Jim Storer
Sr. Director, Social Media Strategy
Return on Community

Jim Storer : Return on Community

Putting the "WE" Into Webinars I'm hosting a webinar with Josh Bernoff from Forrester on Wednesday. Amid the excitement of an event with a lot of interested people (300+ registered the last I checked), is the realization that something is broken in the one-to-many webinar world. I've run literally hundreds of webinars and there's just a fundamental disconnect between the presenter and audience. I'm looking for ways to change that on Wednesday. I'm already planning to request people DM me on Twitter with questions, comments and feedback during the event. I'll be routing those messages through SMS on my iPhone, so they'll be certain to get my attention. I'm also putting together a pretty robust set of questions I'd like Josh to answer during the session (I don't plan on tipping my hand in advance of the session). What else should I be thinking about? Josh and I plan to talk tomorrow about the format and I'd appreciate your thoughts on what you'd like to hear and any questions you want answered. Please submit your ideas as a comment and be sure to leave your name and/or Twitter handle so I know who to thank.  ;-) Mon, Apr 14 2008

Comments

Thanks Warren, Isle and Bryan! Looking forward to getting answers to your questions. - Jim

Jim, I flipped through the book for a few minutes last weekend, and I noticed there wasn't much on podcasting. Does Josh not think that channel can be used to build a groundswell? And if he does, could he give an example or two? @BryanPerson

I like the idea of using twitter as communication medium during the webinar...it has a more casual yet responsive feel to me. As well, I have found it difficult to ask a question or respond to dialogue during, due to business in my office and the forward-moving nature of the webinar structure, and tweets may be able to assist with this. (Depending on the tweetload!)I am wondering about the logistics of using social media community to market a place (province, albiet small), rather than a product...or the place *as* product, multi-region/sector, evolving from a tourism/place based core. @isle

Jim,I agree with your point about the webinar conversation often being too one-sided. Integrating twitter into the webinar so that everyone can create, criticize, and observe is a great idea. It makes it into more of a we dialogue activity. One question I have for Josh is, Would twitter be considered a community of critics based on social technographics and can a community exist successfully if everyone has the same role?Thanks,@warrenss