On the heels of the three-hour keynote session with attendees at Social IRL in St. Louis last Thursday, where the topic gathered excellent feedback, I'm preparing for my session at the WOMMA Summit.
Like the massive Death Star in Star Wars, the accumulation of social media fans for its own sake can create a false sense of power for today's companies. Eyeballs by another set of media (than mass) are still a danger.
Accumulating fans lulls organizations into a false sense of security. That they have a strong and resilient model upon which to trade. Business is looking for answers in all the wrong places - customers don't have them. And they should not shift their focus to expecting that they do.
Commerce is not a popularity contest. It's about relationships. These are a different kind of relationship: What people exchange instead of the asset. It's not about selling, it's about showing and telling. This is the conversation we never had about social and that we desperately need to make sense of what works and what doesn't.
The prequel to the tactical implementations that have followed in the last couple of years.
I see there are another three excellent sessions concurrent to mine; two on customer care stories, and one on sponsorship marketing with my good friend Matt Dickman.
This year I'm particularly focused on raising the specific flag of business assets, trade, and promises. If that is your tribe, if you're planning to work on creative ways to trade your assets, to understand your promises (intended and unintended), so you can trade better ones, I'm your session.
Come find me during the conference, which I will be attending in its entirety, if you'd like to connect. It will be an exciting year filled with opportunity. And I'm already working with some businesses that understand how to trade their promise(s).
See you at WOMMA Nov. 16-18.
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I'll be working on a special dossier about trends in word of mouth marketing from the conference to share with subscribers of the Premium Newsletter in the November issue.
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Yes, what must we learn first to make sense of "talkable brands" and "best practice" ( the WOMMA tagline).
Or is there no learning - just doing. Where we sell in fear and buy in hope or, in the current crisis sell in hope and buy in fear.
The prequel is about competive learning or how to see through most (best)practice and fashinable but modest ideas designed to sell more consulting hours than widgets.
Posted by: Peter | November 06, 2011 at 08:25 PM
it sounds like a talk that would be fun as a dual, Peter. It does sound like we sell in hope and buy in fear at the moment, doesn't it?
Trading is more fun.
Posted by: Valeria Maltoni | November 07, 2011 at 08:37 PM