Executing Social Media

…sure, it’s annoying, but does it really deserve the death penalty?

Sorry, but I’ve been making that awful joke in my own head and it had to come out.

Anyway, that’s the name of the conference on social media that I’m attending. And so far, it’s been an odd experience in several ways.

First, being at a meeting, to me, normally means being at a medical convention with tens of thousands of doctors, looking conservative, tracking down reporters to hook them up to interview doctors, managing events, rewriting press materials, collecting competitive intelligence. Instead, I’m sitting still. Taking notes and Twittering and emailing and IM’ing and learning. It’s startlingly relaxing, actually being an attendee.

Second, I’m usually one of the geekier people I know, being something of a technology magpie. But here, I don’t come close. It’s disorienting. But very good.

Third, I work for an agency and I work in the pharmaceutical industry, both of which make me odd here: I’m not a tech consultant. So while I’m getting a lot of information, it’s going to require a lot of thought to translate it to practicalities.

One of the main things I’m realizing is that there are several different facets, for me, of “figuring out social media.”

The first is, how to use it for my own benefit? That’s not new to me.
The second is, how to use it to benefit the agency? That’s getting clearer.
The third is, how to use it to benefit clients? That’s the hard part.

Which realization is in itself something of a breakthrough; I hadn’t really divided it up that clearly before, but now that I have, it makes things make a lot more sense for me.

So, more later, but now, back to the presentations. (While doing some client work simultaneously. Maybe not so relaxing after all.)