Forgive the long post intended for social media geeks like me.

There is a second revolution coming in social media.

In its early stages, social media was the revolution in and of itself. From a business perspective, social media was about establishing better means of communication and connection with customers. “Find them where they are.” “Listen to what they say about you.” “Fix their concerns.” “Engage your customers in two way communication.” This is all good. But it’s no longer enough.

Yesterday, I was at an excellent social media conference hosted by Tim Hayden of Blue Clover. This event was separate from South by Southwest Interactive (SXSWI). However, scores of people who went to SXSWI were at this conference and in different conversations, I heard them expressing a similar sentiment. “I haven’t heard anything new.” The more I thought about it, the more I realized it’s been a long time since I’ve heard anything new in the social media realm aside from tools and apps. I haven’t heard new discussions. I haven’t been challenged. Until today at Tim’s conference Get Ready to Live (GR2L).

We had a great lineup of social media/marketing thought leaders such as Tim, Chris Brogan, Jason Falls and Sam Decker. I could have listened to these four all day. And their topics were all related to business.

Let me start with Jason Falls. The old way of thinking (in the last 2 years) was that our job was to create online communities that invite people back. We have been told to write for our fan base. Jason did some research and told us that on average 70% of new visits on business site are from new, first time visitors. So what does this mean? Jason said something today that as bloggers we all have been thinking but weren’t courageous enough to say ourselves. Ready? “To reach new people, we must write content for search engines and key words.” While perhaps not a revolutionary thought, it was a revolutionary statement in a space where few people are talking about the business realities we face. We are in business to make money people! If you and I do not increase the traffic to our websites from first time visitors and decrease the bounce rates, we will struggle to increase our revenue. Key Takeaway: Remember your current base and focus on those who have no idea who you are and will stumble upon you (no pun intended) through a search engine.

Then came Sam Decker. This man also destroyed “old” social media norms and helped us see the future. According to Sam, the old marketing model was the manufacturer delivers to the retailer who works with the marketing department to sell to the consumer. The intermediate model (the last 2 years) was the consumer interacted regularly with the retailer, primarily through social media (see the first paragraph of this post). The future model takes engagement to a new level. Not only do customers interact with the retailer, but they will interact with each other. When consumers have a question about a product they have purchased, they will be able to communicate with the manufacturer online, sometimes through the retailer’s website, sometimes not. Marketing/media will be at the center of all of this, communicating offline and online with all the parties. Sam has the stats to back up the fact that companies with this type of interaction on their websites increase revenue.

Okay, step back for a moment. Let’s concentrate on just one facet: providing interaction between customers. Sam told us about a trend. We used to trust companies. Then we moved from trusting companies to trusting the people we know. Now, in addition to trusting people we know, we are beginning to trust people we don’t know who give online testimonials.  Again, we saw the stats to back up the correlation between increased revenue and customer to customer interaction. Key Takeaway: Find ways to help my clients and prospects communicate with each other online. This was revolutionary for me from the perspective of a business owner.

Next up was Tim Hayden. He talked to us about mobility. He told us we are shifting and will continue to shift out from behind our computer screens to being on the street, outside, quilting, playing soccer, doing the things we love to do. He proposes that in the near future, we will no longer carry laptops, but we will always, always have our mobile devices. So now it’s no longer enough to have your website optimized – we must have our websites mobile optimized. Tim hinted that San Antonians will have the opportunity to hear more from him soon. I’m looking forward to hearing more of what he has to say. Key Takeaway: It used to be all about the web. The future will be all about mobile devices.

Finally, Chris Brogan spoke. As soon as I saw him in the conference center I knew something was wrong. I found out what it was when he spoke. He started out by telling us that he is frustrated. He is frustrated that all the recent conversations about social media are “regurgitations” of conversations we were having four years ago. He is frustrated that we aren’t doing more with the tools we have. You can feel his angst in the post he wrote here. To a certain degree I think we have succumbed to the rat race of social media and forgotten its true purpose in our businesses – to build relationships. What Chris was emphasizing today was that handing someone a business card is not building a meaningful relationship.  I believe the same is true with our online presence. Gaining a new follower on Twitter is not building a relationship. RTing a post is not building a relationship.  Key Takeaway: I love this quote from Zig Ziglar: “People do business with people they know, like and trust.” How are you building relationships online that allow people to get to know, like and trust you AND more importantly, allow you to get to know, like and trust them?

There was a piece of the conversation today that was missing and that was the conversation about the small business owner. Best Buy, Sears, AT&T, P&G have the resources to create amazingly interactive websites. They have the capital to invest in mobile optimization. But what about the little guys? How do small business owners effectively implement these things without the large budgets and large employee pools?

I’m not sure what the answer to that question is, but it needs to be asked and answered by the thought leaders from Monday’s session and more. We need to ask these questions as well and relentlessly pursue the answers. I would love to hear your ideas in the comments.

Photo courtesy of psd.

Tagged as: business development, chris brogan, customers, relationships, results, small business, Social Media, twitter