Recapping the Social Media Plus Summit

The Social Media Plus Summit that took place in Philadelphia yesterday was directed mostly at social media novices. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but there weren’t any groundbreaking developments in terms of social media strategies. Attendees got the standard “you have to be online, you have to be engaging your audience, you have to be responding to comments about your company/brand, etc.” It gets a little tedious to listen to the same 5-10 opening by each presenter, who all hit on a common set of buzzwords each time.

My main complaint about all of these conferences is that they seem to cater more to the big brands and businesses. The solo practitioner’s practice, the mom-and-pop hardware store, and the local no-name book store probably don’t have anything in common with Coca Cola, Walmart, or Disney when it comes to social media practices. In fact, many of the day-to-day tasks involved with creating a successful social media presence/strategy differ wildly between small and large businesses. Unfortunately, small business owners don’t have the luxury of relying on a household brand name, and therefore it takes much more work to reap the benefits of social media. Yet many of the presenters will show slides or refer to what social media strategies and policies that the big boys are using. Social media amateurs may be disillusioned by this and may even think that they’ll have the same amount of success as these companies by mimicking what they are doing. Sadly, this is not going to be the case.

I won’t go as far as to say that this conference was not worthwhile; I’m sure many attendees are just learning the intricacies of the vast social media landscape. I’m just saying that it would have been better to see a more diverse set of presentations. And, to be fair, there were a couple presenters who mentioned some more advanced tools and tricks (such as Valeria Maltoni of Conversation Agent, who gave, in my opinion, the best presentation of the day). And I firmly believe that all of the presenters are extremely well-versed when it comes to getting into the nitty-gritty pitfalls and best practices of the social media world, but often get caught up in “dumbing it down” for the audience.

Random Thoughts

At just about every social media conference, a few certain statistics are brought up that make the audience go “Whoaaa,” but in reality they are far less important that people think. The first is that many companies block social media usage while at work, but also try and maintain a social media presence on sites like Facebook and Twitter. Ok, so maybe it doesn’t sound like they greatest strategy, but presenters make it out to be the worst mistake a company can make. The presenters try and tout is as though the employees of these companies, if granted access to these sites, would be the best ambassadors for the company’s profiles. I personally believe that, unless the employee is specifically dedicated to social media strategies for the company, that this will not likely be the case. So, while it may not sound like the smartest thing (and probably isn’t), it certainly isn’t the end of the world.

Second, and I hear this at every conference, presenters love to mention that the fastest growing demographic on Facebook is women over 55 years old. Great! So what? Let’s dissect this for one second. Facebook has over 400 million “active users.” At some point, certain demographics are going to emerge from the massive pattern of sign-ups because other demographics have already registered in droves. I guess it shows that moms are finally adopting the usefulness of the application, but come on, this is not as compelling as presenters like to make it out to be.

I really don’t want to sound like a curmudgeon, but it’s time to either stop having so many conferences dedicated to the same subject, or, better yet, it’s time for new thought leaders to emerge and cater to the more savvy crowd (ie, those that want to stay ahead in a fast-paced social media world).

I’d be curious to hear about the experiences of other Social Media Summit attendees; did you feel you got what you bargained for? Would you attend again?