Guest post by Bill Wagner, Vocus EVP and Chief Operating Officer.
Recovering from another great User Conference last week. It’s always great to hear from customers about their passion for how our software helps them do their jobs. Over the course of three days, I was struck by a number of things.
First, the momentum and the opportunity behind social media. Clearly our customers (and the market in general) have moved beyond the “what is social media?” question and to the “how do I use it?” question. Like anything else, some organizations are ahead of others, but without question, social media is becoming “mainstream” for all marketing and PR professionals. That being said, my conversations with people in the industry lead me to believe that less than 50% of companies are consistently incorporating it into their PR efforts. We have an opportunity to educate them and help them leverage the potential of the Vocus platform. As David Meerman Scott says, “‘social media’ are tools—‘real time’ is a mindset.” We all have stop talking about social media as a “thing to do” and embrace its ability to allow us to engage with prospects/customers/donors/volunteers in today’s real-time world.
The second thing that jumped out at me was the theme of “content marketing” and how it’s being used interchangeably with public relations. As keynote speaker Scott Stratten said, and Ann Handley of Marketing Profs reiterated, relevant content is the best way to engage with your audience. And, as Vocus CEO Rick Rudman said in his opening, PR professionals have always been experts at distributing content—so the talk about content marketing is directly in a PR professional’s wheelhouse. The most obvious example of this is press releases. The term itself is outdated for many who now use them to reach consumers directly and drive traffic to a website. Our PRWeb platform is unsurpassed for this; if you’re in any doubt, check this out.
Finally, I was again blown away by the enthusiasm of our employees. Every customer I spoke to praised their AE and our customer service team. One customer went out of her way to track me down to tell me how refreshing it was to be working with a company whose employees are so passionate. It not only makes me proud to be able to work at Vocus, but it convinces me that we have a great foundation for our future—it’s the people of Vocus that make us successful.
I’d also like to thank all those whose hard work made this year’s User Conference so successful. The Professional Services, Account Executives and the Marketing team who all put in long hours to make our customers feel pampered this week. I’d especially like to thank our customers who presented at the conference or participated in a panel. Their blend of strategy and practical “how to” is what challenges us to think differently while also showing us the way. Planning takes all year and we’ve already begun to think about next year’s event. Personally, I can’t wait.
You can follow Bill Wagner on Twitter at @SaasCmo.
