The Business of New Media
I have been waiting for this week to arrive for about 2-3 years. Over 3 years ago, I went to a blogging conference where I learned, for the first time what a blog was (Robert Scoble, among others, was speaking…had no idea who he was).
About 6 months later I had a vision of how business could use blogs and how we could provide a service guiding clients through the blogging process. Soon after I learned about other cool things like podcasts and videos and began to pitch my clients who gave me the stare of death….the “what are you talking” about look with the thought of “why would I want to play around with blogs and podcasts when I am so busy.”
Frustrated, I decided to put together a conference where the innovators, including us, of social media came together in one room to teach the business community that new media is about to become the necessary media. That was 2 1/2 years ago.
This week it seems the vision of using social media as a business tool has bloomed into a full blown all out cry for joy or help by business people worldwide and we are answering the call and/or celebrating.
We sent out a search engine optimized press release for a travel client which drove visitors to their blog (which we created) and website, met with a client to go over the stats of their blog and their myspace and facebook pages, launched a very cool video on 7 different channels with a teaser on YES Network along with a live-linked flash banner ad below it which drives visitors back to the main website, we met with a new start up/client that uses social networking to reach out to her community and needs help with PR and general promotion (how will we do that? through myspace and facebook of course), helped a client with their wine blog that we helped them create and made sure their pictures were formatted properly, had lunch with a associate where I met another contact who is a top notch branding consultant whose only link missing in her services is the social media factor which she wants to learn more about from Creative Concepts, talked with one of my staff who loves working for Creative Concepts because she can do all of her online work when her kids are in bed (she said she loves what she does so much she would do it for free…should I take her up on it?), and finally, I heard from one of the judges (from a Fortune 500 company) from the Business Smart Tools Angel Award, he wanted to connect to one of my contacts on Linkedin and wants to hear more about our long string of online services.
Now, are we living the social media dream? The vision from over 3 years ago?
Happily, the answer is yes!