Before I get into Monday’s Wired Woman event on “Building Community with Social Media“, I have to share this brilliant comic from The Oatmeal. If you haven’t checked them out yet, you really should!
I think it really does illustrate the difficulty with Web 2.0 and the social media explosion. How are you an expert? How did you build your reputation? And do you really know more than the next guy? It also ties in wonderfully to the Building Community theme (albeit in a humourous stab at the subject).
The fantastic speakers we had at our event definitely were not “Social Media Douchebags” and really did have a lot of insight into turning that online community into ROI, and gave us valuable tips, tools and insights. The speakers were:
- Briana Tomkinson / Tenth to the Fraser and Fjord West – Co-creator of popular New Westminster blog, and Marketing Strategist with Fjord West
- Carisa Miklusak / SoMedios – New media marketing, business development, and leadership consultant
- Chris Breikss / 6S Marketing – Co-founder and Director, and Vancouver’s Social Media Innovator for 2010 with partner John Blown
- Mhairi Petrovic / Out-Smarts Marketing – Social Media and Internet marketing strategist and CMO of Out-Smarts
- Sibylle Tinsel / Club Fat Ass – ‘Chief Executive Fat Ass’ Online Community Manager and social media co-ordinator
Everyone seemed to really enjoy the round table format and it generated a lot of discussion, with different women from vastly different industries coming together to add their insights too. One of the biggest lessons I took away from the event was the importance of listening. See what people are saying about you/your industry and start to build a following by answering their questions and finding your audience in the right places.
I came away with a lot of ideas and also a sense of pride that the event went off so well.
Now to get to the point were I really can add “social media expert” to my Twitter bio… 🙂
Geraldine