heading to nuclear tacos.

At “The evolution of the Independent Worker.”

Just finished a sweet brainstorm, in the hallway of the convention center. Great ideas.

The Core Conversations is a great idea that SXSW has outgrown. It no longer works, with 75 people/session.

Description:
If you think social media is all about clever corporate marketing on Facebook or quirky videos on YouTube, you’re missing an opportunity to change your company’s entire culture and operations. In fact, social media can affect how companies innovate, test ideas, recruit talent, measure performance, and interact with all their stakeholders. In his discussion “Going Social Now,” Shiv Singh, head of the Avenue A | Razorfish social media practice, will show you how the enterprise can use social media to improve your business practices. As part of his discussion, Shiv will discuss how the rise of social media has created a new form of marketing altogether, social influence marketing. Social influence marketing is about employing social media as part of the entire lifecycle of a marketing campaign, even beyond a campaign. You will walk away from this engaging discussion with ideas you can take back to the workplace based on real-world research and case studies.

Panelist:
Shiv Singh (Dir of Global Strate, Avenue A | Razorfish)

(Packed house - everyone and their brother wants in on the social bandwagon.)
This session was a little more basic than I expected - especially given the audience here. Regardless, this turned out to be a decent primer on the importance of incorporating social media into your marketing strategy. This would be a good podcast to download, if you’re a brand just dipping your toes into social media. (Or thinking about it.)

Highlights:
Using product example of shopping for a sofa. Can’t share it with friends, at Crate and Barrel.
Wouldn’t it be great if, instead, the Crate & Barrel site included:
+ Flickr photos of actual C&B customers, with their sofas?
+ YouTube vids of users cleaning a spill off of a sofa?
+ Ability to share all aspects of product features and content

What really matters:
Compliance
Identification
Internationalization

“We are more influenced by each other now, than ever before in history.”

Corporate websites - less meaningful than ever before. Used to be, I’d visit the corporate site for a brand that I had interest in. Instead, users are relying on the social sphere. (duh.)

Sharing matters. When I purchase a Crate and Barrel sofa, I’d like to know who the designer was for the sofa.

Everyone has their own constituencies. It’s our job to identify each of those audiences, and plan a strategy that has the ability to reach them all.

Centrality
People at the center of the network have the most influence.

Giant components - main audience
Middle components - major influencers, who bring their friends
Singletons - people just checking it out, because they’ve heard about it

Middle components will influence the singletons to become other middle components, ,and they all become a part of the giant components. (Starting to sound a little bit like biology, and amoebas, isn’t it?)

Showing really lame video spot that Razorfish produced for a hair gel brand. Supposed to be a ‘viral’. But it’s really boring production, IMO. (You can see that the piece only has a few hundred views.) Not the best example of creating the social sphere that his presentation sets up.

What’s next:
Social marketing continues to grow. (duh.)
Traditional marketing funnel transforms.
Social networks will matter more than corporate websites.
Engagement metrics will come to the forefront
The internet blends in with everything

At the convention center for another glorious day of Internet love.