I recently attended BlogWell; a social media conference hosted by Gaspedal. Hearing different companies explain their take on how they do social media was informative and helpful.  The following summarizes some of primary themes that caught my attention.

The main question seems to be, how do companies operate in the social networking environment. From hearing the speakers, it seems to be clear that no one is an expert. No one offered up a sure fire formula for success. What did emerge were a lot of similar themes and recommended practices. I think this statement frames the issue well and makes a strong case for participation;  “A brand is no longer what a brand says it is, it’s what consumers tell each other it is.”

Listening

The theme of listening was frequently mentioned. The paradigm seems to have switched. Companies no longer simply push information to the consumer. Social media allows consumers opinions to carry more weight. There are many tools available that all a company to track discussion on a brand. Some are free some are paid. Some of these include Google Alerts, Conversation Line, TruCast, Radian6, twitter-alerts, and many more.

One speaker emphasized knowing the customer deeply. Listening allows us to understand the customer and speak directly to them. One thing to note is that you don’t have to have an official presence on a social media site, in order to monitor it. For example, you don’t have to have a Digg account to monitor Digg.

Gradual Build

There seemed be a consensus on taking action in the social media community. The consensus was to “just do it”, to least try something. There was encouragement to follow this process – do something, analyze results, modify and build.

Content

More than one speaker mentioned that obtaining content was the toughest part. I’ve found this true on websites, and it continues to be true for populating blogs, facebook, etc.

There is a question of what content to post and what to keep in mind regarding content. A guy from the Mayo Clinic spoke a great deal on the reuse of content. For example, radio programs get turned into podcasts, which get populated on an RSS blog page. News stories get posted in a blog format while being mentioned on other sites. He also mentioned that each medium has different restrictions. Online use allows more depth and additional content (video, audio) than a restricted news release. So content cannot only be reused but also modified to be most appropriate for the medium. Beyond content reuse that can be controlled internally, using social bookmarking services (Digg, Reddit, etc.) allows your content to be repopulated externally.

Presenting a Human Voice to the Discussion

After listening and understanding your audience, one can now speak to and add value into the discussion. An example of this would be responding to complaints and correcting misperceptions. The opposite of this would be blindly placing a stock announcement into a message board. The goal is to feel genuine and organic. Presenting a human voice means creating individual connections by opening up to the consumers. This creates a human relationship with a brand, rather than just existing as a faceless company.

Another suggestion included tying into other organizations, adding links to other groups or companies. This can be a huge drive for traffic, while helping to build brand recognition externally.

Yet another suggestion was to inform consumers of company charitable and community involvement. As corporations are often vilified, I see more and more examples of companies showcasing their community involvement.

People like to know what is going on behind the scenes. Another suggestion was to present stories to the consumer that they wouldn’t ordinarily hear. This could be anything from explaining a product process or showcasing an employee job description/profile. This is another example of something that gives a face to a company.

Invite Sharing

One of the most interesting examples of initiating sharing, was given by Procter and Gamble. They ran banner ads that invited customers to share their opinions on a Dawn detergent. They received thousands of comments. It seems that if consumers feel passionately about Dawn, any product should be able to draw interest within social media.

The Mayo Clinic invites patients to share their stories. This not only allows the Mayo clinic to understand the patients, but it has often generated news/blog content for them.

Inviting sharing was also mentioned as a replacement for focus groups. People are already using social media to share opinions, it’s just a matter of tuning in and listening to the existing discussion.

In the past there has been reluctance from marketers to engage consumer opinion on a product detail page. Stan Joosten from P&G made a comment that I thought spoke particularly well to this issue. He said something to the effect of “People will always say nasty things about your product, it’s just whether you listen or not.” Not engaging customer feedback is equivalent to sticking your fingers in your ears and pretending that no one is talking. Negative feedback should be valuable to a company. Responding directly to comments online gives us credibility and respect.

Initiating sharing often takes incentives. Molson, spoke of multiple ways that they offered their product as a way to initiate discussion and learn from the customer. Providing samples to key consumers allows them to discuss and promote products to their sphere of influence.

Hopefully some of these ideas were helpful. I’d love to hear your perspective or stories on how you have seen social media work well.