Small business owner? Budding entreprenuer? At all curious about the practical side of social media? Live pretty much anywhere remotely near North Carolina?
Then I’d recommend signing up for the upcoming ConvergeSouth 2010 conference in Greensboro NC, October 1-2. It’s less than 100 bucks to attend ($10 if you’re a student!), as it’s organized through volunteer labor for the benefit of the regional business and creative communities. This is not a profit-seeking venture by any means.
Yes, I’m a volunteer, presenter and moderator for this year’s event, so I have a vested interest in getting everyone I can to show up (my ego hurts talking to empty seats). My specific sessions will be announced shortly, as they are still taking shape, but if either one comes off remotely as interesting as I hope, they’ll be some of the most fun I’ve ever had at a conference.
I say that with all modesty: They’ll rock, outshone only by all the other great sessions from Brent Payne (Tribune Co’s SEO Director), Wayne Sutton, Jeffrey Cohen, Jeff SanGeorge, and Tammy Colson among others; a startup Pitch Camp organized by John Cass; and a bevy of local politicians talking about how the Web affects politics.
@ConvergeSouth10 is the longtime labor of love of @SuePolinsky, and has a stellar group of volunteers working on it this year. Come join what’s been called the South’s original social media event, support the Piedmont-Triad social media community, and maybe learn something along the way.
Jeff Bullas posted today on the “6 Reasons Not to Have a Facebook Page” (via @JasonFalls) and focuses on some of the very real risks and challenges:
1. Facebook own your page not you ..think of it as renting or cyber squatting if you don’t comply with their terms and conditions your Facebook page can be terminated with the push of one button. If you have a blog on your own domain and self hosted then you own it and have total control.
2. Facebook is not forever. As with all trends it will fade away (eg AOL) or morph into something else as the Web continues to evolve.
…
Good stuff, but I believe it focuses on the technical without addressing the *real* number one reason why you shouldn’t create a Facebook page for your brand (wait for it…):
You can’t define the VALUE you will bring to your fans.
People fan a brand page on Facebook largely in order to derive some kind of value from it, be it practical or emotional. That value could be any number of things – access to exclusive content, membership in the cool kids club, early bird discounts and special offers, technical support, first word on new product announcements, or even behind the scenes looks at how the sausage is really made.
If you can’t articulate which one of those you will provide to your fans, then you should step back and put the keyboard down until you can. If your content posting plan (you *do* have one, right?) doesn’t clearly make the case for why people should become a fan (and remain one), then you need to consider a serious redo.
Already have a Facebook page for your company? Then take a fresh look at from the perspective of fan value. What are they getting out of it? Beyond “because they like us” can you clearly define why anyone should Like your page?
No? Then get to work.
Photo by rene_berlin on Flickr via CC License.
It may be a week late, but here’s my entry into the “Social Fresh Charlotte Recap Post” ring. There are already a ton of great ones, collected in places like here and here to start.
What did I take away? First off, the conference was extremely well organized, so hats off to @jakrose and team for pulling it all together. Second, it’s clear from the energy, enthusiasm, and experiences of the attendees and presenters that the field of social media marketing is alive, thriving (despite the recession) and rapidly congealing into a focused marketing, communications, and support discipline. It was fun to be a part of all that.
I took notes on a bunch of good sessions, but for the sake of time I’ll share my thoughts on just two for now (self-servingly, one of those I was a part of):
SESSION: Bert Dumars (@bwdumars) – Building Social Media Across Multiple Departments
Bert is a walking case study in how large companies with multiple consumer brands are handling (successfully) the challenges of social media marketing. His talk reflected a lot of what I see in our own clients – a centralized set of social media domain experts working closely with the brand marketing leads to incorporate social into their existing marketing strategies. Bert shared a wealth of good examples and I ended up furiously taking notes to share back home.
What I took away:
- User-generated content (UGC) gets Rubbermaid the most mileage. Interested concepts like the Sharpie Doodle contest over on SharpieUncapped are great examples of how you can tap into the underlying passions of your existing customers to create a stronger, more personalized connection.
- Well-moderated communities thrive. Something of an intuitive finding that jives with what my own experience tells me, but nice to hear what Rubbermaid has gone through. Bert noted that as the Sharpie Facebook page grew past 1 million fans, the time needed to clean out spam and moderate the comments grew dramatically. However, the faster they cleaned out the junked, the faster they found their fan numbers grow. People appreciate a well-moderated discussion space.
- Social media marketing strategy is a component, not the be all end all. An oft repeated mantra, but one that people often forget. You need a marketing or brand strategy that incorporates social media, not the other way around.
- Rubbermaid is selectively using social media in the brands that make the most sense. Sharpie, definitely. Papermate or Uniball? Not so much. Despite all the attention, social media marketing just isn’t a great fit for many brands.
SESSION: Social Agencies, A New Model (Panel)
I had the pleasure of participating in a panel discussing how agencies are adapting to and pitching social media, involving panelists from four agencies each with a different angle on social media: Steve Parker (@levelwing), James Andrews (@keyinfluencer), Ted Shelton (@tshelton) and myself (@kevinbriody).
Though I’ll have to rely on anyone who was in the audience to tell how it really went, I think from the perspective of a panelists the flow went pretty well and we covered quite a bit of ground, ranging from general thoughts and trends to specifics like pricing agency services (by project, not by the hour, was the unanimous opinion). Hats off to Steve Parker for stepping up at the last minute to moderate.
What I took away:
While I often describe my employer, Ignite Social Media, as a “pure” social media marketing agency, that distinction is a lot less clear to me now after talking with Steve, Ted, and James. The lines between social media marketing and direct, relationship, ad, PR, etc are blurring so fast that it seems we’re more accurately described as a marketing agency with a special focus on social media as a channel and toolset.
After all, we have an analytics team, a media buying team (from search to display to social), full creative and technical teams…all in addition to people doing strategy, blog outreach, new content, and so on. Ted rightly called me on the fact that while we focus on the social media domain space, our capabilities make us more of a full service marketing shop than I would previously thought. It’s definitely interesting to be involved in the evolution of a whole field of marketing…
I also want to call out Amber Naslund (@ambercadabra) and Dave Thomas (@davidbthomas) both put out some great stuff. I wrote a bit about Amber’s presentation last week, nothing yet about Dave’s, something I hope to remedy soon (especially as he’s moving to a new role which I’m sure will put him solidly on the speaker circuit).
