Keystone Click at Social Media Week Chicago
Sometime in late August I was fortunate enough to have a Marquette professor send me the link to Social Media Week. After looking into the event, I couldn’t think of anything better than my favorite city and my favorite activity on the computer. No, not Mumbai and pre-ordering vinyl….Chicago, IL and Social Media. Some extremity pulling took place for a couple of days, and the wonderful Lori Highby decided to send Mike and I down on the train to represent Keystone Click.
This is already getting long, as usual, so I’ll get to the point. Each of us knows that the business world is changing from a push system, to a pull system. What I mean, is that customers are developing opinions about brands, and communicating with them via the interweb. Those connections and conversations are now fueling the growth of businesses and industries. This, among many other advancements in the social media realm, was the reason for Social Media Week Chicago.
The first session we attended at Tribune Tower had a lot of great insights for me personally. This was a partial panel discussion with Social Media and Online Community Managers from Allstate, Motorola, Chicago Tribune, and Zocalo Group. Each member brought a unique perspective to the conversation. One key takeaway for me was the importance that needs to be placed on post development e-commerce management and measurement. By tracking what is going on with your brand, your social media outlets, and your website, you give yourself the ability to change in order to take full advantage of the market. Keystone Click is actually working on a blog series for the near future that will explore some of these themes and some tools that can be used to accomplish them. One other core takeaway was the thought of giving customers an arena to get their questions answered in. Social media is a medium that the customer is already in, and can easily communicate with their brand. By giving customers this opportunity, it widens the respect for the brand overall.
After a short lunch break, it was off to the Cramer-Krasselt Office to discuss Customer Relationship Management within social media. First of all, hats off to Killian Schaffer for his vast knowledge and great presentation surrounding this topic. Killian follows the TRI model. By understanding transaction, relationship and influence, a company can leverage a combination of this behavioral information to understand where opportunities exist. This is a brilliant way of looking at how a business can use social media to drive overall sales. A futuristic thought into C2B was also an interesting topic. A consumer to business type market is much closer than we all think. Within the near future, there may be platforms where consumers will request what they would like and someone will be able to give that directly to them.
Overall the experience was great for me at a time that I am trying to uncover the underlying value of social media. Communicating the value in something that has no specific measurements is somewhat difficult. Social Media Week brought myself, and Keystone Click as a whole closer to complex understanding of this. It is no doubt that our clients and our own business will see the impact of what Mike and I learned.
Post by KEYSTONE CLICK.