Tonight, I attended the third Mashable NextUp NYC event at 92Y, which was the third in a series of three, and also a part of this week’s “Internet Week” celebration in New York.  [If you missed my recap of the first two, here they are: "The State of the New York Blogosphere" and "Lessons from the local Start Up Community"]

Tonight’s panel featured three keynote speakers:  Chris Cunningham (Founder and CEO of appssavvy), Steve Rubel (SVP, Director of Insights for Edelman Digital) and Pete Cashmore (CEO and Founder of Mashable), who all presented their niche as it relates to “Social Media Marketing.”

Panelist #1–Chris Cunningham on “Introduction to the future of Social Media Applications”:

In Chris’ words, Facebook is genius.  But the thing about Facebook is that users are not on Facebook just for it’s primary purpose, they’re also looking for new and other ways to engage.  Users are also looking for applications that matter in their day to day lives.  Among the most successful apps are: Circle of Moms, Dogbook (facebook for dogs), and Texas Hold’em.  There are all kinds of large verticals built around gaming, pets, family, and travel.

Appssavvy is the company that is helping developers of these apps to make money and there is a major opportunity for marketers in this space.  Appssavvy helps brands to discover, navigate, and execute their marketing plans.  They are focused on the sale: finding great partners and executing the right fit.   Appssavvy ironically doesn’t actually build any apps, they just find the best inventory and they sell it.

Circle of Moms works on Facebook because it’s relevant, because they are talking about the ‘Mom’ lifestyle.  Huggies created a rewards campaign that was advertised within Circle of Moms, and it works because it was directly relevant.  Today, brands HAVE to give you something and must enhance your daily routine, or there is no point in being there.

Oakley is another great example.  They came to appsavvy and asked them to build them a custom app.  Appssavvy’s respsonse was simple: they didn’t need one, “snowreport already existed.”  As such, Oakley could take advantage of a pre-existing target audience, and provide desirable content.  Oakley pulled up and provided value to the users of this app, and this in return, directly enhanced their brand.

According to Chris, here are the keys for online advertising as it relates to social media:

• Provide value
• Contextual relevance
• Engagement metrics
• Building a relationship
• Creating KeyPI’s (Key Performance Indicators)
• Treating online advertising like real life
• Conversation
• Partnering not building
• Pull verses push

Chris finished off with a really great quote that brands should read loud and clear, “Don’t believe social media is experimental, it is very real, and its happening right now.”

Panelist #2–Steve Rubel  on “5 Trends to Watch in Social Media”:

Steve started out with a couple of interesting stats:

• 111: is the number of domains the average American visits per month
• 2554: is the number of web pages the average American visits per month
• Thus indicating, that the choices people have to make are infinite

Steve’s Trend 1: Satisfaction Guarenteed
PR and Customer Service are becoming one.  Consumers now use social media to demand they get their problems solved.  Customer Service as a result, is now a PR issue.   There is an entire generation coming up that will never dial a 1-800 number in their lifetime, they will just tweet their displeasure and anticipate a reply.

What are the brand implications of this?  Brands must:

• Audit the entire online experience.
• Build relationships with digital embassies
• Be prepared to engage and act quickly (a lot happens over the weekend)
• Be ubiquitous (the more engaged you are, the better)

Example: Starbucks came up with the ‘mystarbucksidea’ campaign  -  it is completely social, you can suggest ideas and others can vote your idea up or down.  This is a great example of crowd sourcing. Starbucks has since created a Twitter platform for this: @mystarbucksidea  and a Facebook group: mystarbucksidea.  They are directly putting the needs and wants of their customer base into action.

Trend 2: Media Reforestation
The media is contracting: print is cutting back, the New York Times is being forced to put ads on the front page, and it is all going digital.  Rubel dares to predict that in 5 years, all things you can touch and feel will be exinct or in far reach.  He believes (and I agree) that digital is the way of the upcoming generation.

What are the brand implications of this?  Brands must:

• Take a broad view of the media ecosystem
• Become a curator of content in niches (to avoid creating your own content everyday)
• Re-think how media is measured and valued
• Change the economics of PR

Example: Talk370z.com.  Here they have blog posts, youtube videos,  and twitter feeds, all in one place about this particular car.  If you don’t become a digital curator in your space, somebody else will.

Trend 3: Less is the New More
Overload takes it’s toll.  Due to the plethora of information available to us, consumers have begun to use selective ignorance and friends as quality filters, to make decisions.

Brand implications:

• Provide utility (The Tylenol PM app:  you put in how much you sleep and it tracks your mood)
• Sow seeds with peers, grow plants with pros
• Shape the search shelf (make sure you’re visible online)

Trend 4: Corporate All-Stars
As employees flock to social media to build their brands, some companies recognize that these individuals can become corporate all-stars.  Employees know now that if they ever apply for a new job, they will be googled.  So, if you get fired, all you really have today is your online brand.

Brand Implications:

• Connect customers and all-stars
• Give all-stars independence yet focus them
• Equip and support active listening (Real people behind real brands are making an impact online)

Trend 5: The power of pull
So much of marketing is about push, and pushing ideas down the consumers throat.  But now, its equally important that marketers create digital content that people will pull based on their interests.

Brand Implications:

• Create resources that enhance the conversation
• Adopt rather than invent
• Write for searches, not for readers  (Consumers are googling problems, not unknown solutions, keep this in mind for your headlines)
• When people are searching online, if they can find you, then that’s the power of pull

Key Takeaways:

• Publicly engage consistently and regularly
• Create or aggregate meaningful content
• Be simple and utilitarian
• Be fast, fun, and flexible
• Think relationships

When asked how twitter and social media have changed PR companies, Rubel’s answers were very poignant.  The online sphere has made the media cycle faster, which means there are more avenues to tell stories, and to tell them directly.  It also means that we really shouldn’t be distinguishing between media and social media, and that PR in many ways has more credence over marketing in today’s marketplace.

Panelist #3–Pete Cashmore “Closing Presentation & Panel”:

As the creator of Mashable, Pete Cashmore opted to run a panel verses a “talk,” where he surveyed a couple of key tastemakers in the social media sphere on what he deems to be ‘hot topics’ of the moment.

On the panel were: Scott Harrison (Founder, Charity:Water), Steve Rubel (also known as Panelist #2!), Stephanie Agresta (Organizer of TechSet / AKA Internet Geek Girl) and Toby Daniels (Organizer of Twestival NYC + Organizer of Social Media Week).

According to Pete, Charity:Water is a prime example of a Charitable function that has done amazingly well using online tools.  And they suspect this is because their equation is so simple: There are X amount of people without access to clean water, there is a solution to this, all we need is X amount of $, and we can show/prove results.  YouTube, Facebook and Twitter all allow Charity:Water to show their results and progress in motion.  They were able to raise 1.6 million in only 7-8 weeks via social media.  According to Toby, “Social media collapses time, messages travel more quickly, things can go viral and reach millions with a click.”

The panel discussed two recent public disasters for two major brands.  When Amazon experienced a snafu, their immediate reaction was to issue a press release —- no one read it. (Read: Old way of thinking.)   Dominos Pizza had a snafu where an incriminating video surfaced on YouTube which resulted in over 1 million views.   They responded to the fiasco with a video response on YouTube, and it got 600,000 views itself.  It helped to solve the mess.   The idea here is to react within the same channel, but more importantly, to be active and engaged in all channels, before you ever encounter a crisis in the first place.   It’s important for brands to be set up for a crisis so that you have a fighting chance in the event of a fire. Think of it as your modern day fire drill, folks.

When Cashmore asked the panel if they could wrap up the argument of who is king, New York or San Francisco in the Social Media sphere?  Scott replied, “New York more than doubled San Fran in money raised for Twestival, so I think its obvious.”

The New York-based audience liked that answer

*Pete Cashmore discusses the Pay-Per-Post dilemma and disclosure etiquette with the panel

*Pete Cashmore discusses charity campaigns as they relate to brands and social media, with the panel

[Alyson Campbell for It's All Very PR]

Tags: 92Y, appssavvy, chris cunningham, edelman digital, Mashable, mashable nextup nyc, Next up nyc, NextUp NYC, pete cashmoer, pete cashmore mashable, scott harrison, social media marketing, stephanie agresta, steve rubel, toby daniels

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 3rd, 2009 at 11:38 pm and is filed under pr talk, special events. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.