Social Media Blog by Michael Brito
Insights into the social web & real
time community engagement
time community engagement
This will be my first of many tweetups that I am planning here in Silicon Valley. It’s great to meet other business professionals here in the valley that use Twitter; and even greater when we can help the surrounding communities at the same time (we are partnering with several non-profit organizations). The first tweetup is scheduled for July 23rd from 5:30 PM to 8:00 PM at Rosie McCann’s Irish Pub in Santana Row. Here are the details of the event. Please consider joining the community or following the Silicon Vallley Tweetup Twitter handle. I look forward to seeing you there.
I was pleasantly surprised at the turn out from today’s social networking conference in Beverly Hills 90210. I met some really cool people from a very diverse group of companies. Here is a quick recap of the speakers and you can also check out the pictures below as well:
Session 1: Travis Falstad of Electronic Arts talked about social networking in the gaming environment.This was of keen interest to me since I am a serious gamer and Madden (on the Playstation) expert! “EA Sports, It’s in the Game!
Session 2: I talked about building brand loyalty on the social web.
Session 3: Adam Pisoni, VP of Engineering at Yammer talked about enterprise communications and social media.
Session 4: John Ploumitsakos from Google talked about the changing landscape and trends on the social web.
Tonight, I attended the Third Thursday: Social Media in Marketing & PR meetup at SAP in Palo Alto. Jeremiah Owyang spent about 30 minutes explaining the new Forrester Report that examines the social web, tools & collaboration, and – what I found the most astounding, the era of colonization. Here is a quick glimpse or you can buy the full report here.
After doing a little research within my own communities on LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter, it is clear to me that this space will soon be inundated with even more social media consultants and experts. <— like we need more of those.
The same thing happened almost ten years ago with search. Take a look at the job boards today and the resumes posted there; I am sure you will find a several hundred, if not thousands, of people with similar skill sets related to paid search, search marketing, search engine optimization, pay-per-click, etc.
It’s probably already happened with social media; and the question we need to ask ourselves is “what can we do to differentiate ourselves from everyone else, especially during these tough economic times?” What I think will differentiate the common skill sets of blog design & consulting, twitter expertise, RSS gurus, social search, etc. is the following:
I served 8 years in the Marines. Well, more like 6 and then I spent 2 years in IRR (Inactive Ready Reserve) which basically means that if all hell broke loose somewhere on the globe and my presence was needed to “kick butt and take names”, I’d have to go, contractually. With that said, I have always had a soft spot for my brothers/sisters who have served or serving now to keep our country free; and allow me to do what I do best.
A big thank you to Major Dan Ward of the United Stated Air Force for kindly answering my questions; and putting some deep thought on how the Air Force can/should use social media for more than just a recruiting tool. His insights are quite amazing and I want to quickly highlight one of his quotes below about social media and how it can create “ambient intimacy” and [...]
Kudos to my colleague and friend Kelly for emailing this article about social media and how it’s doesn’t really drive purchase decisions (press release here). This strongly conflicts with other, credible research I have examined that states the contrary.
Bob Duffy, in an email string to Kelly and I, responds with the following:
Saying Social Media doesn’t drive purchase is like saying, talking and listening does not lead to decisions. Study is flawed because it does not consider reciprocity of the conversation. Also flawed because they assumed the association needs to be with the site and a purchase decision and they ignored the association is between trusted sources and purchase decisions.
I have to agree. First, advertising on social media sites is not participating in social media. That’s talking AT the conversation; not IN the conversation. As I have said before, the true essence of social media is direct-one-to-one conversations between two people; [...]
