#conv14

[idfc-itsemilia]

Emilia took in a big breath of air as she stepped foot into Serenity. The awful sweaty smell wasn’t overpowering, the patrons weren’t as aggravating and the lights weren’t as dim. Although, they weren’t due to a miraculous revamp and more to do with her life finally turning in the right direction. Maybe it also had to do with a certain someone who makes her see things in a brighter light. Whatever the reasons, she enjoyed it. With a small smile on her face, Emilia sauntered into the establishment and straight over to the bar where Jack was cleaning a couple glasses. 

“Hey Jacko! I’ll have a whiskey to start tonight please,” She spoke in a cheery voice - well, for her. It was probably just a regular polite voice for normal people. Jack paused his cleaning and looked at her like she had two heads. “Who are you and where the hell is brooding ‘I need a drink or the world is ending’ Emilia? Am I having a fever dream? I didn’t know you could be so pleasant in public.” The bartender teased her and gently hit her with his towel. Emilia just rolled her eyes and pushed him back with her hand. “Oh fuck off. Can’t I just have a good day now and then? Fuck dude, don’t take this away from me!” She laughed and raised her glass in cheers before taking her first sip. “Seriously though Ems, why are you so happy? I like to know what - or who - is making my friend so cheerful.” Emilia tried to bite her lip to stop a ridiculously wide smile spreading across her face. “I mean...it’s just...I don’t know if I should say.” She wasn’t sure if Faith would be okay with her telling Jack about their newly established relationship. “Maybe I’ll tell you later buddy, but not now.” She grinned as she pretended to zip her lips shut. The brunette downed the rest of her drink, ordered another before she slipped away to the back room to see her girlfriend. She knew Faith was already at Serenity to get herself ready and wanted desperately to see her. She saw the girl across the room in front of a mirror so slyly made her way over and placed her hands on the back of her chair. “Well hello there babe. It’s so very good to see you.” She grinned cheekily and looked at her through the mirror. 

[lurobredhead]

I am Fred's Bow Tie - Part 3 (the Finale!)

Cliffhangers are the worst!  Sorry to keep you hanging.  Here’s what happened:

No, I did not get onstage, nor backstage.

But I faked it here:

And got this sweet pic with security:

And as it turns out, there were a TON of people who looked just like me at the show (hipster nerds!):

No comment on this last pic.  I just had to include it... just because.

In all seriousness, seeing the band Fun. was the perfect way to end a week-long conference of meetings, sessions, vision-setting, demos, customer meetings, hands-on labs, and general carousing.  Fun!

Back in IAFBT – Part 1 we talked about goals and metrics.  I had a personal goal with FBT to “gain more followers”…  Which developed into “drive fun and excitement yet provide value to conference-goers”...  But those are words, not numbers.  I saw my Twitter followers increase from about 150 at the start of the conference to over 400 by the end.  Not too bad.  And thankfully, we have a whole social media team who was able to articulate goals and numbers in a much more quantified way.  Thanks Kelly Rigotti and the Social Media team! 

Fred’s Bow Tie Results for Convergence March 3-7, 2014:

322 tweets sent

178 favorites

108 replies

312 retweets

500,956 reach

478 @FredsBowTie mentions!

I may not be great with numbers but I am super competitive, so I took these numbers and compared them to the rest of the Convergence social metrics and found some positive and not so positive results.  For example, my number of retweets was 23% of the conference’s overall retweets (with hashtag #conv14).  But my reach overall was only 1% of the overall conference reach. Meh.

With social media, the path to success is to get your content shared across a lot of people that gets them to DO something.  Expose -> Influence -> Engage -> Action/Convert.  So without the reach, the influence and some sort of conversion measurement, who cares?

Was this an enormous waste of time?

Maybe, maybe not.  My goals were: have fun, drive excitement, and provide value to conference-goers.  I believe I did that according to my favorites and retweets.  But it was an incomplete goal without the So What.  So what kind of business impact did I drive?  Is that every fully known?  Should I have sprinkled in calls to action in my tweets?  Should I have had some links on hand to drive folks to more content, downloads, webcast invites?  Maybe, but then it may have taken away some of the authenticity and spontaneity. 

But not all hope is lost.  Let’s get back to the “provide value” part and see if we can do anything there.

First, I’m looking at business value in context of the technology.  Here are some examples:

CRM “Leo” release in Spring Wave ’14 is for Online AND On-Premise customers – 15 retweets,  3 favorites.

Options to avoid autosave in CRM 2013 – 9 retweets.

Form Diagnostics shortcut – 5 retweets.

And so on.

But then there’s value in making the audience feel special.  Examples:

Attendee Love – 10 retweets.

Customer Success at Delta – 11 retweets.

Shout out to Umberto Milletti at Insideview for their great partnership – 7 retweets.

Based on the content shared in highly retweeted posts we can derive “So What” value and drive specific follow-up actions.  We can take follow-up actions as a business to ensure that our existing customers, partners, and prospective customers understand that the Spring Wave ’14 release for core CRM functionality will apply as an on-premise update (this wasn’t the case in early communications).  We can look at providing more tips-and-tricks type content via blog posts and webcasts to power users around diagnostics and autosave options.  We can continue to build and share great customer and partner stories.

And we can always, always find ways to make our audience feel special by complimenting their successes and thanking them for being with us.

Because with amazing customer experiences, it comes down to this:

People will forget what you said People will forget what you did But people will never forget how you made them feel.

-Maya Angelou

And in leveraging social media to drive business value, perhaps connecting with people emotionally is the most important thing.

Fred's Bow Tie, out!

[realneststate]

#conv14 #microsoft #atlanta