Jeremiah Owyang of Forrester, Seth Godin author of Meatball Sundae, and Steve Mann head of social media for SAP doing a webcast at noon central today. http://tinyurl.com/yutq4b I’ll live blog it here. Just the highlights please, OK

Owyang outline to consider and approach social media POST = People, Objective, Strategy, and Technology. Bottom line point - think it through for the long term. Jeremiah’s blog is http://www.web-strategist.com/blog/

Mann - excellent point about the correllation between those who engage in the community or your discussion early will be more likely to convert as the sales cycle moves forward.

Godin - Classic Godin line, you can’t be like that brother-in-law life insurance salesman at parties who only goes to hit you up for insurance. Remember that this holiday season.

Owyang refers to Lego community to embrace customers to help build new products http://mindstorms.lego.com/eng/community/default.asp - He is very clear that this is not about giving away product ideas, no it’s about getting product ideas. And the pay off for them is to be a part of an inside group that then become advocates. Passion is the result of asking for opinions (that last one is my line, so if you don’t like it don’t blame Jeremiah)

Mann makes excellent point again - not every conversation is going to be positive or rosey. However, there can be positive that comes from that, whether its improvement to the product or customer service. It is so refreshing to here someone like Steve who answers to a corporate structure speak like this. It is both a reflection on him as a leader and on the management of SAP.

Godin - Social media is not for every company. I have said this for awhile (listen to Great Blog Debate November 2006) The issue for me is that some companies need to evolve into social media as opposed to “Using Social Media to Grow Your Business” which is the title of this webcast.

You gotta love this one from Owyang - An eye opener ready?

So it used to be that sales managers would take a win/loss report and marketers would pull out the wins to put in their communications. Enter social media, and buyers are taking about the every same things that are in your win/loss reports in the open. Agh! imagine that. Now what?

Companies using social media correctly

http://www.ideastorm.com/

http://www.threadless.com/

Lastly the panel was asked in a couple of words what advice would you give to companies about considering social media (I paraphrasing here on the question) And they said

Owyang - Let Go

Mann - Evolution not revolution

Godin - Be remarkable

Anyone commenting on this post we’ll have a drawing for Seth’s new book Meatball Sundae, Those of you who don’t feel lucky can get it here http://www.squidoo.com/meatballsundae

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