comcast, Wells Fargo, Britney Spears, Coca Cola, Amazon, and Cisco. They also answered several excellent questions from the audience.

We were pleased to see that three out of four of you who answered the post-event survey said you were inspired to try new forms of social media or augment your existing social media efforts. We hope that you'll contact us if you'd like to establish a social media platform that can serve as your home base amongst your various social media activities, and/or if you'd like to reach influential bloggers and their readers similar to the way that Cisco has been doing in the Million Acts of Green campaign.   

If you missed the event, you can listen to it here - the password is "Marketing". We value your feedback so please tell us what you think in comments, or fill out the post-event survey.

Our next online seminar is planned for later this summer.  If you’d like to be notified when the date has been set please email us at info@sixapart.com and we'll send you an invite.

Thanks.

Everybody's talking about Social Media. But who's succeeding at it, and how are they doing it?

We've invited an expert, who happens to use Movable Type, to help answer those questions in an online seminar on Wednesday, June 24, at 11 am Pacific/ 2 pm Eastern. Besides managing social media for Britney Spears, a billion-dollar brand, Lauren Kozak has advised businesses on the most effective use of social media for years. Anil Dash, our Chief Evangelist and social media practitioner extraordinaire, will moderate the event.

We'll share many case studies as we talk about how you can use social media to acquire and retain customers, save precious brand and product research dollars, reduce marketing and IT costs, and build and defend your brand.

This seminar focuses on social media for CMOs and corporate communications, brand and product executives, however all are welcome to attend regardless of job title.  

We hope you'll join us for Let's Get Social: The Marketing Benefits of Social Media. You can register here.

Eve Batey, formerly with the Gothamist network news site SFist and most recently with the San Francisco Chronicle*, launched new online newspaper The San Francisco Appeal a few months ago. The SF Appeal provides comprehensive coverage of local news and events, which means if you’re wondering about the latest on anything to do with San Francisco, this is the place to go. Eve recently came by to talk with us about working with the Six Apart Services and Media teams to build the site and drive revenue by placing quality ads on it. Eve also shared how Movable Type will help her grow her business as she expands coverage and how it helps her team be the first to get photos online during time-sensitive events like protests and, of course, the annual Bay to Breakers extravaganza.

We'll let her tell the story. Have a look.

** Both Gothamist and San Francisco Chronicle also use Movable Type. Thank you to both organizations!

We want to let you all know that Movable Type 4.26 is now available.  This is an optional performance release which includes bug fixes and feature improvements.

Movable Type 4.26 is recommended for Movable Type Enterprise 4.x customers because it provides dramatically better search performance for large datasets and improves background publishing performance and reliability (i.e. TheSchwartz).  You can review the release notes on movabletype.org for full details on all changes.  We recommend only updating to 4.26 if the documented changes will directly impact you.

Movable Type Update Advisor: Version 4.26

• Release Type: Performance Release. This update fixes bugs and improves existing features.  No new features are included.
• Mandatory? No.  This is an optional upgrade recommended for Movable Type Enterprise users.
• Performance Implications: Better search performance for large datasets and improved reliability and performance around TheSchwartz.
• Plugins Affected: None. Current plugins should continue to work as expected.
• Templates Affected: None.
• System Requirements: This release has no new or additional system requirements.
• Licensing considerations: None. Movable Type 4.26 is a free update for users of any version of MT 4.x.
• Upgrade Fatigue: No further mandatory updates are planned for 2009.  Optional releases may become available.

Downloads are available in your account for current customers or through the download page.