Foursquare: Adding Value for Enterprises
For individuals, Foursquare is an application most commonly accessed on a smart phone that allows users to check-in at specific locations, earn points, show customer loyalty, and share the information with other Foursquare users. However, there is more to it than meets the eye. More »
3 Lessons From Social Fresh Nashville
On Monday I had the pleasure to speak at Social Fresh Nashville, a conference focused on educating business professionals on the marketing and communications impacts of social media. I was a panelist on the B2B Social Media panel, which was the first panel of the day (see end of this post for full video of the panel).
Through presentations and hallway conversations at Social Fresh I have come up with three key lessons that I kept hearing throughout the day.
1. Social Media Will Continue To Be Tied To Search – Using a search engine is one of the most common actions on the Internet. Even if consumers are not participating in social networks, it is likely that they are using search engines to discover new information. Jason Falls during the key note panel pointed out this behavior. Social media acts as a key driver of search engine marketing. In the coming years many companies wil be working to determine how search and social can work better together.
2. More Education Is Needed Regarding Web Data – Return on investment was a major issue during the entire day at Social Fresh. It is clear businesses want to know how to invest correctly in social media marketing. However, it was also clear that many marketing and communications professionals need more education when it comes to understanding online data and measurement. Web analytics and other sources of online data are key for determining the ROI of social media. Until more education of online data is done, social media ROI will remain an uncertain issue.
3. E-mail Is Far From Dead – While a few people we talking about future collaboration platforms like Google Wave, it was clear that e-mail is still fully entrenched in daily communication and will continue to be. As mentioned in a presentation at Social Fresh, e-mail is the glue that holds the social web together. A person can’t do anything on the social web without an e-mail address. Try signing up for Twitter or Facebook without an e-mail address, it won’t happen. While social media marketing is a hot topic, e-mail marketing is going to stay a key component of the marketing mix.
While this list could keep going with other lessons from Social Fresh, I will stop for today and save those for future posts.
B2B Social Media Panel Video:
Social Fresh: Social Media's Business Implications Take Spotlight
Monday about 230 people came together at the Holiday Inn in Downtown Charlotte, NC for the Social Fresh conference. The event brought in attendees from across the U.S. including representatives from major corporations such as Wal-Mart, Bank of America, and Rubbermaid. The day was jam packed with great speakers and panels far too many to mention in my recap. However, I have some great video and reaction from the event to share. More »
