Just got out of a super great panel discussion.
Social media tools have entered the traditional marketing sphere, allowing customers to create and evolve their own user communities. Is this a nightmare for traditional marketers? Are barbarians at the gate? Or is this a priceless chance for companies to leverage their most powerful marketing tool of all… the customer.
Handing over power requires a leap of faith. We’ll share our experiences of letting go, then joining, and eventually leading the community. We’ll discuss specific ways in which you can integrate and design community marketing into your company’s business and see customers as your new partners.
Speakers:
Kit Seeborg
Jeremiah Owyang
Brian Oberkirch
Dan Saffer
Here are some of my notes.
Brian Oberkirch:
In a world with so much media coming at us from all directions, we are resentful of advertising and marketing.
Letting go and allowing your community to do the work for you is not laissez faire – it requires more work, more time and more dedication.
We should avoid “advertising by other means” – product placement, geek tricks like Subservient Chicken. Subservient Chicken was amusing but it didn’t build community and it didn’t make people want to buy chicken sandwiches.
“When you put something in an open space and make it vulnerable, you make a connection.” – remixable, open to interaction w community — motivate connection.
Connection over content.
Jeremiah Owyang is a self-described Global Web Strategist who’s a known blogger and podcaster among the Social Media industry. Currently, he maintains the title of Manager of Online Community Marketing at Hitachi Data Systems in Santa Clara. He’s spearheaded the corporate blogging program, which has empowered key executives to publically evangelize the corporate message, and also involved with other new media focuses as well as involvement with various Extranet and Intranet projects. — I was super excited to meet Jermiah. He had a lot of great ideas and I can’t wait to talk with him more. He said things like:
It’s not about message-controllling but message-enabling.
If people are writing about your product, put them in your blogroll – they’ll say nicer things.
The best blog posts an executive can write:
- What do we need to improve?
- We’re not very good about this ___. Talk about it.
- Write about other products, not just your own. (This was actually Brian’s comment.)
Dan Saffer is my friend. He is also a senior interaction designer for Adaptive Path in San Francisco. Dan has developed successful designs for transactional and e-commerce sites, as well as for applications and devices. He’s worked with a wide variety of organizations, from startups to Fortune 100 companies.
Before joining Adaptive Path, Dan served as the senior interaction designer for Ameritrade, the top online brokerage. He led the initial redesign of the Ameritrade site, focusing its features and functionality on active traders. Before joining Ameritrade, Dan was a producer and creative lead at interactive agencies like Organic and Plural. All told, he’s worked in interactive media for over a decade.
Dan received his Master of Design in Interaction Design from Carnegie Mellon University and specializes in interaction design, user research, conceptual models, and interface design. He is a member of the American Institute of Graphic Arts (AIGA) and the Industrial Designers Society of America (IDSA). He also serves on the Board of Directors of the Interaction Design Association (IxDA).
Dan’s book, Designing for Interaction, published by New Riders, is scheduled for release in August 2006. I’m in the book. Chapter 9, an image of my myspace page. His blog is http://www.odannyboy.com.
Dan talked about varying levels of participation. Different types of people will want to interact on different levels. He cited the MSNBC news site as an example. They offer many options for community participation from reading to rating to commenting, etc.
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I saw this panel – I think it was by far one of the best. I was especially impressed with Jeremiah.