Okay, so Albany may not be the first city that comes to mind when you think of innovation, digital marketing, a vibrant creative class or a social networking hotbed, but we have a budding community here that’s really becoming interested in all things social media. This morning was the region’s second Social Media Breakfast, and 80 people turned out at the Capital Repertory Theater in downtown Albany to hear Justin Levy describe how he’s used social media to improve business at his restuarant.
Capital Rep is in the middle of a production called Shear Madness, which takes place in a beauty salon, so it was pretty amusing to see Justin up on a pink and green stage with hair dryers and shampoo stations as a backdrop. Thanks to Annmarie Lanesey at MZA Multimedia, we livestreamed this event: click here to access the recording.
A few key takeaways from Justin:
- Listening is the most important aspect of social media. It trumps any tool or service or platform. You have to listen to your customers.
- You can have the best store or product in the world but if no one’s coming or knows about it, you’ll fail as a business
- Each organization needs to be strategic with their use of social media and not just try tools or tactics because they are popular. Define what success looks like for your organization and develop a plan based around your goals.
- Customers trust Google to give them the answers to their questions. They don’t understand SEO and don’t realize that big companies with huge marketing budgets can essentially “buy” the front page of Google results. You have to create good content that will get you ranked and help people discover and link to you.
- Twitter is where you can be helpful, be a real person. A blog is your proving ground to show that you really know your stuff. Use many platforms in combination to reinforce your brand.
Justin also shared some key social media tools with the group:
- Radian6 (paid) and Google alerts and Twitter search for monitoring mentions of your company online
- Tubemogul as a single upload point for video that then deploys it across the web to video sites
- Disqus and Backtype for managing comments on your blog and searching comments
- BrightKite for location-based social networking and Twitter updates
And of course, Justin plugged Chris Brogan and Julien Smith’s new book, Trust Agents, as a great source for understanding customer relationships.
Here are a few pics from the event (when I wasn’t running around setting up, moderating the Q&A, or live-tweeting!):
I’m really pleased at the turnout and reactions for the first two Social Media Breakfasts in Tech Valley and am excited to keep this going and continuing to see the local social media community grow. Thanks again to sponsor SUNY Cobleskill (and their twittering cow, @CAbunga) for sponsoring the event for the second time.