Seminar Recap

I attended the Social Fresh seminar yesterday, hence no blog post. I had been looking forward to it, and it didn't disappoint.

Amber Naslund from Radian6 was a commanding keynote speaker, and she cleverly "chopped up" her topic, “Zombie Fighting, Handling the Social Media Questions That Just Won’t Die." into bits that were understandable to a newbie and entertaining to someone who's been in the social media business for a few years. What I liked most is that even though she's leading a team, she admits that she's still learning like the rest of us are. Other memorable speakers include Jason Gertzen from Sprint, Jason Falls from SocialMediaExplorer.com and Jenna Petroff from Hardees.

A common thread throughout the conference was that you have to find the right fit or mix of social media tools/strategy for your company. What fits Hardee's might not fit a healthcare organization. It's really a trial-and-error situation, and you have to be able to really understand your audience, listen to them, analyze the data, and switch things up when they're not working. And what I mean by not working is, you aren't having conversations with your customers/community. You're not giving them what they want, what speaks to them.

Another common thread was ROI - specifically, upper management asking for ROI prior to campaign's completion. ROI and analytics are important, but building and maintaining the community ranks higher.

Something I learned long ago when I helped companies build websites was to start off with a basic set of questions - what is your purpose for the website? Who do you want to reach? With social media, the question is, what are your success metrics? My answer won't match Kellogs - there answer might be a certain number of sales per quarter. Mine, right now, is building a community that activates with us. Activation can be commenting on a facebook post, or attending one of our events, or contacting our appointment line after they've read a blog post about Crohn's Disease and are seeking a physician/diagnosis.

So if anyone is out there listening, the best thing you can do for your company's social media efforts is to ask yourself that question - what are your success metrics?