Rachel Levy: Social Media & Marketing

I recently attended a Twitter conference in NYC, called the 140 Characters Conference. For those of you not on Twitter, YES, there’s such thing as a Twitter conference (and 140 is the maximum number of characters in a tweet)!  The conference was not about how to use Twitter in the technical sense, but more about how to use Twitter to benefit from it, and as a platform to other social media communities.  In addition to listening to the insightful 100+ speakers and panelists, the networking was amazing.  I met so many people I have talked to online for a while, and so many more new people.  And,  of course, there were some cool Twitter celebrities there too!

My key takeaway from the conference was that Twitter can be used effectively by almost anyone, if done well.  The speakers and panelists included topics on: news, jewelry, fashion, music, artists, performers, athletes, non-profits, small businesses, TV shows, large companies, government, moms, and so many others.  There are those who do it effectively, and those who don’t.  Check out the schedule, and you’ll see the vast array of speakers.

My three pieces of feedback on the conference are: time, money and wireless.  Time — It was too rushed, and tough to get some really good information in the short time frames.  Money — The conference was $895, which was quite pricey (I was lucky enough to be there as a guest).  Wireless — The wireless access was intermittent, and frustrating at times.

My favorite quotes

(not necessarily quoted word for word; and if you know who said some of the unknown quotes or if I made any errors, please let me know!)

• 3 most important concepts on twitter – immediacy, transparency, approachability. ~Jack Dorsey
• My job as a publisher is finding interesting people and amplifying their voices. ~Jack Dorsey
• Create more value than you capture. ~Tim O’Reilly
• “Passed links” get shared much more quickly in social media vs. email — watch your traffic over time from these sites. ~Fred Wilson (?)
• Bummer… just saw a wedding band on @etanowitz :-( ~Rachel Levy (yes, that’s me)
  • From etanowitz: Haha thanks my wife @dsashin is here; she’s from Boston.
• Getting Twitter, means “you know it’s a conversation” ~TV panel
• If you want to talk about your product, talk TO someone. Don’t just blast it. ~Liz Strauss
  
• Blogs allow me to go deep. Twitter lets me go wide in conversations. ~ Liz Strauss
• Communication is when the message intended is the message received. ~Liz Strauss
• Benefit of Twitter is “listening for the point of need” — people express needs more on Twitter than on any other social network. ~Corporate panel
• Start with listening, move to listening and responding, then let people see your brand and tell your story. ~Corporate panel
• Listening sends a message to your customers, as much as it receives a message. ~Corporate panel
• One of the worst mistakes we as mainstream media make is to go in somewhere and not see the story from their perspective.  We need to tell the story as if it’s about your mother or family. ~Ann Curry
• What’s pissing me off is that it’s hard to get Americans to care about international issues. ~Ann Curry
• I want journalists to stop just telling the news, and telling stories again. ~James Cox
• The worst thing you can say about Kodak is nothing — we want to hear the happy faces, and the bitches and moans. ~Jeffrey Hayzlett
• It’s about the 4E’s – Engaging, Educating, Exciting and Evangelizing. ~Jeffrey Hayzlett
• If you’re in marketing, and not on Twitter, you just don’t get it. ~Jeffrey Hayzlett
• It’s not “what are you doing”, but “What are we feeling and what do we have to share?” ~Laura Fitton
• Make your twitter account, even if you ARE a brand, a bit more personable. ~Unknown
• It’s not always about the money…. it can be about awareness and passing the word on. ~Social good panel
• While technology can scale and bring us everything, humans can’t scale. ~Steve Rubel
• People need to hear something 3-5 times to trust it (and people believe it more coming from their peers). ~Steve Rubel
• Don’t get too attached to Twitter.  I believe that Twitter has peaked.  No community has had staying power more than 5 years. Keep looking for what’s next. ~Steve Rubel
  
• To make your own game, you have to be there. ~Chris Brogan
• On Twitter, you have a friend wherever you go. ~Chris Brogan
• Making videos is sharing moments. ~Steve Garfield
• The fact that you have one follower should blow your face off. ~Gary Vaynerchuk
• The variety of ideas and people are what makes twitter a bottom up platform. ~Small business panel
• Small business owners should use Twitter in 3 ways to promote their business, benchmark their business, as an ESP tool. ~Small business panel
• I don’t think you should have someone tweet AS you, but FOR you, is OK. ~ Small business panel
• Question: How do you get your clients to be on Twitter? Answer: Show them that their competitors are there. ~Wisdom of Twitter panel
• Twitter is about finding your tribe and interacting with your tribe. ~Wisdom of Twitter panel
• Try to make sure social networking is not social NOTworking. ~Unknown

My favorite speakers/panels

Liz Strauss
Liz did a great job of pinpointing a few great ways to be successful on Twitter

News Panel

Great passionate discussion with Rick Sanchez and Ann Curry

(Part 1) (starts about 3 minutes into the clip)

(Part 2)

Gary Vaynerchuck

Passionate talk about sharing and scaling

Jeffrey Hayzlett

Very motivational, funny speaker

Steve Rubel
Don’t only focus on Twitter…

Thanks to all the speakers, panelists,  people I met, and most importantly Jeff Pulver, for putting together this incredible conference.  If you missed the conference, you can watch the video recordings of the speakers on the 140conf website.

(Photo credit: 140 crowd, Ann Curry)

What do you think of the above?  If you were at the conference, what were your key takeaways?