Cincinnati AMA Digital Summit: The Social Media Symphony

By far, for me, the most informative and entertaining speaker during Thursday's Cincinnati AMA Digital Summit was Ted Murphy, founder and CEO of IZEA.

His topic, "The Social Media Symphony" was subtitled "Harness the power of social media to drive traffic and sales."

Far too many people are unaware of what social media means and Murphy explained it well pointing out that social media is a platform and distribution channels that provide scale to reach millions of people.

Consider this: Murphy said five years ago only a few people would have viewed a video of him snoring in the backseat of a car. Today, however, that video can be easily viewed by millions of people. The potential is unlimited.

Today, with Web 2.0, the difference is "social" and is now about people, conversations, interaction and community. A huge difference.

According to Murphy, the way social media works is to "listen."

Listen for mentions of your company or brands. Understand what your customers are saying.

Listen for mentions of your competitors. And, listen for mentions of subjects related to your industry.

These "conversations" are happening at:

• Facebook
• Friendfeed
• Twitter
• Utterz
• Plurk
• Brightkite
• Tailrank
• Techmeme
• Digg
• Google Blog Search
• Technorati
• CoComment

Murphy added that once you have located a discussion, you need to conduct your research (Who started the conversation? What is their relationship with your firm? What is their goal?), then determine your goal and never ever go straight into a sales pitch.

While social media does take time (and who has "time" these days?), you have to start somewhere and do what you can to get involved and participate.

Comments

[David E. Bowman]

I agree, Ted was excellent. What a great slide deck. Mostly images, very compelling, and he did not just stand up there and read. He was passionate and shared stories both funny and meaningful. A great show.

[BenSpark]

I have been fortunate to hear Ted speak on occasion and meet him in person. He is an enthusiastic and passionate person. I'd love to see the slides he showed since I was in one of them and so were my wife and daughter. He has a way of motivating people that is perfect for social media.

[Owen]

Thanks for the detailed synopsis of Ted's talk. I posted a section of your post (well, pretty much most of it) on my blog: http://www.u-g-h.com/2008/09/01/leveraging-social-media/

Hope that's ok

Owen (one of the "Pringle lovers")