2009 MIMA Summit: My Top Ten Takeaways

Exciting! Inspiring! Thought-provoking! Oh my!
Yes. Another MIMA Summit has come and gone.

Most attendees could talk about any one statement from any one session for hours, but in the interest of brevity – a favorite with interactive (web) after all – I’ve combined my top ten takeaways from the Summit. (Or at least the sessions I attended.)

Some of these points are overarching ideas I heard throughout the day and others were just some ideas I found extra-profound in specific sessions.

1. The magic number: 1%.
   For many presenters, starting with Jackie Huba’s keynote and continuing to my last session with Scott Monty, the magic 1% of your audience was a topic.
   You must reach the 1% of your audience who will be vocal and who will influence others. Then, the rest will come along. Get some of this 1% to defend you and be proactive in doing so, and you may just be set for life.
2. Interactive is already leading traditional media.
   We often talk about the way that everything is moving to digital. But, overwhelmingly, we’re already there – particularly when it comes to marketing. To kick off the Summit, Jackie Huba gave several examples of traditional media amplifying buzz that started on the web. The examples continued in session after session all day.
3. Always be “on”. Response time, planning time, projections – everything is shorter.
   Crisis time is minutes, not days or weeks. Your customers are online after “business hours” and on the weekends. Not only is there a short time-span for crisis situations, there’s a short time span for implementing your campaigns, too.
   You can see a big change in a short time. According to Scott Monty, Ford became the #12 most social brand in just months, rather than in the 3 years the company planned for their goal. Instead of planning for years, make “bite size” plans.
4. You don’t control your brand.
   You can try to influence your brand, and you can be pretty successful with it. But the days when marketers could scream about their brand at the top of their lungs and that was the brand – they’re over. As Seth Godin succinctly put it during his keynote, “Your brand isn’t what you say it is, it’s what other people say it is.”
5. Social media is measurable.
   Social media marketing may not be measured exactly as we’re used to measuring marketing, but it can be measured. There are tools out there to measure the buzz and even some tools to measure ROI, like the Social Networking ROI Calculator Laura Chavoen mentioned in her presentation. (Haven’t had a chance to look at this yet – does anyone know where I can find the presentation?)
   People are already tracking ROI. Lee Odden gave some great examples: Dell has generated $3 million in sales from their Dell Outlet Twitter account, and Umi, a sushi restaurant in California, knows they get about 5 new guests every night who heard about them on Twitter.
   In an even simpler, more logical way, though, if people talk about your brand online, and some of those people buy from you, you’ve been successful.
   Finally, social media marketing gives us something new and very important to measure – engagement. Before social media marketing, relationships with your customers were much harder to measure.
6. The more things change, the more they stay the same.
   We all know we’re in the midst of a completely new form of marketing that’s at times both invigorating/exciting and overwhelming/frightening. What was clear throughout the day, though, is that interactive marketing, particularly social media marketing, means nothing without some of the basic marketing principles that have held true since the beginning of time.
   Every session I attended said to start your work with a clear set of objectives. Again, Seth Godin stated this concisely when he gave his steps for creating a movement with your brand. The first step was to be remarkable (worthy of remarks). If you haven’t completed this step, he says, you have to go back to it and start again before moving on. So, if you don’t have a good product and some sound objectives for telling people about it, all the fancy interactive marketing in the world isn’t going to make it remarkable. (As Seth also said, you can’t just “sprinkle some of that fancy new media stuff on top”.)
7. Our role as marketers is changing; we’re listeners and relationship builders, and in some ways, our customers are the marketers.
   As marketers, we’re now in the business of listening to our customers online, and then taking this information back to shape our businesses. Of course, there’s general awareness to be created. A creative, attention getting story or a great promotion doesn’t hurt either. But if we listen enough to create a great brand, our 1% (vocal customers) will catch on and take care of the marketing for us.
8. Be relevant and genuine; provide value.
   There’s an overwhelming amount of information available to people today. Sending out content without a purpose isn’t going to get you anywhere. Neither will sending your message out to anyone and everyone. If someone has no interest in your product/service, it doesn’t matter what content you throw at them or through which channel, they still won’t care.
   Tell a real, genuine story that’s worth talking about to people that want to talk about it. It’s not too hard to imagine, then, that these people will talk about it.
9. Track your efforts, and listen to the data.
   Data isn’t everything and no one is suggesting you get too focused on it. But it can help you determine what’s working, so you can stop what’s not. You might make a mistake, but if you realize this mistake, it’s never too late to improve. While consistency and staying true to your objectives are important, don’t cling to something that’s just not working.
10. Social media is risky and scary, but that doesn’t mean we should ignore it.
    Your customers are talking about you. Not paying attention doesn’t mean it’s not happening; not taking them seriously doesn’t make their issues go away. (I liked Laura Chavoen’s reference to ROI as ramifications of ignoring.) Jumping into social media and talking to your customers can be nerve-wracking, but they’re going to talk whether you’re there or not. So, wouldn’t you like a chance to influence them?