Last night Jason and I had the honor of visiting Newport to discuss social media and social networks with seventy-five business owners. That was in a nutshell: scary, rewarding, exhilarating, nervous, thrilling, insightful and intimidating. All at the same time. I have to admit that I was expecting a lower level of web savvy business folks from the Oregon Coast. By show of hands many are already blogging, using Twitter, Facebook, and video for their businesses. I was impressed and had my work cut out for me.
I am really thankful the group was so engaged. They started asking great questions right away and never slowed down. The two way dialogue helped the presentation remain relevant to the audience but made time management very challenging. I felt myself wishing for more time to share with the group throughout the entire event.
Looking back there are few key things I took away from the event.
I loved the questions, feedback and contributions throughout the entire session. I generally dislike one-way presentations when I am in the audience so I would hate to do that others. The audience engagement was immediately gratifying to me.
I needed to do a better job with my time management. It forced me to speed through some great live examples. What got me was using word scrambles to deliver an overly large glossary of terms. I don’t fault myself for trying to innovate though.
At the end of the session I forgot to do a few things that embarrass me as a marketing guy. If I could go back I would have measured the ROI for the audience. I would have asked the group to indicate by show of hands…
“…if you learned something new tonight?”
“…if you believe that social media can help your business?”
“…feel that social media is an affordable and manageable business tool?”
Slides from the discussion (most are part of that dang glossary!):
Links and examples from the presentation (including some we didn’t get to cover):
Tools and Services:
http://search.twitter.com/
http://reader.google.com
Comical video skit on customer relationship, “You want coupons.”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RZDXfB0Rd4Q
Video for business example: Red Horse Coffee
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qQm9D9ox1TM
Blogging for business
http://www.eroi.com/online-marketing-resource-center/resources-blogs
Monetizing social media
http://bacn.com
http://tv.winelibrary.com/2006/11/09/the-wine-videos-that-sum-up-wine-library-tv-instant-classic
http://www.zappos.com
Social Network on Ning
http://corvallisparents.ning.com
Lincoln County Technology Solutions Alliance http://lincolncountytech.ning.com
http://sbmlincolncounty.ning.com
When you are attending a presentation what do you like or dislike from the audience perspective?
I attended and was glad to see the large and engaged audience. Whether it was successful in changing business behaviors, only time will tell. One of the issues with having a great evening (great presentation, great participation) is carrying it forward into the business management and mindset. The difficulty in “hands up” ROI assessments is there is a lot of emotion and peer influence. Perhaps a Survey Monkey follow-up would work well to get the individual “day after” candid comments.
What questions could we ask?
Do you see your business practices changing as a result of this workshop? Small/Med/Large?
What changes in the way you do business do you expect to make? Add a blog? Create a community forum? Other?
Could we check back in 2 months, 4 months, 6 months to see the actual impact?
1. Yes I think that this is a new tool that I can use to reach all 200 people in the active Small Business Development Program.
2. Create a community forum
3. Sure