Brian McDonald is a busy guy! He is marketing director and/or VP for three companies: Zencos, and Site Dynamics – both related to SAS software, and SignalShare, an event Wi-Fi provider. He recently spoke about how these companies use social media and gave us some excellent tips on social media in general.
Brian’s companies use social media in a variety of ways, specifically blogs, Twitter, LinkedIn and You Tube. Most interesting to me is SignalShare, which is using a total social media approach – no traditional media at all. SignalShare provides temporary Wi-Fi, data collection and analysis for live events. It made a big splash launching at the Social Media Business Forum. Signal Share provided the Wi-Fi for the event – full of very heavy users – all Tweeting away – and it went really well. I’ve been to too many conferences with terrible connectivity and the SMBF was a shining exception to that experience!
Brian also discussed challenges and opportunities of social media:
Some Challenges
- Big challenge is selling internally – getting people who are used to controlling all messaging to accept an open, interactive communications environment
- Measuring ROI – social media has clearly generated leads, but it is difficult to tie it to revenue
- Social Media is ideal for sales people, but the tools can be problematic for them
Some Opportunities
- Lead generation
- Allows consumers access to company leadership
- Peers can connect and discover new resources
- Can respond to criticism and crises quickly.
This is just a sample of Brian’s insights on social media. We also covered thoughts about Twitter lists, electronic business cards and blogging in 250 – 500 words. Blogs should finish with a point of discussion. So here is one for this post: What other challenges and opportunities do you see for social media in business?
