This is the first of several installments in which we couple reflections from the Fall 2009 Communications Network Annual Conference (#comnet09) session presenters with feedback from attendees of those sessions captured by the Gorilla Engagement Squad. First up: Eric Henderson, Special Advisor for Living Cities, reflects on his session entitled, "Brand, Meet Twitter. Twitter, Meet Brand." We lead with post-session analysis provided in this clip from Debra Rubino, Director of Strategic Communications at Open Society Institute-Baltimore who relates session content to the OSI-Baltimore blog she guides entitled: "Audacious Ideas."
Deb Rubino from OSI-Baltimore Heads Into "Twitter Country" from Communications Network on Vimeo.
From Eric Henderson:
While listening to some feedback for "Brand, Meet Twitter. Twitter, Meet Brand" and talking to many people afterward, I think we achieved the sort of "trip to the gym" that I hoped for. That is, I wanted to depose "guruism" for a moment (starting with Elvis leaving the building!) and invite us all to think together, to "work out" using the presentation as a solid jumping-off point. The reason for this approach lies in the very definition of social media. If we really value the knowledge generated by the crowd and by knowledgeable collaboration, then I'm more interested in creating the critical thought paths and platforms we can use as practitioners - compared to getting lost and disoriented diving into each and every one of the latest greatest Twitter apps and nuances.
Walking through "old" screenshots of Twitter, dating back to the first Tweet in March 2006, you could see that each iteration of Twitter, as with any of the popular social media channels, is largely created by ...YOU. We are, thus, in the crew of experts. But only if we learn how to lever that perspective.
Learn the tool and then make it do what works for you. Ignore popular headlines like these we examined: "Twitter is the second coming of the telegraph!" and "Twitter is useless." This is to take nothing away from the Twitter folks or any other social media outlets. The much appreciated genius they have is to know how to incorporate the data streams we give and convert that into something attractive and of greater and greater use for all of us. The point made, though, was to not let the tools run us and not to be intimidated by any new application. "We just gotta jump in!" But that's no blind leap.
That's where we spent our time weaving in and out of Twitter and the brand context for how we use it, particularly on the case study. The one slide that I received the most requests for was the one that detailed the entire communications process from content generation to target audience measures to the place for specific tools, Twitter included. (Eric's presentation can be found here.)I heard a few sighs of relief, people glad to be reminded that they've done a good part of the hard work by simply knowing their brands and how to build strategy to execute on any platform. So, when we approached it from this standpoint, we heard questions and interested talk around what we know best -- managing the brand. "Where should I put Twitter in my marketing annual plan?" "How can I create a measurement system that works for me? What can I do to get other people on board in my organization using those measures?"
Many thanks for an engaging session.
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