Good feedback on the Affiliate Summit social media panel

It’s always good, crucial I think, to read what other people think about your panel.  I usually think it has gone well, but always hard to know if you’ve hit the mark.  In my wrap up post, I focused on us not being able to give the “magic formula” for people.  Joe Tech got some good stuff out of the talk:

This panel helped me to think not only about what I should be doing as a blogger, but perhaps a couple things I should not be doing (maybe I should stumble my posts less, eh, Tris?). It was a rewarding use of my time and it turned me on to some new promotional opportunities. Source: Joe Tech » Affiliate Summit – Day Three : Super Affiliates, Social Media, Experts, XY7, and the Segway

But, like any session, someone won’t like it and that’s okay:

One panelist, who will remain nameless, even commented that Twitter is the next big thing! I almost fell out of my seat. Now I am not a fan of Twitter. I don’t care that someone on my list is stuck in traffic. My ego is not so large that I think that people care what I am doing at this particular moment in time. As for it being the next best thing, in order for that to happen, Twitter would need to get broad acceptance by the Internet community. Can you imagine your mother or grandmother using Twitter? I didn’t think so and that is why Twitter is not the next big thing.

One of panelists also remarked that they use Delcious, Twitter and Facebook to drive traffic back to their web site (blog). Did they not read the definition of social media optimization? It is about making your content portable so that people can read and interact with it on one of these different social networks across the net. If you are only engaging in conversation on your blog you are missing out on a lot of opportunities to interact with your target audience. Source: » Social Media Session at Affiliate Summit – Social Media Optimization

Sam made that comment, and I agree with him.  I use Twitter, email, and IM (various ones) all day, every day.  Why?  Because each serves its own specific communications niche (yes, that’s neesh).  Justine commented that one of the best ways to reach her was DM through Twitter (assuming it’s working, of course).  Like Deb say as well, she’s as much a “blogger” (or twitter-er) as she is a “phone-er”.  There are many ways to use any communications tool.

Content portability?  We only touched on RSS, which is the ultimate in data portability.  I get RSS feeds via a client, sometimes through email, on my Blackberry, and the web if I so choose.  And my feeds are synced up too.

David had a great piece of advice, and one that none of us on the panel, to the best of my knowledge, have done-making a Facebook app:

But what other marketing strategies could an affiliate use to make money? Well one of the biggest opportunities in the social networking space today are Facebook applications. As an affiliate I would have loved to hear from someone who has successfully built a Facebook app, and how they used it. What did they learn from it, how did they do it and do Facebook apps work in every vertical? Source: » What the Affiliate Summit Session on Social Media Should Have Contained – Social Media Optimization

That said, Facebook is on my watch list for 2008.  Has it jumped the shark?  I’m not sure about that, and being a well-known Facebook curmudgeon I am biased, but I see it heading for a slow-down in the near future.  I think people have gotten sick of all the silly apps. 

The hard part about social media is that it is so diverse.  That said, blogging is still the best known and highest profile of the social media tools.  A lot of the other bits tie into it … so I’m happy with what we did on the panel.  Sure was fun too.

For more good bits from the conference check out Jim Kukral’s video footage.