In the latest edition of the SMC Seattle Community Corner, I went hunting for that and several other burning questions related to brands, advocates, and social media. Check it out!

Big thanks to Ron Schott, Heather Fernandez, Mike Jensen, Jeanna Barrett, and Chris Goddard for the interviews!

Did you attend the event? What were your main takeaways?

Nationally renowned speaker and author Jason Falls talk at SMC was our fast-selling event ever, with tickets snatched up in eight hours!  Falls talk lived up to the hype with an audience held rapt with a talk on “Moving the Needle”  (conversations and engagement are great, but alone don’t drive the bottom line).

SMC Seattle July Event: Move the Needle! from SMC Seattle on Vimeo.

Let’s face it, if you are getting paid to do social media for a company, no matter how many great “conversations” you are having with customers if it’s not saving the company money or driving sales it’s going to be hard to justify the budget once the new-fangledness of social media wears off.  Falls pointed to a direction where you can engage customers and still make business owners happy.

And CEO’s are not going to be happy with the “we should be engaging with customers on Facebook, because everyone else is” for long.   More and more business owners are asking if social media is helping the company reach its business goals.  One example used by Falls is Eric Brown of Urbane Apartments.

Brown is asking his people “Are we (through blogging and using Twitter and Facebook) renting more apartments?  Because if we didn’t then social media is just a hobby.”

Falls used some great data that points to just how big a concern this is for business owners.  But armed with that knowledge every social media marketer and community manager can look to ways to make their role indispensable to the company.

Part of that is driving traffic to the place where people spend money while maintaining the customer friendly relationship that makes social media so appealing.  Falls suggested creating valuable content but with the opportunity for people to buy your product as well.  As he put it you aren’t selling, you are helping people buy.

Wiggly Wigglers adds in links to products you can buy in their post.  Indiana Spine Group uses a giant web badge that says we are accepting new patients on their blog about spine health.  But with all the talk on creating valuable content we forget that sometimes people are coming to our company just to buy.  Look at the success of the Dell Outlet twitter feed or the Dollar General circular Facebook page.

Falls also tackled the question that is talked about the most “What is the ROI on social media?”  Falls said that depends on your business goals.  But it is actually not as hard to track as many might think.  You just need to link it to some more commonly used metrics.  For example if you know that 10% of you email subscribers spend atleast $100 and your Facebook campaign drove 10,000 new email signups then your Facebook campaign likely made the company an extra $100,000.

But to that end it’s important to figure out what your business goals are for your social media efforts.  Drive sales? Cut customer service costs? Drive brand awareness?  From there set very specific goals and metrics to prove you are achieving them.  Then when your boss asked “What have you done for the company lately?”  You bust out your list of achievements and go celebrate with champagne (or at least smile to yourself.)

The talk was absolutely jam-packed with actionable information so it’s definitely worth watching the excellent video of the presentation put together by SMC Board Member Greg Young.

To learn more about Jason, visit his blog  http://www.socialmediaexplorer.com/

Also if you love seeing great presentations on social media and other geek stuff, join people like you from around the world and register for Gnomedex now.

Thank you to our sponsors: Microsoft Office 2010 and Spring Creek Group

Microsoft Office 2010.

Access to the tools you need to get things done, anywhere. Productivity tools should evolve to meet the needs of diverse users. Office 2010reflects feedback from the millions of people who rely on Office. Why do we like Office 2010? Socialize your inbox with the Outlook Social Connectors for Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace and Windows Live. Or, use the Web Apps to collaborate and co-author content from a number of browsers. It’s easy and intuitive to create great content to share with friends, family and colleagues with a click of a button.  Office 2010 was built with everyday people like you in mind. Give Office 2010 a spin and see for yourself.

Spring Creek Group

Spring Creek Group is an established social media brand analytics, strategy, and marketing services agency located in Seattle. Whether you need help with your social media accounts or need to run a successful campaign to launch a new product, Spring Creek Group has the experience and passion to help you through the process. The team is comprised of passionate and experienced marketing professionals. Follow them on Twitter: @SpringCreekGrp

http://springcreekgroup.com

Kenji here. If you’ve ever attend a Social Media Club event, you might have seen me – I’m the guy walking around with a video camera . What am I doing? Well, as a SMC board member, my role focuses on creating video content for our community about our community. So more than likely, you’ll see me taking video of our event, the food, and most importantly the people.  What I do with it is create a video, which can be seen right here on our blog.

In my latest video, I interview many of our  great community members & ask them to finish a few social media related sentences. Thanks to everyone who was involved in the video!

Do you have a fun question you want me to ask in the next video? Post in the comments section below!

Yup, it sure did.

You see, prior to SMC Seattle’s February event (which was held at Swedish Hospital’s Cherry Hill Campus), I answered quite a few questions about this exact subject. It seemed most people were really surprised that Swedish would even be interested in participating in one of our events, let alone be the lone sponsor for our February event.

But in taking a look closer, Swedish Hospital’s interest in social media may not be as surprising as you might initially think. There are actually many reasons for them to be interested in the social web and that is just one of the many things I talked with them about when I sat down with Swedish Hospital’s Melissa Tizon and Ed Boyle.

For all of you that requested the video of Sean’s popular presentation here it is!
If you just want the slides you can find them here.

Thank you to everyone who came out to SMC Seattle’s September event at Hotel 1000 featuring word-of-mouth marketing expert Sean Moffitt.

Sean had an in-depth presentation on social media with case studies from some very big brands, along with some helpful statistics on the value companies are receiving from using social media.

Many of you asked us to post Sean’s presentation so you could look at it again, so if you can’t see it above here it is.

We’d love to hear your comments. What did you learn from the presentation? What questions do you still have? What did you think of the event as a whole? What would you like to see more of? We look forward to seeing you at our next event!

Coming up on September 29th, SMC Seattle will be hosting word-of-mouth marketing expert Sean Moffitt of Agent Wildfire.
To learn more about Sean you can check out his company Agent Wildfire, his blog on word-of-mouth and social media marketing or follow him on twitter.

An interview with Social Media Club (national) founder Chris Heuer, by SMC Seattle Board Member @jennifercabala. Chris talks about how he came up with the idea for Social Media Club and what his goals are for the next year. He also talks about resources for those just getting started and some of the tactics he uses.