I went to the Social Media World Forum in Santa Clara last week. I was the grateful recipient of the free blog pass that David gave away last month. Big thank you, David and Sixdegrees!!
Without giving away all the valuable content of the conference for free, I wanted to share some amazing insights and a bit of an overview of the conference with you.
Who Was There?
There were a ton of speakers from huge brands such as Coca Cola, Nissan Canada, GM and Ogilvy PR. Of course, representatives from Facebook, MySpace, Zynga (where your beloved FarmVille comes from), Technorati and LinkedIn gave presentations and sat on panels as well (Twitter was shockingly absent…). There was even a surprise presentation from Ben Parr, Mashable’s editor! Many big brands were in attendance, too, including representatives from Capital One, Paramount and P&G to name a few.
The conference was a great networking opportunity and learning from the successes and mistakes of these leaders in social media marketing was a treat!
People I’m watching as a result of this conference are
- Michael Donnelly (Coca Cola), I must say how impressed I was with his humble attitude! He showed us how to successfully cultivate an online community and put “Fans First” (their motto).
- Chris Barger (GM), yes, he presented after the world’s most loved brand. Brave guy! His boldness with the brand and social media during crisis was inspiring and paid off.
- Angel Gambino developed text to screen (like you use on American Idol or Dancing with the Stars), worked with Bebo to grow it before it was purchased by AOL, and lots of other really impressive things I can’t remember. She’s an extraordinary forward thinker.
- Rachel Polish (Ogilvy PR) had some very insightful things to say regarding social media PR.
- Dallas Lawrence (Levick, Bulletproof Blog) presented how social media is changing the business of communication and PR.
- Jeff Parent (Nissan Canada) gave us a case study on how they successfully created a social media plan and integrated it with street teams and an interactive website to promote the Nissan Cube debut.
- Chris Heuer (Social Media Club) moderated several panels and had great questions. He also had some fascinating things to say about the future of social media marketing.
Improvements
I would have liked to see the conference a little more focused on social media marketing and PR, especially effective ways to collect metrics and measure success (of course, marketing goals must be established first!). A more diverse presentation of tactics that work for all sizes of business (local to global) would have been appreciated as well.
The big thing that I and the attendees I spoke with were looking for was how to convince people this is important. We know it’s important – that’s why we’re at the conference! How do we show our bosses, clients and CEOs this is the future and requires serious consideration? This issue wasn’t really addressed, so I don’t have answers for you 
Stop Skimming Now, Here’s the Goods!
So now the part you are looking forward to: what did I learn?
What You Must Be Doing NOW
LISTEN. If you do nothing else, LISTEN. Twitter is great for that. Pull an RSS feed from Twitter Search on your brand, keywords and competitors’ names.
The conversation is happening with or without you.
Define success before you begin your social media marketing campaign. There is no magic button. Objectives make money.
Just get started and go from there! This is not a fad.
Create value, don’t extract it.
Integrate social media with other marketing efforts (break down silos).
Discover who the key influencers are and develop relationships with them.
What else?
Everyone interacting in the social space should have training, be clear about messages, and be transparent, authentic, valuable and have meaningful conversations.
Real people want to connect with real things.
Social media’s costs come in the form of time and human resources. It’s not free.
Make your content sharable, embeddable and portable. Enable people to take it to their networks.
Social media is not about controlling what is said about you/your company, it’s about interacting with people.
B2B uses social media for research (instead of outreach) on the target and competition. In addition, work with your client to reach their client.
The Future
“Mobile, Mobile, Mobile, MOBILE!” – Ben Parr, Mashable
Social gaming (Mafia Wars, FarmVille, etc.) and virtual currency, specifically advertising exposure in exchange for VC
Short form video is a growing movement (30 seconds – 3.5 minutes max for best exposure chance)
Brazil is one of the fastest growing adopters of social media
We are moving back to local connections being important (think Yelp, Four Square)
Remember, this is marketing. It’s not about the tools, it’s how you use them to accomplish your goals.
Congrats with getting to go to the SMW forum, Lauren. And thanks for sharing what you’ve learned.
Question to you: what advice did they give to people/businesses wanting to get involved and try what Social Media is all about, but being suspicious that it may help them since their target market is locals only, while social media has a more global reach?
I get that question very often, people are not seeing a great potential in Social Media (“we just want to market in Vancouver, not all over the world”), in getting on Twitter, etc. I do have answers for them, but I’m curious what others advise on that?
Vivien,
None of the speakers at the conference touched on that, really, though one presenter did say that we are moving back to local with things like Yelp (maybe there’s a Canadian equivalent?) and Four Square. From my own experience and research, I would say choosing a certain platform depends entirely on the type of business and who their target audience is (where those people hang out online). There are some awesome examples of restaurants and coffee places using Twitter; Coffee Groundz is a great one. You can’t get much more local than a single coffee house!
I’m curious what you tell your clients, too!
Thanks for the prompt response, Lauren. That Coffee Groundz example is a great one, I’ll be mentioning it when convincing people to get on Twitter
I usually advise:
1) Start by following and connecting with local people, interact with them, learn how they socialize, listen to them
2) people from your network might know other people who need your business, so the larger the network, the bigger is potential to get more clients and spread the word about your business
We have Yelp here as well, don’t think it’s quite that popular, but many businesses do create pages there.
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Hey Lauren, I’m so glad you were able to make use of the pass. Good of you to share some of the conference content, too.
I recently set up an alert via RSS for my name. It surprised me how many times I’m mentioned elsewhere without the use of a link. Before setting up the alert I relied on the WordPress admin to find where I’m being talked about (in the admin section that shows links to my site). I was missing a trick.
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Vivien,
You have some great advice for your clients. See, you could’ve given a presentation at the conference! The one on blogs I felt like I could’ve taught because he said everything we all know. Yelp has it’s place and I find I’m using it more and more.
David,
Thanks again for the free pass! That’s cool that you’ve already set up an alert for your name. Now time to add “logo design” and any competitors names maybe! I have one set up for Creative Curio and it has definitely shown me some that WP has missed.
I remember I tried a “logo design” alert a couple of years ago, but quickly got fed up with the requests for $25 logos.
An alert for “logo design love” is a must, though. Thanks. I’ll do that now.
David Airey´s last blog …Milton Glaser on design studios
LISTEN. If you do nothing else, LISTEN. — it’s very true
I appreciate everyone’s comments, but for future reference, I will delete any links with keywords as names. One of the principles of social media is to be authentic. People want to do business with people, not keywords.
Thanks for sharing! Im sure it would have been a great experience. You are right about the twitter part. Meaningful conversation is sure to get you somewhere.
Thanks for keeping the rest of us in the loop who couldn’t be there. I also appreciate all your links for the people at the conference who caught your attention.
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I use Twitter quite alot an can’t believe that I haven’t come across the fact you can http://search.twitter.com/ off to do that now, thanks. G
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Brazil is adopting a lot of things quickly these days. They are one of the big emerging markets right now. Wish I could have made it to the forum, sounds like it was an incredible learning experience.
Hey thanks for your sharing! I couldn’t stop myself asking “How can you testify that Brazil is adopting the social media very well, means what parameters have you evaluated this conclusion? If its not a conjecture then plz give more info.. i m sincerely curio.us
How do you set up an alert via RSS for your name?
First of, let me just say that I love your blog! It’s very charming and whimsical!! I totally agree that everyone interacting in the social space should have training, and should be clear about messages, helpful, informative and have meaningful conversations.
“Social media is not about controlling what is said about you/your company, it’s about interacting with people.”
I’ve worked with a lot of clients that are afraid about what people say about them. Explaining that its an opportunity to turn a negative into a positive has helped tremendously. Thank you for sharing!
I wish I could have gone to this. Perhaps next time.
Great post, very informative, always good to hear others insights!
Mobile is becoming a huge part of social media and internet marketing. A lot more people are visiting sites on their phones and accessories such as the ipad.
Social media is certainly the new powerhouse of marketing. It’s only a matter of time before everybody does business through these channels. Especially in a world where time is money and money is non-existent! People just can’t aren’t prepared to waste time on meetings anymore – even if that is a little sad
Thanks for posting