Observations on WIF Social Media Panel

This morning I had the opportunity to attend a breakfast panel on social media strategies, hosted by Women in Film Chicago, at theWit Hotel.

First of all, I'd like to kick off this blog post by making a recommendation to anyone looking to organize a panel of this kind: I would suggest marketing to either a ‘beginner’ or an ‘advanced’ audience to make your life a little easier. This way, panelists know whether they need to cover the big buzz words, like 'conversation' and 'authenticity,' etc. Social media is such a popular topic these days that discussions draw attendees from a wide spectrum of topical knowledge, so in order to compensate adequately for your audience it's best to clarify who you're speaking to and go from there.

/Soapbox.

The WIFC Breakfast was fun and informative, and indeed drew from a wide range of women and men all looking to leverage social media for their production companies, independent films, and other projects and businesses. The panelists were Brook Jay, President and CMO of All Terrain; Stuart Hemmings, Technology Director at Agency.com; Heidi Skinner, Influence Marketing Director for Critical Mass; Andy Swindler, President of Astek Consulting; and Danielle Uhlarik, Youtube Ad Programs Manager for Google. The discussion was moderated by Barbara Govednik of 423 Communications.

The panelists started off the discussion simply, more or less stating the case for utilizing not just social media but social behavior. If you're wondering about the distinction, just look to your Twitter account. I guarantee you that you have at least one follower who is exhibiting "anti-social" media, spamming you with whatever message (or link) they're trying to get you to read and not listening at all to what anyone else has to say. This was a pretty natural place to begin the discussion, and I think everyone in the room took this to heart.

Soon, the moderator tossed it to the audience for Q&A. Naturally some common questions arose, such as how one is to measure ROI and what’s the next up and coming social network. The panelists offered a number of free tools for tracking the effectiveness of your social media campaign (such as Addictomatic, Tweetscan, and Tweetscore). It was interesting to hear the panelists’ take on building your own social network around a brand, because the impression that I got is that they think it does not work. In other words, you’re better off joining other people’s conversations than expecting them to join yours. This is probably true in general, but there are some very noteworthy examples – Threadless comes to mind – where building a community is the heart and soul of the company’s success. My mental jury is still on this one.

I spoke briefly with Brook Jay from All Terrain after the panel was over about my feelings on this, and she (a personal friend of Harper Reed of Threadless, as it turns out) seemed to agree with me. I told her that I would have loved to have learned more about how we can take the lessons that we learn from these successes and apply them to building other branded communities, where participants actually take ownership of the space.

This strategy, of course, was probably a little unrealistic for many of the audience members who were there, some of whom were still struggling with getting the idea of social marketing accepted in their office and many of whom are in the infancy of learning what strategies exist and which are best for their company. But all in all it was a really valuable experience, and honestly it was really affirming to hear these expert panelists say so many of the things I already know, and am already trying to do for Flashpoint.

On a lighter note, one really extremely hilarious (and pretty uncomfortable) part of the morning was when one audience member asked of the panel how much they charge, say, Skittles and Jay Cutler for their social media expertise (these are two of the high profile clients that were discussed by the panelists). The panelists of course did not disclose in front of this entire room of women – all of whom with Facebook and Twitter accounts – the amount that they’re charging their clients, but it was interesting to see the way they handled that question. They basically recommended that everyone hire one of me, because we’re cheaper than consultants who run around $150-$200 an hour.  (If Flashpoint ever ceases to need me, I know what career path I’ll be looking into!)