Last Saturday I moderated one of the panel discussions at the ProductCamp SoCal conference at CSU Fullerton. With me were the four points of view represented by esteemed colleagues from the Social Media Mastermind Orange County (SMMOC) roundtable.
Notably my panelists included:
We explored some interesting topics around social media strategies for large and small brands.
Our panel was made especially interesting because of the questions some of you contributed ahead of time through an earlier post I made requesting your help, as well as in the SMMOC group on Facebook. Also, the other thing that made this panel so engaging was the fact that our panelists didn't do all the talking.
As barcamps are wont to do, our full house of attendees contributed quite a bit to the discussion. You'll see from the video that a lot of our attendees were really quite keen to share some of their own experiences and case studies.
I posted the panel discussion in three parts and bundled them together above in a handy little playlist.
Highlights Include:
- Opening thoughts about (mine) about terms like "social media revolution" or "paradigm shift" perhaps no longer being accurate statements. (I also followed that up with another video post after the conference in the post titled, "Is Social Media STILL a Shifting Paradigm?")
- Thoughts contributed by each panelist about establishing a baseline definition about any differences between "large" vs. "personal" brands.
- A discussion about differences between large and personal brands and how larger brands seem to have more infrastructure and resources while smaller (personal) brands have to be a lot smarter and resourceful.
- The role of consistency and conversation in brand persona.
- The importance that brands assign resources to monitoring and listening to the social stream.
- The importance of organizations empower employees to communicate directly with customers in the social stream.
- Further discussions (debate?) about whether or not social media is indeed still a "paradigm shift" or whether it's now a "new normal" with implicit changes being more a manifestation of change as opposed to unique effects of social media.
- Education and training's role in building an effective social media strategy.
- Some thoughts about whether or not the popularity of social media is a Gen-Y-driven phenomenon or is social media's adoption more a result of the "older" generation's championing and adoption?
If you were on the panel, what additional thoughts would you have added about strategic considerations for social media in brand development?
