MIMA – Duality Reality: Who Controls Social Media In The Enterprise?

Another great event!!  Interestingly, AMA and MIMA presented two wonderful events about social media in two days – it was such a treat

MIMA promptly uploads images and podcasts to its Web site; we can review the event any time we like

Beside wonderful discussion, some ideas were particularly interesting for me personally:

• Ratings and reviews on the sites of major corporations – helps to engage customers…  Why not? Why hide “the head in the sand?”
• Recruiting sites are sprouting on Facebook
• To engage customers/prospects socially – you have to be useful…  provide useful tools…
• Audience over 40?  Larger font…  The “killer app” for this audience has not been discovered yet…  This audience is not too excited by Superpoke, etc.
• Social messaging  – party analogy: “what is your brand look like when it is social?”
• A gem of a thought: experimentation with social media should be pulled out from product development budget, not from the marketing budget…  ROI for social technology is not quite clear…  but contribution to the product development is obvious…
• As long as the brand is authentic, fans will forgive mistakes…
• How to start: start with something that allows listening… with some association with the brand…
• BestBuy is using social technology for its internal communications…
• Interesting site: http://www.whoshouldifollow.com/ finding who should you follow on Twitter (yes, it is rather difficult… ) 

MDMA – Conference – It’s a Brave, New Marketing World

MDMA conferencewas enticing enough to attend, and the event did not disappoint my expectations.

I must admit that John Sweeney, the keynote speaker was spectacular. I don’t have much interest in theater as a art form, but this presentation was the most memorable, and I would say one of the most useful. It opened my eyes on value of idea generation… and power of no fear of rejection. If the ideas are criticized before they leave the mouth of their creator…  not much will be shared…  Hm…  Interesting…  I also experienced the “removal of constrains” myslef…  very interesting…

Other little notes from the conference:

• Retail: web site can be similar to the layout of the store to help customers fining what they need
• E-mail (or other channel) – paying attention on opt-outs. Why do they leave?
• “multi-channel customers” might like to purchase through multiple channels
• Telemarketing is the method of marketing the most disliked by US adults
• Segmenting messaging can increase response rate three times
• Initial customer segmentation may not be based on data…  but rather industry/company structure or tradition… Oh, yes…