Guest post: My Visit to SMiBCon

A few weeks ago, I had the opportunity to attend the Social Media in Business Conference (#SMIB09) at the Strand Palace Hotel for LBM. I am a Masters student who has chosen a topic on digital presence and trust regarding individuals, but I find there is a lot of crossover between what individuals practice and what businesses practice. I had been very much looking forward to attending since the line up of speakers looked excellent and the topics looked interesting and would be a great addition to my research.

Photo courtesy of Benjamin Ellis via Flickr

The day started off with a few words from our MC, Daren Forsyth, who asked who in the room was from a business that was looking to get into social media. I was surprised to see that only handful of people in the room raised their hands. I looked around at the faces, many I recognized, and realized that the day of speakers might be a day of preaching to the choir. **Sponsor iPadio recorded each of the presenations and has provided an audio embed on the SMIB website.**

The morning’s theme was “Social Media in the context of Marketing and Public Relations” and Neville Hobson kick started the topic by highlighting some of the well-known cases where social media was used to hurt (United Airlines) or help (Domino’s) a brand. In both of these cases, low budget equipment and the internet were used, which means anyone can do it. Businesses cannot disregard what is being said online. They must realize that “it’s a one media world” and find out “which conversations are defining your brand.”

Following Neville was Katy Howell. I thought her pyramid showing how to funnel your community to build favorability based on awareness, which leads to sharing, and results in advocacy was well supported by her case studies from Bailey’s. She and the next speaker, Eaon Prichard from Geronimo, both mentioned the power of peer-to-peer recommendation. According to Eaon’s stats from Marketing Sherpa, 87% of people trust a friend over a critic, which makes P2P media more powerful than a company’s owned or paid for media.

Then, Mark Redgrave of OpenAmplify got up and demonstrated how his company uses symantic technology to help a company understand the conversation, find what’s relevant, and act appropriately. It can help monitor brand safefy (is it good of bad content to interact with); give insight on your brand’s reputation (how do your consumers feel?); intent (triggers); and audience (understanding influencers by topic).

American, and Southern gent (he said y’all!!), Trey Pennington followed and advised to “avoid the black hole of social media: the ROI question.” So if there is a need for ROI, it means there is a problem somewhere else in the company. Find the problem and then address it to create a solution.

SMiB sponsor, Edelman, sent Tim Callington to speak. He said that conversation and collaboration makes customers and brands influential. He used the Left 4 Dead opposition campaign and the Walmart sustainability outreach as examples of how social media has influenced businesses in two very different ways. His advice was that businesses should behave responsibly, accountably and openly by engaging their stakeholders.

The final speaker of the morning was Maz Nadjm who walked us through what he has learned from running Sky’s community. Put the user first: single approach, safe environment, legally compliant, deliver moderation, target users – creators and spectators. By covering those bases it speeds up the social media entry and has increased Sky’s engagement by 200%.

A panel Q&A ended our morning session. The panel received a question from a small business owner who wanted to know whether social media was a fad, if it was worth the money and which platform to jump on. The response was that social media is not going away. People will talk to people and they will continue to talk to people–regardless of whether you are there engaging. It was also suggested to not focus too hard on the platform; focus on the influencer and it will get where it needs to go.

The afternoon sessions was on: “Applied Social Media in Business” – monitoring, measurement, development. First up was Jon Ingham who talked about your business as an orchestra: HR, PR, marketing communications, social media, management, organisational development, facilities design, and leadership. All of these must harmonize in order to achieve results. Charlie Osmond later added that the key opportunities to social media are insight, innovation, advocacy, transparency, increased sales, and support. But we should remember, we “are not monitoring’s bitch!”

The fabulously frank Joanne Jacobs snapped us out our post-lunch lull with a clip from Wall Street. “Greed is… good,” says Gordon Gecko, but “Gecko is dead,” asserts Jacobs. She also delivered the much tweeted statement for the day that “social media doesnt make money — it saves money.” Oliver Blanchard also chimed in with a similar sentiment that there can be great cost savings in providing customer service via social media, and this helps with revenue. He also said that social media ROI is over-rated. Ged Carroll from Ruder Finn called it ROE, Return on Engagement, which seemed to be a better guage of measurement, along with hitting benchmarks and spotting opportunities.

Microsoft PR Manager for the UK, Steve Lamb, contributed some great points about PR and its role in controlling a message. PRs can only write nice things in they have the access to the right information and tools, but there is a fine line about they approach people who are passionate: do not spam them! Steve used an example of the brand he liked, so he tweeted about it. Soon after, he started receiving messages from the brand and as a result he is going off of them. Know when to engage, because the wrong engagement can harm.

Benjamin Ellis brought out some great points for new businesses who might not be sure about the benefits of social media. Crowds can hatch good ideas, and crowd sourcing for smart solutions is like unpaid outsourcing. He also talked about decentralization and how the information degrades as you pass through layers, but social media helps flatten it out. By aggreatation, you will be able to see all the answers. Ben also brought up a point about giving away free stuff online. So many brands are doing it, but what happens when they stop giving free stuff: they lose their audience. Brands should not reward for behavior they dont want to reinforce.

The final speaker of the day was SEO smarty Judith Lewis from i-level who gave a talk about search results and the importance of knowing what is being said about you, but also how search results can affect or confuse your audience. You need to be unique, valuable and identifiable.

After another short panel that included an incredibly off topic, and dare I say off-color, question that ended the day with passionate statements, it was off to hotel bar to wind down from a long day.

I have been debating on my overall opinion of the event. I’m not quite sure I would buy into (meaning actually paying for) another social media conference unless it offers very new information with actual examples that show what works or doesnt work and why. I think this particular conference had a real opportunity to teach businesses who are new to or wanting to get into social media. It was too bad that there were not more people there to learn.

Thanks again to Andy from LBM who gave me the ticket to attend. Thanks to the SMIB09 Sponsors: Edelman and Viadeo, with special thanks to Ipadio for picking up the WiFi tab after hearing the general cries about it not being freely available at the venue. To all the speakers, thank you for your time and insights. For more information on the event, please click a link below.

SMiB09 Presentations: Slideshare

SMiB09 Photos: Flickr set

What Google said: http://bit.ly/2B91f5

Next year’s event is being held on the 21 May 2010 in London and you can secure your tickets by registering here.