SMEI Social Media for Marketing
byI was up at 5:30 today to prepare for a seminar I was to attend for my “day job”. The theme was “Social Media for Marketing” and was put on by SMEI (Sales and Marketing Executives International). There were many non-members in the room, including myself, and already being well versed in the social media realm I wasn’t too sure what to expect. I already know what a blog is and how it can help build a two way communication between clients, potential clients, and my company so I was hoping this would serve a good purpose and make my early morning worthwhile.
There were many interesting professionals sitting at my table and we talked a bit over a nice hot breakfast supplied by The Butler Did It Catering. Short side story – yesterday I wrote a Twitter about how much I love whiteboards and got reply from J Karen Parker about participating in a survey about whiteboard usage. Well at my table today was a women who works for an A/V company and they’ve just picked up these fancy new whiteboard that use infrared technology to transform your notes, tasks and scribbles into pdfs and documents.
Photo Credit: Darren Barefoot on Flickr
Original by Robert Scoble – As seen in the Social Media Marketing Handbook
Back to the seminar, the three panelists were James Wells from BCIT, Rob Duncan from BCIT, and Justin Kestelyn from Oracle. The presentation started out very slowly for me, with all the basics being covered including a glossary of terms, “what is RSS?”, although I can imagine it was very helpful (albeit foreign) to those in the room.
You’ll find both of these components already exists with other social sites. With Facebook updates you have “Rebecca is….” and although the “is” has now been dropped, they are still instant ways of letting people know what you’re up to. With LinkedIn’s “I’m working on” you can publicize projects, products, or even that you’re looking for a new job. You can do the very same with microblogging tools like Twitter, Pownce or Jaiku stating: “I’m eating a sandwich” or “Where can I get a sandwich in the West End”, which is where LinkedIn’s Questions and Answers come in. You can ask the community (anyone else on the system) business-related question ie. where to find certain companies or products, or ask for assistance. I admit, I’ve really been neglecting my LinkedIn profile so I’m definitely more inclined now to clean it up and explore some of the new options.
A common thread was ‘trust’ and having a blog, podcast or making a company Facebook page does not take away from your business or its credibility. It creates an open forum to engage your clients and for them clients to become your spokespeople.
I also ran into Mhairi, who sat in on John’s Podcasting 101 session at Northern Voice. She has her own internet marketing firm, out-smarts, and asked some really great questions for the panel.
It was my first time attending an event like this as I’m used to the unconferences where there’s people in jeans with laptops and cameras, there’s beer afterwards, a conch worked in there somehow. The panelists reached some good topics, and it proved to be a rather productive morning.
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As a side note to your side story, I’ve been pretty impressed with the Qipit service. You can send them a picture mail of a whiteboard from your phone and they will enhance the image and send it back to you (or a group of people) in the form of a PDF.
Good to meet you at the event today and thanks for the mention. Overall the seminar was quite well done.
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