Disclaimer, I adapted this from my blog for Etelos, as one of our executives will be speaking there.
Do you know what South by Southwest is? Sure, it’s a great music festival, but did you know it is also one of the best tech conferences around?
SXSW Interactive is a compilation of some super quality speakers and panels as well as some of the best networking (read: parties) around. It is by far one of the best events I’ve attended.
Loading…This year’s event, however, has a different appeal for me. I was able to secure a pretty powerful panel for Etelos founder & CEO Danny Kolke. OpenID, OAuth, Data Portability and the Enterprise will explore the challenges enterprise class companies face over data ownership.
Featuring Joseph Smarr from Plaxo, Kaliya Hamlin, AKA “Identitywoman” and Bob Blakely from the Burton Group will join Danny to discuss if OpenID and OAuth are good for the enterprise and how to implement them.
Shifting the focus
I think this will be an excellent topic for this year’s event. Layoffs are piling up, mandatory furloughs are being enforced and startups are folding. As the emphasis shifts from true innovation to a successful business model, the debate over identity and data ownership becomes essential.
A prospect or sales lead is an invaluable commodity, and this is even more true in today’s economic climate. But who owns that relationship? Who owns that customer’s contact information?
Meetup Tweetup Restup
Lots of exciting parties have already been announced and dozens more will undoubtedly pop up as March approaches. I have an awesome idea for a smaller, more intimate meetup opportunity if anybody is looking for an opportunity to host something.
I look forward to meeting you all out there and discussing some public relations goodies. As an extra bonus, Kaliya is organizing a lunch that will follow the panel. Come, join us there too!
I’m in the process of building up a schedule, but I want to get your input. What sessions have you excited? What speakers must you see? What parties are already on your list? Fill out the handy-dandy form or post a comment.
Tags: Add new tag, conversation, Enterprise, friends, Kolke, OAuth, OpenID, party, relationships, revenue, socialmedia, SXSW
Do you work for a company that hasn’t yet adopted social media practices? Perhaps you are the one implementing a strategy to stay connected to your audiences. But, what rules are there?
As I mentioned recently, social media and social marketing are in their infancies and we are defining the rules. But defining these rules is especially important for companies. Having clear guidelines makes a social media program versatile and transferable. Plus, it will make the lives of compliance officers a bit less stressful.
Don’t be an idiot
Sounds simple enough, right? If you are acting as a representative of a company anywhere that is visible to the general public, act as if your boss is reading over your shoulder (If you’re the boss, act as if your leading investor is over your shoulder). Having a little conscious whispering in your ear while you type should keep you clear.
Keeping a positive focus on the actions of the company should be a priority for the social media practitioner. It shares the spotlight with fostering discussion of the company’s activities.
Maintain your voice
When you operate as the voice of the company, it will be difficult to keep your voice out of the materials you generate — learn to embrace that. You will create “better” content if you keep true to your personal writing style and voice. Copy will come more naturally and your audiences will be able to better relate to it so long as you are being genuine.
Write what you know; write how you know and you’ll be surprised at the results. Plus, you will avoid the leading, unique tendencies to be a ground-breaking leader in your content vertical i.e. “marketing speak.”
Active or passive
When you are creating a content channel, make an overt decision on whether it will actively participate in any discussions that may or may not occur. Of course, I would recommend being an active voice within the community you are trying to create around your service or product. But it is sometimes necessary to broadcast.
What I would avoid, however, is simply being one or the other. If you only broadcast, no discussion, no community occurs. And that defeats the purpose of social media/marketing as a whole. If you are only responding to comments or external discussions, the audience controls the conversation. And, while it is important to participate, it is necessary that you lead the discussion as it relates to your product or service.
To delete or not to delete
Regardless of how you engage, be it broadcasting or conversing, I would strongly advise to proactively react to negative comments and feedback. Deleting the critical material is ultimately up to you, but I feel that addressing the issues is important. Unless the complaint is patently wrong.
Keep it current
Post, create content and keep it up to date. Not much to say beyond that.
Make it good
Making content that doesn’t suck is generally a good idea. If your job is to blog, make sure you read some of the popular blogs and see what makes them popular. Are they funny? Do they use lots of word play? How many links do they use? And so on. The point is to provide value to the people that pay your company money and the people you want to pay your company money.
Your tweets, blog posts etc… should be checked for grammar/spelling/typos. Your videos should have decent sound quality. Your podcasts should have a quick edit done to kill dead air or pregnant pauses. Posting solid content makes for a happy audience. It is frustrating to read through a post that is rife with errors.
Setting up social media rules is a difficult challenge to say the least. The problems compound when you add in the layers that are natural in a company. But I think that perhaps the most important rule should be “Don’t be afraid of change.”
What has worked in your company? How do you participate? What rules do you have? Share them in the comments.
Tags: genuine, Participate, relationships, socialmedia, Tips
I spent last week offline in Puerto Vallarta Mexico and realized that my world is very small.
Nobody was Twittering about the sun or the timeshare presentations. I had no IM, no email and no iPhone.
And I loved it.
Our world is expanding thanks to these tools, but there is so much of it we miss by chasing each other from social networking tool to social networking tool. The Web is going to change the world. But I think it’s going to change it in a way we don’t expect.
What’s happening
The world is actually going to get bigger because of our self-created isolation that these “social” networks strive for. Instead of going to see my good friend who is about to have a new baby, I sent him a message on MySpace. Instead of getting some friends together to watch the recent NFL draft, I went into a chat room.
We’re slowly eliminating human and social interaction from our lives by adding what we’re being told is being social. As our online presence continues to evolve and our Pownce/FriendFeed/SocialThing/Facebook/LinkedIn selves continue to spiral around the concentric circles, we are actually going to create a smaller world around us.
What it means
I’m not quite sure what’s going to happen in the next 10 years. There’s a lot of room for new technologies to bring us together. There’s a lot of room for technologies that bring niche communities together around a common theme. Unfortunately, that’s going to create a social world that is heavily divided within numerous microcultures.
I think that the social networking sites are innovative. I love Twitter and reading about the dynamic experiences of others. But I think that the future of these applications are in the enterprise. If somebody can figure out how to put Twitter to work or figure out how to increase productivity with these tools, a lot of people will make a lot of money.
I could be totally wrong, too. Or you can prove me wrong. Go introduce yourself to the person next to you and show me that our society isn’t going backward.
Tags: relations, Social, socialmedia