Members of Point It attended two social media events last week. One put on by the Seattle Direct Marketing Association and the other by the Puget Sound America Marketing Association. Apparently social media is all the rage these days and marketers are flocking to these events just to make sure they don’t miss a beat (or contact or job prospect).  Honestly, I’ve been to multiple social media events and typically come away dissatisfied. Where is the meat???  However, I actually learned some stuff at the PSAMA event and Lisa, who attended the SDMA event shared her notes as well. Do tell:

From the “Getting to know Twitter” PSAMA lunch. Jennifer Gehrt, co-founder of Communique PR was the speaker.

•  She brought up an example of a tweet that backfired on a Cisco job hire as an example of how things can go horribly wrong. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/29901380/

• Went over basics of using twitter – provided handout.
• Asked audience how many people have opened a Twitter account. Almost everyone had. When she asked how many actively use it only a small % raised their hands.
• Suggested that, for marketing purposes, use the 80/20 rule of 80% non promotional tweets.
• Did acknowledge that most of the social marketing going on is for B2C.
• Suggested that employees/companies publicize their social marketing sites on the web sites, sig files, releases etc.

 Some Twitter Tools worth looking into include:

•  Tweetdeck.com (consolidates your social media accounts)
• Tiny.cc (to shorten URL’s
• Wefollow.com
• Yammer (Allows you to Twitter within your Domain)
• Twitpick.com
• Budurl.com
• Mrtweet.com
• Tweetlater.com

Lisa’s notes from the “Transform your Marketing and Customer Relationships with Social Media” event, presented by the Seattle Direct Marketing Association.

• All members of the panel were from consumer facing companies (Alaska airlines, PCC markets, Comcast, REI), so they gave a lot of examples how they use twitter to monitor positive and negative consumer comments and then how they react to those. (retweet or customer service contact or send to store mgr to contact customer and resolve problems).
• First thing to do is to sign up for every user name around your brand that you can think of. If someone already has it, they might be a loyal customer and willing to give you their username, or you might have to pay for it. (REI did this and an excited loyal customer gave them their username for free)
• They see social media as relationship building and complementary to other marketing efforts. Don’t try to say it is going to replace anything, but rather support/integrate with other efforts.
• Hardto gather metrics and benchmarks in order to justify costs (usually labor hours) to top mgmt focused on profitability. Need an advocate in a top position who is willing to test things.
• Find employees in your company to get involved who are interested in social media, use it, and are company proponents.
• Most have “guidelines” on what to say and what not to say in social media to maintain brand and positive image
• Most use twitter for 60-75% non-promotional tweets, but do see sales lifts when they remind people about big sales or do couponing.
• Recommend to develop videos and then publish on YouTube, then promote in twitter, FB, etc. because YouTube’s search and find is really difficult for users.

 Here’s some info I found the other day about measuring twitter

summary article

http://blog.searchenginewatch.com/090908-210732

 PDF

http://www.webecologyproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/influence-report-final.pdf