Reflections from Social Media Breakfast 9 in Boston

Here are a couple of things that stuck in my head a day after the event.

1. It seems like mainstream corporate types (ie enterprise customers like EMC) are taking it slow with social media.  Like other new technologies, they are carefully evaluating it (in this case inside the firewall first) as another tool to help them improve their business.
2. Absent a  a clearly articulated ROI, there will still be alot of testing with social media before acceptance in the enterprise C-suite.
3. I heard my first fear-based argument for social media engagement.  David Alston of Radian6 used an analogy of someone standing in front of your company shout bad things about you at the top of his lungs.  If this were about your company would your PR team ignore them?  I enjoyed the demo of his their platform but it probably makes him nuts when people say “why can’t you just use a Google alert to track these things”.
4. As Peter Kim reminded us, CMOs are general managers typically with short tenure.  They need to think about ROI first and coolness second.
5. There are still more vendors and consultants at these events than prospective clients or end user types.  The irony is that I’m a potential customer looking for solutions and no one even tried to sell to me.

For more from SMB9 Boston, check out Twitter with hashtag #smb9.  Twitter may have jumped the shark but it is still the medium of choice for real-time sharing.  And you can still follow me at @tangyslice…