Plenty of “non-experts” – tons of social media expertise

January 29, 2010January 30, 2010 / Angelo Fernando / Leave a comment

A funny thing happened in the lobby of MADCAP Theater, Monday.

It had nothing to do with these two familiar faces. Most of the 400 + attendees at the Social Media for Business event –a..k.a SMAZ –about all things digital, indulged in one of the oldest communication tools, business cards.

I loved how, despite seeing a Twitter handle on the last statutory slide of every preso, this tiny cardboard rectangle still works. It probably illustrates how social practices like this will not go away despite the attention we give to trackbacks, Tweetdeck or Posterous.

In between working the floors wearing that funny hat, I sat in on some great sessions. The panel on Building Brand Evangelists with Social Media, moderated by Kevin Gawthrope (@gawthrok), was very enlightening.

Then there was our very own Linda Vandrede moderating Social Media 101 a panel that included Amanda Vega, Chris Hewitt, Scott Andrew and Sheila Kloefkorn. Talk about heavyweights! If you’d been to last year’s SMAZ, you would have notices how the audience had changed, even at a 101 level. One of the sticky topics that came up was about outsourcing content. There were two schools of thought here, but both maintained that content creators have to be transparent and committed. Blogola and astroturfing won’t cut it.

As I mentioned earlier, the tone was set by Sitewire president, Greg (“I am not a social media expert”) Chapman but having said that, there was plenty to glean from. Especially in the hallways!

My takeaways (updated):

Be the message, don’t just post the message!
Don’t treat Facebook like the Yellow Pages.
Listen first, tweet, post later. Use Social Media as a listening post.
Be cognizant of the ‘channel agnostic customer.’
Google handles hyphens better than underscores, so be watchful when you write headlines, tags.
“Social media is free” is a huge misconception. There’s a human resource cost attached to it.
Social media is not a strategy – it is what you embed into your Comms strategy, marketing strategy, PR strategy.
Google’s new search engine, Caffeine, will knock your socks off.
Think less about the platform, more about the content.
Content isn’t king. Optimized content is king!
Start with small things. If your boss or client wants to start tweeting, facebooking, start with small goals before the big-hairy-audacious ones
There’s a difference between a News Feed and a Live Feed on Facebook.
Train others freely. Give away secrets. The rising tide lifts all boats.
Differentiate between Goals and Tactics. People mix these up.
Just like the way they confuse Strategies and Tactics, I suppose.

If you read other takes on SMAZ , you’ll see that there’s a lot of tech stuff to wrap your head around. But for all the talk about ‘matchbacks’ and Seesmic, Tweetie and Flowtown, I came away with three things:

“Social Media is an ingredient, not an entre.” – Jason Baer
“Hang out where your customers hang out” – Sheila Kloefkorn

And …

Bring a lot of business cards, next time, dammit

Cross-posted from ValleyPRBlog

“Stop treating Facebook like the Yellow Pages”

January 26, 2010January 26, 2010 / Angelo Fernando / Leave a comment

Evo Terra was firing rounds of ‘measurement’.

Jason Baer was his usual self –provocative, helpful, and making some terrific observations of where we are heading.

As with last year’s Social Media for Business Conference, (see post here) now better known as SMAZ, this year’s conference had some outstanding panels.

The event kicked off with Sitewire president, Greg Chapman making statement that was more of less repeated at every session: “I am not a social media expert.”

Followed by a “however…”

So in the company of these non-experts, I learned some amazing things, and confirmed a lot of the approaches I’ve been taking. Here are the ones that I liked:

Don’t treat Facebook like the Yellow Pages.
Listen first, tweet, post later. Use Social Media as a listening post.
Be cognizant of the ‘channel agnostic customer.’
Google handles hyphens better than underscores, so be watchful when you write headlines, tags.
“Social media is free” is a huge misconception. There’s a human resource cost attached to it. Social media is not a strategy – it is what you embed into your Comms strategy, marketing strategy, PR strategy.
Google’s new search engine, Caffeine, will knock your socks off. Even if you’re in flip-flops 🙂
Content isn’t king. Optimized content is king!
Start with small things. If your boss or client wants to start tweeting, facebooking, start with small goals before the big-hairy-audacious ones
There’s a difference between a News Feed and a Life Feed on Facebook.
Train others freely. Give away secrets. The rising tide lifts all boats.
Differentiate between Goals and Tactics. people mix these up all the time.
Just like the way they confuse Strategies and Tactics, I suppose.

SMAZ also turns out to be a great way to connect with the people we only meet virtually here in the Phoenix area (I met many of our readers from ValleyPRBlog), whether no matter where we are on the analog-to-digital scale.

And lest we forget the person behind the curtain who makes this happen, I want to tip my hat to Fred VonGraf.

Copy from a fake piece of editorial that’s part of a creative ad buy for Aflac in The Wall Street Journal, linking to the microsite, getquack.com

Kaiser Kuo, a Beijing-based consultant and former head of digital strategy at Ogilvy & Mather in China, on Google’s decision to pull out of the country.

Jeff Gaspin, of NBC, on the network’s decision to move Jay Leno back to his original slot –11.35 pm

The reason, according to televangelist Pat Robertson, why he thinks Haiti is cursed.

Haitian ambassador’s response, to Robertson

John Savageau, on CNNs use of citizen journalism in Haiti

Kit Eaton at Fast Company, on Google’s Near Me Now app on its Android phones and the iPhone that he says will make “a lot of location-based App Makers” furious.

Matt Singley, on the 6 things you need to know about social media.

Nancy Duarte, CEO of Duarte Design and author of slide:ology, on presenting to remote audiences.

NBC statement on its decision to move the time slot of Leno’s show.

Web 2.0 Suicide Machine, a web site that claims it can erase a person’s presence from Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and MySpace.