Seminar on Social Media

I had the privilege last evening to attend the American Marketers Association meeting in Tampa, FL with the topic of Creating Business Value in an Open & Connected World. The seminar featured Mike Haines, Facebook’s Central Region VP; Sam Feldman, Account Manager for Google’s National Agency Team; Kevin Hourigan, CEO Bayshore Solutions; Tom Hoof, Dir. of Tampa Bay Ray’s marketing team; Peter Taylor, Dir. of Mktg. for Sarasota Memorial Hospital; and Douglas Sparks, VP of Operations for Offshore Sailing Schools.

The speakers discussed the latest social media topics such as Facebook, You Tube, Google, Blogs, Mobile Media, Twitter and more. The local marketing executives described their initial forays into the various social media mediums. The topics were timely, informative, and well presented. Coming from the ‘Baby Boomer’ generation, all the new technologies and media sources are intimidating and somewhat foreign to me. But, I’m determined to at least try to keep up and not become a dinosaur. Our company needs to grow for the sake of all our employees (and their families) and we can’t do that if we don’t stay on top of the latest technology and resources. If we don’t do it, our competitors certainly will.

If I learned nothing else last evening, the statistics are staggering. There are over 400 million Facebook users. Some of these have to be your customers, no matter what you sell. You Tube has over 448 million new visitors per month and over 1 billion visitors per day. If you don’t have video on it, your company is missing out. You could not afford to buy this much media exposure, but the real beauty is that both of these media venues are absolutely free.

I encourage readers to assist in my education. Tell me about your experiences with the different social media forms and how they can and do help your companies. What did you try that worked really well? What pitfalls can you offer the rest of us to beware of? I worry that ‘I don’t know, what I don’t know.’ I feel like I’ve just touched the tip of an iceberg and I want to see and learn more about it. Help teach me about the unknown.

The author, Marge Bonura, is the Director of Sales & Marketing for New England Machinery, Inc. (NEM). NEM is a leading manufacturer of bottle unscramblers, cappers, orienters, retorquers, lidders, pluggers, pump sorter/placers, scoop feeders, hopper elevators and much more. The company has been in business since 1974 selling to the food, beverage, pharmaceutical, personal care, chemical, household products, automotive and other industries. For more information on NEM, visit their website at www.neminc.com.