Bryan Person's Blog: Social Media Breakfast

The social media community is thriving in Ottawa. I drove up there earlier this week to take part in a Social Media Breakfast event.

Some 70 social media enthusiasts and newcomers from the city gathered at the offices of Overlay.TV on Tuesday, July 15, for a discussion of how video is being used to build community.

SMB Ottawa 2 photos



I'm joined by Ryan Anderson (left) and Simon Chen (center), two of the three founders of Ottawa's SMB series.



Overlay.TV CEO Rob Lane (the third founder of SMB Ottawa) gives a presentation on video and social media.

And one photo from my wanderings around Ottawa ...



I wasn't expecting Ottawa to be so beautiful and picturesque. I really like this shot taken of me by Bob LeDrew. I'm standing on Parliament Hill, with Centre Block behind me.

Peter Kim is maintaining a running list of brands using -- and being used by -- social media marketing. As of today, that list includes 234 examples.

Have any brands you'd like to add to Peter's list? Drop a note into the comments section of Peter's original post.

Does social media marketing matter?
As good fortune has it, Peter will be leading a discussion on social media marketing -- namely: does it actually work? -- next Tuesday at a Social Media Breakfast event in Austin that I've organized. Watch this space later next week for a report from Peter's talk.

Peter Kim generally isn't afraid to stir things up, and today was no exception.

Peter led a spirited discussion this morning about the value of social media marketing at Austin's third Social Media Breakfast, a monthly breakfast event I co-organize with Dell's Amie Paxton.

Some questions Peter had us thinking about:

• Does social media marketing matter in the first place? For example: There was outrage over Wal-Mart's fake blog two years ago, but has that stopped anyone from buying from the retail giant?


• Does social media marketing scale? Responding to a few tweets on behalf of a company is one thing, but responding to hundreds a day is quite another. Are organizations willing to make social media engagement a more integrated part of their communications efforts?


• Why are enterprises still blocking employee access to social computing tools and applications? Peter gave the example of an employee expected to carry out a Facebook campaign for his employer -- and not having access to Facebook from the office.


• Do A-list bloggers really care about “the conversation?” If the big-name bloggers aren't jumping in and answering the comments themselves, are they really blogging? Or, are they using the blog as just another marketing channel?

My one-on-one conversation with Peter Kim

After the breakfast, I sat down with Peter to dig into his thinking on social media marketing. Click below to stream our conversation.




[Right-click to download]

 

In two weeks, on Thursday, December 11, I'll be on the "hot seat" in Ottawa (or maybe I should call it the "cold seat" since it'll be Ottawa in December; brrr!) at that city's Social Media Breakfast 5.

SMB Ottawa organizers Simon Chen, Ryan Anderson, and Rob Lane have tapped James Lewis, executive director of the Canadian Interactive Alliance, to interview me for a 2008 Social Media Year in Review.

We'll be focusing on the broad business trends in social media from the last 11-12 months and looking ahead to what changes could be in the offing for 2009.

More details are in this video:



I've already started my note-taking and preparation for the conversation with James, but I'd like to ask for your input, too:

What are the most significant business developments/events/trends you've seen across the social media landscape 2008? Where do you see social media marketing headed in 2009?

You can leave comments just about anywhere I might find them -- on this blog (I'm also cross-posting to BryanPerson.com), on FriendFeed, or on Twitter, using the hashtag #SM0809.

I pledge to provide a full report on the interview and how I included your contributions in a follow-up post next month.

Are customer-service successes on Twitter worth celebrating?

A debate of sorts broke out over that question during yesterday morning's Social Media Breakfast in Ottawa during a presentation (slides embedded at the end of this post) by Tara Hunt | @MissRogue, when she suggested that "@ComcastCares is a victim of our own nepotism.

Tara argued that Comcast's efforts on Twitter and other social media channels are overhyped by an adoring crowd of social-media enthusiasts, even if customer-service problems and culture at the company remain largely unsolved and unchanged.

I relayed the "nepotism" line in my Twitter stream, and Frank Eliason, the director of digital care at Comcast and the man leading the charge at @ComcastCares, quickly responded with this series of tweets:

Tara and Frank have since exchanged tweets with each other, and I expect a direct conversation between the two--and perhaps a face-to-face debate!--to follow.

But until then, the question remains: If good customer service through social media doesn't trigger corresponding improvements throughout an organization, just how should we be talking about it?

Earlier this month I posted about a Social Media Breakfast Ottawa presentation from Tara Hunt, who suggested that the customer-service successes of Comcast may be overblown.

Following the breakfast, I sat down with Tara for a video interview that included some questions about her Comcast remarks.

[RSS readers: You may need to click through to the original post to see the embedded video player.]



SHOW NOTES

* Tara Hunt contends that the "celebration" over Comcast's efforts on Twitter is "premature."

* Tara compares the Comcast Twitter story to Zappos'. 

* Tara explains why a business should use/create social media as an output rather than an input.

* * * * * * * * * *
This video was recorded and edited by Simon Chen, senior consultant at Ramius and co-organizer of Ottawa's monthly Social Media Breakfast series, and is divided into three parts:

Part 2: Tara's advice for brands that want to interact with customers online without forcing products and services on them.

Part 3: Brand representatives jumping into social media conversations: helpful or creepy?