Spending the Weekend at Social South (aka #SoSo)

We here at [meta]marketer are advocates of recognizing any potentially meaningful tools that may exist in the marketer’s toolbox. But tools, whether a hammer or a broadcast email, have unique characteristics, and so we regard each tool with the following observations:

• You should measure carefully when using any tool.
• Each tool is not relevant to each situation.
• Using a tool to address a problem it’s not designed to solve can often cause bigger problems. But it can sometimes lead to ingenious new uses for that tool.

Luckily, I’m spending the weekend surrounded by people who generally seem to share these views and who are involved in advancing the ingenious uses for the tools we know collectively as social media. The context is a conference called Social South (known on Twitter by the hashtag #SoSo) and it has attracted respected thinkers in the field such as Andrew Keen, Mack Collier, Beth Harte, and quite a few others.

As I mentioned a few weeks ago, I recently spoke at a seminar at Lipscomb University on social media, and the thrust of my presentation was on analysis and risk management. (You can see the slides from that presentation on my SlideShare account.) I have already attended a session here about planning and strategy which dealt heavily with measurability and accountability. It makes my heart glad to hear people discuss social media with the rigor and discipline that might be applied to your average direct marketing campaign.

In short, social media (for as long as that term is still relevant) and the associated tools that comprise the field are coming to be managed as a marketing channel. While that may be the beginning of the end of loosy-goosey job descriptions for “social media gurus,” it also signals a maturing process that was necessary for respect and revenue allocation in mainstream business.

If you haven’t evaluated where social media fits in your marketing strategy, you may be missing out on your most profitable channel. We can help. Contact us today to schedule a consultation.