It’s always good to be around like minded, happy people that enjoy what they do and the people they do it with. This is true of the Indy Social Media Breakfast, and it is equally true for business. Jay Baer the author of The Now Revolution and Convince and Convert marketing blog shared a lot of insight about the infusion of social media into business and explained how business has fundamentally changed with these tools.
Before social media tools, he explained that companies were the master and customers were the servant. Companies advertised and marketed products to customers, convincing them to buy, buy, buy. Unfortunately, customers couldn’t easily communicate with companies, it didn’t matter whether the information they wanted to share was good or bad. Social media changed all of that. It leveled the playing field, transformed the relationship between business and customer from master-to-servant, to peer-to-peer. Here are the takeaway points from Baer’s presentation:
- If you have anything to do with your company, social media will strengthen it faster.
- Many of the best practices of social media are unwritten. You must be a participant and continually learn to be credible.
- You have to love social media to succeed at social media.
- What your company measures in social media is determined by what you’re trying to accomplish.
- People want to do business with people.
These are especially apropos given the conference I will be speaking at Saturday. At Get Social PRSSA, the Regional PRSSA Conference, I will be talking about ethics and social media strategy planning. Here are a few questions we will be discussing:
- What are the organizing principles of your strategy?
- Do you want to build community and relationships?
- How do you honor people?
While the answers to these questions will be different for everyone, they are important to consider because the answers will impact how you approach the integration of social media and inbound marketing into your campaigns and business strategy. It will also lead you in to decide which department oversees social media engagement and other public relations activity in your company.
After the conference, I will make the slide deck available for public viewing. If you would like a copy of it now, follow me on Twitter. Let me know and I’ll send it to you.
