Photo Credit: Ivan Nava – Steve Berke, Lesley Abravanel, Alexia Echevarria, Louis Aguirre

Reality TV – There’s no escaping it and for many of us, we don’t want to. From American Idol to Survivor reality television has taken over. But how does social media play a part in reality television or the making of a star? The “Social Media as the Driver of Reality Television” panel touched upon these questions, and many more yesterday, at Social Media Week Miami.

“Social Media as the Driver of Reality Television” Panelists

The panel was hosted by Emmy award-winning TV host of WSVN 7’s “Deco Drive”, Louis Aguirre. The local all-star panel included Lesley Abravanel (pop culture writer for the Miami Herald), Alexia Echevarria (Executive Editor for Venue Magazine and cast member Real Housewives of Miami on Bravo), Steve Berke (Contestant on Fox’s The Rebel Billionaire) and was certainly one of the more popular and entertaining panels of the day.

There’s no doubt you’ve heard of Bravo TV’s hit franchise “The Real Housewives.”  Part of what makes it so popular is that Andy Cohen had the foresight to give people the power to share their stories around the shows and directly interact and engage with him, the network and the reality stars themselves. All reality show housewives are required to have social media accounts. They tweet, they blog and they have Facebook pages and clearly, their audience loves it and it’s working for them.

Also, driving the link between Reality TV and social media are apps like Into Now and Get Glue, that allow you to check in to the shows you’re watching and talk about it with others who are watching as well in real-time.

Social media has already changed the world as we know it… – Steve Berke

At one point, Steve Berke stated that social media has already changed the world as we know it stating that if it wasn’t for social media, today’s U.S. President wouldn’t be Obama, it would be Hillary.

Social media is turning the average Joe or Jane into celebrities

Social media is turning the average Joe or Jane into celebrities. Don’t believe me? Ask Justin Bieber. Steve Berke mentions that in order to break into the music business, you’d better have a pretty healthy following on YouTube if you even want to be considered by a record label. His suggestion for creating videos that will get watched – digital shorts. He added, “If a video is too long (10Min) I’m going to skip it, but if the video is 3 min long ok.”

Journalists vs. Social Media Influencers

Speaking of celebrities, it’s said that they will measure your level of celebrity by the number of followers you have on your social media accounts. Which leads me to the conversation about Klout. If you don’t think people are paying attention to Klout or that your Klout score doesn’t matter, think again. Fashion Night Out at Bal Harbour Shops selected their VIPs based on high Klout Scores, stated Louis Aguirre. Respected journalists with years of hard work couldn’t even get into some of the VIP Parties, yet there were bloggers who were in attendance because they had more clout than traditional journalists.

Key Takeaways

• 90% of the television shows being produced right now are digital oriented.
• Teenagers watch 5 times more YouTube videos than TV.
• Social TV is where it’s at with apps like Into Now and Get Glue.
• Everything is heading toward being web-based – so social will become even more important.
• Attention spans are getting shorter, build your content around that fact.
• SuperBowl had over 1 million viewers watching ONLINE.
• Twitter is the new focus group.
• Social networks have become the online water cooler.
• Don’t underestimate the power of YouTube (or social media in general).

And finally, Reality TV much like social media, isn’t going anywhere, anytime soon.

There were plenty of great conversations around this panel and I could write for days, but in the interest of accommodating those short attention spans, I’ll let you check the recorded version yourself for more. You can watch the livestream playback at http://new.livestream.com/smwmiami/realitytelevision

You can read Lesley Abravanel’s blog “Scene in the Tropics” in the Miami Herald, check out Alexia Echevarria’s magazine “Venue Magazine”, keep up with Louis Aguirre on his Facebook page “Louis Aguirre TV“  and learn more about the projects Steve Berke’s working on at his website “Steve Berke for Mayor”.

Do you think reality television is here to stay? What reality shows are your favorite? (You can tell us, we promise we won’t judge) Do you use Twitter and Facebook while you’re watching TV?

Powerful campaigns deliver a message that resonates with your audience – they inspire, motivate and influence people to take action. Campaigns help you raise the profile of everything you do, from launching an application, promoting a product, driving donations to your charity or bringing a community together on your website. Today, a strong social media strategy can help you achieve almost overnight what used to take months in the good ol’ days. And, the tools you use can help place your campaign head and shoulders above the rest – think Facebook, FourSquare, Digg, Twitter, and YouTube.

But it’s not enough to just create an amazing campaign, not anymore. You need to do things that haven’t been done before or even take an old idea and put a new spin on it. Good strategy is born from research and insights – but how do you get there? Where do you begin?

One of the most important social media skills to exercise is listening – but you know that listening isn’t enough when it comes to social media. Let your brand’s customers, fans and influencers drive the conversation. Don’t ignore detractors or the competition either. If you want to build a better campaign, you’re going to need to take what you’ve learned from your community and put it into action. Your campaign should be a thoroughly researched and carefully crafted plan based on what you have learned – good and bad – from your community and it must be fully integrated throughout your organization.

Social 2011 –

During our panel Build a Better Campaign: Research, Plan, and Integrate, industry thought leaders Adam Keats, Senior Vice President, Interactive, Emerging and Social Media Marketing at Weber Shandwick; Cat Lincoln, Founder & Principal at Clever Girls Collective; David Wickenden, Executive VP & Senior Partner, Managing Director, Digital Integration at Fleishman-Hillard and Gemma Craven, Senior Vice President, Digital Influence at Ogilvy Public Relations Worldwide will be sharing their experience on successful campaigns.

You’ll also learn what social tools have helped shape successful campaigns and how communications professionals integrate listening data into their communications strategy. Plus, they’ll answer questions like “How do I identify the right influencers and audience for campaign outreach?” and “What data and metrics are useful, and what could be misleading?”

What else would you like to learn? What challenges are you facing when it comes to creating your campaigns? What questions would you ask these thought leaders?

* You can find Adam Keats blogging at Dad-o-Matic  and Cat Lincoln sharing all things clever at: Clever Girls Collective and you can read Gemma Craven’s insights at OgilvyPR.com. * 

Advertising and marketing, in some form or another, has been around for a very long time. In fact, the first newspaper advertisement, an announcement seeking a buyer for an estate in Oyster Bay, Long Island, was published in the Boston News-Letter back in 1704. I’’m sure the folks at the helm of the Boston News-Letter never imagined a time when advertising would become as omnipresent as it is today.

So, on that note, we thought we would give you a very brief – and admittedly jumpy – history of some key events in its evolution:

1867 – James Walter Thompson buys Carlton & Smith from William J. Carlton, paying $500 for the business and $800 for the office furniture. He renames it after himself and moves into general magazine advertising. Later, he invents the position of account executive.

1911 – For the first time in its history, P&G pays an outside agency, J. Walter Thompson Co., to launch Crisco, its new vegetable shortening.

1929 – American Tobacco Co. spends $12.3 million to advertise Lucky Strikes, the most any company has ever spent on single-product advertising.

1947 – JWT becomes the first agency to surpass $100 million in billings.

1963 – “The Pepsi Generation” kicks off the cola wars.

1976 – The Supreme Court grants advertising First Amendment protection.

1981 – MTV debuts with frenetic video images that change the nature of commercials.

1993 – The Internet becomes a reality as 5 million users worldwide get online.

There’’s no need to point out that that last one was a game changer. And from the 2000′s onward the brave new world of the internet fundamentally changed the way advertisers worked and what tools they used on the ““get my product/service/company to the most eyeballs first – and keep it there!”” playing field.

Which brings us to social media. Clearly, based on advertising’’s long history, agencies and ad execs are extremely adaptable. Marketers and advertisers need to be at the forefront of what’’s trending and what isn’’t – and why. And they’ve been eager and early adopters of social media engagement and listening.

Social 2011 –

At Social 2011′’s panel “The Evolution of the Agency”, we’’re going to look at why social media, in all its forms, has become such a key element of agency strategy. Panelists Blake Cahill, Principal at Banyan Branch; David Armano, SVP, Social Business Planning & Integration at Edelman Digital; Jim Tobin, President of Ignite Social Media; Sean McDonald, Colony Master at Ant’s Eye View; and Slavisa Samardzija, Executive Vice President, Market Intelligence at Wunderman will be exploring how they use social strategies and integrated planning to reach key targets and deliver real value to their clients. How do agencies handle the unique challenges that social media brings on a global level? And what, if any, changes have to be made at the agency level itself, to integrate and successfully adopt social media strategies?

Social media has changed forever how we all do business. It has also changed the way customers view and respond to products and branding. It has, in some ways, made a smarter consumer, smarter than anyone back in 1704 could ever have imagined.

Has your agency evolved to become a social media agency? What do you think? Has social media impacted your work as a marketer, as a PR professional?  Have you seen your clients change? And what does that mean to an agency? Has social media blurred the lines between traditional agencies? I appreciate your comments and questions.

Jim Tobin shares his views at IgniteSocialMedia, David Armano shares his views over at Logic + Emotion and Sean McDonald can be found sharing his views at AntsEyeView.

Once upon a time the majority of your brand’s customer interaction was a reactive process. Someone called or wrote in to your company with an issue and your customer service team responded to help with that issue. Often, a response or resolution could take days. Then things changed. Real-time engagement took center stage.

Now, through social media, your brand’s interaction with your customers is a more proactive process. Your brand uses social media platforms to reach out to customers and hold conversations, ask their opinions, look to them for ideas on new products and provide content that they’ll value based on what you’ve learned from them. Of course, you still have to deal with your share of issues but now you’re balancing them with interactions and engagement, too.

This is where your brand was meant to be. But what if your brand isn’t quite there yet?

Social 2011 –

Don’t worry, we’ve got you covered with our Social 2011 panel High Performance Participation Brands. We’re going to explore how brands are going beyond passive listening and are becoming adaptive businesses, recognizing and responding with real-time engagement.

Panelists –

Our panelists, Barry Dalton: Senior Vice President Technology at Telerx, Claire Spinti: Global Community Engagement Specialist at 3M, Stephanie Marx: Social Media Marketing Manager at Cisco Systems and Wendy Kritt: Senior Director of Global Consumer Relations at Kraft, will share their experiences and answer the questions you’ve been wanting to ask. They’ll share what engagement means to their respective brands, how your brand can achieve a more proactive role and how you might balance the challenges of reacting while moving toward a proactive model.

Sure, there may be missteps along the way toward becoming a fully engaged brand, we’ve all had them, but with proper preparation and insight from our panelists, your brand can overcome these minor bumps in the road. After all, the benefits far outweigh the risks.

So, what do you think? Is this where your brand was meant to be? Is it risky to go beyond passive listening and engage or is it much more perilous not to?  We’re interested in what you’ve got to say, you’re the driving force. What would you’d like to learn from this panel? Let me know in the comments below.

If you’re a non-profit, no one has to tell you that your playing field is getting crowded. While social media has changed how we communicate with each other, it’s also changed how messaging is received by a community and how quickly causes can go from niche to mainstream. It’s fair to say that social media has revolutionized philanthropy, and Social 2011′s panel Social Good Begins With a Strategy is going to explore how non-profits have broken new ground with little budget, a lot of heart and a sound strategy.

Our panelists – Geoff Livingston, Chief Marketing Officer for Zoetica, Sanjay Patel, Project Manager for Epic Change, Inc. and Andrew Daley, Principal for Common Sense NMS – will share their insight on how your charitable organization can seize the opportunities social channels are providing. Are social media strategies for charitable organizations that different from the for-profits? How do you fight cause fatigue? And with the farthest reaches of the planet literally at our fingertips, what steps can you take to cultivate interest in issues that often lie far outside the realm of most people’s reality?

This “social good” panel was created with you in mind, so we want to know what questions you’d ask. Has social media forced you to look at your non-profit in a new light? How can social media help increase brand awareness around your event or campaign? What would be beneficial for you to know when creating your strategy?

Stop by the Social 2011 website and then share your thoughts here.