True Stories from Social Media with Guy Kawasaki – SXSW 2008
Guy announces the all women panel. He is a brave man. Well there is a guy in there. YAY!
Most amazing/surprising stories from Social Media from the panel are:
- Sinha – Phone call in the middle of the night from a guy that says someone is personating me on the site. It’s only someone using a photo on the site.
- Patricia – She has 12 days to sale a company. Patricia says she did not shower for 12 days. ??? I did not get this story.
- Can’t see name tag person: Sarah Jessica Parker has a clothes line in Steve and Barry’s. She posted image of her clothes line on her blog. Steve and Barry’s contacts and ask her to take down photos of Sarah Jessica Parker’s clothes line on her blog. They where giving threats to sue her for negative comments. Sarah Jessica Parker goes on Oprah and really drove traffic back to the blog. Guy says anyone sends you images, POST them.
- Laura (Pistachio) – She finds Guy though him slamming Twitter. They had an email/blog comments exchange but found him through twitter. Pistachio says be yourself on Twitter. Don’t try to be too strategic. Let it flow and things will happen. Find one things someone could do on Twitter and introduce them that way.
- Christine – She writes stories about design and allowed for story submission and did some editing to them and then posted them. Then she started a Content management company. She talks about CMS systems and clients that suck because they all want something different. Non-profits are the worst clients as stated in her story.
- Erica O’Grady – Opmoms launch and then issues press releases after the site is up and running in good shape. Investors called because the site was down after the press releases went out. They where reactionary in their launch. Don’t launch because of competition pressure.
- Aaron – He launched a Tracy McGrady web site with comments allowed and someone posted something negative to the site then McGrady wanted the site taken down.
Tips to help with issues on social sites:
- When blogging realize it is not always about me and more about the community
- Twitter further connects people and let’s you talk to people. You create a site because you know the information useful.
- Listen to the target audience instead of the internet Guru’s. The community will be more involved if you don’t force them to signup during beta versions etc.
Key factors of social media success:
1. engage offline to further promote
2. You can connect many medias/users using twitter. Just play on Twitter because you get so much exposure.
3. Brilliant Human Connections are made on Twitter.
4. Stay three steps ahead of the people you lean on because there passion will stray.
5. Research your networks. Know what the people are saying (the language) then position yourself accordingly. Decide what you want to be and how you want to say it.
Not too many take aways from this panel. Some of the questions where vague… Hopefully the questions from the audience with help purge the goodness from these brains.
Ed Schipul asks a question… Guy cuts Ed Off. He picks the wrong side for the last question. SUX.
March 13, 2008 at 4:14 am
Hey, I was that side, thank you very much. I like Ed Schipul a whole lot, but I was in line first so it would only make sense that Guy would point to me. My point was that the social media world can be quite insular. We draw value from people different from us, and it seems like so many people in social networks are in the tech industry or in marketing. How do you get people from other industries/backgrounds to Twitter? How do get people to realize that a social network is just a communication tool the same way a cell phone is? That’s what I wanted to know and I did not feel like I got the answer I was looking for. It’s possible I didn’t ask my question well enough. Who knows. Anyway, I’m sorry you didn’t get to hear Ed’s question. He’s a smart guy and if I knew what the response to my question would have been, I would have passed the floor.
March 20, 2008 at 5:57 pm
I think you must show case studies that may relate to them so they become passionate. We have to move them by telling a story. If they still are not moved or open to the idea of Social Marketing then they just don’t care and will miss the boat entirely.
Oh and Ed Schipul is my boss so that is why I wanted to hear him. He is no B.S. and was looking forward to him sparking conversation.