Today’s Technology Tools and Social Media for Growing Business was the title, and this session was the last one for Tech Fair, and the Panelists and their company names form an impressive lineup:
Doug Whatley – Human Capital Consultant, moderator
- Scott Ingram – Sales Director, Bazaarvoice / Founder, Network-In-Austin
- Julie Niehoff – ConstantContact
- Dave Evans – Principal, Social Web Strategies
- David Armistead – Principal, Social Web Strategies
- Britton Manasco – Manasco Marketing Partners
After a development manager from Paypal gave a great inspirational talk about how the inflection point for electricity’s usefulness came after an electrical washing machine was invented, bringing the outlet from the ceiling to the wall, Doug Whatley introduced the panelists. Each panelist talked briefly about their perspectives on social business. Here are some notes from the valuable session with interesting insights. I mostly wrote down quotes that I found insightful or that offered a perspective I hadn’t heard.
Britton sums up the social technologies that enable businesses to get work done with a simple phrase: Guidance imperative – the ability to provide expertise, advice, coaching, to be a trusted authority and advisor in the marketplace. He says, social media outlets amplify our ability as authorities – helps us personally brand ourselves. Helps us target and reach prospects.
David Armistead says his perspective is that the C-suite is grid locked on what social media is and what it can do. He typically explains it as, social tech does 2 things well – lower cost of communication and lower cost of coordination. There’s a lot of work to do in comprehending the change and effecting the change – transforming the way we work. No piece of the org will not be affected. We are not “messaging’ any longer, taking a known message through the structures in place – we’re talking.
Dave Evans has been working with groups in Argentina, Netherlands, US and Canada. He observes that 15-45-year olds are doing the SAME things with social tech across all four countries. The other countries just need time to catch up. For example, in India, the 3G spectrum bidding has started, and will enable much more mobile technology. Dave also sees opportunities for businesses monitoring the Social Graph – using TweetDeck and BuzzStream in combination he can monitor microscopic conversations.
One example of business tie-ins with people’s social graph – Social Web Strategies uses the LinkedIn API to build a specific landing page on the 2020 social site that shows C-level people who visits their site a page that shows anyone in their 1st tier who has used their social site. He said later that this is their highest converting landing page. This is B2B lead generation, folks.
Dave also says, this shift affects the whole organization – not just marketing. His example – marketing can’t possibly respond directly to comparison of carbon footprint of products. Basically, consumers can take out their smart phone and scan the barcodes of products while shopping to find out carbon foot print and make your purchasing decision based on the data. That type of decision isn’t made due to marketing or sales team’s efforts.
And next, Julie Niehoff, a development manager at Constant Contact, spoke on her perspective as an email marketing and list segmentation provider. They also acquired Nutshell mail this week, which caused a bit of excitement in the room. She reminds us all that you need a strategy first. Know what your objective is, try and test, then stop doing that when it doesn’t pay off. Loved hearing this as it validates my thoughts in this area. She said, always test just 10-20% of people on your list to try something new – don’t make them all dislike a new method or approach. Later she asked, “Can you segment your lists based on ‘raving fan/brand ambassador’ vs ‘kinda maybe’ vs ‘never gonna’? Do it. Treat brand ambassadors well.”
Another speaker noted that the gaming generation has gained a lot from the mentality that it’s always okay to hit reset and restart.
Where technology turnover is higher, adoption rates are higher. The pay offs are doing business faster, easier, or cheaper.
Scott Ingram spoke from BazaarVoice’s viewpoint, where one of their clients, Sephora, garners lots of reviews, such as 17,000 reviews on a base foundation. Goodness. He noted that people are starting to “live’ in Facebook. One of their customers has 20% of traffic from Facebook. Wow.
I think it was Scott who also said that Twitter is a relationship accelerant. It allows you to stage when you personally and physically interact with others. For example, sales people don’t get on planes until they know what people are looking for. Julie noted that there are also tools that actually mask the relationship – ratings and reviews set the rhythm of the relationship, but you can screw it up with the wrong copy.
The panel session had a question about privacy as the last question, though I think discussion continued after I departed. I liked David Armistead’s assertion that we mostly format questions around privacy when what we need to discuss is security. Julie had good points that there are laws around data collection and privacy policies and companies need to be governed accordingly. She also noted that as individuals we personally need to draw our own points of privacy in what we share online, read the policies before sharing info, and prevent certain connections in order to prevent correlation of data for those people under 13, for example.
What a great session – I could tell many people in the room were learning, taking notes, and nodding in agreement. Thanks to Matt Genovese for starting Door64, to Paypal for sponsoring the session, and to the presenters for sharing their valuable insights.