Panelists Simon Salt, Natanya Anderson, and Lionel Menchaca and moderator Aaron Strout led an engaging discussion on the value of content marketing for brands at Austin’s 7th Social Media Breakfast, held Friday morning, May 8th, at la Madeline Country French Cafe in North Austin.
Some of the highlights:
Aaron (@AaronStrout), CMO at Powered, noted what what good content marketing is not: “a company trying to force its tongue down your throat” as soon as you introduce yourself.
For Simon (@IncSlinger), the CEO of IncSlingers, the challenge for brands is to produce not just “good content” but “social content,” where the ownership of the content is actually unclear. A good example: Disney’s Moms Panel.
Natanya (@NatanyaP), VP of Content of Powered, explained that most brands aren’t passion brands (Disney being an obvious exception), and that good content can serve as the “proxy for the passion.” She also argued that content should support users “lifestyle needs” over time, and not only during the period of the transaction.
Lionel (@LionelAtDell), chief blogger at Dell, recounted the company’s early efforts in social media and the key lesson his team has learned along the way: “content needs to be shareable.”
Cost: The event itself is free to attend; attendees pay for their own food and drinks
Program overview: Content marketing
In an age where more and more consumers are taking a “search and click” approach to buying new products, it’s becoming harder for brands to differentiate themselves from the pack.
As pricing pressures continue to mount, companies are turning to compelling online content as a way to drive ongoing, active engagement around their brands and products. The aim: increased customer loyalty.
Creating user-centric content requires a shift of traditional brand/product messaging and the development of a new communication approach.
Austin’s Social Media Breakfast 7 will be your opportunity to hear from a panel of content and community professionals, who will discuss:
* How to bootstrap online community with professional content
* Best practices and case studies from companies that are seeing measurable results
* Content that spans the brand content continuum: lifestyle, category and product
BreakingPoint Systems‘ Kyle Flaherty informed and entertained in his talk on the business-to-business applications of Twitter at last week’s SMB Austin 6, held downtown in the scenic office space of Tocquigny.
Here are a few #SMBAUstin tweets from the morning that offer a flavor of Kyle’s presentation:
It’s time for another Austin Social Media Breakfast! Join us in downtown Austin for a presentation/discussion on business-to-business applications of Twitter with Kyle Flaherty, director of marketing at Austin startup, BreakingPoint Systems.
In this session, Kyle will discuss the use of Twitter for B2B marketing and lead generation, including a case study from his work at BreakingPoint. He’ll also present the current challenges for the BreakingPoint Twitter feed and lead an interactive brainstorm and discussion.
About Kyle Flaherty
Kyle Flaherty has a true passion for technology B2B marketing, having worked in the industry for more than 12 years. In his work, Kyle strives to talk directly to an audience about a technology product or service.
Currently, Kyle is the director of marketing at BreakingPoint Systems, where he leads all things marketing, including the company’s online community, BreakingPoint Labs, and its robust Twitter presence.
7:30-8:15 a.m. Event begins. Food, drink, and mingling.
8:15-9:00 a.m. Presentation by Kyle Flaherty and discussion
9:00-9:30 a.m. More mingling and wrap-up
Breakfast is free and sponsored by Tocquigny
SMB6 will be sponsored and hosted by Austin-based Tocquigny, an interactive marketing and advertising agency. Have a look at this short video, featuring Tocquigny’s Jason Ford, for a sneak peek of the venue.
Tocquigny (@Tocquigny on Twitter) will provide cofee and light refreshments.
Marketers, PR pros, entrepreneurs, bloggers, videobloggers, podcasters, students, new-media enthusiasts, Twitterers, community managers, recruiters, online social networkers, etc. are all welcome!
Making online media?
Please use the SMBAustin tag.
Questions?
Please contact:
Amie Paxton: Paxton - DOT - Amie - AT - gmail - DOT - com
— or — Bryan Person: Bryan - AT - SocialMediaBreakfast - DOT - com
When:
Wednesday, January 28, 2009, 7:30 - 9:30 a.m. (CST)
Where: Curra’s Grill
614 E. Oltorf St.
Austin, TX 78704
Phone: (512) 444-0012
Parking note: Overload parking is available in the abandoned lot adjacent to the restaurant.
SMB5 program
Our main guests at Social Media Breakfast 5 will be Alan Graham and Rachel Patterson from Austin-based Mobile Loaves & Fishes (MLF), an organization that has been serving the city’s homeless and working poor since 1998.
MLF is already active in social media, using video, blogging, Facebook, and Twitter (see links) …
… but as Alan explains in the video conversation with Bryan Person above, what is really lacking is a comprehensive social media strategy. That’s where we come in!
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Agenda for Austin’s SMB 5
7:30-8:00 a.m.
Event begins. Food, drink, and mingling.
8:00-9:20 a.m.
1) Brief Q&A with Alan and Rachel; 2) Strategy sessions in small groups
9:20-9:30 a.m.
Wrap-up
Breakfast is free and sponsored by LiveWorld
Austin’s SMB5 is sponsored by LiveWorld, a social-networking agency that builds, manages, and moderates online communities for brands.
Thanks to the sponsorship, there will be no charge for food and drink for the attendees.
Here is the Curra’s Grill menu. Please try to arrive early if you plan to order food, as we plan to start the formal program promptly at 8:00.
Marketers, PR pros, entrepreneurs, bloggers, videobloggers, podcasters, students, new-media enthusiasts, Twitterers, community managers, recruiters, online social networkers, etc. are all welcome!
Making online media?
Please use the SMBAustin tag.
Questions?
Please contact:
Amie Paxton: Paxton - DOT - Amie - AT - gmail - DOT - com
— or — Bryan Person: Bryan - AT - SocialMediaBreakfast - DOT - com
Since starting the first Social Media Breakfast in August 2007, Bryan Person has seen the Breakfast idea turn into a franchise, spreading from Boston to over a dozen cities in the US, Singapore and Canada.
What’s a brand without a logo? To that end, the various Breakfast organizers have come up with several options. We’ve been debating the choices among ourselves and we’ve narrowed down the options to the following four. We’d like your help to pick one.
Note: The inclusion of specific cities in the logo are for example purposes only. Each city will have the option to add its own name to the final logo.
To see the logos at full size, please click the thumbnails below:
Logo 1 Logo 2 Logo 3 Logo 4
As well, we welcome your comments below. We’ll spend the next week or so gathering your votes and feedback, and then be back in touch to announce the winner. Thanks!
3. Tim reminded us that a medium is just a “means of human communication.” Media include everything from printed newspapers and blogs to smoke signals and church sermons.
4. Messages easily jump from one medium to the next “because people want to communicate;” they also “tend to use the media available to them for much the same human purposes over time.”
5. Was Martin Luther that different from today’s blogging superstars? He knew how to take advantage of a new technology of his day, the printing press (not to mention word of mouth), to spread ideas and build community.
6. How did Bob Hope stay so popular throughout his life? He knew how to port what was essentially the same act across multiple media (vaudeville, radio, television, etc.) through the years.
7. Corporate bloggers who only talk about their products and services would be wise to take a cue from Tim’s neighborhood hardware merchant, who will refer Tim to another store when he doesn’t have the product Tim needs on a particular day. In so doing, the merchant gains Tim trust and becomes a resource Tim will willingly come back to again and again.
8. Tim echoed Chris Brogan’s sentiment that newspapers are not in the newspaper business. Rather, they’re in the newsmaking business and need to deliver that news through whatever media/device their customers demand (newspaper, website, RSS, mobile phone, etc.). Understanding that distinction, Tim said, is crucial to papers’ survival and evolution.
9. Tim suggests that we’re only in the very early stages of development of social media, and that associated unpredictable social, economic, and personal changes are still very much to come.
10. Once again, Austin’s social media community showed its enthusiasm and willingness to come together, share, and learn.
Listen to Tim
Thanks to Karen Kreps, we have an audio recording from Tim’s presentation. Click below to stream or download.
Those of us active in the social media realm sometimes talk about it as though it’s all-new and all-different, an unprecedented development in the history of human communications. But for all the new technology that the social media employ — and all the unique opportunities they bring — they’re not quite unprecedented. In fact, in many ways today’s social media parallel the earlier development of other media, from books and radio to the mimeograph and the fax machine.
This short talk will take the SMB audience on a funny (and painless!) tour of the history of modern media, reaching as far back as town criers and Gutenberg’s press to unearth some important lessons that we can apply to our own day. As we discuss similarities and contrasts between older and newer media, we’ll gain new insights into the use, finances, control, technological limitations, and social impact of all types of media.
Austin’s Social Media Breakfast 4 event information
When
Tuesday, December 02, 2008 from 7:30 AM - 9:30 AM (CT)
Peter Kim led a spirited discussion on the value of social media marketing at Austin’s Social Media Breakfast 3, held this morning at Rudy’s “Country Store” & Bar-B-Q.
Peter, who’s currently building an Austin Ventures-backed enterprise social computing startup, asked several pointed questions of our group:
Does social media marketing matter at all?
Does social media marketing scale?
Why are enterprises still blocking employee access to social computing tools and applications?
Do A-list bloggers really care about “the conversation?”
Peter’s generally not shy about stirring things up, and today was no exception.
Take a listen to my own conversation with Peter, immediately following the breakfast
Peter Kim on social media marketing: a conversation on Austin's Social Media Breakfast 3 [6:26m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download
To keep up with Peter’s daily take on social media marketing, follow his Being Peter Kim blog.
Author, blogger, and word-of-mouth expert Jackie Huba led an engaging discussion on the value of niche communities on Tuesday morning during Austin’s second Social Media Breakfast, held at Genuine Joe Coffeehouse in North Austin.
Jackie kicked off her talk with case studies from Fiskars and Maker’s Mark, two companies who’ve established communities through ambassador groups. With Fiskars, that community didn’t come together around their actual products (such as scissors), but around the hobby of scrapbooking.
Also emerging was a lively discussion around the value of “lurkers” in communities, a topic attendee Kyle Flaherty and Shel Israel have since blogged about.
After the breakfast, Jackie sat down with me for a one-on-one interview to recap the highlights of her talk, including:
Why Jackie thinks niche social networks are the “plastics of the future”
How customer communities can build loyalty and encourage participation
How Fiskars and Maker’s Mark have cultivated brand ambassadors.
