social media strategy keynote presentation

The Current State of Social Media

David CarterCTO & Founder

Awareness

[email protected]: dkrcarter

© 2008 Awareness

Things I think we need to cover

• About Awareness & David Carter

• What do the current economic conditions Mean?

• Is Social Media a Fad?

• Is Social Media a Commodity?

• What are the standard "recipes" that are working

© 2008 Awareness

First a little about Awareness

• David Carter, CTO and Co-Founder> Microsoft for 11 years.

• Awareness> Formerly iUpload founded in 1999 as a CMS company based in

Canada> CMS, Email Marketing, Surveys

> Hosted CMS was a response to> Marketing's role on the web> Reduction in Web budget, ROI concerns> Departmental need to own content> Need to have fresh content

Note: FYI 1999-2000 was not considered a great time to launch a web company.

© 2008 Awareness

2003 A lot of things started to change

• Canspam Act

• AOL Added strict spam filters

• Email marketing was loosing its effectiveness

• Email Marketing space was getting crowded

• CMS space was getting crowded

© 2008 Awareness

New years Day 2004.. we had a brainstorming session

© 2008 Awareness

Jan 4th 2004 We changed our company

• We were going to embrace RSS• We were going to write a new system for Blogging and

capturing "Vistitor Generated Content"• Jan 21st we launched MailbyRSS• And we did some really interesting communities

© 2008 Awareness

Feb 2005 We relaunched ourself at Demo@15

• Blogging and UGC Platform> Secure> Brandable> Extendable into other API's (like Salesforce)

• 2006 We won Forrester's first Wave Report on Blogging Platforms

© 2008 Awareness

And here we are today

• Forrester is about to launch their Wave Report on Social Media Platforms

• Mature space, defined competitors

• Companies are looking to Social Media Platforms as a cost effective and better way to:> Attract Customers> Inform Customers> Retain Customers> Know Customers> Learn from Customers> Gain Customer Trust

© 2008 Awareness

Factoring Current Economic Conditions

Is the timing that bad?• Lots of people "dabbling"• Lots of products with no

value proposition• Lots of money being

tossed about• Only the strong and

committed will survive

Survivors will…• Get close to their

customers• Be Agile• Reduce Costs

© 2008 Awareness

The irony is that the tools and concepts we need to survive are what most of us here are selling

Right now

• Marketing budgets are getting slashed

• Sales forecasts are being lowered

• Travel is being cut

• People are preparing for cut-throat competition

• Spending is reduced

• People are separating "needs" from "wants"

© 2008 Awareness

Social Media is Not a Fad

• A response to the over whelming amount of information and relationships we need to manage.

• These tools evolved out of tools that have been around for a long time.

• Customer Expectations have been set> They may not be able to get phone support, but it better be online

> They want product depth, if not from a company then their peers

> Both happy and unhappy customers can/will be vocal in your community or outside

> People want transparency from the companies/products they use

© 2008 Awareness

Note: in the presentation I showed screenshots of some data points on marketing spend moving to digital marketing Please visits the research authors sitehttp://www.mslworldwide.com

I could only find this linkhttp://www.reuters.com/article/pressRelease/idUS173446+16-Jul-2008+BW20080716

http://www.forrester.com

http://www.epsilon.comhttp://www.epsilon.com/epsilonstatic/media/press/2008/09/08_cmo.html

© 2008 Awareness

Is Social Media a Commodity?

• No! That would mean we have all the tools we need and innovation can stop> People Lists> Social Mining of content> Reputation Systems> Profile portability, and security> UIAll have a long way to go

> But…we HAVE standardized on some USE CASES to rally around.

> We are talking about similar ROI and benefits

© 2008 Awareness

How can we Execute Better

• Identify /Leverage "Points of Enthusiasm" and make them part of your community

• Picks a Best Practice

• Identify watering holes for customers

• Pick the project that has the most ROI, Benefit> Save money> Increase CUSAT or NPS> Gather important information

© 2008 Awareness

social media strategy keynote presentation

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