Last night I went to the PR Unspun event laid on by Chinwag. Some great speakers (including Neville Hobson who had some great things to say), held together rather nicely by Mike Butcher and some really good little nuggets in there. But, on the whole felt all a bit “Yeah, Yeah”. All the questions were there but still no one seems to have any answers. Or they do but because they’ve spent time and money cracking the code, they won’t be willing to offer it up for free in a room full of PR people 
If there’s one thing that resonated with me it was this:
Your client has to be ready to be transparent to engage in social media
Excuse the very note-like-nature of what follows. It was a bit hot in there and I was relying on the friction between a MacBook and blue denim to to allow me to type. No full stops or anything. Crazy.
Is social media mature and mainstream now?
Unilever switched entire £272m budget online to online market research
You can get actionable insights now and that is key to helping brands navigate.
How do you react to clients wanting to know what to do?
Not just a band-aid fix anymore – more proactive approach is required.
How do you get up to speed?
Don’t just train specialist people, train everyone so the whole company is up to speed
Training and education for clients is key too
Idea of losing control is the key issue
B2B clients are really starting to get involved in this space
Need to dedicate time to get up to speed with digital
Fragmented media – more outlets to think about
Does blogger relations really exist?
Relationships need to be developed differently with bloggers that with traditional media outlets
Now you trust people but you’ve never met them in the physical world
Blogger relationships tough, some even choose to post the home address of a client
What is the influence of social media?
Depends on what the context is and what the network potential is
Authority is key so you need to filter it down to a handful of people
You can kill conversations with tactical messaging
Technorati – beware, it covers English speaking blogs mainly
Is it cheaper to use social media?
Sprite in the US wanted to target young audiences via basketball
Zonga and Myspace seeding - achieved as much click through from here than the whole of Yahoo! take-over did which cost $250,000 per day -10 times more for ten times less
Can you make the outing of the strategy part of the strategy?
No not really
You have to be part of a community and immerse yourself in it
See Cillit Bang and Plasticbag as a BAD example
If you mess up be transparent
Your client has to be ready to be transparent to engage in social media
Is this the end of spin?
Honesty is very important
Need not to be worried
BUT people appreciate you reaching out to them as long as its done the right way
Check out Ideastorm from Dell as a good example. dell and XP/Vista – got feedback and shipped with XP as people said they weren’t ready for Vista yet
There is a distinction between consumers and producers
Need to be a blogger to take part
Why would a business want to get involved in SL?
They need to experiment and learn. Is this the future?
IBM is a great example with a dozen presences in SL, including a meeting space.
SL Business Communicators Wiki is a great resource
Is it worthwhile targeting bloggers?
Yes. Everyone reads news online.
Young people will be consumers of tomorrow
Try and tap into the real story
The nasty comes from consumer generated content
Marketers need to look at brand weaknesses as well as brand strengths
How long has the press release got?
It will never go away. It has a purpose.
See social media press release
Will advertising kill off social media?
No. Disclosure and transparency is key
How do you feel about paid for content?
Don’t care as long as content is good
How do you speak to bloggers?
Participate
Create and post as a spokesperson for the company
Check company policy
Bring something to the conversation
Add value
Build a relationship
Be careful as you’ll be asked a whole heap of questions on lots of different topics
What about Web 3.0?
Look at other devices beyond the web, how everything connects
3D stuff
Semantic web?
Its all about talking to people as individuals
RELATIONSHIPS
See twitter – online and offline integration
Check out Twittervision.com
Where is this all going?
Change of tone is a fundamental shift and will impact on way we do communications
We can bring much more insight to clients and measure and communicate in new ways
Mobile will play a big part – anything that brings it all together will be very big
Take it to the next level of emotional and intellectual engagement
It’s just the tip of the iceberg. Important to be part of this change.
A breath of democracy.
Honesty and transparency.
Companies learning a lot from everyone.
Most of it is good.
