Fred Von Graf and team have been busy. Social Media AZ, or SMAZ, is now in its third year. To be held February 11, SMAZ was started by Von Graf to fill a void in the Social Media/Digital Marketing for Business event realm, the event has grown from a place of veterans teaching newbies about social media to experts working with other experts.

February 11’s event will introduce new topics like mobile, location, video, search, branding and e-commerce, all with social ties. Arizona’s own (well, former resident) Jay Baer of Convince and Convert and VP of Radian6 Amber Naslund will be flying in to discuss their new book The NOW Revolution (look for a special giveaway on this blog soon), along with e-commerce and social startup cinsay, and the president of L.A. based mobile development company Pyntail.

It’s great that Von Graf has expanded the speaker base, both topic and location wise, to include more than AZ faces.

Von Graf is currently working on a co-working space in Tempe, technology incubator LaunchSpot and mobile game Hexxa, which is set to be released this year at SXSW. These accomplishments all take a slight backseat to his number one priority, Alex, his two-month-old son.

“Social Media is becoming more mainstream, far more people are using it and marketers have finally started looking at the data to make their decisions. We as businesses now realize that there’s a cost associated and are able to measure success though more mature tools,” Von Graf said. “Businesses are able to make small and intelligent changes using known strategies and improve their businesses both from a sales perspective but also from a customer engagement experience. We are social creatures by nature and social media consists of the tools we now use to engage in these conversations and helping our advocates converse as well.”

Valley PR Blog readers get a special discount and a special link. Type in SMAZ4VPRB to get 30% off your ticket(s).