New York
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Social Media Week Event Coverage: Marketing to Millennials with MrYouth
Part 1: Introductions
Part 2: Who do they follow and why?
Part 3: Content Consumption
Thanks from the organizers of Social Media Week
I would like to thank everyone who played such an incredibly important role in helping to make Social Media Week such a huge success. Particular thanks to our volunteers, staff, advisory board members, city organizers, event partners, sponsors, media partners and of course our wonderful attendees.
In total, more than 7,000 people attended across the six cities and over 150 individual organizations were directly involved in helping to produce the conference.
In addition to significantly increasing in size from 2009, the scope of our program also grew with more than 200 events hosted, covering such topics as social media’s impact on healthcare, technology, non-profits, corporate social responsibility, higher education, politics, open design, crowdsourcing, social graph optimization, PR and brand communications.
Here in New York, we hosted 80 individual events, partnering with organizations such as Wired, JWT, The New York Times, Porter Novelli, The Paley Center for Media, Razorfish, MoMA, Sony, Converseon, Morris+King and many many more.
Thanks to our production partners Colaboratorie Mutopo, our global headline sponsor Meebo for all their support and also to our supporting sponsors Pepsi Refresh and PepsiCo.
Thanks also to New York sponsors MotoBLUR, Thrillist, Wholefoods & Diageo and to our media and communication partners PSFK, The New York Times, Mashable, Fast Company, Porter Novelli, 360i, SmartBrief, Mediaite, Mediabistro, PR Newswire, PressLift, SoundCtrl, Gary’s Guide and CSR Wire, and to our streaming partner Livestream.
If you missed some of the events here in New York you can check out the video archive here: http://socialmediaweek.org/newyork/livestream/ and for press coverage of the events visit: http://socialmediaweek.org/newyork/press-media/
Finally, we welcome all feedback, both good and bad and would love to hear specific thoughts on how we can improve every aspect of the conference in future years. If you have a couple of minutes, please complete this short survey: http://cot.ag/aFo8bk
Thank you again!
Toby Daniels & the Social Media Week Team
Milk, Cookies, and Social Media at Whole Foods
One of the closing events of Social Media Week took included snack time at a grocery store, as Whole Foods presented Afternoon Snack: A New York New Food Media Panel.
On the menu were:
Liza Mosquito de Guia, Founder & Chief Storyteller, food. curated.
Cathy Erway, Not Eating Out In New York.
Nick Fauchald, editor-in-chief, Tasting Table
Emily Fleischaker, Associate Multimedia Editor, Bon Appetit
Amanda Hesser and Merrill Stubbs, Food 52
Nicole Taylor, host, Hot Grease Heritage Radio Network
Moderated by Josh Friedland, Editor & Publisher, The Food Section & GastroBuzz.com
The event started the way every event should: with milk and cookies. But then the panel got sizzling. Here’s a recap of highlights:
Question: How is social media changing things?
Amanda: Publishing used to be more top down and social media changed that dramatically.
Merrill: Our commenting system keeps conversation going.
Emily: For traditional media, it’s a challenge. Our systems are optimized to send out a magazine to a million+ people and not get much back. “Changing that is a challenge but it’s an extraordinary opportunity.” Our product improves with feedback. We use it to engage with our users, to promote our content, and for inspiration.
Liza: I can’t believe the power of social media. “I was a nobody six months ago.” Social media helped fulfill a dream.
Nick: We forget that email is the core of social media – “it’s the mother ship… Today, we take that for granted.” Replying to their newsletters goes to his inbox. Facebook and Twitter are important – “Twitter is a means of filling in the gaps between stories.”
Nicole: Social media is the sole reason Hot Grease has been so popular. “I try to remember that everyone is not on Twitter” as she’s not a big Facebook person.
Cathy: I thought there was something a little unfulfilled with having so many nameless friends. I don’t want to forget the real-life social aspect of food. “When you come to a table, it should be about meeting people” and sharing the experience with them. It’s great to have two ways of social connections.
Amanda: Last week we used Hot Potato to run a virtual Sunday supper and all cooked it at the exact same time, taking pictures, uploading them – it doesn’t replace cooking in a kitchen with someone but it was a valuable community experience.
Question: There’s some debate over whether this is all good or all bad. Amanda, you got in a dust-up with Christopher Kimball at Cook’s Illustrated.
Amanda: He challenged us to a duel about crowdsourcing recipes. We had about eight conference calls with him. We agreed to all of his rules but he wouldn’t agree to any of ours.
Emily: We need a new revenue model. Social media almost makes it too easy to share content. There’s value in professional test kitchens. But the pros of social media outweigh the cons.
Moderator: Any other cons?
Nicole: There are some people in small towns, say an expert in canning, who aren’t online and get left out of this. This is our life – we live and breathe social media. There’s a group of people who will never be a part of the social media movement.
Cathy: If we’re all plugged into all these blogging and tweeting and creating content, when are we going to come up with the content, and when will we enjoy ourselves in the moment?
Question: Is this enhancing our discussion of food? Is it dumbing it down?
Liza: I think it’s making it more exciting. Social media’s all about developing relationships. You start to learn who you really trust. There are certain people who I’ve seen their content and I know I can trust them. When you’re using social media to get good ideas and feedback, you need to rely on trust.
Emily: It’s becoming so much easier for small producers of quality food products to sell them, thanks to sites like Foodzie. That’s a pro. One of the cons that Liza brought up is that there are a lot of stories that can’t be told in 140 characters. When I’m reading a great piece in the New York Times elsewhere, I always think, “How does David Carr turn off his Twitter feed long enough to write good stories?” The challenge is putting out a quality product while communicating with our fans, but we won’t have a quality product if we don’t communicate with our fans.
Question: What does the future hold for food writing?
Nick: Food writing is becoming more like being a potter – it’s generally more of a hobby, but if it turns into a career, great. “It’s becoming harder and harder to make money writing and selling words about food.” Part of the blame comes from writers in general because we started giving away the milk for free and no one wants to buy the cow.
Amanda: It wasn’t that long ago that the old media model was very exclusive. It’s always been a very limiting field. The limits are in a different landscape now.
Liza: I think there’s a big future for video. Advertisers want video content like that that they can sponsor. Hyperlocal is also a big opportunity.
Cathy: It’s not just about writing. There’s radio, there’s video – there are more things we can do. It doesn’t have to be limited to writing for a magazine anymore.
Higher Education’s Future: Collaboration, Augmented Reality, Faculty Education
Friday’s Future of Social Media in Higher Education hosted by McGraw-Hill Student Innovations offered five great professors (matched with a masterful moderator) to explore the challenges and opportunities in using social media to advance higher education. The faculty included:
Adam Ostrow Editor in Chief, Mashable.com – @adamostrow
Dr. Kathleen P. King Professor, Fordham University; President, Transformation Education LLC – @drkpking
Greg Verdino VP Strategy & Solutions, Powered; author of microMARKETING – @gregverdino
Mary Casey NYU Student and Founder of Jatched.com
Vineet Madan VP Strategy & Business Development, McGraw-Hill Education
Yianni Garcia (Moderator) Marketing Specialist, GradeGuru.com – @yiannig
On to the panel coverage…
Yianni: One in four students in 2 or 4 year programs are taking at least on course online.
Question: How does social media play a role?
Kathleen: Distance education is moving more swiftly in community and 2-year colleges. Community colleges can respond more quickly to changes in demographics, the economy, etc. Four-year-universities and research centers can’t move as fast. Distance ed is a good connection for us with social media – the faculty’s already using technology, and students are embracing it. Working on using other tools like Twitter, Facebook, etc. We also must address the needs of non-traditional students – this used to mean older students in their 20s through 70s. That term “non-traditional” are outnumbering traditional students.
Mary: Beyond distance learning and online courses, there’s the trend around open content. There are intellectual property issues, but they can spark interest from those not present in a class.
Vineet: Of 12 million college students, only 6 million are 18-24. A big reason for dropouts is lack of engagement. We need to promote engagement more than just enrollment.
Greg: Students want to text with deans or people admissions offices.
Adam: Social tools present new ways for students to participate, rather than the old way of getting graded just for showing up.
Question: How do you use various tools to engage students?
Mary: Blackboard is great, but it’s not collaborative and archival. You can only collaborate with students in your class, that semester. NYU has taken the Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn under its umbrella. They’ve tried to develop collaboration between that and Stern Business School. Needed: apps for collaboration. Gradeguru is one that fits in, provides incentive for collaboration – “it’s kind of revolutionary.” Facebook’s Courses application: you can submit which classes you’re enrolled in to get opinions of a class. Another: Dropbox – lets more than one user edit documents at a time.
Question for Mary: Are you using Google Docs extensively?
Mary: Yes, a fair amount.
More on apps…
Vineet: Tegrity records courses, sort of like a DVR for college courses.
Kathleen: Skype – ‘it’s like Kleenex now’ – everyone uses it.
Yianni: How will we make these technologies more compelling to engage students?
Mary: I want to bring up augmented reality to overlay digital technology over the real world. Would love to use it in history classes.
Greg: Students are already using platforms. If we know that 85% of college students are on Facebook, You need to go where students are.
Kathleen: Faculty need to learn how to use these tools professionally. Many colleagues don’t get the professional use. She takes issue with Greg and Adam saying they don’t remember their education well – they don’t remember their formal education but they’re examples of lifelong learning.
Adam (responding to another question): Technology will lower the cost of so many things for education – so much of what you need is on your phone. The iPad will play a big role in furthering that, replacing textbooks and adding even more.
Audience question (from Sanford): How do we align incentives between professors there to teach (but often to get tenure and get published) and students there to learn?
Kathleen: There is no incentive in most universities for engaging with social media or even for faculty to engage their students. We have to start with the professor first, and we have to look to the institution. Most universities: publication and research is how you get tenure. If I’m spending 20% of my time doing innovative things, it’s counterproductive. It’s detailing me from my goal and livelihood. What has to be done: we have to integrate innovation in teaching and excellent teaching. Teaching must be raised to be more important than the merit and tenure system.
Is The Future F#cked? How Social Media & the Real-Time Web Are Changing the Game
About this Guest Blogger: Johnny Makkar is a digital marketer who blogs at Attention Digital. You can also find Johnny on Twitter @jsmakr.
On Thursday night, Deep Focus hosted “Is The Future F#cked?” as part of Social Media Week which was held at the trendy Hudson Terrace. The big debate revolved around the future of media, a topic many people in the advertising and publishing industry have certainly been putting a lot of thought into lately.
Moderator:
Panelists:
- Ian Schafer (@ischafer), CEO of Deep Focus
- Nick Denton (@NickDenton), CEO of Gawker Media
- Joe Marchese (@joemarchese), President of SocialVibe
Below are the frightening questions the panel focused on while providing their own insights. Make sure to also check out the video of the event (which should be up soon) along with the other commentary from attendees on Twitter using the hashtag #smwfcked.
Is traditional media f#cked?
Rob Norman doesn’t think so, stating “traditional media channels still give brands the push they need.” Nick Denton was brutally honest with his thoughts on newspapers, letting everyone know that he thinks “most are incredibly boring.”
“The news has to be entertaining.” I agree 100% with Joe and it’s pretty obvious why a show like John Stewart (which was referenced) has built such a large following. Ian is concerned about all content moving towards an a la carte model, which would make it extremely hard for content that appeals to a smaller niche to survive.
Rob asked, “where does creativity evolve from in a social world?” Nick replied that encourages his writers to be creative by rewarding the ones who bring in the most page views and unique visitors.
Joe Marchese and Nick Denton (from left to right) | Photo credit: Kelly Samardak’s Flickr
Is online advertising f#cked?
Ian wasted no time pointing out the downward trend in ad click-through rates vs. impressions. He does, however, give credit to Google which has proven that good impressions are worth more using valuable data. Ian’s newly coined term for the race-to-bottom in ad performance: “direct responsified.” (via @superfem)
Rob brings up word-of-mouth, which he points out is “now perceived to be measurable and more effective.” There’s no arguing that it’s becoming more effective, but what the industry is obviously still struggling with is the measurement part. Ian adds, “brands generally don’t know the value of an engagement with social media.” Social media measurement is a hot topic and a service many companies are trying to get right, but we still have a lot of work to do.
At another SMW event, Reinvention From The Ground Event, Pepsi’s Global Director of Social Media seemed to have similar thoughts, asking “How do you get your company and brand to evolve from a focus on impressions as a measure of media efficacy, to connections and engagement with consumers?”
Is the real-time web the future?
While there are many wonderful advantages to getting information faster, it takes a little more work on our part to become better filters of the social web. Ian summed it up nicely by saying, “we are all broadcasting information, anyone with followers and friends online. Now it’s our responsibility to call foul on news, brands, and celebrities when the truth is stretched.”
Nick Denton is not a fan, “Twitter is the worst facet of online media right now”, bringing up the Jason Calacanis’s recent iPad stunt which got picked up by a reputable blog as being a real product leak. But Nick also mentioned that Gawker get’s 5% of their stories wrong, so no matter what, no content provider is perfect (and the reason why lawyers are kept busy).
“As media becomes more social, that leads to inherent problems,” says Ian. Rob adds “brands want to protect their identity, so they don’t want to advertise in online environments.” It’s pretty clear why advertisers don’t want to attach themselves to sites like YouTube and Digg that rely heavily on user-generated content because of the large amounts of offensive material. “Commenters on most social media sites are idiots,” says Nick.
Final Thoughts
Everyone agrees that our attention is increasingly in limited supply. Yes, the future may be f#cked for many traditional content creators and media companies that aren’t paying close attention and adapting but that will only open doors for other players. It certainly helps to pay close attention to how certain businesses and brands are experimenting and adapting to stay relevant.
Other Quotes
“Everything single thing we do is a work in progress.” — Nick Denton
“When brands see results, it’s no longer an experiment” — Ian Schafer
“This makes our life is a fuck-load more complicated” — Joe Marchese
“Impressions are dead in digital because they are meaningless/fictional” — Joe Marchese
“Creativity is like magic, you can’t bottle it. You can never predict a popular story” — Nick Denton
“Social media allows audiences to opt-in and discover things” and “express an interest in a brand that might not view them as target audience” — Rob Norman
From Sideline to Byline: Unleashing Social Media on the Sports World
Matt Wurst is Manager of Digital Communities at 360i. You can follow him on Twitter @mwurst.
The sports world has always been defined by lines.
Some lines are visible for all to see. Games are played within the lines. Scoring in football or soccer means getting the ball across the goal line. Basketball shooters are rewarded with more points for hitting a shot from behind a three-point line. In tennis, the line is in. In volleyball, the line is out. Lines keep runners in their lanes. Batting orders are written on a lineup card.
Then there are the lines that exist outside the field of play. The rules of the game are defined by lines in a rule book. Even off-the-field/court conduct is restricted by rules to prevent athletes from going “over the line.” Bettors make wagers based on lines. Athletes even feed lines to the media that later show up as quotes in lines of print articles. Fans and media watch the games from the sidelines.
Unleashing Social Media on the Sports World, today’s panel discussion hosted by the New York Times, featured the perspectives of league official, blogger, beat writer and fan to discuss how the non-linear rise of social media is blurring some lines while hardening others.
In the hour-long Q&A session, die-hard New York Jets fan and “wine guy” Gary Vaynerchuk (@garyvee) and the panelists shared examples of how social media has blurred the line between spectator sports and participation sports yet strengthened the lines of communication from athlete to fan.
Michael DiLorenzo (@NHLdilo), the Director of Social Media and Business Communications for the National Hockey League, discussed how the league and teams use Twitter to “satisfy the emotional craving fans have to be directly connected” to their favorite teams.”
“Social media is the sunshine and water that helps grow the passion of fans,” DiLorenzo said. “It also provides the shortest distance between, in our case, league and fans.”
Michael DiLorenzo starts the pre-event conversation via Twitter.
Of course, whereas sports used to be a world where athletes played and fans watched, the access that some athletes grant has its pros and cons. If done right, the benefits far outweigh the risks. However to do it right, athletes need to really invest in it and be authentic.
“If they aren’t authentic, this new era of transparency will run right over you,” said Jim Bankoff (@bankoff), the Chairman and CEO of SB Nation, a sports fan blog network.
With so many parties – the athletes, teams, leagues, agents and representatives – all having a vested interest in the message, the issue of control remains. But it is an issue that is being worked out across different sports and with varying degrees of success. Remember, access to athletes has been carefully managed for decades. There are pre-determined times before and after games when athletes can and cannot talk to the media. The NBA has implemented a similar rule about tweeting before and after games.
For Matthew Cerrone (@matthewcerrone), the founder of metsblog.com, social media has blurred the line between journalist and fan. The site started in 2003 as a hobby, but he now covers the team on a daily basis and serves as a conduit between players and Mets fans.
Sports journalism is changing as reporters adopt a more digital mindset. Writers and broadcasters are breaking news on Twitter. Game recaps are secondary projects after in-game live blogging or tweeting wraps up. But where is the line between journalist and fan now that anyone with an opinion and enough money to pay web hosting fees can become a blogger.
According to the Focus “State of the Blogosphere 2009,” 41% of bloggers describe their style as ”journalistic.“ But do they conduct interviews, research a topic or fact-check like journalists of yesteryear?
Vaynerchuk believes that the best, no matter the medium they use, will stand out for being capable storytellers. For New York Times baseball writer Tyler Kepner (@tylerkepner), journalists present multiple angles and perspectives, painting a fuller picture of how and why.
“As a journalist, you have to stand behind what you write or say,“ Kepner said. “When breaking news, you can tweet it out first, then get to work on the rest of the article or blog.”
But perhaps the greatest impact that social media has had in sports is how it strengthens the lines of communication between fans.
The immediacy of information is staggering and the volume of conversation is overwhelming. Social tools make it easier to connect fans of the same team and find communities to join. And we’ve really just scratched the surface, too. Geo-targeting will facilitate fan connections between friends and strangers on living room couches and inside stadiums. Enhanced filters will reduce the clutter and noise of extraneous conversations and better mobile devices will guarantee that we can always have a voice.
Except for the bicyclist sitting directly in front of me, there were no athletes to speak of in the room. NBA and MLB league execs? Sure. More sports bloggers than I could read in a lifetime? You bet. But despite what our business cards said, we were just a small community of sports and social media fans tweeting to each other from across the room, re-tweeting handles, sharing quotes and direct messaging.
And I know I’m not the only one who took part in today’s dialogue that is looking forward to the NFL’s own foray into social… the first ever official Super Bowl hashtag on Twitter, #SB44, kicking off this weekend!
“Sports exists for conversation,” Bankoff said. “And there has never been a better time to be a sports fan than right now.”
Digital Culture NYC: Breaking Down the Walls at MoMA
Amanda Bird is Brand Manager at 360i. You can follow her on Twitter at oiseau678.
I was really looking forward to last night’s event at MoMA and the panelists did not disappoint. As a hard core public radio listener and an art lover and with memberships to most of the major museums on the panel, I was excited to hear first-hand from those who are helping me and other art/music/literature/knowledge lovers connect with the inspirational content coming from these world-renowned institutions. The panel was moderated by Tina Roth Eisenberg of www.swiss-miss.com and featured panelists included:
- Karen Karp, The Metropolitan Opera
- Victor Samra, The Museum of Modern Art
- Benjamen Walker, WNYC Radio
- Shelley Bernstein, Brooklyn Museum
- Josh Greenberg, New York Public Library
- Amanda McCormick, Film Society of Lincoln Center
The first half of the session focused on learning more about each institution’s forays into social media. Some of the programs I was already familiar with (if you don’t follow @brooklynmuseum, I highly recommend you do!), while others were new to me. There were six panelists so for the sake of brevity, I’ll just provide a few of my own personal highlights from what I learned about their current efforts in social media:
- MoMA on Facebook and Flickr – MoMA’s social media presence is not limited to just these two channels, but their Facebook and Flickr presence stood out to me because they both revealed an important lesson – if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em (or have them join you!).Victor recounted his story about getting MoMA on Facebook. Before setting it up a few years ago, MoMA had previously wondered “Why should we do it just because everyone else is on Facebook?” Once convinced it would be a worthwhile effort, they set up a Facebook page only to discover shortly thereafter that a MoMA page already existed on Facebook…and had roughly 12,000 fans. Turns out that while MoMA was debating whether it’d be worthwhile, fans of the museum answered that question for them, devoting time and effort into setting up a page themselves. So in the beginning, the official MoMA Fan page was competing for traffic and fans with the older, more established Fan page. Victor got in touch with the admin of the original fan page (a college freshman without much free time on his hands) and was granted admin rights to control and add content. Later he worked with Facebook to combine the two pages seamlessly, resulting in a page that currently has over 240,000 fans, including yours truly.Similarly, fans were already contributing content about their experiences with or at the museum on Flickr. MoMA has established a Flickr group where people can contribute their photos from visits to MoMA directly to the group and draws from these to find images to feature on its own Web site.
- The Brooklyn Museum on Building Community – “Community” was a prevalent theme during the panel. Who is the community you’re trying to engage? Accordingly to Shelley, for the Brooklyn Museum they are focused on building a community around the people who are physically local to the institution (aka Brooklynites). For MoMA, their community is lovers of design, photography and modern art globally. To build up your presence in and among the community you have to both listen and proactively participate in the dialogue regularly – dialogue means both responding to your community and providing valuable information to them. Shelley pointed out that having a sustained conversation with your community does not translate to a 9-5 M-F job – she tweets on weekends, in the early morning, late nights – as often as she can in order to quickly and readily answer the community’s questions or put out the insights that they crave from @brooklynmuseum. In addition, the tweets are always from a “person,” such as Shelley herself or one of her colleagues and they make clear that there is a person with a unique POV behind their tweets.
- The New York Public Library on their Blog – The New York Public Library recently relaunched their site, which they chose to build in Drupal to more effectively aggregate and link their various content sources across their site architecture, according to Josh. He mentions that only 5% of their site visitors are going to the blog, yet those that do are spending twice the amount of time on the site. To keep folks engaged when visiting nypl.org, they’re getting some serious new blogging efforts off the ground. Josh’s goal is to have all of their staff trained and contributing content to their various blogs. No small feat for an institution with hundreds of staffers.
Shelley Bernstein, Josh Greenberg and Amanda McCormick (from right to left) discuss how they’re using social media to connect people with their institutions.
These are just some of the highlights and there were valuable insights from all involved. I’d recommend visiting or participating with any of these institutions and, of course, they’re all on Twitter at @NYPL @WNYC @filmlinc @brooklynmuseum @MuseumModernArt and @MetOpera respectively.
“From Listening to Activation”: a Conversation at Converseon with Crepes 2/4/10
About this Social Media Week Guest Blogger: Dani Klein is Founder and Blogger at YeahThatsKosher.com, Founder/Consultant at SocialCity Marketing and Social Media Director at StandWithUs. You can follow Dani on Twitter @YeahThatsKosher.
Today’s #SMWNYC event for me was the most insightful event of the week. It was held at the Converseon offices in Midtown, which hosted an intimate crowd, albeit a packed room, enjoying breakfast crepes, freshly squeezed OJ, and Mimosas. Why couldn’t all of Social Media Week be this tasty (& educational)?
The event was moderated by Converseon’s CEO: Rob Key
On the panel were 3 well-informed & knowledgeable digital marketing professionals who had much to share:
Jon Burg – Emerging Channels Specialist at Digitas (@jonburg)
Craig Daitch – SVP of Activation at Converseon (@cdny)
Andy Von Kennel – SVP Growth Director at Rapp (@avkthinks)
Rob kicked off the event by asking us to “stop using the term ‘social media’ (would defeat the purpose within Social Media Week) since it is a limiting term when discussing it as a business solution.” “The next steps in social media won’t be about the next Twitter account or viral video.” It’s beyond that. Rob introduced us to Converseon, the agency, which leads the way in Social Media listening tools and metrics.
The purpose of the panel was to discuss listening while participating in social media campaigns – something not discussed at the other #SMW events I attended this week. The overall concept of the panelists discussion was to think of social media as a listening tool. By listening, we can gather insights into brand perception, brand awareness, be able to provide appropriate customer service, etc.
Let’s hear from the panelists…
Listening & Challenges
Jon – brand marketers need to be listening and engaging an active vocal audience. Get to know your audience as people / as human beings. This is the first time that we can listen to what millions of people are doing and saying. Social media gives us those tools.
Andy – social media allows us to get specific guidance from listening for products and branding.
Jon – the challenge with our clients is getting out of the perception & expectation that social can do everything. It is not the end all and be all. The social fluency of your client will affect how you are able to run your campaign, or your campaign in general.
Craig – another challenge today is that CMOs have little time to prove results. We live in a world of accountability – it is no longer about the checklist anymore (do we have a Facebook & Twitter acct?).
ROI
Rob – Social Media ROI is like dark matter in the universe.
Jon – there are different ROI models depending on the agency. We’re trying to remove “media” from “social media” –> different forms of ROI will come together.
Today, we can demonstrate that social media does things, but we don’t have the full picture yet. What agencies claim they can do, they often can’t.
It’s not about technology. It is about the insights & value the social media intelligence brings to the company. The technology is just the tool or platform to get us there.
Craig – (agrees) it is not technology, but the human intelligence behind it. In social, human power trumps technology.
Andy – (also agreeing) understanding sentiment takes a human element.
Jon – sentiment is a metric, but it doesn’t necessarily give insight.
Twitter is disposable. It is only valuable if RT’d or blogged about (which has a longer lasting affect).
“The social media space is still very new, the industry is still taking shape.”
Social Media Intelligence
Andy – we were able to use social media with a client to figure price and a new flavor. Social media was used as a means to do market research.
Jon – social media intelligence helps brands define the company components and how we work with people.
–> “The Web is the world’s largest focus group”
Craig – Consumers don’t care what position you hold within the company, they just want to get what they want. Social media professionals can be on the clock 24/7. Consumers are agnostic to your position.
Rob – we (agencies) need to talk about (social media as) business solutions & what social media listening can do to help their company. We need to talk about what social media does and stop talking about what it is.
Jon – an important question to ask is: How do we bring social media to your business, and how do we bring your business to social media?
—-
Great questions were asked, and of all the events I had to attend this week, this one gave me the most insight into ways marketers need to be approaching their clients concerning social media as a tool.
I will be posting videos of the event shortly.
Also, shout out to @AmandaRykoff who also Tweeted some great quotes from this event.
Women in Social Media Answer: “Why Go Social?” & “What’s the Right Way to Do It?”
About this Social Media Week Guest Blogger: Though Rebecca recently graduated from The University of Texas at Austin’s Advertising program, she has been a social media enthusiast for years, and is honored to guest blog at #smwnyc. To learn more, visit her blog and follow her on Twitter @rebeccaweiser.
Women in Social Media
Panel at the JP Morgan Chase Building, NYC
Panelists: Alexa Hirschfeld, Meghan Muntean, Casey Carter, Joran Reid.
The panel of strong, successful women featured those who, after spending time with traditional and realizing that digital is the future, have found their niche in the digital space. Their entrepreneurial spirits and experience provided insight into the two biggest issues addressed: “Why go social?” and “What is the right way to do it?”
Why: “Bloggers just get it.”
One issue addressed was that of the FCC’s new restrictions on bloggers, essentially mandating that they issue full disclosure whenever gifted or paid to create content. The panel agreed that this is completely in line with the informal blogging code: be honest. Bloggers should give full disclosure regardless of the FCC, as they owe it to their readers. Have fun: Blogging should be a safe, fun space in which like-minded individuals can express themselves. Whenever a blogger posts about an item, readers can immediately click through and potentially be moved to purchase. This immediate response truly separates traditional from digital, allowing for faster and much more effective ROI.
How : “What is the right way to do it?”
- Before starting anything, either business, blog, or any other type of venture, it’s important to make sure you talk to others. If you have friends who have done this before, ask them for guidance, or “learn the expensive way.”
- In order to gain traffic to your blog, try getting your name out there. Try guest-posting on a blog that you like. If readers like your style and content, they’ll want to read more.
- Take calculated risks, and go exploring in the digital realm. “Buying domain names is like a 21st century landgrab.”
Reporting on Reporting: The Evolution of Journalism at Mashable’s NextUp NYC
Matt Wurst is Manager of Digital Communities at 360i. You can follow him on Twitter @mwurst.
If video killed the radio star, is Internet killing the print and video stars? And if so, how should current journalists adapt and current journalism students prepare?
These are questions that newspapers and television networks are grappling with on a daily basis. They were also among the many topics discussed at Mashable’s “NextUp NYC – The Future Journalist” event last night at the 92YTribeca as part of Social Media Week here in New York.
A year ago, TIME magazine predicted that a journalism crisis was approaching “meltdown proportions” and that “some major cities will no longer have a newspaper.” The alarm bells rang even louder when The Rocky Mountain News and Seattle Post-Intelligencer shut down for good and The Philadelphia Daily News and Minneapolis Star-Tribune filed for bankruptcy soon thereafter.
Video coverage of Wednesday’s panel:
But according to last night’s panelists, Sree Sreenivasan (@sreenet), the Columbia Journalism School Dean of Students, and Vadim Lavrusik (@lavrusik), one of Professor Sreenivasan’s Digital Media graduate students, journalism isn’t dying. It’s simply evolving. Even as many traditionalists feared the end of beat reporters, in-depth coverage, investigative reporting and newsmaker/celebrity accountability, the sounds of their struggles are being drowned out by the sound of keyboards clicking, video streams playing, Twitter feeds refreshing and RSS feeds updating.
With upwards of three hundred journalists, PR gurus and social media aficionados filling the lofted space in lower Manhattan, the teacher and his student optimistically agreed that a new era of “tra-digital” journalism, the surface of which has barely been breached, is upon us. They astutely compared where we are now in a digital age to where radio was in 1912 and television was in 1950. (You can view their shared presentation at http://bit.ly/futurej.)
As a veteran of the news industry and well-connected social media insider, Sreenivasan navigated through the multiple uses of new and emerging platforms and how they can apply to the “old world.” (He doesn’t get GoogleWave yet, but who does?) He emphasized the need for today’s journalists to learn multiple talents while retaining a specialty that distinguishes them from their peers. Working together, Sreenivasan and Lavrusik also explained how to become a multimedia storyteller, “learning and understanding what media is right for what story.”
Some other required qualities and skills for experienced and news journalists alike are to become reliable “pointers,” helping cut through the noisy clutter and sharing good content from across the web. They stressed the value of “community managers” that listen and interact with readers/viewers and don’t simply broadcast their messages in one direction. Additional “best practices” encourage newshounds to think about their own brand and adopt an entrepreneurial spirit.
The Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism is a top, if not THE top, journalism program in the country. Yet the curriculum taught just a decade ago is already an antiquated relic of a lost era. Faced with advances in technology and expanded use of the Internet, the next generation of journalists is training for professional opportunities in a changing media landscape that might be very different in another ten years down the road. Meanwhile, the journalists of today must reconstruct their skill sets for the growing world of online media.
It is imperative that journalists of today and tomorrow develop a “digital media mindset”—how to think about news stories and packages from an online perspective. Look no further than our hosts for the evening. Mashable plays an important role in the publication of digital news, trends and technologies. (In fact, Mashable has become such an institution in my own daily diet of fact-gathering that it now holds the fourth spot on my iGoogle home page, batting clean-up behind my Gmail inbox and RSS feeds from CNN and ESPN.)
Throughout the course of the discussion, a number of the journalists in the room were taking notes, some even sticking around as the crowds dispersed to learn more, dig deeper – clear indication of a reporter’s nose for information, if you will. And that, as the professor noted throughout his presentation, is just one of several skills that will never be rendered obsolete, along with the ability to observe, ask questions, process thoughts and write.
