PhIMA Panel Discusses Social Media

Last week, I had the opportunity to attend the Philadelphia Interactive Marketing Association ‘s presentation on Using Social Media to Hear the Voice of the Customer & Drive Revenue . The event was well attended by a variety of Philadelphia-area marketers and social media luminaries. Without getting into the minutiae,  I thought that I’d offer a few points made by the panel:

Steven Ennen – People thought to influence others (aka “Influencers”) actually have very little influence
Frank Eliason – Social media has forced traditionally seperate disciplines, such as Advertising, Marketing, PR and Customer Service to become one and the same.
Sang Kim – Listening is important, but it’s only useful if you can act on it.
Sarah Larcker – Avoid shouting brand messages
Hemang Gadhia – Social media is being sold short when calculating impact using ROI

I paraphrased these comments, so I apologize if I’m off-base. Finally, I’d like to pop out a few additional points applicable to every business:

• Don’t suffer from paralysis by analysis. Get started and be active now.
• If you use the internet, you’re using social media.
• The  future of social media is less about developers and more about crowdsourcing ideas, as well as gathering information to improve marketing and customer service.

Sorry for the sound-bite nature of this post, but I was was tough to keep up.

Please let me know your thoughts.

Bill Rowland