Some Social Media Wisdom

Those of us fortunate enough to get away from the office for a few hours last Wednesday, unlike Bill, were rewarded with a great refresher course on social media and how it can be used to promote your company. Kudos to Badger NAMA for hosting the social media event and props to StreamCreative for presenting some great information.

Our collaborative key learnings include:

• Social Media is changing how we market: People are already talking, so join the conversation. If you aren't talking, someone else will be and that someone else could be a competitor.


• There is power in numbers: Twitter is a growing social media application, currently receiving 7 million monthly unique visitors—at that rate, it will have near 100 million visitors at this time next year. YouTube will serve 75 billion video streams in 2009. And Facebook has 87.3 million unique visitors per month. Don't just become one of numbers, become a user.


• It's not about which tools, it's how you use them: Tools will come and go; don't focus on one application, cater to your audience. People will always be searching out information; provide them with the information they want.


• Look to the future: Although your current customers may not be using social media, your future ones will be.

The overall message—don't dive in too fast. You will not be a social media expert after your first post on Twitter or Facebook, or upload to Flickr. However, if you are a social media expert and have additional input, please do.