Gavin Baker

In a two weeks I’m going to be joining a few friends on the stage at Social Fresh Nashville.  It will be great to see @jasonfalls @djwaldow @genochurch @katadhin @waynesutton @GregCangialosi and meet some new friends from Home Depot, Radian6, Newell Rubbermaid and Southwest Airlines at Social Fresh aka @sofresh conference in Nashville, TN on January 11, 2010.

After being an attendee at the original Social Fresh in Charlotte, I’m excited to be able to speak at round two.  I found the first conference an action packed few days – while the conference is actually one day, the pre-party and post-party are things I wouldn’t miss – and when you show up, come find me and say hello.

Here’s a bit on what’ s being presented:

• The ROI Of Community
• Social Media In The Music Industry
• Corporate Blogging Is Your Social Media Home Base
• B2B Innovation In Social Media
• Real Twitter Results
• Word of Mouth Marketing form the Bottom Up
• Moving The Needle: Social Media For Your Bottom Line

That’s all I’ll say as Jason Falls has already written up a great post about the conference on his site.  If you’re an organization that is looking to learn more, this is a great opportunity to dip your feet into the social media and at $315 a ticket, it’s quite reasonable.  There will be great minds covering almost all the bases you’ll need from start to finish.  You can register for the event using this link to the Social Fresh registration site. (Disclosure: As a speaker, I am an affiliate of the conference and get a commission on any sales made from the link. Non-affiliate link register here.)

PS if you can’t make Nashville and you’re in the Tampa, FL area then you’ll want to be on board for the next Social Fresh on Feb. 8.

So register, show up in Nashville and I’ll see you there.

Image by doug88888

David Armano makes a three predictions for 2010 on social media and business.

1. Scale

2. Integration

3. Policy

I think he’s right on for 2 and 3.  I’d add an additional prediction – that social networking sites and tools will begin to add offerings that appeal to business.  I’m not talking about CoTweet ramping up it’s twitter tool, while it’s a good product.  I’m talking about product design BY the sites themselves.  Sites building out tools and frameworks that not only support businesses but invite them.  Let me be clear, I’m not sharing insider information, I just know what I think would help us and other companies like us.

Most social sites are designed for the individual and rightfully so as relationships are what create and grow these sites.  But now that organizations are starting to join the fray – their needs, our need are different.  Take for example any national retail company in any vertical.  Walmart, Best Buy, Ruby Tuesday, P.F. Chang’s, Moe’s, etc. the list goes on and on.  The commonality with all these organizations is that they are national, if not international companies, but ultimately serve customers locally.

Each of those customers cared for locally visits a store, where there may be 10-10,000 locations and those local stores together create the global brand.  The tension is that social sites know how to serve the local – they are even set up for that in most cases (i.e. requiring a geographic area) but they haven’t quite figured out the global range yet. Global brands need the ability to set parameters to maintain control while allowing for local flexibility.

I’d also add that this need “could” be filled by third party developers if the platform API’s allow deep enough access.

Exciting to see how this plays out.