Keynote address to PR and marketing execs from NASCAR and affiliated partners.

1. Changing Relationships with Audiences:
Social Media & Two-Way Conversations
Prepared for PR group and its partners
By: Jason Silverstein / Jan. 23, 2009

2. Presentation Notes
• Many ideas build on others; I have
learned from many
• Photographs mine unless noted in
appendix (Creative Commons)
• Presentation to be posted on
jasonsilverstein.com and
observerinteractive.com

3. intro: information & trust
First, put yourself in your audiences’ shoes. Then act.

4. Theme: Pace of Change
The pace of change in
information and supporting
technologies today -- across
industries and geographies --
is nothing short of an
industrial revolution.

5. Media

6. Automobiles

7. Banking

8. Implications
• Pace favors nimble & technical
• Customers favor openness
• Costs of business / real & imagined
• Information increases competition
• New biz models must occur

9. Theme: Online Communities are People
Social and online media best
practices are built on familiar
offline principles of basic
human interactions.

10. Let’s have a thought experiment.

11. Would you trust this (tired-looking) guy?

12. Now, let’s change the thought.
(Yes, let’s!)

13. Today’s Speaker: Jason Silverstein
• VP, Interactive Media
largest news organization in the Carolinas
• Seven years at
One of internet’s top brands
• Formerly at &
• Constant knowledge seeker - started
businesses and has three degrees
• E-mail: jason@jasonsilverstein.com or
jsilverstein@observerinteractive.com

14. What Changed?
• Different information & presentation
• Known Associations
• Context understood
• Appears more credible (trust?)
• Contact information available

15. Making Interactions Trustworthy
All successful on- or off-line conversations
should be:
• Authentic
• Verifiable
• Relevant

16. what is social media?

17. “Social media are primarily
Internet- and mobile-based
tools for sharing and discussing
information among human
beings...” - Wikipedia

18. Additional Qualifiers
• Can be product or feature
• Anonymous vs. Verifiable
• General and/or Targeted
• Business and/or Consumer
• Typically “unicast” vs. “broadcast”

19. Categories of Social Media Users*
• Creators - the publishers
• Critics - commenters
• Collectors - RSS, taggers
• Joiners - network joiners
• Spectators - readers/watchers
• Inactives - online, not social
* Via BusinessWeek, as is graphic on following page: http://www.businessweek.com/
magazine/content/07_24/b4038405.htm

21. Different Interests in the Same Place

26. What is successful
social media?

27. Success for Today’s Discussion
• Each person/company must define success
• Influence (one measure)
• Can you shape the thinking of your
customers / fans / audience?
• Engagement (one measure)
• Can you be a “real” person? (accountability)
• Are you increasing customer interaction(s)?
Sales? Etc.?

28. Success for the big players *
• 100M videos/day on YouTube (!)
• 346M people reading blogs/day
• 3M “tweets”/day
• 150M users total on Facebook
• 63% twitter users are male
* Source: http://thefuturebuzz.com/2009/01/12/social-media-web-20-internet-numbers-s

29. A Note of Caution (!)
• None of the big sites are profitable
• Gathering audience
• YouTube bandwidth/day - estimated
$1,000,000
• Twitter just hired its first product
manager
• flickr a loss leader for Yahoo!

30. changing media landscape
What are media companies to do? Listen to your audience!

31. New Audience, New Attitudes
“If the news is that
important, it will find me.”
“Finding Political News Online, the Young Pass It On”
- New York Times.
(Emphasis above on “find me” is mine.)

32. Newspapers

33. RSS / Mobile / Niche

34. Radio (Programmed)

35. TV News

36. Trusted Brands
• “Short” window of opportunity - TBD time
• Still needed (remember “verification”?)
• Brand affinity not what it used to be;
accelerating with web / “pace of change”
• Some making great investments; other
struggling with culture

37. media in another definition

38. Changing Web is Changing Entertainment
• Phases of Engagement
• Walled Garden (CompuServe)
• Portal
• Search
• Community
• Economies of Scale / Distribution

39. TV Shows

40. Path of TV
• Broadcast Networks
• Cable, then Satellites
• VCRs, then DVDs
• VOD
• DVR
• Internet TV

41. Books

42. Movies

43. Music

44. Forget What You Know About Media
• Broadcasting is moving toward live
events quickly
• HD/digital changes TV
• If it’s able to be digitized, it will be
• Time shifting
• Two-way is the new “normal”
• Net changes all paths (next slide)

45. power of social media

46. #motrinmoms

47. The Aftermath
• Immediate and swift reaction
• Demands from users
• Commercial removed
• Main website taken down
• Apology
• Lesson learned about online responses

48. FedEx/Memphis & Ketchum
• PR rep on way to FedEx visit
• Updates Twitter with Memphis remark
• FedEx finds, takes offense to update
• Irony: PR rep to discuss social media
• Lessons: 1) It’s easy to listen/be heard
& 2) Professional / Personal

49. AdAge’s Marketer of the Year
iPhone screenshot courtesy
http://dogearnation.com/

50. LASIK
• Our dev manager updated status
• Included LASIK
• Replies back from unconnected
people
• Lesson: Mine data for your use, add
value

51. getting started

52. Internally
• Identify who and what
• How will you use your brand?
• Separate personal from professional
where possible (execs can not)
• Be ready to see the bad, the worse,
and the ugly
• Be cool

53. listen to your audience

54. Externally
• Don’t react (aka “Be Cool,” again)
• Pace is the trick
• Find your friends, connect
• Super friends take up for you
• “You can’t win them all.”

55. managing info overload

56. Finding Tools Right for You
• Google Reader
• Technorati
• Twitter searches
• Social bookmarking sites
• more...

59. in conclusion

60. • Pace of Change
• Social media = offline mirror
• Audiences choose convenience over
quality most of the time
• Media world dictated by users
• Step out there!

61. additional info

62. Pace of Change influences
These books and online research have influenced my thinking.

63. Social media influence
These books and online research have influenced my thinking.

64. Credits
• Image with Wikipedia definition - kara by john
curley - http://flickr.com/photos/jay_que/
2501197232/
• Image for “Automobiles” - IMG_7055 by
i_am_lee_sam - http://flickr.com/photos/leesam/
3207747285/
• Book covers from Amazon.com.
• All other images (c) Jason Silverstein.
• Other sources cited throughout.