What I learned from Social Media Show & Tell
My Social Media Marketing professor is
, founder and CEO of Dooley Media. Dooley Media is a social media consulting firm and brand building agency located in Cincinnati. The company hosts events called “Social Media Show & Tell” inviting prominent people in the Cincinnati social world to speak and give advice to all people who eat, sleep, and breathe social media. Unfortunately I couldn’t attend due to travel with work but thanks to the wonderful people of Twitter, I was able to virtually attend. Here’s what I learned from the Twitterverse.Your brand extends to social media
Something that marketers sometimes forget is that your company brand extends to social media. As Gina Gaetano mentioned during her speech, it’s important to understand that every interaction on social stems from an engagement with your brand.
“Remember, there is a person behind every single like or comment who had an experience with your brand.” — Gina Gaetano
This also extends to interactions with your brand on social. Anybody can interact with any brand on social media, they don’t need to already have purchased your product. Keep in mind that some of the people who interact with you online are having their first interaction with your brand. Because of this, your brand voice online needs to be the same as the brand voice consumers get when they interact with your actual product.
Trust and transparency is everything
The Keynote speaker of the event, Todd Henry, discusses the importance of being transparent and building trust among consumers.
“Trust is built through transparency and honesty. Don’t be afraid to say ‘I don’t know.” — Todd Henry
This concept of trust and transparency has become huge recently in light of the Apple battery issues and Facebook with the Cambridge Analytica data breach. When the Apple battery issues first started, people were obviously pointing fingers at the company and expected a true and honest response. While the response that Apple gave wasn’t exactly the best and what everyone wanted, they did get some clarity on why Apple was doing it and what they’re doing to fix the issue. Most people weren’t exactly thrilled with the response because it was a typical corporate “cover our butt” response but they were pleased with the ability to switch their batteries for free or at a very nominal fee. People quickly got over this issue because of Apple’s true and honest response.
More recently, Facebook has been under the scope because of the fact that they allowed Cambridge Analytica to collect data of millions of users across the world but mainly in the United States. While Facebook thought they solved the issue a little while ago when they asked Cambridge Analytica to delete all their user data, they were quickly mistaken when they found that they still had all of the data — some of which was obtained without Facebook’s knowledge. In light of this, Facebook has been very open and honest about their mistake and are actively making corrections to prevent this from happening again. By limiting Facebook’s API, they are restricting the amount of data that advertisers and partners can gain about users. However, this has a negative impact on social media marketers. One of the largest impacts of this is the fact that the ability to target a very specific market is now limited due to this data breach.
Social Media Show & Tell
This has been an event that I’ve been following for a little while after seeing it blast across the Twitter world a year or two ago. I really wish I would have been able to attend in person and hope to be able to attend the next one. Nonetheless, the event seemed even more incredible than the past and they seem to just keep getting better and better. I’d recommend this event to anyone who enjoys social media, marketing, or likes to stay in tune with changes in the digital world. Huge shoutout to Matthew Dooley and Dooley Media to hosting this event and helping connect the social peeps in the Cincinnati area.
