Get social or die!

Jeremiah Owyang’s workshop today flew by in a whirr of audience interaction as we delved into the world of social media. This is a guy who really knows what he’s talking about! Jeremiah is a web-strategist, customer experience and brand champion. On Twitter he has over 80,000 followers… and even his dog has a following on Twitter which most leaves most of us in the dust!

One of my favourite takeaways from Jeremiah session was that saying you need a social media strategy is ‘like saying you need a hammer strategy to build a house!’ It’s important to remember that Twitter and Facebook are just tools, not business strategies in themselves. We should focus on our business goals and use social media to build towards these goals.

And an insightful warning from Jeremiah – we must be careful our interaction with customers via social media doesn’t encourage them to YELL at their friends through online channels when they want to attract out attention.

During the session we went through a simulation of a social media crisis… How would you respond to a vocal customer sharing a negative experience through his social media channels? Would you be tempted to ignore them and hope they went away? What if this experience snow-balled through the online world then attracted the attention of the traditional media?

Rather than giving you the answers through a blow-by-blow account of the session, I’m going to leave you with the strong recommend that you take the time to watch the video once it’s posted to his Amplify profile page later in the week. It’s an investment worth making whether or not your work involves social media.

Or if you’re curious as to how he’s attracted such a massive following on Twitter, check out his blog post 'How I use Twitter, and you?'  Genius!

Blogpost by Carla Ellerby from the Amplify team @carlaroo