Social Media Week - A Series of Fortunate Events

The first week of February was a chance for IDEA to spread its wings and fly out to San Francisco to sponsor and participate in Social Media Week. A series of events spreading across the entire week gave social media mavens, marketers, agencies, start-ups, VCs, and others the chance to connect, collaborate, discuss, and learn about the innovations and best practices within social media.

IDEA helped coordinate and moderate a panel on Customer Service as Marketing. Panelists included Kristie Wells, President of the Social Media Club and community manager for , Thor Muller, Founder and CTO of Get Satisfaction, and Bliss Dake, VP of E-Commerce for Mighty Leaf Tea.

Main takeaways from Social Media Week:

1. The "synaptic" web may be more descriptive of the current and future internet than the "semantic" web.
2. Community management is the wrong word to describe what community managers do. The word is "tummeling." Tummeling
3. Personal story-telling is the chief thing that will differentiate participants in the social web.
4. Customer service through social media can be the best form of marketing if executed responsibly and humanly.
5. The real-time web has shifted the way we use, search, and understand the web.
6. "Geo Loco" (or geo-location) games/apps have surged on the social scene and are likely to be a major player in years to come.

Chris Pitre, IDEA's social media strategist, is an avid fan of social, tech, and pop culture who retains large amounts of life-saving and brand-building trivia.