On Thursday, I attended a seminar in Vancouver, put on by the Canadian Public Relations Society Vancouver (CPRS).The seminar was titled "Social Media - Beyond the Basics" and featured Gillian Muessig, President and Co-founder, SEOmoz. The session was billed as an opportunity to learn about "the world of social media content development and promotion through SEO, social media, and beyond" and also to go "beyond best practice to advanced stats and tips for implementation of social media".
Not really sure that the seminar followed the description that well, but I thoroughly enjoyed listening to Gillian speak. She had a well-thought out presentation that flowed well, and had a lot of interesting stats, without information overload. Plus it was nice to have a social media refresher and a chance to talk shop with women (because there didn't seem to be many guys there) who work with social media marketing (SMM) everyday. My only negative about the experience was the lack of question period, because I'm sure Gillian would have had some great answers.
Some of my key learnings (both from the presentation & from conversations):
- SMM needs to be a long-term strategy, and shouldn't be the end-all of your marketing plan
- Twitter isn't near as popular as one may think, despite my own trend toward writing emails in 140 characters or less, as conditioned by frequent Tweeting
- Most marketing professionals still don't "get", or even use, Twitter
- Mobile marketing looks like a big trend, maybe here to stay
- Social networking is up 100% for people over 65, while Facebook still targets ads to under 65 . Might be a business opportunity?
- Customer engagement is critical
- Use SMM to "listen" to what customers are saying
- Let people know you're listening, and remember to say "thank you"
- Strive to increase "stickiness" - make people want to stay with your business
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