Global Social Media

I went to Las Vegas twice this month. Once for a rather unglamorous global meeting run by my own corporation and the second time by Intel’s invitation to speak at their International Sales and Marketing Conference, which was a fabulous experience by anybody’s standards.

Five thousand four hundred people turn up, and I was lucky enough to share a ‘power session panel’ (try saying that with six San Miguels inside you) with blog Gods Shel Israel and Jeremiah Owyang training about 600 Intel people about new media marketing technique. Shel co-authored the book Naked Conversations with Robert Scoble and is good opinionated company, and Jeremiah is Forrester’s top commentator on social media. He’s also pretty handy with the cam as you can see here.

Enough name dropping already (there were plenty of other super people to meet and Paul of course twitters with Shel tous les temps) - the gist of the sessions was healthy debate about whether social media is relevant to a firm like Intel. My take on it is simple. Social media helps you do two very important things. 1. Listen to customers. Those that don’t are dying and those that won’t will die. And 2. Listen to yourselves. If it doesn’t sound credible to you, how can you expect them to believe it?

Luv

A