Published: August 28, 2009 06:07 pm      

Businesses adopt social media for 2-way communication

EDMOND — OKLAHOMA CITY — As more than 125 people watched a Twitter demonstration Wednesday morning at the Saxum Social Media Summit, they learned from a tweet that Oklahoma City Mayor Mick Cornett will run for a third term. Encouraged at the beginning of the summit to leave their cell phones on, members of the group began to retweet the news.

Renzi Stone, president and chief executive officer of Saxum Public Relations, and Jim Quillen, founder and chief executive officer of Connect Social Media, had proof in Cornett’s successful use of Twitter that social media platforms work. When the tweet appeared, they had been advising the group of business leaders and public relations professionals meeting at the Waterford Marriott in Oklahoma City to start using microblogs, such as Twitter, as well as social profile sites, video sharing, blogs and social bookmarking to reach their market audience.

Stone offered another, more personal, example of the power of Twitter.

“This morning, I had not even gotten out of my bed before I found out Ted Kennedy died,” Stone said. “How did I do that? On Twitter.” Four news feeds had brought that information to him using Twitter. Following the news, tweeters began to post their own comments.

To any members of the audience who still thought of social media as a fad for their children, Stone remarked, “That’s so 2006.” Twitter demographics show that most users fall in the age group 25 - 34. For Facebook, the fastest growing age group is age 35-plus.

The main advantage of social media for adults in business is that it offers two-way communication. Stone used Comcast as an example to demonstrate effective two-way communication between a company and its clients. Comcast, he said, knew they had a problem with customer service, so the company made a conscious decision to provide people a forum. They started a Twitter page called comcastcares. On Wednesday, comcastcares had 27,920 followers on a page managed by their director of digital care and his team.

Stone demonstrated to attendees the impact of Comcast’s use of social media. Typing “comcast sucks” on Google at the summit resulted in 106,000 hits, while typing in “comcast cares” resulted in 7.l million hits.

Several members of the audience expressed concern about the potential to lose control of their marketing messages with two-way communication. One audience member suggested that a disgruntled ex-employee might use social media to spread negative information about their past employer. Stone agreed that was possible, but countered with the suggestion that current employees would be able to respond with a more positive story.

YouTube, the No. 2 search engine after Google, also offers the possibility for two-way communication. The search engine has 200 million videos viewed every day, yet continues to be an underutilized social networking tool, according to the presenters. “If you have a business or organization, you should have some video that you have posted to YouTube,” Stone said. “We all can create video. We all can post video.”

Stone said video can be created with a smart phone or an expensive HD camera. “If you want to look bigger than you are, splurge for the HD camera. You can look like you are a very robust, active brand with a great video,” Stone said. “It doesn’t matter if you’re operating out of your living room.”

While the platforms are free, Quillen suggested, their content development and management are not. Seventy percent of business and organizations using social media, however, report a reduction in their marketing costs.

Presenters also suggested attendees look at WordPress and Blogspot to create a blog for their organizations. In addition to providing company information on a business Facebook page, every CEO should have a blog, they said. For a good blog use example, they suggested reviewing how British Prime Minister Gordon Brown uses his blog, gordon-brown.blogspot.

The two further recommended considering the social bookmarking platforms Digg and Delicious as potential business tools.

“It takes time to set some of these up,” said Quillen, an Edmond resident, “but once they’re in place, you really have an opportunity to have very dynamic content all the time.”

The presenters said they couldn’t predict which social media platforms were likely to see continued growth. Stone recommended, however, that audience members become aware of all the available social media tools and start small with something they could handle.

Following the summit, Natalie Lovenburg, corporate communications specialist for Bank of Oklahoma, said she believed in “embracing social media and perfecting your skills as a professional.” She said she enjoyed the opportunity to “dive in” and get the tips and learn about new applications. “I thought it was very useful.”



ktoppins@edmondsun.com | 341-2121, ext. 114