Everyone’s feeling the pressure from this recession and budgets are being cut/tightened. Now, more than ever, it’s important for teams, athletes and agencies to get what they can for free. While there are many other reasons for getting involved in social media, engaging fans and customers online via social media is a great way to [...]
Blog Carolinas Notes
Posted on May 11th, 2008
On Friday I attended Blog Carolinas, an event for professionals who are interested how to use social media tools in ways that impact business. It was a great learning experience and I enjoyed meeting some new people, as well as others who I’d been following on Twitter. Unfortunately I didn’t get to meet everyone, but that’s how these events go.
I attended three different sessions:
- Engaging the Customer
- Citizen Journalists
- Monitoring and Measurement
I especially enjoyed the first two of these sessions. Ginny Skalski (NBC 17) did a great job leading the “Citizen Journalists” panel and Cord Silverstein (Capstrat) and Jim Tobin (Ignite Social Media) presented some great info during the “Engaging the Customer” panel. Since I took the best notes during “Engaging the Customer” I wanted to share some of them with you.
Brands want to engage customers online but their main challenge is minimizing risk and protecting their brand.
Communication Trends
- 1 in 5 adults comment online
- 80% read online recommendations
- 75% do research online before making a purchase decision
- 1 out of every 30 comments in an employee discussing the company he/she works for
Case Study - Sun Microsystems
- Every employee has a blog - now there are around 90,000 blog posts
- Blogging policy: nothing is reviewed or looked at prior to publication
- Results: Their site is now ranked #1 most popular in the world (according to Alexa) and they have a ton of valuable content
Sometimes a person will blog or post a video about your company. How do you decide when to jump in and respond?
- Is the person/blogger an influencer?
- Is the blog post/video generating additional conversations?
- Does the person look approachable?
- Would you respond if the issue/comment was said at a cocktail party?
What to tell small businesses about how to use social media:
- Listen first and figure out what’s going on
- Figure out what you’re trying to accomplish
- Don’t get hung up on the tools - the message is what is important
That’s all for the highlights from my notes from the “Engaging the Consumer” session at Blog Carolinas. If anyone else out there has posted notes, let me know where they’re at. Also, if I missed any major points in these notes, please let me know.
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Comments 1
May 19th, 2008 at 3:13 pm
Hi Jason -
Thanks for sharing your thoughts on the conference.
You should take a look at a sports marketing social group (on ning) focused on web2.0 technologies
It is located at: http://www.sportsmarketing20.com/
I recently joined and have found the discussions pertinent and full of good content. Its also good for making connections.