Everyone's Trying to Get This Whole Social Media Thing (Part II)

Part I of this post can be found here.

Well no matter what the social media networking ney sayers might have to say, marketers and sales folks from all walks of life are *really* trying to get on board this whole social media ‘thang. The diverse audience members at Jeremy Epstein’s "Marketing Navigator for the Attention Economy" October 28 presentation at the National Museum of the American Indian on the National Mall are a testament to this fact. Sales managers, marketing and sales folks, marketing directors and managers, business owners, project managers and PR professionals made up the bulk of the audience. How do I know? Well, they told me so. At the end of Jeremy’s presentation, everyone who stayed behind got to introduce themselves briefly to the rest of the audience. I took meticulous notes on those who stood up to introduce themselves and those were the most frequently mentioned position titles.

So what about the industries?

OK, sure, you’d expect tons of marketing, sales and PR types to be at an event like this. But what about the industries? I was very curious to hear each attendee share his or her industry or business and found that truly, just about anyone who’s anyone really wants to learn how to make social media marketing a successful endeavor on behalf of their business.

Audience folks came from all kinds of business backgrounds and services. There was a natural propensity, being in DC and all, for a good portion of the audience’s businesses to have some kind of connection to tourism, museums, hospitality and lodging services. That said, here is my long yet interesting list of attendee industries, organizations and businesses interested in making social media work for them:

• flower delivery; flower shops
• information kiosks and help centers
• museums and folks from museum group sales
• gift basket services
• accommodations and travel services
• convention centers
• catering services
• travel agents and private tours
• hotels
• public relations professionals
• spas, beauty salons and personal grooming services
• room services
• inaugural events-related services
• Washington Redskins Cheerleaders (no, not making this up)
• Japanese American Society of Public Affairs
• transportation services (tour buses, taxis, Corporate Express Limo)
• restaurants (Dave & Busters)
• Washington Metro
• Arlington Promotional Products
• Event security
• Smithsonian Conservation & Science
• Reagan National Airport’s Traveler’s Aid
• Arena Stage Audience Development
• Kennedy Center
• Historic societies

The proof is in the puddin’

So if you are one of the folks out there continue to bash, resist or reject the notion that social media networking or marketing is not worth the time or investment, you may want to — even for just a moment — perhaps rethink your position?? Maybe ?? I mean, I don’t know but it would seem to me that there’s got to be *something* of value for all these organizations, businesses and services to want to learn more and become more entrenched in social media networking circles. I can’t imagine these folks having oodles of time to waste. Trust me, there was genuine interetest by each audience member there and the desire to figure out how to successfully network socially was beyond evident.

Part III coming soon

I have one more aspect of Jeremy’s presentation to go over, and that would be (drumroll, please) …. Jeremy’s presentation! Jeremy had some helpful client case studies and fun anecdotal stories I believe are worth sharing. I’ll need a bit of time to do this, however … this week I am *slammed* with the final details of our exciting and upcoming Social Media Primer Workshop on November 5. If you are in the Northern Virginia area and can attend, I’d love to see you there!

More on Jeremy’s presentation hopefully by next week.