This time last week, I had the pleasure of representing the Head of Digital Strategy for Andy Law's marketing agency (The Law Firm Group) by speaking with a group of UK business people developing their knowledge of Social Media.
The event, titled, Engaging the Customer with Social Media : Getting it Right was organized by Unicom and ably facilitated by KM expert, David Gurteen. The Twitter chatter can be found at #ECSM.
The delegates were already very knowledgeable and attentive and the speaker roster was very impressive. I learned much, gleaning many good lessons and tips from the leading edge of practice.
Julie Walker from Purple Spinnaker, the first guest speaker, ably put Social media in historic context, provided a number of case studies and, really importantly, raised the key questions any business should ask before strating their "social media" journey.
Ian McNairn, Program Director, Web Technology & Integration, from IBM showed how building community within a company fostered employee engagement - the importance of which was echoed recently by my colleague Leon Benjamin here;
Christope Langlois at Visible Banking seems to be doing a heroic job with the banking sector (I suspect most customers are thinking of engaging the banks in battle rather than conversation right now);
Lloyd Davies Director, Perfect Path Consulting is showing that you don't need fixed structures to create collaborative sources of intelligence and service.
Richard Sedley Director of the cScape Customer Engagement Unit (CEU provided some fascinating insights into the psychology of getting customers engaged online. His Customer Engagement Network, built on the amazing Ning platform, is well worth joining.
Robin Grant from We Are Social described their groundbreaking work with Skype and how they used social media to respond quickly and positively to negative comments and news stories.
Robin Hamman formerly of the BBC and now with Headshift had, like all journalists, some great stories and anecdotes as well as practical advice from the BEEB.
Sam Marshall from Clearbox Consulting also drew our attention to some of the funnier ways people have used social media to tell a story - notably the case study of the small manufacturer of blending machines who used an inexpensive campaign on You Tube to show his Blender could blend anything - including an Apple iphone.Over 6 million people ave now viewed this.
I had to speak in the dead spot after lunch and, following Monty Python's lead, decided it was time for something completely different. So instead of talking about the hows of social media, I attempted to show why it wasn't just a new marketing fad but symptom of a real revolution. The slides are below and as this will form the underlying theme of much of this site, I'll stop twittering on for now!
Thanks to the audience for listening, tweeting and blogging about the content. I had to miss the ensuing discussion in order to exercise my franchise and vote in the European Elections. So comments and further discussion will be most welcome!
