The Future of Business on the Social Web

Last Friday, we packed up our suitcases and headed over to Durham, NC for the 2009 Social Media Business Forum.

It was a fantastic conference that brought together some of the brightest minds in the social media scene including Laura Fitton (author of Twitter for dummies), Jason Falls (Principal over at Social Media Explorer), John Andrews (Founder and Managing Partner at Collective Bias), and Lucretia Pruitt (Director of Social Media at Collective Bias.)

They spoke on the keynote panel addressing “the future of business on the social web” You can watch the video below.



Runtime 52min (Jump around with the timestamps below)


The future of business on the social web - Social Media Business Forum from Alter Imaging, Inc. on Vimeo.

Timestamps

1:10 The social business concept

2:00 Panera is a social company

2:20 “What it boils down to is engaging your customers in a new way.”

4:50 Magic Bullet remains the same: Right time, right person, right place. The reality of social media is about customer engagement

7:00 Question: What is changing in Social Media?

8:17 Honesty and transparency are important

9:35 Criticism is always a benefit to the business. Real insight from real people. The best kind of R&D to have.

11:05 What do companies need to do to start getting into social media? Listening

12:19 Social media hack : Listen, Learn, Care, Serve

15:01 Don’t be afraid of jumping into social media

15:30 Legal ramifications of social media

19:45 “How empirical are billboards?”

21:30 ROI for urinal cakes?

24:50 Social media should be adopted by many layers of the organizational structure and not just as a marketing function.

32:32 Fewer traditional media outlets will exist in the future and they will be focused on a more web centric model. This will happen through mass consolidation of many old school media companies

34:50 Question: “Is it important for businesses to own their content on their company site?” via @waynesutton

37:20 Don’t be selfish with your content

38:45 Engaging with customers in a real, authentic, and genuine way that is beneficial to them is key in social media

39:00 Fish where the fish actually are!

42:01 What other platforms does the panel use? Other than just twitter.

43:30 Forums are a great place to engage with niche audiences

45:30 Whrrl the twitter killer? Scoble says so.

49:20 Question: “How do we get people who don’t understand social media involved in the revolution?”

51:00 Real-time search is something to watch out for! Make sure you are prioritizing search