Snippets on Social Media from @PubClubofNE Event #pubclubofne

Last night I attended the Publicity Club of New England's panel discussion, "Tools and Tips for Social Success: Taking Your Social Media Program to the Next Level."

The panel was moderated by my colleague, @TedWeismann. The panelists were:

Janet Aronica, Head of Marketing at Shareaholic (@JanetAronica)
Eric Leist, Emerging Technology Strategist, Allen and Gerritsen (@EricLeist)
George Snell, Senior Vice President of Digital and Social Media, Weber Shandwick (@HighTalk)
Andrew Teman, Vice President, Social Media Strategy, Hill Holliday (@andrewteman)
Anne Weiskopf, Vice President of Business Development, The Realtime Report (@AnneWeiskopf)

The room was full and the discussion lively, touching on a broad spectrum of issues and opportunities in social media.

Many interesting points were made. You can read the audience's reaction to some of the comments at the #pubclubofne thread. Here are a few of the more interesting ones:

B2B organizations need to do a better job finding and listening to influencers. As expected, B2C is way ahead in this area. Consumers are far more likely to voice their opinions about CPG products online than are B2B customers.
Metrics and measurement of the "value" social media provides continue to be the elusive holy grail, especially for B2B companies. There is no one way to measure success and influence. Lots of skepticism about Klout. The message -- take Klout ratings with a grain of salt right now.
Organizations underestimate the importance of consistency in content -- both in message and frequency -- to generate the maximum impact and return on social media.
Even though social media is driving the creation of more content and more observers who "report," it is also accelerating the decline of classic long-form journalism.
As jobs for traditional journalists disappear, opportunities are arising for them to become "brand journalists" driving social media content for companies. Transparency will be critical for them to have any credibility with audiences. Cisco was cited as a company making big investments in this area.
CEO's who are active in social media are far and few between and most don't think they should be spending too much time doing so, but should focus on running the company.
Most organizations are still working out internal processes for who owns and contributes to social media. PR is seen as primary lead, but companies integrating contributions from other areas -- marketing, customer care, R&D -- is necessary.
Is social media killing journalism? Traditional print-based, long-form journalism continues its downward tailspin and how it can pull out of it is unclear.
Trends to watch in 2012 -- better metrics tools, #PR professionals as story tellers, social shopping, mobile, Twitter chats, lists.

So what is the take away? I think it's that social media never stays in one place. It defies categorization, and it means different things to different people and markets. If that is the case, then your approach should be to listen to your target audience, learn from others who’ve done well but don’t copy blindly what has worked for them, and always keep moving ahead because something new is happening every day.