Meltwater Social Media Summit – Key Takeaways
Last month, we had the pleasure of attending the Meltwater/Sysomos Social Summit in San Francisco. Like many customers, we have been eagerly awaiting hints of a product integration path since Meltwater acquired Sysomos earlier this year.
And while we knew going in that integration plans were unlikely to be announced at the event, we were hopeful that the impressive speaker lineup would shine some light on the future of social media and related platforms and tools. In this regard, the summit did not disappoint.
Here were some of our favorite moments:
Erik Qualman’s keynote speech blew everyone away. Not surprisingly, there was a focus on privacy from the digital expert and best selling author, whose latest book is titled What Happens in Vegas Stays on YouTube. He emphasized that we do not have a choice to digitally transform – the transformation is already upon us – our only choice at this point is how well we do it. Some statistics that really resonated with us:
- 25 percent of unborn children in the US already have a digital footprint
- 2 out of 3 people get their news from social media
- 93 percent of buying decisions are influenced by social media
- The average attention span for humans is now just 7 seconds
Jorn Lysegge, founder and CEO of Meltwater, is a serial entrepreneur and visionary. We listened attentively to his views on the most important use cases for social media moving forward, which include:
- Influencer Marketing
- Customer Feedback/Service
- Social Commerce
Paige O’Neill, CMO of SiteScore, gave a great talk on how she currently leverages social media for B2B marketing. Her viewpoint was incredibly refreshing, given that it does not focus solely on ROI. Instead, she uses social media as a customer engagement tool. Some examples include:
- Leveraging passionate customers to become brand ambassadors
- Testing content with a target audience
- Directly asking customers what they think in lieu of a costly survey
All in all, we found the event to be worthwhile. And we look forward to seeing what Meltwater has in store for us on the social media front in the coming months.
Thea Roberti is Offleash’s chief research analyst, providing competitive analysis, industry research, media analysis, social media research, marketing channel analysis, and influencer intelligence. Contact Thea at thea@offleashpr.com.