Online Marketing Summit - Harnessing Social Media

Before attending the Online Marketing Summit, I found and began reading the book, "Join The Conversation" by Joseph Jaffe.  It was a terrific preparation, because at the Summit, there were several excellent sessions on how to harness social media -- and from both the book and the sessions, there were a few common threads that really stand out, namely:

• To engage effectively, you must be willing to give up control of the message and be authentic and real in your communications.
• Start with listening.  Locate the conversations happening in your market or about your company, and listen to what is getting said -- good, bad, ugly.  Just like in life, be appropriate when you "join" a conversation - so get a feel for it. 
• When you do start participating, don't ever defend yourself -- just like in life, it's just not very effective, and in most cases, worsens a situation.
• There may be no single department within your organization that "owns" the social media space.
• The reality of engagement is much different than the fears that are stopping most companies today. 
• You don't have to be perfect to participate -- don't be afraid of people who say bad things about you - just listen, engage, and be authentic.  Quit trying to spin everything.  Quit pushing for an outcome that fits your pictures (like getting people to buy something from you).
• The team you have pay attention and participate in the social media realm may not be anyone you've got today -- it might be Interns who enjoy the social media realm and understand it, rather than your PR group or Marketing Communications who are too busy 'spinning' to be authentic. 

Think about this: by the year 2010, 100% of high school grads will have spent a portion of every day of their school life online.

Are you exploring any of the social media sites yet?  LinkedIn or FaceBook?  Did you know that FaceBook allows you to publish a business page specifically?  If not, what's stopping you?  If you are interested in how to harness the power of social media for your business, you're going to have to find the time to engage with it yourself.

If you're curious where you or your organization might be showing up or getting talked about, set up a Google Alert, so you will get notified when it happens, so you can track it.

There's also a good post on Jaffe Juice about a specific Chapter of "Join The Conversation", that's all about getting started -- you might enjoy some  of those insights.

Comments

[Kelly Balarie]

Good article - I really think social media is key these days! You are so right that our newer generations are being growing up in this environment too!

I actually work at SAVO, a b to b technology company, and we definitely leverage social media in our sales enablement technology. We use personal pages (similar to my space), star ratings (on documents, insights or expertise) and comments to leverage an organization's expertise, insight and collective genius to drive better customer conversations. Ultimately, we enable sales to be more productive. Check out our latest webinar, "Moving Beyond the Sales Portal -- Capturing Mindshare in a Web 2.0 World" Click here to attend: https://savoevents.webex.com/savoevents/onstage/g.php?t=a&d=664757276

[Kim Albee]

Sounds great! Would love to know more about how people are using your solutions and the kinds of results they are getting.

This sounds great for an internal tool between Marketing and Sales, but could something like this also be used as a customer portal? And would companies want to offer it?