Brian Solis on the State of Social Media

In our last post, we mentioned that we had been to hear Brian Solis speak downtown about the state of social media. We’ve wanted to talk a bit about Brian’s presentation and have, frankly, just now had time to sit down and digest our notes from that evening. It was enlightening on a few different levels.

One of the first things Kiran and I noticed that night was that there were certain things that we know and do as almost second nature, that had to be pointed out to some of the old-school PR-types in the room. And I’m not slamming or judging them at all in saying this (neither, I believe, was Brian Solis). I totally get it (I used to practice law. Lawyers are not exactly known for being on the cutting edge of very much). They’ve done things a certain way for a very long time. And it can be so hard to embrace change.

Maybe this is where our varying backgrounds are a true asset to K2Media. We’re not entrenched in any traditional process and are eager to network and learn more about emerging philosophies and technologies.

So, here’s the basic message from Brian’s talk, I think: We have to stop shouting and broadcasting our message to the masses and start talking to people individually. Social media is more about sociology than technology – although over the internet, these interactions are very human.

Social media is allowing people to connect in so many ways that were never before even thought of. Below is Brian’s Conversation Prism diagram, depicting exactly how many places people are connecting online:

The Conversation Prism by Brian Solis and Jesse Thomas (click the image to enlarge it a bit…)

These aren’t just places to blast your commercial messages. The word “conversation” is key. There must be listening and observing in addition to talking if social media is going to be useful to a company. You must be able to react to what you hear about yourself via social media. In that regard, monitoring is tremendously important and cannot be allowed to slip through the cracks.

We also talked about “influencers” – identifying who they are with regard to any particular client and understanding that there may be multiple, overlapping markets of influencers, then focusing our efforts very precisely towards those influencers. Social media optimization cannot be forgotten as a tool in this effort.

And, there’ s a ton more in my notes that I either (1) can’t decipher or (2) don’t have the energy to delve into right now. But we left Brian’s talk energized and feeling very confident in the messages we convey to clients about social media.

(Thanks to the AMC Mainstreet Theatre for hosting the event!)