I thought it was a great gathering: The keynote speaker was Ray Kerins, VP Worldwide Communications, Pfizer. The panel that followed was moderated by Melanie Milstein, author of Twitter and the Micro-Messaging Revolution with Dave Armon, President PR Newswire, David Sacks, Founder of Yammer, Paul Gennaro, Chief Communication Officer, AECOM, Morgan Johnston, Corporate Communications Manager, JetBlue, and Marc Monseau, Director, Media Relations, Johnson & Johnson

The forum then broke out into roundtable sessions moderated by professionals in PR and Marketing who are involved and active in social media and real-time communications.

It was exciting to actually meet and talk to all of these good people that are the front-runners in embracing and using social media and real-time communications to strengthen their brand and connect and communicate with their customers.

I must say, it was mostly in a B2C context, but the forum tried to cover B2B as well.

Everyone was fired up; the room was abuzz with talk, questions, and networking. All the social media buzzwords you could find were flying around: Twitter, YouTube, FaceBook, MySpace, Flickr, blogging, tweeting, video, RSS, IM, email, wikis and on and on…

I felt that people could not get enough information. Everybody was thirsty to learn more.

The questions seemed to be unanimous and ubiquitous:
How do I start?
What does it take from a tactical point of view? One person or a team of 10?
What are the risks?
What are the benefits?
Can I calculate ROI?
How do I get executive management on board?
How do I manage a crisis?
What is a fast response? Two days, two hours, 2 minutes or 2 seconds?
How do I control what’s out there?
How do I manage and aggregate all the different platforms for RTC?
What about traditional media?
How do I get buzz going for a small company that’s not a JetBlue or J&J?

Some questions were tackled and answered, some were not, some got an honest “we don’t know the answer to that yet”.

My key takeaways – and I hope this helps all of us – were:
- Start by discovering what conversations are going on in the social media space like Twitter, YouTube and blogs
- Monitor these everyday by getting RSS feeds through Google RSS or Google Alerts
- Make sure you understand and define your goals and what your communications strategy is
- Don’t be afraid to dip your toe into this fast-flowing social media river.
- Conversations are happening about your company anyway, so get involved
- Depending on your corporation or business, you should decide how to become part of these conversations and who should be answering
- Key: BE HONEST, BE TRANSPARENT
- Employees are spokespeople for the company – they are out there using Twitter and the likes, so they should be brought up to speed
- To do this, and do this right, in a big corporation, there needs to be a mind shift from the top down. Changes in the organization need to be made. Processes need to be streamlined. The social media spokespeople need to be empowered to reply quickly
- To quote Morgan Jonston from JefBlue, “This is about humanization of the brand!”
- Be careful not to seem like the overbearing “big brother”, don’t be intimidating
- Open up, LISTEN to your customers, be committed to change
- Remember and be aware: The line is thinning between traditional media and social media – many journalists have left traditional media and are now influential bloggers/tweeters

Lots of *stuff* to take in…

I look forward to a follow up event, which, in my opinion, could be a full day event, instead of half a day.

If you’d like to hear the two main sessions they are available here.

*Please* add your comments – I would love to hear your opinion and additions!

A great article in USA TODAY covers the arena and the players well:

McDonald’s spent zero on digital marketing at the 04 Games, this year 10% of its Olympic budget went to new media. Kleenex: 30%. Coke: 50%. And Speedo: 100% of its budget went to online social media channels this Olympics.
Nike, Lenovo, GE, Bank of America and Johnson & Johnson are all on board with their initiatives as well. Incredible.

Get this: Millions of Americans will watch the Olympics but never turn on a TV set. The Beijing Games is the first Olympics ever where up to 5% of the viewers will watch their Olympic coverage via personal computers or mobile phones.
I think probably even more…

We can see the advertising game plan is changing. Budgets have shifted tremendously from traditional advertising media to digital online outreach that impacts and engages the hip, trendsetting and very important 18-26 age group. From Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, blogging to mobile phones, all the “social networking” avenues are being covered. Millions of people are being touched and drawn in with online games, videos, blogging and mobile pushes. And getting the Olympic players involved has been key to making it so much more touchy and feely, giving this the adrenaline rush it needs to make it spiral and viral.

This is exciting. And its the tip of the iceberg for advertising to come…

I read mommy blogs (for my client, of course!). I become hypnotized at least once daily by my Digg screensaver. And: I love dishtowels from Anthropologie. Given all those factors, how has sk*rt eluded me for almost a year?

I have to admit, I am a bit torn by the idea of a Digg for chicks, as Mr. Kawasaki puts it. If I were still in college, I’d probably write a long work of creative non-fiction on this topic, peppered with quotes from Judith Butler. Luckily, I work in PR now, so you will be spared that horror. Suffice to say, I find myself looking at sk*rt from my current perspective not as an alternative to Digg but, like a commenter on Kawasaki’s post called it, a special interest Digg site.

Frankly, there’s a place in my life for outrage at Mars Rovers’ funding being cut off and recipes for beer cupcakes. It also seems that many Digg/sk*rt top stories overlap. (Trying not to use the phrase “subverting binary opposition,” but you get the idea.)

If you haven’t checked out sk*rt, I encourage you to give it a peek and leave a comment. I’m interested in what the women (and men) of Affect think about the site. Oh! And Laurie S., if she’s reading this…