Three Ingredients for Your Social Media Pantry
Kansas City social media practitioners shared gems at our South By Southwest tweet up yesterday, thanks to local organizer Lisa Qualls of Fresh ID. As Rick Mahn and I make our way to the SxSW tech festival we are asking consumers and producers of social media about the state of the medium, and how businesses are using it (or not). Also how consumers are interacting with each other and with brands. The dynamic debate among this group was outstanding.
As a journalist of these issues, as well as a practitioner, these gems of opinions from others are data points I keep in mind as I assess recommendations for companies. There is no “right way” to do social media, and each case, each company culture has a different perspective, which is why this summary should be viewed as a pantry of good quality raw ingredients, and not a recipe for the one size fits all social media strategy. Some ingredients may be right for some, companies may have the budget to use them all, some may not.
- Measure everything, apply tools like Google analytics, www.bit.ly and www.idek.net (last one shared by Bestofjess ) to every link. - Really I say? Really, the fact is whether you are an individual blogging about a passion or a Fortune 500 company selling cars, measuring is one of the major ways you know that what you intended to communicate is what the recipient receives. Don’t leave it up to the response mechanisms like comments to determine whether you have engaged or not. Measurement to me in social media is like watching someone’s body language when you are having a conversation. Those gestures, facial expressions and twists and turns are cues which impact the next message you send.
- Explain stuff until people understand it. Regardless of the “advanced” level of the group there is always something new for anyone in the group to discover. Whether it’s, “this is an RSS feed” or this is the beta version of Google buzz, heck, this stuff is being made hourly, there are no experts on everything. There is constant learn and props to groups like the Social Media Club and Social Media Breakfast who are in local communities creating forums for learning. Bless you.
- The relationship between data, individual, and their location is a condition I call mobile which is powerful. Mobile services interacting with location based applications like Yelp, Layar, Foursquare and Gowalla (to name only a fraction) come as close to getting inside your head as we have today. An example raised at the Kansas City meeting was telling. Jenn Bailey was traveling in New York City, stopped in a couple of shops and local landmarks checking into Foursquare at each location. After her fourth stop she received an invitation that went something like this “You’ve been busy this afternoon, must be tired, stop by our restaurant and we’ll buy you a drink.”
As the group concluded, we’ll give up a little privacy to gain something that may well be very relevant to us at that point in time and space. The huge increase in smartphone sales is simply making this relationship easier and putting the power in the hands of consumers as they interact with a society on the move. Analysis predict 50% of web connections will be made via mobile device by 2012.
You can see the discussion at the Twitterface page created for the event. Twitterface is a neat application that allows companies to create a brand experience with streaming video, which is also recorded, and the social media stream.
This live stream was shot with a Verizon Wireless Motorola Droid and used the Verizon Wireless intelligent hotspot MiFi 2200. Verizon Wireless sponsored this road trip and provided the devices we used along the way.
