Social media – understanding and creating new marketing opportunities

Social media is a hot topic, and much of the discussion about the value of social media is dominated by sound bites and daily reports about the newest marketing success or social marketing horror story. The goal of this workshop will be to go beyond the sound bites and discuss, as a group, the real opportunities and challenges that exist so that the participants will be better equipped to take advantage of these new channels.

This much is definitely true; social media has changed the way your customers talk to each other and influence each other. It has changed their attitudes around how they share and protect personal information. It has changed their expectations about how you engage with them and how you address their concerns. It has created new opportunities for you to build personal and valuable relationships with your customers, but these new opportunities also come with new challenges.

The workshop will be a group discussion that will begin with a set of real world examples that exemplify the types of new opportunities and potential pitfalls that exist in social media. We’ll discuss what can be learned from these successes and failures. We’ll also highlight some of the new technical and analytical tools that help companies make sense of the social media landscape, and talk about how to quantify the success of social media in concrete terms. Along the way, we’ll look at some of the changing attitudes of customers and challenge each other’s assumptions about what can and cannot be done in the new world of social media. Some of these topics are sure to create lively and valuable debates.

We look forward to you bringing your experiences to the discussion.