Why has always been more important than What or How.

Absolutely blown away by the quality, talent, strategy and brilliance of the speakers and attendees at #SocialFresh West San Diego 2013. The talent and power was epic and palpable. Jason Keath and team put together a remarkable event. kudos and praise heaps a plenty. I have been to a lot of conferences and not one of them has been as focused on strategy and the WHY of things as this one. THere was a plethora of HOW, WHAT, WHEN, WHERE answers, tips, data, facts and advice. But the mind-blowing was reserved for the overwhelming cornucopia of WHY. The strategy behind WHAT we all do.

There is no way I can fully synthesize how much I learned, how pumped and excited I am and how many new things I learned from two radically informative days. of course there was an avalanche of awesomeness about using Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Vine and all the other social media tools,; but more than that was the depth of interest in the WHY, the strategery if you will, My personal love affair.

I will be synthesizing my “Jack Handy’s” (deep thoughts) on the take aways from the whole conference over the next few days so here is just my personal notes from each speaker. My brain is spilling over all over the keyboard right now so excuse the randomness of this but its leaping off the launchpad.

Brian Solis, Altimeter Group , Shared Experience is the Future of Branding

• Relationships+ the best listeners often make the most engaging conversationalists
• technology and mobile is changing us completely
• Social Media tools are what you use to become more relevant , they are NOT your purpose
• You are now marketing to audiences with audiences
• Creative must engage and trigger a social effect
• Us Social Media marketing folk are trying to automate the very thing that people want to be personal
• Every business is a journey, but then again so is every customer
• All markets are experiences
• People are searching by questions not keywords, so trust, referral, references, reviews etc are it
• The Experience divide is between what your Brand promises and what they experience <– this is the key issue of Social Media
• Most brand promises and the brand experiences are very far apart
• Everything must be seamless across every screen every time
• Innovation is not about technology, innovations start because you were inspired to do something better and people cant help but want to be involved

Tim Hayden, TTH Consulting; Social Media is your mobile Strategy

• 60%+ of Americans are on Smartphones now
• over 70% of Social Media consumption is on smartphones
• THINK MOBILE FIRST!
• behavior before technology means convenience, brevity and content
• good mobile content is : acctionable, visual, video light, local relevant and fast
• over 350 Million photos a day are uploaded to Facebook
• ALways do responsive websites! always
• URL shorteners are also OS sniffers to direct to appropriate platform
• Twitter is group text messaging
• 30% of active Twitter users talk about TV (I hate TV! so bummer I guess we all talk about beer and coffee)
• if you make a youtube video make sure the text can be read on a  tiny screen
• Youtube place URLs above description so users can click on mobile
• If you had a Mobile ONLY strategy you would still meet desktop needs

Christi McNeil, Southwest Airlines; Taking flight on Facebook

• They believe that the business of people is people
• Their #1 focus as a customer is their EMPLOYEES!! yeeha! that’s always been my belief as well!
• Go where your customers are
• They use their blog massively
• 4 million fans on Facebook
• Social Media is in every department and is not isolated <– THIS is key
• Their purpose on Facebook is to make flying human
• They have a Social media corporate lawyer on their Social Media steering committee
• THEY HAVE A FREAKING SOCIAL MEDIA STEERING COMMITTEE!!!!  This sure sounds like a STRATEGY!

Lauren Fernandez, Mortons Steak House; Converting Social Media to Foot Traffic

• its ALL about getting Butts in the seats
• they have 40 concepts with 450 locations worldwide and she manages every single freaking twitter, Facebook, Instagram etc account ALONE!!!!!!!! WTF!>?
• Social Media is ALL about amplifying NOT replacing your content to drive foot traffic
• They can track from social media to reservations to checkout and build an ROI per event
• They always start with customer behavior
• They look to drive action in every social interaction and campaign
• They promote their twitter chats with vine videos leading up to the event

 Chuck Hemann of WCG; Building Brand Through Social Customer Service

• Tony the CEO of Zappos.com said a radical idea: it was OK to serve the customer anywhere they were
• Customers are FAR more likely to buy from you if they are satisfied and they tell their friends
• For the first time in 2012 the switch was made that overall customers prefer to interact with a  brand on the internet rather than the phone or in person
• 77% of companies who spend ANYTHING on internet based Customer Care spend less than $50k TOTAL per year (and wonder why they cant get a return or improve satisfaction)
• Analytics is everywhere in customer care
• Understand your demographics, what their preferred method of engagement, where they reside, how they search, what’s their sentiment to your brand
• MOST PEOPLE on the internet don’t contribute much and are content to lurk and learn
• Perform an inventory of FAQ’s from customers to learn where they are dissatisfied and fix those PROBLEMS
• @deltaassist model is to meaningfully interact with customers where they live online
  • they have the fastest response time in the industry, concentrated all customer service issues into one platform on Twitter and improved satisfaction
• Online sentiment is NOT a proxy for overall Brand Health and satisfaction

Sarah Evans, Sevans Strategy; The Difference between content marketing and great content

• Great content = people remember it easily, emotional connection, relatable, written, visual or video
• the KEY to great content being SHARED is to feel that you: Share, Care or Swear!
• Great writers are people who Get People and understand your industry and know how to create for mobile and web
• Good headlines should be no more than 100 characters to enable sharing and RT
• Content idea for balance: 1/3 of each Curate, Aggregate and Create – BUT Create is best
• When in doubt use quotes, questions and quips
• Help people out with free advice
• Photos get 53% more likes on Facebook (although text has more reach!)
• great app tools: Phonot, OVER, News Booth, Whims, Phoster, VSCOCam, Screenshot
• Great written content gives people more w/o making them ask for it

Eric Gottloeb, Walgreens; Blogger Outreach Going Native

• Consumers don’t understand ad tracking and targeting and it freaks them out
• Native advertising is the happy spot
• Native advertising is: an ad that takes places in the core or meat of whatever app or story you are in (so it’s by default contextual and relevant)
• Blogging about products, services etc is native advertising
• Their blogger program had 120 bloggers who posted over 8,000 unique pieces of content
• Share of voice for them got to over 77% during the campaign
• They collected questions from bloggers on the problems of their product and then created answers and asked the bloggers to blog about them

Bryan Srabian, San Francisco Giants; Using Instagram to bring fans closer to the brand

• ATT park is the 5th most instagrammed location in the world!
• Instagram has 130 million daily users, 23% are 18-29
• Young people use Instagram more than Facebook
• 41% of brands using it post each week, 59% have an account now
• Engagement leads to affinity leads to sales
• Your fans are your brand on Instagram
• Media walls are going to be HUGE in sports locations

There was SO MUCH more great content created in all the awesome interaction, talks, discussions and great people I was privileged to meet which I will be writing about more over the next few days. #SocialFresh was such an amazing conference!