As I mentioned yesterday, something was missing though.

Businesspeople.

Social Media offers anyone with a business an opportunity to:

• Increase brand awareness
• Increase customer satisfaction
• Gather Intelligence on customers and competitors
• Increase sales

Yet, at nearly every social media event I attend (SxSW, Social Media Club, Free State Social, Highlight Midwest) the target audience appears to be those in mobile/social media, user experience design and application development.

There is one business exception — Non-profits. As management guru, Peter Drucker once noted, businesses can learn a great deal from the business efficiency of non-profits. At it’s core, social media is operationally efficient marketing.

Non-profits, out of necessity, are looking for ways to funnel as much of it’s cost to its core business. In the book, “Managing the Non-Profit Organization: Principles and Practices,” Drucker assesses that most non-profits are run more efficiently than most of for-profit businesses. Both types of businesses have something in common — sustainability. The reality is that the for-profit business probably has a budget to pay for an expert resource. The non-profit is more likely to be interested in offering you a volunteer opportunity.

Wouldn’t it be nice to network with businesspeople at these events or have a meaningful conversation about the type of help you might be able to offer? Wouldn’t it be a great opportunity to learn about specific problems businesses are struggling to solve?

So why don’t more businesses attend these events when they could obviously benefit? I speculate that something to consider is that it is easier to market these conferences to those wishing to become more competent in social media professionals. These conferences offer attendees an opportunity to improve their craft.

But a more likely reason why businesspeople don’t attend, I speculate, is that Mobile/Social media utility and value still isn’t obvious to business. I speculate social media isn’t yet relevant or meaningful for many companies. How can the social media industry make these methods more obvious to businesspeople?

I wonder if, because these are events are billed as “social media,” they would attract more companies if they were billed to be about “business innovation.” I wonder if a conference offered a business track and included education on “increasing sales, “lowering the cost of public relations,” or “lowering the cost of managing customers,” which highlighted many of social media principles, would more businesspeople attend. At the very least, I speculate more companies might pay more attention.

If we could create a space where business could look to the social media community as experts in business, instead of social media, we would see an opportunity to talk to small and medium-sized business owners and executives about their needs. It would create a powerful networking opportunity in which business leaders(potential customers) and experts (potential suppliers) could come together and give each other the type of help they need.

What do you think? If you are a social media professional, what more do you need to learn to begin to help someone with their problems in business?

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• Increase efficiency
• Increase brand awareness
• Compete in the global marketplace
• Anticipate market drift
• Produce satisfaction

The lineup of speakers was truly strong. Chris Brogan and Jeremiah Owyang represent two of the strongest thinkers in the industry. The rest of the lineup was extremely solid as well and in that assessment I also include the local panel of Zena Weist, Shea Sylvia, Ramsey Mohsen and Tony Botello.

I left the conference Friday afternoon extremely satisfied and thinking that I couldn’t wait til next year.

There will be a lot written about the Free State Social and what a strong event it was. After all, the Lawrence Journal World brought industry heavyweights to the region. They were exposed to legions of the social media professionals in the mid-west. This created a situation in which we in the mid-west walked away with some tremendous learning. There were a few things that I personally took away from the conference.

1. Be who you are all the time – You never stop being a mother or a father and similarly, you never stop being an executive, salesperson, customer service associate or a technologist. We tend to compartmentalize who we are. Do we decide we are only who we are at work from 8-5 and after that, do we become a cook, a chauffeur, or care-taker of virtual farms? We must embody our role and be that at all times.

2. Be a care-taker – Your customers, your employees and even your boss need to be tended after, much like your children, even when you are not with them. Take care of those who take care of you. Hold their concerns as your own.

3. The Rings of Influence – This is a powerful way to help businesses think strategically with social media. If you want to reach potential customers via social media, have you even reached your own employees yet?

4. Be Different – If you are the only supplier of what customers are looking for, they’ll come back for more.

5. Lastly, there was something missing from the conference which I will write about tomorrow. I speculate that for those of us who attended, there is a leadership opportunity available to us, that you hadn’t thought of.

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Now it’s more like an infinity loop — less newspapers but more news.
3 x factors

News is published (and then people share it)
Journalists report on news that others find.
Journalists use audience to develop stories and report during and after stories.

Facebook users share 5 billion pieces of content every week.

80% of sites linked to on blogs come from social media

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Take advantage of where potential customers are by providing something of value.

Opportunities are Bourne out of connecting with others.

Community members will preserve and protect the community if they “feel” ownership.

Staying overnight to raise money for the community brought attention to a cause. Get involved and bring forth the message.

Sign up for cnnireport sign up for helpareporter.com. Follow journalists online.

When you pitch look at recent tweets of the company and include them in proposals.

Use pitch engine for your releases.

Crowdsourced ideas from the gallery.

Aggregate content from the rest of the internet. #commentz on Sara’s blog.

Take your message offline too (and to Skype) anyone who comments on my blog gets a Skype conversation.

Fake confidence even if you don’t have it.

Don’t Bullshit.

Answer questions from Yahoo Answers.

Connect people who need help, to those who can help.

Listen and be flexible with ideas.

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Do something nice for the community. Seduce people to want to spend time with you. We are a bundle of concerns apart from social media. Do something that takes care of anothers concerns. The most powerful way to help people is to spend time with the people you want to help. Communicate with them!

Be your ambition all the time in all your messages to others. Be consistent about communicating.

CEOs need to also be conscious about connecting with others using their personal brand.

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