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Murmuration 2012 Recap
February 15, 2012
On February 8, Industry Collective hosted Murmuration 2012, a social media marketing conference. While there are no social media experts, there are some of us who may know more than others. Let's share.
A fellow Atiban recently told me something that will resonate with me for the rest of my professional career. He said - "amateurs believe they already know it all, while true professionals never stop educating themselves..." or something like that.
Anyway, it is so true. And carrying that into the recent Murmuration 2012 Social Media Conference at the Franklin Theater on February 8, I came away believing the same thing that I did when I entered - that there really are no true social media experts. Now, don't get me wrong, there are some of us who have done far more with social media marketing than others, and many who have a far greater understanding of how to use social media to achieve business success. Now, of course all of the conference's presenters certainly fall into these "more advanced" categories, and have a wealth of knowledge to share - but none are truly "experts," nor was anyone sitting in the crowd - as again - I believe that no real social media experts exist.
Industry Collective did an awesome job with the event - and I've already commented on Twitter that the popcorn box was easily the best event program idea I've ever seen. The presenters - James Soto (founder of ISM), Jeffrey Cohen of Radian 6, Dawn Devirgilio of Exact Target, Patrick Salyer of Gigya and Marcus Whitney of Moon Toast - had a HUGE challenge: presenting new and innovative ideas and tips to a room full of people who either use social media all the time, or already have a strong knowledge base of how to use social media effectively for business purposes. Again, no "experts."
That said, my approach was to try and get some solid take-aways from the conference, as well as hopefully validate much of what I have already been doing, as well as what I've been advising our clients to do.
Overall, I feel like those two goals where accomplished, and below I've listed some of my top take-aways from the conference. To speak with me more about social media strategies, please connect with me on Twitter @ATIBAmarketing, or on Facebook at http://facebook.com/atibasoftware.
- Cohen - Make social media posts and actions revolve around a business goal. This doesn't always have to mean selling a product, but it can also be used for testing the effectiveness of content or other marketing efforts.
- Cohen - it's still important to monitor what others are talking about in your space and related to your space. Connecting with these people on social media can and should be very simple actions achieved via reaching out to them in a casual, friendly way.
- Cohen's best take-away: Use social media to discover and Build a User Community. Ask your audiences what features are important? What are the things that drive people crazy that they need to get into the next version. Get this instant feedback and use it. What this does is create a community of advocates - an inner circle community - which simply can't be purchased.
Devirgilio - Groupon sends email in the morning, because most research says people wake up and check email first.
Devirgilio - Twitter drives more people to purchase than Facebook, People on Twitter are more looking to buy, whereas Facebook users are looking for deals
Devirgilio - Is listening really the best thing you should do first? You can no longer just be listening, you need to be doing. And you can't be scared of taking action. Toyota responded to some negative press on Twitter from some "mommy bloggers" and were able to turn negative response into positive response with one simple post. Toyota took action and didn't just sit back and listen.
Devirgilio's top take-away - An idea that a company can recruit "Twitter contributors" from outside the organization to submit content via Twitter. The organization then listens and rewards the top content with the ability to publish blog posts on the company website. This effectively creates a social media team/squad along with a blog squad that functions as a champion for your organization.
Salyer – Mainly Patrick Salyer talked about the importance of leveraging social APIs (providing users with the ability to log into your website via their existing social profiles). This is great for User Experience, as the average online user has 28 accounts and 7 profiles. Thus, users don’t have to remember a whole new log in because your website has allowed them to register via their Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn account, etc. Also, it gives you demographic information right away, without having to ask them for it on a registration page. A decent take-away.
Whitney – Marcus Whitney of Moon Toast – here in Nashville – hit a grand slam home run as far as I’m concerned. An extremely honest dude, he was not worried about touting his product or talking about all of his high profile clients. More so, Whitney dropped knowledge that contradicted many social media norms. Some of which were completely new to me, and others that I had already begun implementing myself.
Whitney – It’s important to realize what fans want from brands on social – Deals, Games, Promos and content. In other words, “connecting” and “starting a conversation” is overrated. It’s okay to promote on social, because people know that’s what you’re there to do! Kind of like the blog I wrote a couple weeks ago.
Whitney – Worrying about ROI is a joke for social. You don’t have a choice; you have to have the “I.”
Whitney – He went into a little bit of detail on how Facebook’s Edge Rank Algorithm works, talking about how Facebook is personalizing the news feed, based on affinity, weighing rich media like photos and videos higher than regular text-based posts and time decay – if after 24 hours of posting, your post has disappeared completely, unless it was super-engaging.
Paul Hickey
Atiba News
