After 5 glorious days, I’m back from Boston, and the incredible digital marketing unconference, Social 2011!

This was such a great experience, I helped put together the conference panels and wrote their respective blog posts in my new position as a Community Manager at Radian6. You can read about those below: 

• Social 2011: Build a Better Campaign
• Social 2011: The Evolution of the Agency
• Social 2011: Social Good Begins with a Strategy
• Social 2011: High-Performance Participation Brands

My Trip to Boston and Social 2011

All I can say is that this trip and the conference itself were amazing, tiring, exciting, exhausting, insightful and fun. I had the pleasure of meeting so many of the people I connected with as an early adopter on Twitter. Look closely and you may see some faces you recognize. I also had the pleasure of meeting Isaiah Mustafa, you know, the hunky, Old Spice Guy. Yes, he’s hunky in real life, too (and humble).

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© derekwilmot.com

© derekwilmot.com

© derekwilmot.com

© derekwilmot.com

Have you ever been to a Social Media Unconference or Conference? If so, which one? 

I traveled to Boston for Social 2011 and The Build a Better Campaign panel. Here are a few notes from the event and the panel.

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 –

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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 shared their experience on successful campaigns.

I also learned what social tools have helped shape successful campaigns and how communications professionals integrate listening data into their communications strategy. Plus, they answered 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 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. * 

Enjoyed this article? Then you’ll also enjoy these: 

• Social 2011: The Evolution of the Agency
• Social 2011: Social Good Begins with a Strategy
• Social 2011: High-Performance Participation Brands

I traveled to Boston for Social 2011 and The Evolution of the Agency panel. Here are a few notes from the event and the panel.

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, I thought I’d 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 –

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At Social 2011′s panel “The Evolution of the Agency”, we took a 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 explored how they use social strategies and integrated planning to reach key targets and deliver real value to their clients. How 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.

Enjoyed this article? Then you’ll also enjoy these: 

• Social 2011: Build a Better Campaign
• Social 2011: Social Good Begins with a Strategy
• Social 2011: High-Performance Participation Brands

I traveled to Boston for Social 2011 and The High-Performance Participation Brands panel. Here are a few notes from the event and the panel.

Let’s talk about top engaged brands. Once upon a time, the majority of your brand’s customer interaction was a reactive process. Someone called or wrote into 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?

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Social 2011’s panel High-Performance Participation Brands covered all that and more. We explored how brands are going beyond passive listening and are becoming adaptive businesses, recognizing and responding with real-time engagement.

Panelists –

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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, shared their experiences and answered the questions you’ve wanted to ask. They shared 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, but with proper preparation and insight from these 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?  

Enjoyed this article? Then you’ll also enjoy these: 

• Social 2011: Build a Better Campaign
• Social 2011: The Evolution of the Agency
• Social 2011: Social Good Begins with a Strategy