Podcast: Play in new window | Download
The Social Media Club Atlanta hosted it’s most recent gathering at Manuel’s Tavern in the Highlands neighborhood. The event really solidified for Cameron and I that there is a burgeoning social media marketing scene in Atlanta.
We met some really cool people here locally who are also going through the process of establishing their networks and providing their expertise to either clients or employers. It would be great to help us post-meeting to see info about who attended, and who we might want to connect with on Twitter and other social platforms.
Acting in our previous businesses, we haven’t attended many of these types of events because they turn out to be groups of people trying to impress one another by name dropping clients and proclaiming expertise through buzzword hyperbole. There was some of that going on Thursday night, but actually the social media space appears to be different (at least for the time being). I think there was an attempt by many to truly get beyond the “buzzword bingo” and more after helping to develop the group expertise.
The stated topic of conversation was social media in retailing …
There are some customer service aspects to SM in retail of course that could be explored in depth:
- listening tools in order to hear the online conversations
- ways to be responsive to what customers are stating
- sharing relevant information about policies and pricing structures
- product support
- understanding customers expectations
…….. but it turned mostly to a discussion about Spam & Twitter.
One attendee brought up a project that he is working on, where during the checkout process you can tweet to your friends about the purchase and get an incentive discount. This generated a lot of discussion. His concern comes about because he has recognized an ethical dilemma in his technology. Although he can accomplish it, does he, and does the entire community want that capability to be an option during a transaction? He gets big props for even considering this issue.
In the end, I suspect the technology would end up being misused and potentially ruining the huge benefits derived from a service like Twitter. When you are directly compensated for sending a tweet, it equates to selling out the network for a price. You could do it, but it’s too big of a risk of turning off your entire community … It’s like hiding affiliate links in your tweet stream, or “selling Amway to your family”.
Don’t do it, there is no good to come of it. It’s the same backlash towards the Magpie ad network, which also entered into the conversation but actually did have some supporters in the group.
We were very glad to have attended the event and believe that we will be able to benefit greatly as the conversation continues to evolve within the group. We would like to suggest scheduling a followup session that excludes the dominant topic of Twitter, so that we can focus the session on all of the other elements within social media. We could help each other determine the best practices for using all of the elements of social media in retailing.
The sponsor for the night was a blog aggregator called ReGator .. they were in the top three of Mashables Open Web Awards which should be announced later this week. (Followup note: It looks like Regator lost to Hubdub.com in their category — Congats on making it this far guys, best of luck going forward!)
