Yesterday, social media extraordinaire Peter Shankman visited Delaware (yes, Delaware the state; no, not that county in Pennsylvania) and delivered a 90-minute keynote speech on social media. It was engaging, innovative, and downright hilarious. I knew I wanted to capture the essence of his talk on this blog, but instead of writing a long post with his top points, I decided to share his wisdom via tweets. Here are some of my favorite Shankman moments and, hopefully, you can learn a thing or two about your own social media strategies…
Shankman encouraged us to live tweet throughout the speech and told us he was honored, rather than offended, when 90% of the audience was looking down. However, not everyone understood the “live tweeting” concept, including one of our tablemates…
Talk about not getting it. Ouch.
Anyways, on to Shankman’s talk. He shared some foundational rules for social media...
And told us that the number of fans mean…nothing. Engagement means everything.
Make your customers brand ambassadors, and let them do PR for you.
“Writing” isn’t dead. In fact, it’s still the top skill in social media. We just need to know how to write digital content.
Don’t focus on the platform. Focus on the strategy behind it.
Know your audience and what they want. Then, give it to them. If you don’t, they won’t pay attention.
And, remember, social media is meant to generate revenue and contribute to the bottom line.
Any #PSinDE attendees out there? What were your favorite insights?
Great summary of Peter’s talk! More importantly, very smart use of your brethren’s tweets! You “tied it back to you!” And because you mentioned my tweet, of course now I must “promote it for you!” 🙂 It’s my pleasure.
Shankman was indeed an entertaining speaker. How clever of him to get so many people to promote his work so heavily for free. Will PR agencies become obsolete in the Age of Twitter?
Hi Abby, great post. It gives a really rounded view of how we can utilise relationships through social media. i think your final point is perhaps the most important, particularly when looking at political communications. Communicators on campaign teams need to know what their main objective is when using social media, is it engagement, pursuasion or revenue collection? We’ve already seen that social media gave Obama’s campaign a financial boost. Perhaps more campaign teams should follow that model and concentrate on revenue maximisation.