Guest Lecture on Social Media Marketing by Headstream

March 17, 2009

Last Thursday Tom Chapman and Natalie Kitcher from Headstream came to talk about their experiences of Social Media Marketing to Southampton University undergraduates studying Digital Marketing. They covered examples of their work for a diverse range of businesses including the Young Victoria film and Red Funnel Ferries.

As an experiment, I tweeted the event using the #headstream tag. If you do a Twitter search for #headstream you will see the entire conversation, but here are a few edited highlights from my notes as the speakers talked, and the backchannel comments and Q&As.

First a few comments from me…

lisaharris: #headstream Innocent Drinks crowdsourced ideas for a new drink from Facebook – via a poll to select favourites

lisaharris: #headstream see @YoungVictoria which has been very successful in engaging people with ‘key facts’ about the Victorian era

lisaharris: importance of analytics in measuring success and demonstrating value to the client #headstream

Lorraine invites a virtual guest to join us…

lwarren17: @jonhickman, we’re doing a live tweet-up in a marketing seminar here on #headstream

The virtual guests start interacting…

Jas: @jonhickman Some companies measure loyalty and trust through surveys and polls. #headstream

jonhickman: @Jas how do you feel about the effectiveness of that sort of research? Is the data good enough to demonstrate ROI to suit types? #headstream

Jas: @johnhickman Also watch out for brands as they start to position their social media efforts onto their front pages. #headstream

I bring in the virtual participants for questions and feedback…

lisaharris: #headstream any questions you would like me to pose to Tom and Natalie?

lwarren17: #headstream, we all went quiet when you gave us a space – just like a lecture! :>)). was interested to see Young Victoria link

Jas: @lisaharris What are Tom and Natalie’s thoughts on the recent social media experiment by #skittles? #headstream

lisaharris: thanks for questions – I have asked some of them and will feedback shortly, just wrapping up now #headstream

lisaharris: @Jas in response to your qtn about what happens after the campaign, that depends on for how long the client is prepared to pay #headstream

lwarren17: #headstream, raises interesting questions of managing on and off line interactions together in real time – super stuff

What is missing of course is the contribution from the student audience in the room…. we’ll try that next time! But if you were there and would like to add your comments to this blogpost, please feel free J

Many thanks to Tom and Natalie for their efforts!