On Wednesday May 19th, we had our 6th social media event at HyperArts. We began hosting these "mixers" or "meet-ups" almost exactly a year ago and we have always been amazed by how informative, interesting and fun they are each time. At each event we have invited local social media experts to come and share their strategies, advice and experiences with our guests. I actually met most of the people who have come to speak on social networks like Twitter or Facebook.
Since the beginning, the format of the events has been casual, with 2-3 presentations each night. But for this last gathering, I decided to try something new. First of all, I had 5 prospective guest speakers (from 4 organizations) that I wanted to invite, so the night would get really long if each one presented for 10-15 minutes plus questions. I remember attending a great discussion panel event at Razorfish in the city, and decided to give that setup a try. I knew that everyone would have great things to share, since each organization that I invited really understands the importance of community (not selling) on social networks. Our fabulous guests included:
- Ellen Seebold of Seebold Marketing Communications
- Adam Rozan of the Oakland Museum of California
- Andy Murdock and Rana Freedman of Lonely Planet
- Elisa Williams of the Oakland Visitors Bureau
The panel discussion was a great idea! The guests were interacting with the speakers, everyone was commenting on different ideas and strategies, predicting the future and defending best practices. The last question that I presented to the panel was inspired by our discussion of ROI and the challenge for certain businesses using different social networks to actually produce a concrete benefit (with a $ sign) as a result of social media engagement. I asked each panelist this question:
"If you had to defend your online communities to a higher-up who was threatening to completely end all social media for the company, which single network would you keep based on its actual return on investment?"
Here are their answers:
- Andy of Lonely Planet pointed out that Facebook is one of the #1 sources of traffic to their website (where they sell products) so if they had to defend it to a boss, they would definitely point out that benefit. Also, Rana (who works in traditional PR) said that so many PR contacts and journalists follow @lonelyplanet on Twitter to get information about their company, so to get rid of their Twitter account would "be terrible PR!"
- Elisa from the Oakland Visitors Bureau said that their annual Flickr photo contest is a huge money saver for the organization. Rather than sending out a hired photographer to get shots of the city to use online and in publications, they crowd-source the whole thing and spend a fraction of the cost on prize money to the best local photographer submissions. Plus, Elisa remarked, she would still use Twitter for research even if she had to stop tweeting for the company account. It's where she gets all of the information for the newsletter!
- Adam from the Oakland Museum refused to pick just one network to keep
But he did explain that when the museum was deciding how to spend their time online, they did a lot of research to find out where to go to find an audience. They discovered that their #1 audience is the artistic community of adults in Oakland, and they primarily hang out on sites like Facebook and Twitter. So that is where Adam hangs out too, to make contact with them on a regular basis. His defense of social media is simple and classic: you absolutely HAVE to go where your audience is. - Finally, Ellen responded that as a primarily B2B consultant, her business benefits the most from her well-maintained profile on LinkedIn, and the connections she sustains there. If she had to get rid of her other social networks, LinkedIn would still help her keep in touch with colleagues and clients, and bring her new business.
I think that the biggest takeaway from the panel discussion was the conclusion that there is no one-size-fits-all with social media. And since our theme was "Evolution of Social Media" we tried to talk about how social media has changed in the past year, and this point is still just as important! Businesses big and small want to start participating in the social realm, but there is not a single set of tools that is appropriate for everyone.
Thank you to everyone who attended our event, we are looking forward to the next one. To find out more, or contact us about speaking, visit the events page on our site.
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#1 by Kingsley Tagbo - June 1st, 2010 at 09:46
Adam is correct, that you must go where your audience is located. I think at least 50% of audiences for businesses are on the Internet using social media, while the other 50% may be half asleep at the TV, reading newspaper, or listening to radio. TV advertisements are normally costly, newspaper involves a smaller audience, and radio is an even smaller crowd. This leaves the extremely affordable option of social media that can reach people locally as well as all across the globe. The audience is out there ready to connect, and it's more often than not social media provides that connectedness.
#2 by Dallas web designers - June 18th, 2010 at 08:14
I too think that placing the value on one network would be extremely difficult. One thing we frequently promote is that not only can it help grow your business as far as sales but it can also help attract top talent (people want to work for progressive forward thinking companies) as well as, as your article states, reduce costs in areas such as support, product development, and time to market. If tracked using bit.ly style links and proper analytics it can usually be fairly easy to show that much traffic is generated by SM sites.
As for me, I would have to agree with Adam. I can't pick one that I would eliminate. They have all brought significant business to us. If I could consider newspaper ads social media, I would cut those.