Friday, January 23, 2009

The Social Media SeeSaw








Social Media: Real World Lessons
Hats off to Tom Hopcroft and the rest of the team from The Mass Technology Leadership Council for the awesome break fast seminar and networking event they held on Jan. 22 at Communispace.

If you’re a tech company based in Massachusetts, I STRONGLY encourage you to become a member of MassTLC. For a very reasonable annual fee—your organization and employees will reap myriad benefits.


As Communispace is the leader in listening to and learning from "the voice of the customer," the choice of venue was particularly a propos. It was also fun to see friends Andy Updegrove
and Diane Hessan, ebullient CEO of C/Space in attendance. The omnipresent Paul Gillin
was also there and wrote a nice post about the event.

The theme of yesterday’s event, Social Media: Getting Started with Social Media – Lessons from the Frontlines--- brought together a super panel of experts who provided their lessons learned on “how to” and “how not” for companies to conduct impactful social media programs and initiatives that really engage audiences.

Deftly moderated by Debi Kleiman, Communispace’s VP Product Marketing, the speaker roster included:

  • Perry Allison, Vice President, SocialMarketing Innovation, EONS.com
  • Brian Halligan, co-founder and CEO, HubSpot
  • Pam Johnston, Vice President, Member Experience, Gather, Inc.
  • Dan Kennedy, Assistant Professor, Northeastern University School of Journalism

    While all the speakers had lots to say, I especially enjoyed Dan Kennedy & Brian Halligan. Kennedy demonstrated that he has a solid grasp of the status quo and likely future state of the world of journalism and made some very helpful suggestions on how to connect with professional and citizen journalists using new media tools like Twitter. His comments convinced me to follow him and read his blog Media Nation: http://medianation.blogspot.com/

    Part of my INSTRASTAND philosophy is derived from my long-held belief that “old” sales comms techniques are increasingly ineffective. Halligan’s demonstration that people now don’t want to be “marketed” to—resonated with me personally. Brian’s exclamation “It’s a great time to be a marketer” was elegantly illustrated by this counterbalanced seesaw picture above.

    Whereas old-time marketing required great sums of cash (usually only within reach of big companies), New Marketing tools level the playing field and let small organizations leverage relatively free marketing tools (SEO/SEM, Blogging, Social Media, RRS) to accomplish what his company (HubSpot) is all about: “get found, convert, make better decisions.”

    Further proof that a picture is worth a thousand words.

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