Social Media Breakfast #19

Last week, I attended my first Social Media Breakfast. Social Media Breakfast - Minneapolis/St Paul is a group that meets for breakfast (bacon!) periodically to discuss social media.

At the most recent SMBmsp (the 19th!), the event was divided into two sections - a presentation and demo by mixmobi and an interactive discussion about the state of social media use within corporations.

Mixmobi is a quick and easy way to deploy announcements/coupons/offers via social mediums and the ability to report on those campaigns in near-real-time. The tool, which they demoed live at SMBmsp, allows nearly anyone to deploy campaigns - no coding or technical background required. The resulting campaigns can be deployed via SMS or Twitter, I believe, although they were looking to expand that list.

The feature that I found most fascinating (as you'd expect, given my background!) was the near-real-time reporting capabilities. During the presentation, they deployed a postcard via Twitter - and near the end of the presentation, went into the reporting feature to show it off. Already, we could see some of the stats emerging. Quite a departure from my experience with reporting!

(If you're interested in more details on mixmobi, check out an article here, including a demo video.)

The second half of the event was an interactive discussion about the use of social media. People shared their frustrations about being social media evangelists within their company, and techniques for helping others realize the power of social media. There were many interesting points and discussions, but one stood out for me. If someone doubts the power of social media, or feels they can ignore it until they're ready to tackle it - take them to Twitter or Facebook and search on their company name. I imagine the results would be eye-opening to many.

Overall, an enjoyable, interesting, and thought-provoking morning. I look forward to attending more of these breakfasts in the future.