I am listening to Shel Holtz speak at Ragan's Corporate Communications and the Social Media Revolution. I am up next. The room is full - 250 people? I had a great conversation with an attendee who hopes to bring back learnings to her otherwise conservative leadership.
Shel's a seasoned communications pro and knows how to speak to a roomful of corporate communictors (PR people). He has a sober point of view about the fundamental shifts and the practical applications. Overall, his emphasis is on what we should include in our communications effort - the right social media tactics - versus the overthrow of the PR process as we know it today. His appoach makes him much more accessible to communication pros then the usual "everything you know is wrong" -type of social media speaker.
The role of the communicator:
Old: produce stuff
New: orchestrate
He mentioned a few best practices (along with the dreaded Dell/Jarvis story):
Forbes.com Widget
Shark Week widget
Southwest Airlnes - I wannagetaway.com
Deloitte's employee videos
The Presidential candidate's use of Twitter
Dell's Ideastorm and their use of Twitter for special deals (Dell Outlet)
Coke's Virtual Thirst program in Second Life (create a virtual vending machine) & their response to criticism - great YouTube video from Coke project manager
GM FYI Blog and the run in with the New York Times (when they published their response - and the back and forth with the editors - on the blog when they couldn't get a letter published in the Times)
Jonathan's Blog/Sun's CEO's blog post regarding employees leaking information
Community at Intel including Intelpedia (knowledge management)
Users joing a Facebook group to brink back Cadbury's WispaBite
Orbitz' usage of a Twitter-like comm tool for customers to update each other
Cogenz: the private tagging service via ASP model
Small issue: I disagree with his contention that the Web will all be "3D" in five to ten years. Having developed next generation interfaces for interactive TV in the nineties and throughout Web1.0, I lived through the 3D craze then. While I do think they will get more sophisticated and accessible. But there are terrific interfaces for computing experiences that do not need a "real-world" metaphor to work well. The restrictions of 3D space do not always make for the most engaging or useable experiences.
Shel's a great speaker and hit upon the fundamentals of the change via storytelling. See him when you can. Read his blog.
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