This week I attended Useful Social Media's Corporate Social Media Summit in New York city where hundreds of practitioners gathered to hear case studies from some of the best in the business.
There were 11 sessions over two days delivered by 27 speakers. The content was practical and interactive. Each session had short case studies followed by a question and answer session.
The big takeaways for me:
- Add real value and have fun with your social media efforts
- Integrate Social into everything your company does
- Social Media is adding real value in customer support
Here is my compilation of the most "tweetable moments" from the Corporate Social Media Summit...
Laura Fink (@laurabfink), VP Social Media for AMEX Open
- Break through. Be disruptive. Engagement must be fast and easy. Altruism has a long tail.
- This policy helps explain how AMEX helps small businesses do more business.
- Social media changes the velocity at which you can reach customers and prospects
- Their program "Small Business Saturday" saw a 28% increase in sales for small business customers
Ashley Brown (@ashbrown77), Dir of Social Media, Coca Cola
- Avoid shiny new objects. Define the problem to solve. Integrate across the 360 degrees of your marketing. Monitor and learn.
- Done is better than perfect (borrowed from Facebook motto)
- Tie social media to business objectives
Gina Debogovich (@GinaDebogovich), Director and Social Media Leader, Best Buy
- Gartner says that by 2016 40% of all new Fortune 500 contacts will come from social media
- All employees are empowered but 13 community managers and 26 super users support over 6 million customer interactions
- 3,000 employees formally signed up as social media ambassadors
- Helps decrease calls to the call center, increases customer loyalty and decreases support costs
- Customer service department has video production services to create content to answer top customer questions
- "Be smart. Be respectful. Be Human" is their social policy
- Looks at ratio of community posts vs @BestBuy employee posts of greater than 70-80%
Jessica Kalbarczyk (@SamsungJessica), Social Media Analyst, Samsung
- Hires social media agents with phone experience to provide customers with concierge-like service
- Uses a tweetchat twice a week to allow customers to engage directly
- Transcripts of social interactions is also helpful
Tom Hoehn (@tomhoehn), Director of Interactive Marketing, Kodak
- The worst thing anybody can say about your brand is nothing. It means you don't matter.
- It's incumbent upon us to show the value. Use measurement tools to tie social to business value
- Key Social Media Measures: Reach, Participation, Influence, Impact
- Blogs are still the heart and soul of our social efforts
- Listen | engage | be real | measure | iterate - Kodak's process for social media
- Some of the most powerful words in social media are, "can I help you?"
- Facebook or Twitter or Blogs? You have to do them all..."Figure it out!"
Richard Binhammer (@richardatdell), Head of Social Media, Dell
- I totally agree: people do not segment themselves the way businesses segment the market
- Control is not as important as influence
- Cluetrain quote: Markets are conversations! But conversations are not just marketing
- 2010 was the first year that home computing advanced faster than business computing
- Businesses always succeeded and grew based on worth of mouth
- Dell.com is no longer the center of the ecosystem. People are spending less time on your websites and more time talking about you.
- "The point of social media is to be a better business" ~ Michael Dell
- The business value of social media is wherever business value is typically found...at each customer / company touch point
- Social media is about a lot more than marketing campaigns.
- Need a social radio that "tunes" to each part of business
- Embed social media across the fabric of your company to become a better business
Alice Wilson (@MissDallasAlice), Manager of Social Media, Southwest
- We are a customer service company that happens to fly airplanes
- Have fun. Respect the brand. Follow the guidelines but have fun!
John Wolf, Senior Director of Global PR, Marriott
- Know your business. know you customers. Find the intersection. Create value.
- Marriott does not have a social media team. It is totally integrated
- 74% of Ritz Carlton fans on Facebook engage monthly and personally respond to every post.
Bert DuMars (@bwdumars), VP eBusiness, Newell Rubbermaid
- Value of a brand = number of customers plus amount of (Pos or Neg) consumer generated content.
- Ratings and reviews are the best thing a brand can do. They inspire consumer confidence and guide preference, but require great quality/service
Mark Keys (@Markskeys), VP of Interactive Content, WWE:
- Content Rules make it quickly consumable, highly engaging. Always end with a question!
- Create a viral loop, allow both sides of discussions to get the conversation going
- Socialize don't advertise
Chip Rodgers (@chiprodgers), Vice President and Chief Operating Officer of Community, SAP
- To create community: look to customers and partners to create their own content and cultivate the conversations
Matt Rozen (@mattyroze), Senior Manager of Social Media, Adobe
- Social is the new normal
- Support isn't just the support team anymore. Everyone has to think about social as a part of what they do.
Andrew Warden (@apwarden), Head of Strategy and Communications, Cisco
- The future of work is through communities: rapid and agile collaboration drives productivity
- "Don't do something stupid" as a social policy means something different for a college grad than it does to you
- Internal social communities foster company awareness, sales enablement, employee engagement/retention
Christopher Baccus (@cbaccus), Executive Director of Digital and Social Media, AT&T
- Determine what motivates people to engage with your brand
- Categorize results by type
- Dig into "anti-data" (unfollows, dislikes, opt-outs) to determine the right frequency of posts
Michael Procopio (@michaelprocopio), Social Media Strategist, HP
- There are big differences between B2B and B2C
- Only measure what you can action
Giles Palmer, (@joodoo9) Founder and CEO, Brandwatch
- Social Measurement is a big challenge for organizations
- Rely on experts to help you get started
Chelsea Marti (@TTaxChels), Social Media Manager, TurboTax
- Social media objective is to acquire new customers and keep the ones you've got
- People who were helped by @teamturbotax were 70 percent more likely to recommend to a friend.
James Wisdom (@wisdom), Director of New Media, Aflac
- Shareholders don't care about likes followers and engagements- they care about revenue and dividends
Bill Tolany (@btolany), Head of Integrated Media, Whole Foods
- Social media value is simply to make customers' lives better
- Whole Foods considers mobile part of social. Developed recipes app.
- 85% of Tweets are customer service. 10% content. 5% promotions.
- Don't take yourself too seriously. Time sensitivity is important. It's ok to repeat yourself. It's ok to repeat yourself.
I wasn't able to make every session so apologies to those speakers who shared insights that I missed. All the content was great.