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So today I sat in on a twebinar (yes, that's Twitter webinar) sponsored by the monitoring tool Radian6 and Kodak.  Kodak was explaining how they've been adopting social media tools into their company and how it's working for them.  Put simply, I was BLOWN AWAY.

The way they described what they were doing and how they've been approaching it was just awesome.  (Keep in mind that they never actually mentioned how they use Radian6 at all, just how they were taking advantage of the tools out there.  That gets props for both Radian6 and Kodak in my book.)

Kodak has their employees, some of whom are just regular folks and others who are geeky camera enthusiasts, blogging, tweeting, and engaging all across the social web.  These are passionate people; not everyone in the company does it and it's not necessarily the marketing or PR people. These people are authentic and "real."  They show off their personalities and don't only talk about camera and photo stuff.  They share what's going on with their lives and often don't mention Kodak at all by name. 

One great quote from the Kodak speaker, @tomhoehn, was that "you can't outsource real."  I could not agree with this more.  This is what companies and individuals have to understand.  An agency cannot be you.  Only you can be you.  Only you know how you talk, your life's story, your hopes, dreams, wishes, and fears.  That will never come across through an agency.  An agency or consultant can guide you and show you how things work but they can't replace you.  You're the expert on your subject and you're the expert on you!  Not to mention the amount of time and level of connectedness you need to have which brings me to another point.

These guys understand Sweat Equity.  As a student of the Gary Vaynerchuk School of Hustlenomics, I couldn't have been happier to hear this.  Tom admitted that it takes a lot of work and effort and time to keep up their engagement and interaction.  That means doing things at home and after hours.  He knows that if they didn't all work so hard, they'd never be successful.  A lot of people miss that when it comes to social networking.  They think that just because they have a Facebook profile, that magically they're going to have a community that cares about them.  Sorry, but if you build it, they may not come.  In new media, you get what you put into it.  As @garyvee would say, you have to "bleed through your eyeballs" if you want to be successful.  Again, an agency can't be you just from an authenticity/quality/morality standpoint and they definitely can't keep your schedule.  They can't be you.  This is hard work, but if you want to be successful, you have to do it yourself.

One final point that Tom made regarding ROI which is that he's "having the same conversations about ROI & social media that I had in 1996 about the internet."  I'm feeling similarly.  Many people just don't see how powerful these things are.  I'm sure people said the same exact things about telephones when they first came out.  This doesn't mean you shouldn't measure things but make sure you don't forget the bigger picture- you have powerful tools for engagement that can help you learn more about your company/brand, your field, and have your customers/fans learn about you.  This is a mutually beneficial exchange, but only if you play the game.

One woman from Kodak, whose name I'm blanking on (sorry!), explained how that by engaging their customers on blogs and forums, they've actually received amazing feedback which they have then TAKEN BACK TO THE PRODUCT TEAMS!  Not only did they just take this feedback back to them, but they used it to actually implement improvements to their products.  This set my heart a-flutter!  Your customers are out there telling you the product they want, all you have to do is listen, engage, and then make those changes.

I was honestly shocked to hear a big corporation explain that they truly get it.  I think Kodak is going to be very successful and I think they feel that they already are.  I think it's safe to say that I definitely have a social media crush on Kodak right now!

I had the pleasure of attending the Trust Summit with Chris Brogan and a cast of others last Friday at the Harvard Club here in New York.  Copies of Chris's new book, Trust Agents, were included in the low price of admission.  I already had a copy so got a second! 

I've been a fan of Chris for a while so it was great to finally meet him, ask him a question, and get my book signed.  He really was as gracious in person as he comes across online.

So I just wanted to touch on some of the points he made and hopefully I can get the thoughts of the others in a future post. 

What if you made your most disgruntled customer your CMO?

This is a really interesting idea.  Chris talked about the guy who tried to bring his guitar on a United Airlines flight and they messed it up and he complained about it in a YouTube video.  That guy got tons and tons of views and United caught lots of flack. So what if they hired that guy as their CMO?  Seriously.  I'm sure they'd learn a lot about customer service.  And I bet a lot more people would want to fly their airline.

New tools relate basic human passion

Basically, the more things change, the more they remain the same.  The reasons why we trust people today are the same as the reasons why people trusted others in the past.  Today, we have tools like the Internet, but we still look for indicators of trust when we connect with people online.  These reasons haven't changed and they're not going to change.  It's only the tools that have changed.

Relationships matter before the sale and after

If you're going to be successful in the digital economy you can't just open up shop, plant a flag, and expect people are going to flood your digital store.  You need to be there before and after the sale.  If you just pop in when it's convenient and when you're looking to sell something, people are going to tune you out.  People don't want to engage with businesses, they want to engage with people.  They'll gladly spend their money on your product or service but they hate being sold to.  I've never met anyone who likes being sold to.  That doesn't mean they don't like the products they buy.  In fact, there are more communities around products than you could believe.  But if you go in trying to hawk your wares, you won't be One of Us (a concept from Chris's book.)

Metrics

I'll combine two points here:

1. It’s not how many hits or views, but potential sustainable relationships over time
2. We need more productive numbers, not more numbers

There's a huge focus on numbers and how many hits, views, friends, and followers you can get.  As someone once said, (and no, I don't know whom) there are lies, damn lies, and statistics.  If you have 20,000 hits to your site, but only 300  people take the desired action you want them to take, either signing up for something or actually making a purchase, then the fact that you have 20K hits doesn't really matter.  But if you only have 1,000 hits and 150 people take a desired action, then that's a lot more meaningful.  It's better to have a smaller community that's actively engaged and spending money than a lot of attention from people who aren't doing anything for you.  It's the quality relationships that you want to have.

And trying to measure everything is not necessarily going to help.  You don't want to get to a state of being so concerned with measurement that you don't take action.  There's a phrase I like- paralysis by analysis.  You need to know what people are saying, not just how many are saying it.  Step back and look at the bigger picture.

Conclusion:

These were just some of the great points that Chris made.  I'm going to try and cover the remarks and concepts of the rest of the panelists in a later post.  It was great to finally meet Chris and hear it straight from his mouth.  It's no wonder why he's so respected in the field- he's a talented guy and a damn nice one too.

Also check out Amanda Arykoff's wrap-up of the summit.  She has links to some other reviews and I haven't had a chance to review them yet but hopefully can soon.