FreshSocial 2011 Review

Yesterday I attended #FreshSocial which was put on by AABEngage. I was invited initially to interview someone from Facebook or LinkedIn but they declined the opportunity to be given a proper Irish grilling. Here are my notes. 

@JemimaG opened the event:

• 1. Map your network
  • Check out LinkedIn's InMaps and Facebook's Friendwheel
• 2. Identify your influencers
• 3. Share stuff 
• 4. Find your story
  • @znmeb - has a nice biog "Media Inactivist, Thought Follower, Sit-Down Comic, Former Boy Genius, Real-Time Data Journalism Researcher, Open Source Appliance Maker And Mathematician"
  • @twrbrdg_itself - tells you when it opens and closes
• 5. Listen
  • Pepsi-Co spends a lot of money and uses a mission control for Gatorade but Google Alerts is effective also - and is free.
• 6. Respond

@CEDRICtus talked about Bing which is actually doing some really exciting stuff. 

• Almost 50% of searches last more than 30 mins.
• Check out bing.com/social.
• Search engine research.
• SEO your CEO.
• Have a social charter including a crisis plan. Establish the rules.
• Assess before you act.
• "If search engines are the database of intents then social media is the database of sentiments."
• Check out bing.com/webmaster.
• Optimise for users, not search engines.

• Check out inforgraphiclabs.com.
• Redwings Horse Sanctuary has over 5k likes. Spillers gave 1kg of feed to Redways for every like they got. This resulted in 15,000 likes for Spillers and loads of feed for Redwings.
• Steelmaster Buildings - Prefabricated Steel Buildings. You can upload pictures of your steel building.
• Nextivity Inc - missed her point on this. Anyone get it?

Slide by @julie_hall@julie_hall talked about Facebook, "If LinkedIn is seen as being a formal space, Twitter is like a cocktail party then Facebook is your living room." 

• Name Art - 50% of their business comes through Facebook.
• Cake Pop Princess - 100% of their business comes through Facebook. They don't even have a website.
• Sprinkles Cupcakes - asks their users "where should we open up a shop?".
• Choose 1 channel, do it really well and move onto the next one. 
• Choose to be where your customers are.
• Get them to like you.
• Photosharing works.
• Treat your page as a brand VIP room. Put stuff in there that doesn't exist anywhere else.
• Send email to your network asking them to like your page.
• Link to Facebook from your website.
• Set up future tweets to your Facebook page.
• No more than 3 or 4 messages a day.
• Ask friends to recommend 5 other people to your page.
• Run competitions.
• On your welcome page get people to sign up to your newsletter.

Sam Michel (@toodlepip) chaired a panel conversation about Twitter with @Dr_Black, @benjaminellis, @historyinanhour and @GAILsBakery

• Many started off using Twitter, didn't see the point, then got into it again
• A question was asked "how do you have two accounts as in a work one and a personal one?" It never actually got answered by any of the five. The answer is that you actually need two email addresses.
• There can be advantages in separating your work Tweets with your personal Tweets. @benjaminellis thought that his friends might not be interested in the latest releases of his software and similarly his clients might not be interested in his personal life.
• Twitter tools mentioned such as Co-Tweet, Klout, Peer Index, awe.som, Hootsuite
• Hashtags were covered.
• For me there could have been more indepth look at things like:
  • To use your real name or not to use.
  • When to follow and not to follow.
  • How to really get the business benefits out of Twitter.
  • Using Twitter Lists.
• In fairness the time was tight and @JemimaG did encourage us all to carry on the conversation via Twitter.

Louise Findlay Wilson (@louisefw) gave a presentation on LinkedIn.

• She covered the basics quite well and rightly pointed out that many people do not do them.
• Check out the More tabe and rate yourself!
• Join groups where your customers are. DOn't do the hard sell. Say "I am thinking of launching this new product but thought I'd get a feel or what you thought."
• Identify 20 companies which you would like to work with and look through your contacts to get to speak with them. 
• If you want to talk with a 2nd level connection just pick up the phone (or email) the connection who knows them. Don't use Inmail.
• Use polls.
• Louise used a poll saying "Which premiership mangerial style do you identify with?" This was the hook to get good engagement.
• Start up a group for yourself. (Note to self: start up a group for startups/entrepreneurs.)

- LUNCH - 

Jasmine Skee Head of Music Sponsorship at O2 was interviewed with Filip Matous (@filipmatous)

• Ironically where I was sitting was beside Filip and Louise. I found Filip to have been really good company. "All I am interested in is the conversion" he explained to me. In fact where people were saying about stats being. the "boring stuff" he would say "no, it's the sexy stuff!".
• Jasmine explained that the record industry has changed greatly over the last 10 years. No longer is there the large budgets. 
• Record companies are now coming to O2 and asking for ways in which they can promote their bands.
• The cost of video production has tumbled so it's very easy to put a video up on YouTube.
• Interestingly there were only 2 people who put their hands up when asked if there were anyone interested in using YouTube for business at the end of the talk. Maybe an accountancy firm using video might have seen. some greater application in terms of day in day out business.

Lloyd Davis (@LloydDavis):

• Talked a fair bit about his Tuttle meetup group.
• Good use of photos of the meetups displayed in a slideshow via Flickr instead of slides.
• Talked a bit about blogging. Didn't really sell it as good as he could I felt. Lacked a business focus for me.
• Talked about posterous. I'm not a fan of it though as you can't use tags.
• Plays the ukulele. Was nice to chat to him afterwards briefly about that.

David Terrar interviewed Charles Amstrong (@car0lus) from Trampoline and Simone Schuurer, (@SimoneSchuurer) a community manager at Microsoft 

• David was great in his direct and methodical line of questionning
• Read the Cluetrain Manifesto. A 1999 book which states that "All marketing is conversations."
• Also read Meatball Sundae by Seth Godin
• Advisable tools for monitoring your social activity:

  Social Media Monitoring Sites

  • Market Sentinel
  • Trampoline Systems
  • Radian6
  • Brandseye
  • Brandwatch
• Also check out:
  • Sobees
  • CoTweet
  • Google Alerts
  • Get Satisfaction - customers can leave feedback. This can be embedded in your website.
  • The Museum of Me - which is pretty awesome if somewhat useless beyond making you smile for a bit. Which is actually useful in itself.
• Dell Hell is something that led to Dell Idea Exchange which is like MyStarbucksIdea. DIE is powered by Salesforce which recently bought Radian6.

All in all I thought it was a great event for SMEs who are looking to get started in Social Media and want to see the business benefits. Although many of the talks started off quite lightweight they quickly moved into more heavyweight styles in terms of content. What did you think? Were you there? What have I missed out?

Comments

[Louise Findlay-Wilson]

Cormac, congratulations for a fantastic and clear roundup of a great event...really useful

[Filip Matous]

Haha, yeah all I care about is: Will social media and these internal/external social channels help my business be more successful?

If YES, then HOW? And how much time am I taking away from other money making activities to invest into social tools?

Good round up bro.

[Jemima Gibbons]

Thanks for coming Cormac!! Fab write up! And yes, you sure got Filip's character nailed ;)

[Jemima Gibbons]

PS. The name you're missing for the final panel is the wonderful Simone Schuurer - a community manager at Microsoft - who stepped in to cover at last minute. We are very grateful!

[Cormac Heron]

@Louise - Thanks, and thanks for the great presentation. Thought your tips were pretty spot on.
@Filip - Indeed. You give gravitas back to the phrase "money shot"
@Jemima - Thanks. And well done again for putting on a great event. Feel free to try to involve me again :-)

[Cormac Heron]

Thanks Jemima, I have amended the notes to include Simone's details.