Looking for Feedback for a Presentation

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Permalink Reply by Paul Salinger on August 17, 2009 at 3:13pm

Hey Chris,

I think my main concern is that we keep trying to tell people how to use tools, when what we should be teaching them is how to actually think about and create a social media strategy that meets their marketing objectives and meets their audience concerns to deliver overall value to the customer.

In my (limited and non-expert) view, the power of social media is to change the dynamic of traditional one-way advertising and marketing from a brand-centric, one way communication to a user-centric, two or multiple was set of conversations and interactions that change the typical relationship structure of marketing and make it far more people centered and conversational - more active than reactive where we are no longer passive consumers of messaging but active participants in an ongoing social relationship.

I also think it's not useful to people to just focus on a few tools, even if they are the most popular ones right now without showing them how they could actually link all of these with other social tools to create a very integrated and dynamic marketing or event campaign. I'm thinking of things like digital event platforms (like Map Your show, for example), with a social invite tool like Octozen, to white label social networks like Ning or KickApps to video and video management tools and finally to web analytics and measurements tools - because there's really no point in doing any of this unless you can understand the results and refine your strategy with good information.

I also think that way too many event and marketing people think (and secretly hope) that social media is a fad. We need to dispel that with good facts and good case studies and good demographics on audience and good research on digital/online behavior. Here's a good video you might want to use as an opener for your presentation - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sIFYPQjYhv8&feature=player_embedded.

Ok, I'll stop ranting now. Good luck with your presentation.

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