We had a fabulous afternoon at the King’s Fund on Thursday 13th May in the company of many authorative voices from the world of Social Media.
@Dom_AsdaPR went down a storm with his tales of Asda’s use of Twitter – very much a “just get in there and do it”. At Asda HQ they have a board with an “Asda” twitter stream and employees are encouraged to engage with the twitter conversation whenever they have a few minutes to spare (as well as having a more formal approach obviously! ).
The subject of ROI was something which speakers, panellists and the audience referred to again and again – it’s the instant question demanded of those proposing Social Media use and there were varied responses, including analysis of the usefulness of monitoring but also “how long is a piece of string?” Will McInnes noted that the benefits are also not necessarily instantaneous and may take 9 months or more to become apparent.
In the evening we held a “Politics and Social Media” panel which can only be described as the most animated of all the debates. My takeaway comment came from @Tom_Watson who, in regard to point being made regarding the lack of take up of Social media by politicians, noted that many would-be politicians had failed to be selected as PPC’s precisely because of the way that they had used Social Media e.g. innappropriate comments on Twitter causing sufficient backlash. So whilst Social Media has yet to be adopted widely across British politics it is apparent that it has made plenty of ripples, so watch this space. My personal thought would be that for politicians social media allows a level of transparency and instant interaction which, at the moment, most are not ready for.
Blogs below:
@gabrielleNYC http://sociable.net/
@Chris_Reed from Brew Digital http://www.brewdigital.com/blog/being-social-2010-few-thoughts-0
@Paul_Clarke – Photos http://www.flickr.com/photos/paul_clarke/sets/72157623935361977/
@socialoptic http://socialoptic.com/2010/05/really-social-business-the-key-to-collaboration/
@benjaminellis http://www.flickr.com/photos/jamin2/4608742548/
@leebryant http://www.slideshare.net/leebryant/social-on-the-outside-needs-social-business-on-the-inside
@abisignorelli http://abisignorelli.wordpress.com/2010/05/18/social-media-roi/
TwapperKeeper hashtag archive #beingsocial to download at http://bit.ly/9By6rz