Five incredibly talented and deeply entrenched social media THOUGHT LEADERS fielded questions about “How to get the word out” and win more business now that there’s so much FREE stuff out there.
THE VENUE: Grand Hyatt in San Francisco
THE SPONSOR: San Francisco chapter of the American Marketing Association
THE “WHY”: To discuss whether or not today’s marketing and PR “sucks,” and, if so, What To Do About It.
What would you do if you had a great product in a niche and zero dollars in marketing?
What would you now do if you now had $10,000 in marketing? How would you put it to use?
What is the role of agencies in today’s environment? Should companies simply do their own marketing?
Headlines from the discussion:
PR NEEDS A NEW NAME
NO TRUST IS OBSTACLE FOR PR & ADVERTISING
CROWDSOURCING IS THE NEW INFLUENCER
KNOW WHAT YOU WANT TO BE
BECOME AN EXPERT IN A UNIQUE NICHE
“TRUTH IN MARKETING”: [Who’d a thunk?]
EVERYONE IN YOUR COMPANY WILL BE FINDABLE
BE YOUR OWN MOUTHPIECE
PR AGENCIES ARE PASSÈ
Selected clips from the discussion
Silicon Valley blogger Louis Gray
“For marketing on a shoestring: Tap into personal network for word of mouth. Leverage the people who are your biggest fans.”
Seesmic founder: Loic Le Meur
“The problem with old styles of marketing is No Trust. What I trust are my friends telling me about products they like.”
“Twenty years ago there were 20 influencers. Today there are 6,000.”
“When you engage with customers on Twitter, you can learn what problems need to be resolved.”
“Social Media Marketing: Find the fight people in the right places and offer the right message.”
Steve Patrizi and Renee Blodgett round out the panel of experts
“Online Social Media: No difference between personal and professional.”
“Professionally distributed news releases may only be necessary with major launches.”
“Break out of old marketing by teaching your people to LISTEN and then to RESPOND.”
“The speed of innovation is directly related to the speed at which we are sharing information.”
“Rules are different for social media platforms: MySpace is like your neighborhood bar. Facebook is the backyard BBQ. LinkedIn is your office. You’ll need to act accordingly.”
WHAT DID THE ATTENDEES HAVE TO SAY?
Mark Evans, SFAMA President
Marketing is going through a revolution. The SFAMA is here to embrace this change and help bring together all the moving parts. — Mark
Julia Francis - Ubiquity PR, Wendy Fisher - Moxie Mtkg, Sharon Lee - Shamiko Design, Kelly Connelly - Kelly Connelly Design
MARKETING AND PR “SUCK”? — People will always need them, suck or not. It depends on the approach for them “not to suck”: Change the name of PR to a more friendly and real term like SOCIAL CONNECT, for instance. — Sharon
Bill Bralye
After listening to the panel, I want to devote more time identifying best practices used by companies that are effectively widening their marketing tactics by adding social media to the mix. — Bill
Deb Kockos
I can tell you that most people do not spend their day online exposed to ads or blogs about certain products. Most of the world doesn’t even know what Web 2.0 means. When referencing a conversation on LinkedIn during a recent presentation, the audience looked at me like I was nuts. No one even knew about LinkedIn. We’re definitely in the early adopter stage here. — Deb
John Meyer - UC Berkeley, Laura Dantes - Engagement Strategies
We do need to filter the Hype and remember basic marketing principles. As Renee put it, “What is the problem we are trying to solve?” Focus on strategy, messaging, and reaching the right stakeholder groups using multiple channels. I don’t believe the zero budget Twitter solution is sustainable. — Laura
Cory O'Brien
Marketing and PR don’t suck. They’re just changing rapidly, and the companies that can’t keep up with the changing environment are using marketing and PR methods that “suck.” Social media has closed the gap between the company and the consumer, and there’s a level of speed, honesty, and transparency that is required to play in this field that many companies are not yet comfortable with. — Cory
FOR THOSE WHO’D LIKE TO VIEW GUY’S QUESTIONS AND THE PANEL RESPONSES AND DISCUSSION:
Can’t get enough of thought leaders in panel discussions? Here’s my report on Steve Rubel, Michael Brito, Richard Brewer-Hay, and Angela LoSasso discussing “Beyond the Hype: Roadmap for Social Media”
SFSU student Justin Fong puts his Social Media lessons to good use
More than 100 marketing students in the College of Business at San Francisco State experienced All Things Social Media from classroom activities, influential guest speakers, and their own individual research.
Justin Fong was one of a half dozen students who had a double-dose, taking both my PR and my Advertising courses. After the semester ended, he began working for Scoreloop and here is a report on his internship activities:
Hey Shari,
How’s the summer going for you? My internship is really tough. Long hours and pretty much a non-stop day, but it’s a lot of fun. There is a lot going on at once.
The first thing I do in the morning is troll through the news for stories about our company and our competitors. I look through Facebook, Linkedin, Twitter, and other social media sites to see if anything’s new. If something does comes up, I e-mail it to my team and we try to de-position our competitors.
I also take care of all of our social media profiles. I made our Facebook fan page, our Linkedin company profile, monitor our Twitter account, etc. There are so many different things I do.
One thing that I helped the company with was the idea of creating a wikipedia page, which we discussed in a phone conference.
We had a big press release yesterday. It was a hit and got picked up by a lot of big companies, Google, Yahoo, CNBC, MarketWatch, and so many more. We do both traditional PR and PR 2.0. I’ll update you when more things happen for the company. We’re getting ready for Apple’s World Wide Developers Conference so we’re really busy this week. Have a good rest of summer!
Best Regards, Justin Fong
Hey guys, if any more of you are “out there” doing social media activities, please send me your reports and maybe we’ll have a host of guest hosts.
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