On Monday Jim and myself headed down the road to Dell’s Bracknell office for their B2B Social Media Huddle. Here’s my redux of the day, via selected highlights from the Twitter stream (Twitter search for the full set). @kerryatdell kicked things off with an energiser – hence the picture – Thanks go to Kerry and Neville (@jangles) for organising a great day focussed on social media in the Business to Business context, with speakers from across industry and a good mixture of presentations, case studies and group discussions.
As well as the Twitter stream, I’ve added links to the presentations posted to slide share, so you can browse through for yourself. Neville started the presentations with a review of survey results and an overview of the major trends in the social media space:
stuartbruceInteresting debate on difference between “ghost” blogs and helping to publish a blog, I’ll write a post on it, can’t do in 140 #dellb2b
The topic of ghost blogs (writing blogs on behalf of someone else) spilt over into a broader discussion on the web: Ghost written blogs – right or wrong?
Next up was Steve Lamb (@actionlamb) from Microsoft:
stuartbruce@BenjaminEllis Just said what I was going to! Find people with passion/knowledge and help them, it’s not the technology or channel #dellb2b
melcarsonRT @willmcinnes Underlying theme of everything so far; the hidden & vast complex challenge with b2b social in big orgs – CULTURE #dellb2b
The culture theme re-emerged a number of times during the day – social media definitely isn’t culturally neutral and is much more personal that traditional marketing channels. While technology changes quickly, business culture moves at its own, slower, rate.
EEPaulWhat is work? Is it a place you go, or stuff you do?@actionlamb#dellb2b > trust issues for companies, boundary issues for individuals
Steve touched on a favourite SocialOptic theme – is work somewhere you go or something you do? Milestone Planner let’s you share plans and objectives regardless of where you are or what time it is – the idea is to keep the focus on what you’re doing and need to do, rather than being limited by time and place.
And some themes emerged: joiningdotsConsistent tip coming out of #dellb2b Social Media Huddle. The costs to try are very very low. Make your targets the same.
EEPaulSchneider on Web 2.0 communications: don’t lose control, but lose the fear #dellb2b – illuminate the space to reduce the ‘unknown’
And we picked up a new Milestone Planner use for the day – it turns out to be handy for co-ordinating message timing across different social media channels and groups. Create a project, add the team members that might post, then create a work stream for each group or platfom:
Tada, see at a glance if you are over or under communicating on each, and play nice with people who are signed up to both email lists and social media groups. We’ll add that to the list.
And, to sum up in the words of John Duffy from Ipadio:
This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 9th, 2009 at 3:07 pm by Benjamin Ellis and is filed under On the road.
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Great overview, thanks for the mentions!
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