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Robert Scoble, blogger and entrepreneur discusses how ideas spread. The public session was part of the Stanford GSB marketing course, the Power of Social Technology. While his presentation style is undeniably understated, his observations and insights are powerful. Question of the day: In the last bit of the video he refers to an intimate dinner conversation, if shared with the right four people, you could change the world. Who would you like seated at your table? Tony Chapman of Cap C shares his views in this video. 
Here, Tony, uses the phrase social marketing, not social media. I think we’ve got some serious semantics at work here. I agree that tactics should never be confused with strategy, but so often are! To all you self proclaimed social media experts , ad agency types who invest an hour on Facebook before you start hyping its’ “game-changing” benefits to your clients, you digital dudes, dude-ettes and drive by “strategists” take note of this – a twitter profile, a Facebook fan page, or single blog does not constitute an effective marketing strategy. What you are recommending, is a flavour of the day, smoke and mirrors approach that hops on the latest shiny object band wagon and preys on client ignorance, then taints the experience for clients who have entrusted you with their business and ruining the name of real strategic marketers in the process. These are the professionals who will embrace a far broader approach and encourage dialogue around a truly strategic solution to the client’s specific marketing challenge. Why can’t we get this concept of strategy first? It’s then, and only then, can we decide on the appropriate selection of tactics to be used in an integrated approach to ensure you achieve that strategy. And, of course, social media tools may right for that mix. Mitch Joel, a man, whose views I really respect on this topic, had this to say in a recent blog post about “marketers’ missing the mark on twitter Social media may lead you to developing new strategies, to assessing how you currently approach the marketing and communications challenge. And yes, they may in fact lead you down a path of massive change and take you to a place where you do new things in new ways, to create a new way of thinking, acting, doing and relating with your customers. But, from where I sit, I don’t see social marketing or social media as strategies. They may be the conversation starters, the instigators, but strategy is still driving force that will guide the effective use of these new tools. So, if your potential provider can’t talk strategy – don’t waste your breath. Find someone who can and let the social media dilettantes go “help” your competition. Question of the day: What are your thoughts on tactics versus strategy? Social media versus social marketing? Share your thoughts… What’s the consummate conference experience? TED of course. TED has become synonymous with innovation, inspiration. It thrills and inspires audiences around the world to join in the conversation. As stated in their history,
This year’s conference is next week and its theme is what the world needs now… I know what you’re thinking, the song is running through my head too,but it’s more than love, sweet love. What the world needs now is …ideas, creativity and innovation. There’s too little of those things too! Free Broadway Shows songs | Cell phone ringtones at EZ-Tracks.com I’ve never attended TED in person, but it is on my bucket list. However, I have experienced it through the resulting podcasts, their online presence and others who share in its appeal. I’ve witnessed the magic of TED speakers who have moved me to action, brought me to tears or lead me to a greater understanding or appreciation of things, events or concepts. I hold this conference up as the yardstick for all conferences. Pssst…all you in the conference business… there are lessons here to be learned here if you’d just invest the time to learn them. Firstly, perhaps you can glean a little something from the winning TED recipe that includes:
As a result, the demand to attend and to speak at TED is staggering. It has become annual global phenomenon. Why wouldn’t it? These “ideas worth spreading” ignite innovation, stir passion, inspire action and evolve the conversation to a higher level. So, listen up all you conference organizers, regardless of what industries, geographies, or topics your conferences cover, you can borrow a page from TED. First off, define your purpose, test your ingredients, aim high and develop the winning recipe that will accomplish it. There are a plethora of goals that you’ll want it to achieve with your conference (from gaining visibility, facilitating member networking, providing value to the membership, recognizing and advancing the profession, to, yes, MAKING MONEY!) so spend time defining them. Set clear objectives. And do this in SMART terms. And, if MAKING MONEY is a priority, why not take another lesson from TED. In addition to creating a fabulous conference experience, why not add your own version of the latest TED offering of The Associate Membership Program. They are offering a discounted conference fee for those who can’t actually make it to the conference, but want to share the experience of TED as it unfolds with a group of associates, family, or friends of their choosing. It has always been my belief that there are tremendous untapped revenue streams that can be easily applied to conferences of all topics, geographies and sizes, with a little pre-planning and vision, some tech-savvy support and sound strategic marketing (ahem, here’s the shameless plug). Why, when so many of you conference organizers are clamoring to get butts in seats and create decent revenue streams from these events they spend months (and sometimes years) planning, you aren’t also embracing innovative ways of extending the conference conversation, is beyond my bottom line focused comprehension. One thing I think the world needs now is flexibility that will open us up to consider other options for accomplishing our goals, to broaden our vision and our minds and lead us into doing new things in new ways. I guess that’s why I think that what the world needs now….is also… TED. Questions of the day Have you attended TED? Viewed a TEDTalk? What are your favourites? How did the experience change you?
What Matters Now is the latest free e-book from Seth Godin and friends -it’s provocative, insightful, inspiring and just plain powerful! Download it, read it, live it….just trust me on this…this IS what matters now. What a great day at the SME Technology Summit 2009 This was an AWESOME way to kick off the month. HUGE thanks go out to @trib aka Stephen Collins whose generosity made it possible for me to attend. “You da man!” So, what were my lasting impressions? First off, the Waterview Convention Centre is a stunning venue – well chosen! The Insight Exchange team ran a great conference and they diligently made sure that the speakers and delegates alike enjoyed the day’s experience. The keynote speakers – Tim Pethick and Mark Pesce were both compelling and knowledgeable. I thank them for sharing their experiences, their thought provoking ideas and predictions for the future. It was obvious to those in the room that a future that relies heavily upon technology is as real for SMEs as it is for large multinationals. I came away from these sessions reassured that I am one of the lucky ones. I get this stuff. I already have many of the skills necessary to participate and even lead in the use of technology in meeting the strategic marketing and communications agendas of organisations, large, small and anywhere in between.
Throughout the day, I jumped across all three tracks (Marketing, Social Media and Effectiveness) in the sessions I attended. I noted a number of tips from the presenters, learned of some terrific examples, many of which were tweeted by a vocal group of us who populated the hundreds of tweets that became the #smetech hash tag dialogue.
I also came away with a long list of things I must learn/do more about – including: • investigating freelancer.com (and other such offerings) as both a buyer and supplier of services, Attending an event like this really brings home the need for both community and conversation in our professional lives. I’m grateful I could take advantage of this opportunity. Now, it’s time to leverage it and see how far I the journey will continue past this first step! Thanks to the organizers, the venue staff, the speakers, the sponsors and the many delegates who all did their part in making the day worthwhile. PDA, the digital content blog, featured a recent post that highlighted the discussions of a star-studded internet rock star panel who met at Said Business School in Oxford recently to discuss the future of the web. These great technology minds considered some basic, yet tough and far reaching questions including:
Peter Thiel, who co-founded PayPal and was an early investor in Facebook and LinkedIn reminded everyone to evaluate first what stage we’re at with social networks and suggested that maybe there is no innovation left any more, and we have to look for it in a completely different direction. Biz Stone, Twitter’s CEO was quite sure that for him, Peter’s suggestions were not the case, there was further innovation to come and that using open technology, open platforms that encourage transparency is where we’ll continue to go and that this open exchange of information will create a resounding global impact. Ram Shriram, a founding board member of Google and one of the search giant’s first investors, moved discussions to the mobile internet, suggesting quite assuredly that “Combining social and mobile – there is a new wave of opportunities coming up, a growth of users, so mobile internet is clearly the next major computing cycle.” LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman observed, “I actually think we are just beginning to see how people launch the eventualities of social networks into their life.” Given that so much information is now being generated through social networks, but we’re just getting started on determining what can be done with it. Oxford lecturer, Dr Kate Blackmon summed up the discussions in a nutshell in saying that the future was not about crowd sourcing but crowd filtering. So, where is the web going? Who can really say for sure. There are many questions, a few sound predictions, but no clear agreement about exactly where the web is headed. Personally, I’m fine with that, because for me, not knowing and being there to evolve along with it is half the fun. Besides, if these web-savvy minds can’t come to a clear agreement or shared predictions, how can I? I know one thing though, I’ll be sailing on into the future of the web, clutching tightly to my mobile. Question of the day: After social networks, what do you think is next? Chris Brogan’s recent post Social Media Needs to Become a Team Sport makes some valid points. In essence, he says that social media is full of a bunch of solo players, rather than teams of people working together to achieve (or, in his analogy, score) a common goal.
Many companies who have adopted the use of social media tools (applause here for this in itself is a huge step) are entrusting the success of their efforts to only a few company representatives – often the responsibility lies with only one or two people within the organization (and even more often, this person’s position is far removed from senior level strategic decision making and many are also new to the organizations they represent). How ironic that social media tools are being trusted to so very few people. I would love to see companies embrace the power of social media by first seeking to really understand it – to embrace the opportunity to offer education to employees around these new tools that have become embedded in our culture , to teach employees of all levels and within various functional areas how Facebook works and how to tweet important news, how to find and upload videos on YouTube regardless of whether or not they will actually use these skills in their day to day jobs. I don’t have to be an accountant to get value from understanding balance sheets and income statements, but I make better bottom line decisions becauseI understand the basics of how what I do affects the bottom line, and the same holds true here. Imagine if companies sought to understand what twitter, Nings, Facebook, YouTube, wikis, etc can actually do, AND how, once they have become familiar with their capabilities, these tools can be used and integrated to accomplish the organization’s goals from various departmental, and management level perspectives. For HR and PR will have very different needs, views, concerns and ideas of how social media might be used to achieve their goals, as will the Systems Developer when compared with the CFO. What benefits would we see from organizations that take advantage of the opportunity to use teaching social media as the springboard for greater internal dialogue between departments and use it as the galvanizing force for ongoing communication and in breaking down functional barriers? Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we saw decisions about how best to leverage social media be the thing that brings together departments like Sales, Marketing, IT, Communications, PR and HR. Yes, I agree with Chris Brogan and think there needs to be a team approach to social media adoption. Maybe this is the strategy that will drive corporate adoption rates. Maybe this is the only way we’ll truly see a lasting increase in corporate “socialarity”. Questions of the day. Do you know an organization that is doing great things with social media? increasing their “socialarity”? one that is educating employees around these tools? using social media to help increase interdepartmental communications or break down functional barriers? Google has launched Sidewiki, a browser sidebar that lets you contribute and read information alongside any web page. It was launched on September 23, so some of you may have thoughts on its viability by now. It’s designed to allow readers to contribute insights, access tips on browsing, ask questions and build community. Site owners are provided with the ability to interact with users, editing and responding in a way that links into the new technology being made available through Google Wave. You can access the sidewiki feature by downloading the Google toolbar with sidewiki, online at www.google.com/sidewiki. Question of the day What will you use sidewiki for, if anything? I recently presented this to the IABC NSW chapter, sharing the highlights from the outtathegate campaign designed to extend the IABC 2009 World Conference conversation. If you’re interested in a similar campaign for your next meeting, conference or summit, I’d be happy to discuss your specific needs. Outtathegate Presentation
View more presentations from lindajohannesson.
The outtathegate case study from IABC’s 2009 World Conference in San Francisco
The IABC NSW (Sydney) chapter offered a scholarship to help a lucky chapter member defray the costs of attending the IABC World Conference 2009 in San Francisco. I was lucky enough to receive the award this year. So, a huge “THANK YOU” goes out to the IABC NSW chapter. To show my gratitude, I wanted to share the wealth. As was part of the scholarship agreement, I was happy to provide a conference report upon my return. But, I wanted to do more. So, I decided to use the power of social media to share the conference highlights with the NSW chapter, conference attendees and anyone else who was interested. With that thought, outtathegate was born. I created an integrated social media campaign consisting of blog posts, podcasts, tweets, flickr photos, delicious links, audio Boos, gmail conversations and video. My hope in developing it was that it would become a crowd sourced project where other conference delegates will provide content by sharing their comments, highlights, ideas and feedback. I felt that together we could create a vibrant citizen community that participated in meaningful conversations that continued on long after the conference ended. Campaign Goals 1. To connect the NSW IABC chapter members with highlights from the World Conference as they happen Campaign Components The campaign integrated the following components to create the conference conversation blog, @outtathegate, the conference hashtag – #iabc09, a dedicated email address – outtathegate@gmail.com, a flickr photo feed, skype- outtathegate, YouTube, Ning, the delicious tag – outtathegate, business cards, word of mouth, IABC issued emails and I even wore a couple of outtathegate t-shirts! Campaign Tools It’s a good thing I carry a large bag because, while I ”parked” the Dell Inspiron 17” laptop and the Logitech ClearChat Comfort USB Headphones, I still toted an ipod, Belkin TuneTalk Stereo Microphones, the handy little Flip video camera, my Nikon D80 and a bright smile and an outgoing personality around with me. The Contributors A campaign like this is successful because of the contributions of many. To all of you who shared your greetings, ideas, insights, tips, suggestions, observations and inspiration, “thank you”. I am grateful that you shared your unique voices and participated in the outtathegate conversation. The Conference Highlights The highlights were many and varied; including: grumpy old men, silly string, meeting heroes, golden gate bridge and gold quill photos, generational communications, measurement tips, dispelling CEO fears around social media, saving the planet, second life, tweetups and greetings from the incoming chair, I hope you’ll visit the outtathegate blog and the outtathegate Ning to experience them for yourself. Overall, the top eight themes I observed from this year’s conference are: For the details around how I saw these themes play out, please read the full post. The Top 10 Lessons Learned from the outtathegate campaign
The project succeeded in capturing and sharing a great deal of the fabulous content, people, events and ideas that came outtathegate. It achieved its overall aim to provide a snapshot of the various components that worked together to create a meaningful and memorable conference experience. That said, there really is nothing like being there – I’m grateful I had this chance and hopefully I’ll see you all in Toronto! |
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Copyright © 2010 Linda Johannesson - All Rights Reserved |
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