Social Media Lives

Folks,

I had SUCH a GREAT time at the Marketing Prof’s Digital Mixer in AZ last week. Thanks to Stephanie Miller of Return Path for getting me there to speak and for giving me this new outlook on marketing. I think for me the eye opener was the idea that marketers/companies are NOT using the newest and brightest methods for getting to consumers through social media techniques.

Social media can take many different forms, including Internet forums, weblogs, wikis, podcasts, pictures and video. Technologies include: blogs, picture-sharing, vlogs, wall-postings, email, instant messaging, music-sharing, crowdsourcing, and voice over IP, to name a few. Examples of social media applications are Google Groups (reference, social networking), Wikipedia (reference), MySpace (social networking), Facebook (social networking), Youmeo (social network aggregation), Last.fm (personal music), YouTube (social networking and video sharing), Avatars United (social networking), Second Life (virtual reality), Flickr (photo sharing), Twitter (social networking and microblogging) and other microblogs such as Jaiku and Pownce. Many of these social media services can be integrated via social network aggregation platforms like Mybloglog and Plaxo.

Now as some of you know, I am NOT a user/fan of facebook, myspace, flickr, etc mostly because I don’t have time to push my everyday busy life to the Internet plus I tend to be a private person and if I do publish anything I try to use my own websites due to the personal aspect of my identity on the Internet.

What did get me to open a twitter account the last day of the event (@ddayman) was a kick ass (yes I just cursed) keynote from Gary Vaynerchuk of Wine Library TV . If you’re not familiar with Gary, or GaryVee as he’s known on Twitter, he is a self-made “Internet celebrity” known for his pioneering approach to personal and business brand-building, and his unscripted video blog Wine Library TV that now draws tens of thousands of viewers daily.

Gary drilled home these essential points.

• Content Is King
• Authentic Community Engagement Is a Necessity
• Marketing is about the 2 Cs: Content and Community. Don’t forget about that second C – Community – and think of your audience as human beings, not nameless, faceless potential for ROI.
• Social media are just tools to help you engage with your community. They don’t make the difference, you make the difference. Use the tools to interact with your community. Word of mouth is incredible for building your brand, and social media amplifies your WOM reach.
• Big corporations "don’t get it" because they don’t care about their company. But be glad the mainstream "doesn’t get it" because this is your opportunity to get ahead of the game. Build your equity, build your brand, before they get here.
• If your company, product, etc. is broken, don’t spend time controlling your message, spend your time fixing your message.
• Social media takes time. There’s no way around putting in the time, because you can’t fake community engagement. Be authentic, be transparent, and build your brand equity so you can crush your competition.

Check out Gary’s keynote here in audio or video form. The video is quite bumpy as the table near us did it on a digital still picture camera. I hope it hits you like it hit me and you begin to QUESTION/PRESSURE your companies tactics for marketing in the near future. Also, at the bottom is an interview on ABC’s NightLine that Gary did that you should watch.

Audio:

Video:

Nightline’s interview of Gary Vaynerchuk:

-Dennis
Eloqua

Don’t Just Send, Deliver!

P.S. Thanks to ALL including Gary who played poker till 3 am the last night . Good group of guys having a ton of loud fun. And to those who said it was their first time playing? I don’t belive you now…

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