We had our 6th session this morning of Social Media Breakfast San Diego, which turned out to be a very energetic session. Our featured speaker was Steven Cox, CEO and Founder of TakeLessons. TakeLessons is Americas leading source for private music and voice lessons.
Steven began his speech discussing what some of the challenges TakeLessons has come across in their own marketing strategies. One question they had as they began to build their strategy was how were they going to apply social media, which is now 15% of their marketing. TakeLessons fundamental issue was to create a trustworthy and safe environment for their audience. Their goal is to inspire a generation of people through music, so how could they create this safe environment through social media?
Their 3 marketing challenges:
- How do we build trust?
- How do we communicate passion to people?
- How do we sell more lessons?
The social media solutions they’ve integrated are as follows,
- A Blog: Firstly, creating relevant content, which establishes them as credible experts, which in turn helps create that trust. Secondly, recruiting guest contributors, which opens the blog up to junior editors. This allows people to be a part of the experience by sharing their thoughts.
- A Twitter Feed: Of course this is on the list to help connect and create value for the people
- YouTube: To showcase their customers.
- A Facebook page: How they get people to be their “brand ambassadors”. They communicate their latest happenings and use that to build trust.
One of their philosophies is that people buy from people they know, so one of their fundamental reasons for integrating social media into their marketing is to help people feel comfortable and to help create value. One important aspect in all this that I personally took away from this speech is that TakeLessons really try’s to bring out the human side of what they do. They listen to their feedback, they communicate with their customers/fan base, they decide what is most interesting and relevant to their audience with help from this feedback, then they run with it using all the social media tactics mentioned above. In essence they use social media to build trust.
It was a delight to have Steven Cox speak this morning. You can view the presentation here:
You can view the session at:
San Diego – Social Media Breakfast 6
We went over our top 10 in 10 and found some great new stuff going on in social media this month. Here is what I grabbed,
- Twitter Tees: Twitter launches official Threadless T-shirt store. Twitter and Threadless have partnered up to bring Twitter T-shirts to the masses. Tweets on Tees Example: In space no one can hear your Tweet.
- Patrick Swayze not dead despite Twitter reports: Traditional media reported it and social media helped spread the news only it was false.
- Iran-A social media election held on June 12, 2009: twitter is the best place to follow what’s happening in real time. YouTube has video content from inside Iran.
- What is Twitters value to Dell Computers?: The Twitter account @dellourles-Tweets discount offers for Dell products has generated more than 2 million in sales in 2 years, making it the biggest concrete business on Twitter.
- Twitter plans to conquer the Tube with a TV show: Twitter has partnered with Reveille productions and Brillstein Entertainment to develop an unscripted series we know that it’s going to be a competitive TV series which will “harness Twitter to put player on the trail of celebrities”.
- How 2 roommates saved a dogs life using Twitter: Twitter has found a heartwarming use. 2 roommates found a Pit-bull on the side of the road injured. They took him to vet and needed $400 to amputate in order to keep the dog from being euthanized. The 2 girls set up a Paypal account and used Twitter to raise money. They raised $500, so they used the remaining $100 for food for the dog.
- The United Nations Environment Program: The UN has engaged in a really cool Twitter campaign for every follower @unepandyou gets by midnight June 5, 2009 the program will plant a tree with a cap of 100,000 trees.
- E-Commerce tool BillMyParents allows teens to enhance social experience: parents are able to manage teen’s purchases on social networking sites with a new payment system that enables teenagers to purchase goods and services on social networking sites and e-commerce sites, but this gives parents full control over whether to either accept or decline the child’s purchases.
- Bing: Microsoft launching new rival to Google: Microsoft plans on spending 80-100 million dollars in ad campaigns. Google spent about 25 million dollars in 2008.
- Another Facebook phising scam: Scammers continue to exploit Facebook. From a site called Areps.at, like other scams it asks you to input your Facebook username and password, with a design that looks similar to Facebook. If you give them this info all your friends will get the message telling them to go to Areps.at and the scam will spread like a wildfire.
We ended the session with Feedback 5, which allowed a couple people to present some issues they’ve been facing with their own social media campaigns.
A big thanks to Milano Coffee Co. for having us and to Steven Cox for speaking. You can follow TakeLessons on Twitter @Take_Lessons
A special big thanks to UserVoice for sponsoring this month’s breakfast. You can follow them on Twitter @uservoice
Next Session: TBD More details will be available on the SMBSD website soon.