It’s a conversation that could touch on many aspects of how the Twin Cities works:

• How we attract and reward talented people
• How we promote the Twin Cities as a destination for business, meetings, movies, etc.
• How we nurture startups and entrepreneurs
• How we attract conventions and tourists
• How the press covers technology and innovation

And it’s a conversation that calls for participation from people who make decisions on a city-wide or metro-wide scale. I’m talking about government officials, politicians, business owners & executives, non-profits, associations, etc.

Specifically, I’ve come up with a list of people I’d love to have attend UnSummit and participate in these discussions. But I think it’ll take some active recruiting by other attendees, as many of these people would have no reason to know about UnSummit and might find the unconference format a little strange.

So, who wants to do some outreach? Below is my list of desired attendees. Perhaps you know someone on the list? Feel free to write or call them and give them a warm invitation to the next UnSummit.

• Minneapolis Mayor R.T. Rybak
• St. Paul Mayor Chris Coleman
• Thomas Lee, Star Tribune
• Representatives of the Minneapolis CVB (a.k.a. Meet Minneapolis)
• Representatives of the St. Paul Convention and Visitors Authority
• Representatives of local chapters of Adfed, American Marketing Association, IABC, MIMA (Prez. Matt Wilson is coming), PRSA, SHRM, Womenventure
• Representatives of the U of M Alumni Association

BTW, This list is being maintained at the bottom of the Attendees page at Unsummit.org. Feel free to go there and add any folks you feel belong on the list.

Woo hoo! This week at the Minnov8 podcast, Steve Borsch, Tim Elliott, Graeme Thickins and Phil Wilson review both the MIMA Summit and the UnSummit. As some of you know, Phil led the “Social Media Reality Check” session at UnSummit and later blogged about the experience. Graeme attended the MIMA Summit and blogged about it as well.

The podcast devotes a good amount of time to discussing both events and the gentlemen make some interesting observations.

Graeme Thickins on the MIMA Summit:

• The event pulled in some high-profile, national speakers.
• ZeFrank was the highlight of the day.
• The audience was quite diverse, but seemed to be geared toward downtown advertising agencies. As a result, some people complained that it wasn’t “interactive enough.”
• Except between sessions, there weren’t too many opportunities for deep discussion.
• The swag bags were chock-full of promotional goodness.

Phil, in his review of UnSummit, says:

• The event was all about intimate conversations.
• Discussion focused primarily on social media and social marketing.
• The conversations revealed that many businesses are monitoring social media right now, but not yet marketing with it.
• By contrast, our swag bag consisted of a bag with Cheetos written on it. (Ed: Actually, even that might be an overstatement!)

Thanks, guys, for providing a comparative rundown of the events! Your commentary cements my view that just as much as this town needs national speakers and expert forums, it also needs forums for conversation and hands-on collaboration. Just as we thrive on peer-to-peer interactivity on the Web, we need it in our real-life meetups. I’m encouraged to see events like Social Media Breakfast, Likemind, Social Media Happy Hour, MinneBar and UnSummit can help satisfy this need.

UnSummit ‘08…More Than a Summit Alternative

Keep uploading event pics to Flickr, tagged unsummit08.

I’ll be putting the final touches on the social media strategy we created for The Local and Keirnan’s over the next few days. I’ll post the overview and links soon.

The discussion around community management, moderated and facilitated by Meg Canada, covered a range of ways community management benefits an overall marketing strategy. From responding to complaints and giving immediate reassurance to advocating a brand or product, community management is key to new media.

A community manager becomes the human face to an organization, answering questions, making suggestions and generally letting customers/users/anyone know someone’s listening. Specifically, the library immersed itself into social media through Facebook and Myspace, creating applications for catalog search and cultivating relationships online.

An example mentioned came from Sprint. Their Instinct phones were advertised incredibly well, better than expected and phone delivery/activation was delayed for months as Sprint caught up. Many forums and sites were established to vent about frustrations.

Sprint implanted users into these forums. The Sprint representatives tried to clear up interpretations, contradicted false information and reassured those frustrated. Their community managers realized these forums were appearing before the Sprint site and addressed the issues within them.

Community managers monitor, through multiple channels, a brand’s image. They should be professional and approachable. They gather input for products and other forms of consumer research. Their voice should reflect that of the brand because they are advocates for their products or services.

Established advertisement strategies or marketing won’t be replaced by community management but enhanced by it.

Other points or questions posed by Community Management 101:

• What defines a good community? Can the communities themselves take on a life beyond the brand? (Comments on book items within the library’s online catalog becoming a new-age book club)
• When the library needed more images of people reading they used Flickr, Facebook and Twitter to ask for submissions.
• Will a bottom-up, transparent system reduce the shock of scandalous information? Are brands so insulated they don’t have feedback?
• Call-based support services are frustrating. Will an online support system add a level of savvy intrinsic to working from the web? Can the support person do more answering questions online than over the phone?

General Ideas and Concepts: 

Chasing after “viral” marketing
When you try to engineer viral, you have to be part sociologist and part psychologist, but ultimately you come off a little like a fakeologist. Companies show concern for having a pristine, buffed image, but this doesn’t translate to creating viral content. No one can predict viral. The more important activity should be listening to where your customers are living and what they’re saying. Letting your customers drive business decisions involves a radical trust because it means negative and positive happen together. But the payoff is credibility (among other things.)

Marketing “creative” is overrated, substance rules the day
Sites that can get you what you need are way more important than a catchy headline. In turn, you need to follow those people who are driving your content across the web. Adapting to the way of the Web is not a generational thing, a demographic thing or a psychographic thing – but it’s often a business thing.  Business leaders are operating on razor thin margins to drive wall street, and are often less trusting of the shift in marketing focus to Web 2.0. They don’t see ROI and maybe that’s because they’ve yet to find a quantifiable way to talk about it.

Loyalty is backwards
It’s no longer about customers being loyal to a brand. Now it’s about a brand being loyal to the customers. Listening. Hearing. And responding. It’s silly to think you can maintain a customer simply based on one good experience. Companies can’t assume any permanence with customer affinity. If the company can keep up with us, great, but we’re moving targets.