Being The Social Camels That We Are…

A couple of the Camels headed to Toronto for this year’s Community Management Conference on May 22. There was a tremendous amount of hype surrounding this year’s conference, and with good reason, as there were some impressive speakers lined up to share their creative ideas including representatives from Rogers Communications, CBC, Flight Centre, Tangerine (formerly ING Direct) Google Canada and HootSuite. The day focused on the role of a Community Manager and how we should utilize our online and offline strategies to connect with our clients to help strengthen their brand. We need to stay ahead of the curve in community management for our clients, so we were pretty pumped to be surrounded by so many like-minded “socialites”.

The day was fast paced with #CM1TO trending to No. 1 and with Flying Camel and our very own Social Media Coordinator Julia @langlois_julia being a top 10 influencer on twitter throughout the day!

There were a few key takeaways that really stood out for us and that we believe can benefit you:

Be local everywhere

Don’t assume what works for your company or brand in Vancouver will work for you in Montreal. Social Media and branding needs change depending on your surrounding culture and geography. Listening and understanding your audience and reacting to each need will bring a national or global brand local and working for you.

Swag is good!

Really! Who doesn’t like free stuff? Flying Camel t-shirts?  Water bottles? Corkscrews?  Talk to us!

Use swag to engage, brand or re-brand, but don’t over saturate. When companies are going through a growth or transition they need to ensure their online and offline audiences are able to connect and relate. Giving out FREE items is a perfect way to showcase your brand and just might be the perfect tool for you to make an IRL impression.

Digital and social needs to be in the DNA

Everyone in your organization needs to buy into the ‘social’ world.  It’s OK to have your team execute the strategy, but it shouldn’t be handled solely by those with Social Media in their job titles. Digital and social engagement must work effortlessly from bottom-up and top-down, and should not be ignored by VP’s or the CEO.  It is important to remember to work closely with your team, go over strategy and then execute effectively.

The role of Community Manger has skyrocketed over the past three years by building on social media, communications and brand awareness principles. How is your organization using some of these imperative takeaways?

Interesting fact: Did you know that over 100 Hours of YouTube video content is uploaded to the site every minute? To put that in perspective, by the time you finish this sentence over 9 hours of YouTube content will have been uploaded. That translates to over 540 minutes of people sitting on their bed playing the guitar; fans bantering over whether Star Wars or Star Trek is better and more videos of people hurting themselves than anyone can realistically watch.


Posted May 1, 2015 Category: Tags: , , , , , ,