Pre-Conference with Enterprise Social Networking and Platform Marketing

Executives from Deutsche Telekom and Concord Music will highlight the morning session of pre-conference I’m leading at the Social Networking Conference June 16 in L.A. The pre-conference is a bootcamp for directors of social networking initiatives who want to understand and practice emerging best practices for strategy, tactics and project management.

The afternoon session will focus on using major platforms Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and blogging to create relationships.

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Is the Tail Wagging the Dog? Evaluating the Potential of Location-based Social Applications

If you read any mainstream media or social media sites, you might have started to get the impression that a Foursquare, Gowalla or Loopt application is your only hope to make this quarter’s numbers because check-ins are on everyone’s lips, er, finger tips these days. However, for CMOs of large brands, what’s the real business potential of these apps in 2010? What can they do for your business, and what and where are their limitations? Here, I’ll share some due diligence I’ve conducted for one of my clients and give you some general guidance for using these apps this year. I’ve also included links to the best information sources. First, let’s start with an introduction of geosocial and how it fits into the ecosystem you already know.

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Social Networking Conference Pre-Conference LA Features Enterprise Speakers and Live LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter and Blogging Examples

I am pleased to share the updated agenda for the #snc2010 pre-conference. The morning session will focus on strategy, planning and management of enterprise social network initiatives and will feature several speakers who are currently leading businesses and initiatives. The afternoon will focus on practice and show live example/demos of using LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter and blogging tools for marketing campaigns. Read on to review the agenda in depth.

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Los Angeles Conference Offers Onramp for Managing Social Networking Initiatives: Learn from Leaders

I am excited to announce that I will be joined by several enterprise executive innovators in the pre-conference “Enterprise Social Networking Bootcamp.” They will share their experiences with using social networks for innovation. I have invited executives from mobile, manufacturing, telecoms, entertainment, media and retail. I will add them here as they confirm. You can read about some of the other panels I’ve led here.

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Increasing Leverage of Social Business Investments with a Web 2.0 Competency Team

Using social technologies to improve business function and customer experience (“social business”) is already a complex proposition, and it is going to become more so in the near term. Today, we are in the initial stage of adoption in which most firms are still on the sidelines, so the main challenge is understanding how social business applies to the organization and developing the skills for engaging people. This is difficult because social skills are required—social skills in digital environments. However, soon the main challenge will be competition for attention, which will increase because more companies are entering the market.

Let’s assume your company has had several social networking experiments going for the past year or so. Most of them were funded haphazardly, you have achieved some promising results, but you also seen that engagement takes commitment. You wonder how can you get some “enterprise leverage” working for you in your desire to scale your social business initiatives without breaking the bank. Here I’ll discuss how the SNR approach uses Web 2.0 Competency Teams, so you can apply its principles to your initiatives.

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Market Opportunities and Emerging Good Practices

I had four speaking engagements at the Social Networking Conference Miami 2010, so I was only able to attend a few sessions in their entirety, which are linked here. Others are summarized below.

• Steve Faktor, Vice President, American Express: Social Networking in a New Economic Reality
• Sandy Carter, Vice President, IBM: Social Networking Strategies at IBM
• Jim Rushton, Senior Vice President, Miami Dolphins: Social Networking in the NFL
• Kenton Olson, Digital Media Manager, Seattle Seahawks: Social Networking in the NFL
• Allison Cerro, Chief Marketing Officer, Alcatel-Lucent Americas: Leveraging Social Media for Effective Marketing Strategies
• Rachelle Barnette, Program Analyst, FBI Cybercrime Division: Social Networking and Fraud
• Ann Aikin, Social Media Team Leader, CDC: Social Networking and Fighting Disease

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Steve Faktor, Vice President, American Express: Social Networking in a New Economic Reality

Steve Faktor leads American Express’s Chairman’s Innovation Fund, so he is constantly surveying the landscape for emerging market opportunities. He works with start-ups within the corporate environment, so that gives him a diverse perspective. He also tied economic conditions to the adoption of social networking: they will drive it up.

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Rachelle Barnette, Analyst, FBI Cyber Division

The FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) receives and coordinates investigations of Internet crime, and it was fascinating to hear about how they work at the Social Networking Conference. Rachelle reported how criminals (“perpetrators”) use social networks, she outlined the major scams, and she provided numerous resources that I have linked below. Here I’ll share my notes and related thoughts.

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Sandy Carter, Vice President & Social Media Evangelist, IBM

Sandy Carter has been on the front lines of introducing disruptive technology to the market for many years, and she outlined an impressive string of IBM’s social business initiatives and milestones on Day One of the Social Networking Conference. Even though I am aware of many of IBM’s initiatives, I took away several new nuggets, which I’ll share below, along with my notes of her presentation.

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Allison Cerra, CMO, Alcatel-Lucent

Alcatel-Lucent has an interesting perspective on social networking because their equipment and services enable the infrastructure over which everything runs. They are constantly scouring the universe for ways that they can add unique value to infrastructure, and Allison shared some fascinating insights from a study A-L conducted in her Friday session at the Social Networking Conference. Here I’ll share my notes and related thoughts.

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