But now I’m finally getting around to sharing the key themes that resonated with me from sessions on social media, marketing in a recession and measurement. Each session built on one another, and as a result my notes felt more like a Twitter stream than the linear notes I usually take. Subsequently, I wasn’t able to directly attribute each piece of marketing wisdom to a speaker. However, at the end I have provided links to all the sessions and speakers I attended — and definitely recommend you check them out.

Without further ado, here’s my Top 10 list from the event (in no particular order):

1. Perspective matters. I’ve attended events focused on “just” communications/PR and always found them to be preaching to the choir. While the event had its fair share of preaching to the choir, there were enough marketing and B2B buyer perspectives represented that added a ton of value. Too often, communications silos itself from marketing and loses sight of the larger, collective goal.
2. There is still a battle over control when it comes to social media. A lot of questions during the sessions highlighted a fear of losing control of the messaging from marketing departments. At the same time, a lot of responses from self-described social media experts took the tone of “the point of Twitter is …” I think they’re trying hard too to dictate the usage the tools when the reality is that the usage depends on the goal – and (gasp) not every campaign is designed to engage directly with a customer.
3. Use social media tools to complement existing marketing/comms/PR campaigns. As Sandy Carter of IBM said, “we don’t have a social media strategy, we have a marketing strategy.” Look at social media tools as new mediums to execute against your strategy. For example: include a link to the blog in banner ads; use Twitter to drive booth traffic; supplement a whitepaper with podcasts, etc.
4. If you pay attention, social media gives you valuable insight. With today’s information overload, everyone agrees that customers and influencers are more savvy and more skeptical – and they can easily detect marketing “hype.” Use videos and blogs and twitter and <insert your customers’ favorite medium> to understand how they want to be marketed to. Listen to the words they use and update your messaging accordingly.
5. 2009 is about doing better with less. As measurement maven Katie Paine told us, “Measuring isn’t always about proving value, it’s about knowing what’s working and what’s not.” Forrester’s Laura Ramos added in one session, “Without understanding your strategy and having measurable goals, social media can easily become ‘purpose-less’ activity.” A quote from Peter Drucker summed it up: “Efficiency is doing things right; effectiveness is doing the right things.” Focus on using measurement to see what works and then dial up/down your mix accordingly (listen, learn and change).
6. Stay true to your company’s goals. Define upfront what success is and how you’ll measure your efforts, including your social media tactics. And don’t confuse popularity with influence. Target your efforts. It’s not necessarily about getting thousands of followers on Twitter, it’s about connecting with people who ultimately influence your sales cycle. Particularly in communications, popularity metrics are an easy out when we don’t have “real” results to report on.
7. Recognize that social media is different. You can’t take traditional content and just “plug” it into social media and be successful. Most presenters also agreed that social media is hard in B2B because you have to find where your customers are, and how (or even if) they want to be engaged.
8. Remember your audience is not necessarily your peers. In several sessions, questions were asked about LinkedIn versus Facebook for marketing efforts. The consensus – from an audience of marketers – was that Facebook had more users and was more fun and was therefore better. But over and over, presenters from B2B companies reminded us that our goal isn’t to get in front of marketers, and many B2B buyers don’t want to be sold to on Facebook. In fact, IBM actually surveyed its SOA customers and found out, hands down, that they preferred to hear about vendors on LinkedIn. They don’t necessarily post and interact with vendors there, but they do join groups and read the Q&As to get informed.
9. Counting is not ROI. Move your metrics framework from the very tactical to being strategic. That’s how to impress the c-suite, but it requires that you can speak in business terms (and if you can’t, focus more on learning about business than social media). Measure business outcomes (market share, share of voice, adoption rate, etc.) not your tactical activity (coverage numbers, leads, downloads, etc.). Realize this means siloed metrics need to feed into broader measurement reports.
10. Don’t be afraid to “fail” once or twice. Time Magazine’s Steve Johnson told us, “Right now, there’s a tolerance of failure [in social media] that we should embrace. Experiment and innovate now.”

Overall, it was great event – one I’d love to attend next year. As promised, here are links to the presentations I listened to, as well as the speakers’ blogs and Twitter feeds:

• All the handouts are available at http://www.marketingprofs.com/events/7/handouts/?adref=ematt528
• Marketing 2.0: Integrating Social Media into Your Marketing Mix with Sandy Carter of IBM (blog, @sandy_carter)
• 2009 Economic Impact on B2B Marketing Budgets & Practices with Carter; Laura Ramos of Forrester (blog, @lauraramos); Roy Young of MarketingProfs (@RoyProfs)
• Day 1 Keynote with Steven Johnson of Time (blog, @stevenbjohnson)
• Make Every Investment Count: The Measure of Marketing with Laura Patterson of VisionEdge Marketing (@LauraVEM)
• Social Media Hot Seat with Jason Baer of Convince & Convert (blog, @jaybaer)
• Tales from the Trenches: How Organizations are Measuring Value in Social Media with Katie Paine of KDPaine & Partners (blog, @KDPaine)

Last year, I took a vacation at about the same time, and came to a startling realization: I loved my job, the people I worked with and the companies I worked for. But I was bored and it occurred to me that I had become complacent. I was using phrases like “that’s good enough” and “it’ll work for now.” I wasn’t making mistakes or slacking, but I didn’t have that fire in my belly that I was known for. So, I thought it was time to shake things up and try something new.

And with that, I left the only PR world I knew — agency life — for the unknown corporate gig. I’m having a great time, and while it’s unnerving to be in such a different environment, I think it was a good call (though I still miss my old home). Almost a year later, I’m still debating which I’m better suited for agency or corporate life. I realize I don’t need to make that decision anytime soon, but I have been reflecting on the differences and similarities of the two positions lately. Two huge differences I’ve noticed are:

1. Camaraderie: Agency folks are spoiled, and I don’t think they realize it (at least, I didn’t). Certainly, there’s a wide range of experience and skill levels, but across the board, everyone understands the value of PR. They also understand how frustrating clients can be, how challenging it was to get that huge hit, and how fun a major launch is. It’s a world where all you have to say is “my client has no customers but wants to win a customer award” and everyone understands your frustration. It’s a world of bonding over briefing documents, meeting logistics and driving directions and working late to finalize every last detail. And it’s a world where everyone really understands that PR is a process, and getting profiles in business press takes months (and sometimes years) of work. Your colleagues understand that changing strategy every six weeks is counter productive. They realize that you can’t decide on Monday that you want vertical press coverage the following week. And they realize how much effort goes into a lot of the little successes along the way.

As I interact with colleagues outside of the PR world (from developers to salespeople, etc.), literally everyone thinks they know PR. Apparently, at least I’m told, it’s mostly common sense. That’s a much different environment than I was used to, and it’s made me think about how I present ideas and promote PR successes, because I’ve found that I also need to sprinkle in an appropriate amount of education. I will say I’ve found a different kind of camaraderie internally, which has been great. For example, it was exciting to see all the work that went into a complete relaunch of our search engine in April. But, sometimes I miss that sympathetic, all-knowing nod.

2. The make it work mentality: Another difference I’ve noticed — and I think this is probably true with any client service industry — is that at the agency, our job was to make “it” work. Even if our counsel to a client was to do the exact opposite, at the end of the day, our job was to accept the client’s decision (within reason) and then make it work. And we almost always did. Teams banded together and figured out how to make whatever the initiative was a smashing success. Often, it was the client throwing the highest hurdles at us. Yet, the mentality was always “find a way to make it happen.”

I work with another former agency person, and we both have commented on this. I think that mentality is a huge asset internally, because we’re never the “that won’t work for X reason” person in the room. It’s in our DNA to come up with alternative suggestions and brainstorm a way to make it happen. I have noticed that I need to catch myself sometimes, though. For example, my PR team was pitching a press tour in San Fran for July, and we were finding that most of our reporters were on vacation. My first instinct was to come up with additional targets and brainstorm new pitch angles, and then it occurred to me — I had chosen the date, and if it wasn’t going to work, I could easily move it. It was a part-light bulb, part-DUH moment. So now I’m trying to better balance my “make it happen” mentality :)

A year later, I can safely say that I don’t think one — agency or corporate life — is necessarily better than the other. They’re just very different in a lot of ways. As I reflect on this past year of my transition, I’ll be comparing and contrasting agency and corporate life more in an ongoing series. In the meantime, I’d love to hear your thoughts: What do you think is the biggest difference between the two (or similarity)?