The 9th Social Fresh social media conference made its way to Tampa again this week and filled the DoubleTree Westshore with hundreds of social media geeks. Marketers, PR specialists, small business owners and agency consultants spent two great days exploring the latest trends and industry best practices in the realm of social media marketing.
In addition to the great networking and ideas that come with that many minds in one place, I came away rejuvenated and validated in my practices and approach.
The first session was Social Media Hospitality, presented by Brian Simpson, Director, Digital Media Vikram Chatwal Hotels, NYC. Brian spoke realistically and frankly about why we need to stop building our audience and start trying to engage the people who are already our fans. Stop worrying about the 'Likes' and focus on the conversation.
The lessons that he really hammered home for me included:
- Stop talking about how awesome you are and start engaging. Start working yourself into the conversation.
- An audience will watch you fight your battles; a community will help you fight. Use social media to help you build a community, not an audience.
- Don't respond to every single social site comment - reduce the signal to noise ratio.
- An agency can never articulate as clearly or communicate as well as a voice from inside your organization.
- A great way to monitor your social media success includes taking lots and lots of screenshots of conversations, tweets, mentions, comments, and posts.
My favorite quote of the day reminds me that the social media space is crowded and loud. Its a noisy, busy place and we need to work hard to build true relationships organically and sincerely - not be the loudest voice. From Buddha, in all his wisdom, "Don't speak unless it improves the silence."