Social Media Conference @SoCon2011 & the learning

Today I was tuned in to a social media conference - SoCon 2011, which was happening at London. There were a lot of intelligent speakers who were talking about what Social Media and what it can do for brands and more importantly what should marketers do to make their Social Marketing effective. By the way, I heard about this awesome conference through the Social Media :)
One of the speakers Mathew Hawn who is the VP at Last.fm summed up social media beautifully:

1.     Embrace the diversity and chaos on the independent web

There are going to be people who talk about a lot of stuff, in different styles. You cannot talk to just one set of people. You need to embrace everyone on the web and talk what your brand wants to portray and listen to all that they have to say.

2.     Be on the social networks, but don't build your house there

It was a very valid point I believe. The idea of social media is not to replace your website for conversation or for enquiries. It is just to listen to the people and react to issues and proactively push out the messaging your brand wants to. A valid example cited by Mathew was about the gaming app company Zynga. Zynga has launched some of the most popular games on FaceBook called Farmville. And now they are trying to move away from FaceBook and call users to play on their independent platform.
Keep your customers close to yourself :)

3.     It’s not always about you. Sometimes it’s about the community

Is it not more interesting when people talk about your brand rather than you yourself talking about it? It sure is. But not every company has that mass appeal. So what can a brand do? Listen to the customers. Help them out where you can. And to do this, you don’t need to stray away from your brand communication guidelines either.
I’ll narrate an example of what I did at the company I work for during the petrol price hike in India. The petrol price had hiked by Rs. 3.14 in India. This created a lot of unrest amongst the people and everyone started criticizing the politicians, etc! We simply tweeted:
Make the most of the petrol hike! Use coupon code petrol314 and get a 3.14% discount on our products. Don't you wish the hike was higher?
The result? People loved us for that quick and witty tweet. They retweeted, followed us, favorite our tweet and more importantly, they like us as a brand because we understood their pain points.
So just be a part of the community and the community will give you back the appreciation you deserve.

4.      Be a Swiss Bank with the data you collect from your customers

This point talks about not selling off your database to any vendor or even google. Make sure your data sharing happens in an encrypted environment and don’t ever let your customers feel their privacy is being invaded.
Anyways your customer database is the more valuable thing your company has. Why would you want to share or sell it off anyway?

5.     Translate your online strategies into offline events

This is another interesting point that Mathew brought up. If you want to become successful, you’ll have to reach out to your customers through all possible mediums that they’re on. Including offline advertising -a poster, hoarding, road show, TV ad spot, events, all of these help your customers feel your brand. You need to show them your non-digital side to get approval on your digital front too.
The other speaker who I was able to pay attention to during my work day and absolutely loved was Tejal Patel, who is leading social commerce at Nokia.

She made a wonderful comment: "It's no longer about pushing people to your e-commerce site; it's about creating a social shopping experience"

That is very true! You spend $40 in converting a customer online, and their experience with you was really bad. You get your conversion, but the customer doesn’t like you. What are you going to say? Its okay, he’s paid anyways?

I would be very worried if that was the case. I would be worried about the things he’s going to say to other probable customers. So yes, through digital marketing or any other kind of marketing, don’t try to push people to your site. Give them an experience they remember you for.Social media is not about get your products to Facebook. It’s about creating a holistic user experience.

Another very interesting thing she mentioned was: “Social media is like a pub. You go there to have a good time, catch up with friends. But the pub owner also wants you to buy a drink and not just sit there”

As a social media marketer, this statement makes so much sense. There is a human who is working throughout the day, listening to you, making you enjoy your tweets, keeping you abreast with the latest news, etc. But at the end of the day the human also wants you to purchase something. And at another level, FaceBook wants you to click on those ads and buy something.

There was much more that I’ve heard at the conference today… I’ll try to put up some more stuff as and when I can.