This past Tuesday marked the second annual Likeable U conference at the Desmond Tutu Center in New York City. A recap for attendees, and also an informative brief for those of you who couldn’t join us, I am providing some of the Likeable staff’s favorite takeaways from the conference. As members of the Likeable Media family, we live and breathe social media – and can talk about best practices and stellar examples until we’re blue in the face. These learnings, however, are all things that stuck with the social media savvy staff and were what we were all talking about as the conference came to a close.
The Value of Social Content & How To Get It Right
Amy Kattan: User-generated content = AWESOME.
Frank Emanuele: Don’t worry about marketing, worry about being Likeable. Sharing great content makes you Likeable!
Katie Kearsey: A picture is worth a billion dollars in social media, courtesy of Dan Kim. I personally love Instagram, Pinterest and the recent focus Facebook, Twitter & other networks are placing on rich media – so this sentiment was very gratifying for me to hear.
Michele Weisman: “Writing is the most important part of your job even if it’s just 140 characters!” – Jeff Glor
Megan McMahon: “When you have to plan a ‘stunt’ start with zero dollars, get creative, and go from there.” - Lauren Appelwick, Shelby.tv
Building A Thriving Social Community
Mallorie Rosenbluth: “Community managers are the voice of your brand — you need the right people in that role. It’s a big responsibility.” – Aliza Licht
Dean Opriasa: ”Understand the pulse of your community and what they want.” – Matt Burton, American Express
Kate van Geldern: I was inspired by Kate Ellis of Rent the Runway. She stressed keeping the human element in the social media conversations their stylists have, and also allowing their stylists the ability to maintain their identity. The tone should still fit with the brand, but don’t turn your people into robots.
Lauren Sleeper: You need to invest serious time and effort into the people who are building your brand voice online. At Bonobos, they have an intensive training program that incentivizes their customer service agents (or “ninjas” as they call them), and teaches them the importance of knowing the brand, it’s voice, and it’s practices like the back of their own hands. I loved that they had such a well-developed training program, and that so much emphasis was placed on it.
Words of Wisdom from Peter Shankman
Dave Kerpen: You can’t be successful in your comfort zone.
Christine Varriale: Don’t tell people how awesome you are. Do awesome things.
Shari Donk: If you dont have haters you’re doing something wrong.
The Inspiring Aliza Licht & Jeffrey Hayzlett
Carrie Kerpen: Through Aliza, I learned how a brand can be simultaneously aspirational AND approachable at the same time using social media.
Allie Herzog: Finding the voice for her blog and twitter account {DKNY} wasn’t hard because it’s actually her voice. And that’s ok; it lended authenticity to what she was doing, and made the DKNY social presence more than just a promotional vehicle.
Theresa Braun: “Succeed through failure. If you fail, don’t scrap the idea. Find a new way to do it.” – Jeffrey Hayzlett
Brian Murray: ”You can be passionate about something and still be wrong.” – Jeffrey Hayzlett
Evolution of Social Media
Gabriella Piazza: Social Media is not marketing, it needs to spark an activity which will in turn, help your marketing campaign and efforts.
Ricky DeMaio: Newspapers are dying because those people whose “jobs” it is to tell us how to think are no longer relevant. We’re now in an age where we value our friends’ opinions more than professional critics’. The power of a Facebook “like” is greater than a NY Times review. – Peter Shankman
Tracy Spetka: The power of video, and it’s growing importance in social media. Warby Parker spends an hour a day creating video responses to customer service questions. Not only are those customers thrilled with the personalized response, other customers benefit from a useful piece of information and ultimately the content is shared over and over again.
Whether you couldn’t make it to Likeable U, or there were simply too many great speakers to catch them all, our CEO Dave Kerpen will be breaking down his top key learnings. Join Dave as he gives you the run down of the best panels, speakers and announcements made at our Internet Week conference. (You can sign up for the webinar here.)
If you attended the conference what, was your favorite moment of Likeable U? If not, which of these learnings resonates most with you?
