This morning I attended the Albany Ad Club’s annual meeting and social media panel discussion, which featured five local PR, marketing and advertising professionals discussing their current use of social media tools and strategies. All were from different backgrounds and it was neat to see the contrasting methods and platforms that each preferred for communicating to their audiences and the various strategies they highlighted:

• Steven Jeffes of EdgeUp Marketing uses LinkedIn and manages several groups. He connects with more than 15,000 professionals through his moderation of eight different LinkedIn groups. Jeffes manages employee groups for GE, Lockheed Martin and the Wharton School and also the popular Albany, NY Professionals LinkedIn group. He’s gained several consulting clients through the connections he’s made on LinkedIn.
• Megan O’Toole from the New York State Bar Association has found that a combination of blogs, LinkedIn Groups, Facebook groups and pages have been an effective way to reach out to her organization’s members. She often uses traditional media (direct mail, e-mail newsletters) to promote these new media channels and the NYSBA is budgeting for Web advertising in 2010.
• Gina Hyams works with several arts and non-profits in the Berkshires. She used Twitter to promote the Berkshire International Film Festival and to interact with filmgoers during the event. As a “Tweeter-in-Residence” for the festival, Hyams shared links to film trailers, film makers’ Web sites, and general information about the festival. During the festival, she would monitor and retweet mini-reviews of the films and would tweet information about parking and ticket availability and line length.
• Patrick Boegel and his firm, Media Logic, have redesigned their business model and offerings to focus on a conversation-centric model of marketing. Through new tools, like their proprietary custom “Zeitgeist and Coffee” social media monitoring dashboard system, they are encouraging their clients to become involved in the conversations that are already happening about their brands. He stressed the importance of starting with a strategy and letting that dictate how and when you use social media tools for communication.
• Paul Fahey of Zone5 discussed how really the “old school” principles of communication are the core of social media. He referenced Dale Carnegie’s book, published in 1936, that focused on how to establish good relationships with people. That’s what social media is really about today. He noted that there’s a lot you can’t control in social media – but you can control the way you respond and the principles you use to guide you in a conversation or interaction.

Following the panel, I captured a quick reaction from my table mate Jim Stagnitti, general sales manager for Clear Channel Radio. Here were his three takeaways:

(Free videography tip: Get a Gorillapod. Do not try to use a full glass of water to prop your camera on, or you could possibly knock it into the glass. Not that I’ve ever done that. Like, say, this morning.)

I had a side conversation with Jim and some of his employees about social media ROI after the panel. I agree that none of the panelists really did have a good answer when the question of measurement came up, but that’s about par for the course these days.

I directed them to Katie Delahaye Paine’s blog and talked about how ROI in social media is a lot like ROI in sales: How do you put a value on building relationships? Taking a client out to dinner? A round of golf? It’s still the million-dollar-question as to how you take the customer engagement and relationship-building that happens as a result of interactions in social media and link it to revenue gained or costs avoided.

As for Jim’s assertion that the medium is no longer the message and the “message is the message”… exactly. Social media is allowing information to be seen/heard/shared across platforms and with loads of added commentary, perspective and criticism. Consumers are no longer bound to receive messages exactly as brands or organizations dictate. As Patrick stated during the panel, “consumers are in control now and clients have to understand that their brand is not all their own anymore.” Right on.