22 May 2008

Executing Social Media

…sure, it's annoying, but does it really deserve the death penalty?

Sorry, but I’ve been making that awful joke in my own head and it had to come out.

Anyway, that's the name of the conference on social media that I'm attending. And so far, it's been an odd experience in several ways.

First, being at a meeting, to me, normally means being at a medical convention with tens of thousands of doctors, looking conservative, tracking down reporters to hook them up to interview doctors, managing events, rewriting press materials, collecting competitive intelligence. Instead, I’m sitting still. Taking notes and Twittering and emailing and IM’ing and learning. It’s startlingly relaxing, actually being an attendee.

Second, I’m usually one of the geekier people I know, being something of a technology magpie. But here, I don’t come close. It’s disorienting. But very good.

Third, I work for an agency and I work in the pharmaceutical industry, both of which make me odd here: I’m not a tech consultant. So while I’m getting a lot of information, it’s going to require a lot of thought to translate it to practicalities.

One of the main things I’m realizing is that there are several different facets, for me, of “figuring out social media.”

The first is, how to use it for my own benefit? That's not new to me.
The second is, how to use it to benefit the agency? That's getting clearer.
The third is, how to use it to benefit clients? That's the hard part.

Which realization is in itself something of a breakthrough; I hadn’t really divided it up that clearly before, but now that I have, it makes things make a lot more sense for me.

So, more later, but now, back to the presentations. (While doing some client work simultaneously. Maybe not so relaxing after all.)

2 comments:

1 Tim Street said...

You need to quit your bellyaching and get out more. Maybe take some of those pharmaceuticals of which you speak.

Seriously, though I think you do have a big problem…

Social Media and stuffy conservative corporate clients or SCCC as I like to call them are two things that are hard to get together. They are like gasoline and matches. But just like a combustible engine that uses a spark plug once they are harness they can be extremely valuable in taking you places that you couldn’t go before.

I have a feeling that you will be able to figure out how to put these two things together and that you will be the “Smart Plug” that makes them ignite . Together you will both go very far. That is of course if you don’t get fired for goofing off at conferences and blogging and twittering about it. :)

Sarah said...

Interesting: that's the second time someone's said a post was me complaining when I didn't mean to be.

Means I need to watch my tone.

Appreciate the "smart plug" comment though. Or was that just a crack at my outlet-hogging yesterday?