Jimmy Gilmore

I’ve already posted on the 10,000 foot view, so I wanted to get at about what I actu­ally learned Blog­Well Atlanta.

Andy Ser­novitz had some impor­tant points on ethics and dis­clo­sure. He out­lined dan­gers to a brand of not hav­ing clear, legal agree­ments with ven­dors act­ing on a brand’s behalf and opined that the new FCC guide­lines a pos­i­tive devel­op­ment for the indus­try. His belief is that social media will be much bet­ter served by gov­ern­ment polic­ing than it would by being allowed to evolve on its own the way email did.

There were some com­pelling BtoB sto­ries. Orange and Sun­Guard had showed how social media ben­e­fited their bot­tom line through pro­vid­ing help­ful infor­ma­tion to clients and poten­tial clients.

Also there was a ter­rific UPS cri­sis man­age­ment story. And I enjoyed hear­ing about Coca-Cola’s Expe­di­tion 206 campaign.

But what did I really learn there? That there’s a vibrant com­mu­nity of pro­fes­sion­als try­ing to fig­ure this social media thing out. That it lives beyond the blogs and tweets. That peo­ple are engaged, smart, and want to do the right thing. And frankly that’s damn refresh­ing place to be com­pared to dis­cus­sions about direct mail, email mar­ket­ing, or print adver­tis­ing. Peo­ple really are see­ing a brighter hori­zon in this space while in tra­di­tional mar­ket­ing the world is shrinking.

So even if Twit­ter does turn out to be a stu­pid fad, I think social media is a pretty great space to be in.