This week I attended the Social Media Strategies Conference in San Francisco and I was amazed by the strategies being used by big business. They've jumped into social media with both feet and are exploring every possible avenue to build relationships with their customers. I'll go into more depth about each company's strategy in future blog posts because this blog post would go on for pages if I tried to summarize what I learned. It was a great event and I met so many sharp people. I highly recommend attending the next conference in the spring. Keep an eye on www.webguild.org for more information.
Some of the things people are doing include:
1. H&R Block is using sites like Second Life and eHarmony to connect with prospects
2. 1-800-Dentist is using social media extensively to engage and educate prospects
3. Kodak is building a large presence on sites like Flickr which drives people to their website where people can join their community to discuss cameras and photography.
4. Everyone has jumped on the Twitter bandwagon to see what people are talking about so they can proactively diffuse negative conversations
5. Every company is using social media and communities to provide customer support and gather feedback
6. Intuit is integrating user generated content into their products. Hundreds of user generated “how to” videos are being added to the Help section of their products
7. Edmunds.com built one of the first online communities and is a social media leader
The list goes on and on. All big companies are focusing on building communities to build relationships and build their brand. With recent budget cuts, companies are spending less on media advertising so they're now focusing on social media which has a minimal cost to them. They admit they're all in the learning stage but they are making tremendous strides by building a comprehensive strategy first, then implementing and testing.
I'll share more tomorrow.
To your online success.
Ted
