NOTES from 7/24 OCA meeting

Welcome new members:
- Suzanne LeMere - recent graduate with a wealth of prior business experience
- Mary Beth Lambert - non-profit marketing expert

A record crowd for last week's Social Media and Marketing presentation with Spring Creek Group principal, Andy Boyer. A full room got a dose of explanations and insight from one the area's leading companies. Stories were told, laughs were had, and a lot of knowledge was imparted.

Below are some highlights of the discussion:
- Insights: "Social media is not a campaign, it's a culture." People aren't necessarily going to your web site to look for answers; they're going to chat rooms and the blogosphere to find out about your products and for customer support. (ex. YahooAnswers)
People can be extremely influential and make companies jump at the drop of a hat. "People are going to the highest mountain to shout where they feel they can be heard."
- Future trends: Anything that increases the conversation between a brand and its customers.
- Example of a company (or product) that has done well to integrate social media into its marketing mix: bing from Microsoft. They generated a buzz as to what the name of the search engine would be, then released the name just prior to the launch - and had more than 50,000 fans on Facebook within 20 hrs.
- B2B vs. Consumer social media - B2B has a much smaller number of influencers, so keep pushing relevant material to those people. Go deep, and know your audience. With Consumer brands, you're dealing with the masses - wanting to increase your number of loyal followers. This can be tricky, as you have less control, and can respond to fewer items - but the same goes in terms of knowing your audience.
- Words of advice for those in Job Search mode: "Control your brand." Before and after interviews, hiring managers are researching you. Make sure you have a handle on what's out there to be viewed. Check accounts on Facebook and any other digital source that could have info on you.

"What is the definition of Web 2.0?"
This question came up and was actually a bit difficult to answer for all -- because there is no right answer.
Christine Goetz sent over this link, which explains from a web design look and feel perspective: "It allows web users to use the web with great ease."
http://blog.magnoninternational.com/web-20-look-and-feel-of-a-website/

Another view, and how I would define 2.0, is the emergence of focusing on the interaction of the user / viewer.
From Wikipedia: "It is characterized as facilitating communication, information sharing, interoperability, user-centered design, and collaboration on the Web."