A Few Thoughts from Enterprise 2.0 Conference Session on Does Social Media in Matter in Marketing

This was an excellent panel at the Enterprise 2.0 conference. I was distracted and did not get everything but here area few bits. Ben Foster, Allstate, Morgan Johnson. JetBlue and Greg Matthews Humana participated on the panel. Peter Kim was moderator

Ben said social media can be a cure chasing tool. Morgan said it was important to manage both followers and following. I like that they are reciprocal to many of the their followers. I try to follow as many of my followers who seem sincere in their efforts even of they have a only a few followers so far. I guess I am a softy but I also believe in reciprocation.

Greg Matthews said they are trying to push forward in a new frontier as a company and not just be a health benefits company be a heath company. They want to help people take care of their health. For example, they launched bike sharing program. Humana has created an Innovation center web site to aggregate their social media efforts. Their content lives all over the web and the Humana innovation site brings it together.

The panel said there are two emerging area where social media matters – customer service and innovation and new product development. People are talking about needs and frustration that will help you design new products.

Humana is looking beyond marketing but marketing remains important. Social media is helping with their geographic expansion and proving a positive image and brand recognition as they come to new areas. On the issue of internal support there is always tension when you introduce something new into an organization. Bottom up generation of ideas creates tension. They have a big data security concern as we have health data on people. They work with IT to stay separate from core data with social media.

The panel advised us to not focus on one tool as another will come along and replace it or go in a new direction. Used to be how to use technology. Now you can build your own technology. The greatest technology does not seem like technology. A good example is the iPhone.

Comments

[Greg Matthews]

Bill, thanks for this post. It was great to meet you face-to-face at the Enterprise 2.0 conference this week. I have to say that I really enjoyed being on the panel with Morgan and Ben; it's great to hear what other brands are doing, what issues they're facing, and how they're dealing with those obstacles.

I think that the biggest issue we face as advocates of "social business" is that the groundswell that hallmarks all social movements is in direct conflict with typical top-down corporate control structures. That tension can be tough, but I believe that eventually the tension is going to lead to some breakthroughs that we haven't even imagined yet.

And thanks, too, for the mentions on Humana's innovation center and our web "hub;" you and your readers can find us at http://crumpleitup.com.

[bill Ives]

Greg

It was also great to meet you. I want to learn more about what you are doing at Humana. Thanks for the link to your site. It actually had an extra period so here it the one for everyone to access it http://crumpleitup.com/ as it should be seen. Bill

[Ben]

Hi Bill. Thanks for writing this, I'm glad you enjoyed it. I was way out of my league with Morgan and Greg on the panel, so I'm glad that some of their awesomeness could rub off on me.

I'm glad you picked up on the theme of Social Media being "Cures Chasing Diseases" is certainly not unique to Social Media. It's been a part of business for years (Segway, anyone?).

Lots of times we get really excited about things without thinking what problem they solve. I really think it's because figuring out the problems and doing the detailed research is the hard work.

The technology is the fun stuff, so we focus on that which is why there are so many mistakes.

Keep writing
Ben Foster

[bill Ives]

Ben

Thanks for adding to the conversation. I would be pleased to learn ore about what you are doing at Allstate. You certainly held your own on the panel. Everyone is doing good things. Bill