Market Camp Silicon Valley

At the first marketing camp unconference in SV and it's good place to be. It was terrible to wake up in the 7am hour on Saturday, but the sheer number of people here sacrificing their Saturday represents both personal commitment and possible productivity pain.

I think this could be a great thematic direction for SVForum, as this was the first large scale marketing conference that I've seen where the egos were secondary to the learning. Like the unconferences for hacking and technology, this featured directed topics, lots of discussions, and Q&A. This was the place to learn what's on people's mind: What do marketing people think and worry about? What marketing issues are top of mind?

As a problem solver, it was fascinating to see what people consistently had questions about. What did I gather was the major direction? Marketing people, or at least people tasked with marketing, are saddled with tactical issues. Several of the sessions had topics covering strategy and planning, but most were limited by the generic for of "How do I do X" or why are things changing?

The undertone is that business is changing. Many of the "How To" questions were based on several areas that I followed:
- How do I best use Twitter?
- How do I best use Facebook?
- How do I measure return on effort and return on investment?
- How do I grow (users, engagement, customers, etc)

If I could take one thing away from this conference, marketing automation and the training around it is really solving problems. This particular audience seemed more tailored to startups, small business, and consultants, so the defacto vendor mentioned over and over again was hubspot. One caution here - several people stated that while hubspot was good to start, it was painful to leave.

I'll be looking for the final slides here.

All talk and no action? Social Media Gumption

socialThis is a brief post about all the talk about "joining the conversation" and all the pontificating about it. As a lead in - this post is NOT about talking about "joining the conversation" but instead about actually getting involved.

Over and over again I hear people and so-called social media experts talking about "joining the conversation." Sometimes they're effusive, sometimes they're instructive, and other times they pragmatic. This subject, as it turns out, is exactly one where the debate of "do" vs. "teach" comes into play.

Ask these people how many of the following have they done?
- youtube videos uploaded
- youtube videos commented on
- blog posts they have written
- blog posts they have commented on
- twitter messages they have sent
- twitter @reply messages they have received

Then ask them how many of the following they have:
- total views on their youtube videos
- friends or subscribers on youtube, facebook, or myspace
- followers on twitter

If the answer to any of those items is less than 10, then there's alot of work to do. The actual absolute number of any of the above do not matter, but instead the participation does. Becoming part of the conversation and participating in social media is NOT about pontificating about what the benefits might be, but it is simply participating. I think it was either Lao Tzu or Chuang Tzu who said " the journey of a thousand miles begins with the first step". Joining the conversation is not really as hard as you might think, and all it takes is one comment to get involved.

Just to be clear, though - there is a difference between social media and building your personal brand. I'll get into that in a later post.

That's all for now.