sourcing the amplified crowd

At Phoenix Square Film and Digital Media Centre this evening, for the regular monthly meeting of Amplified Leicester. A good number attending, at least two dozen, with the seats arranged in rows this time, rather than around tables, cabaret style. Though that lends a little more formality in terms of the audience, there's no sens of this being a formal sort of presentation.

Eileen Brown (photo above) is a social media consultant who works with corporates to improve perception about their brand and create vibrant communities using Social Media to amplify their message and improve the quality of the connection to their customers increasing satisfaction. She is an accomplished and well-known speaker and expert on Social Media, Online Branding, Web 2.0 and Unified Communications. She's just published her new book, Working the Crowd: Social Media Marketing for Business. In it she discusses how some organisations are shunning social media, or restricting access at the firewall. They are reluctant to embrace this new media which will harm their business. This will restrict their ability to employ new talent, respond to market forces, be agile, and grow their revenue. Eileen explains why social media is vital to continued business success and why it matters.

In a nutshell, Eileen talks about how to make sense of the wealth of information about actual and potential customers, partners, employees etc that can be scooped up from social media. We can say more about ourselves and learn more about others than ever before - but what can we actually do with it all? There's a raffle for a signed copy of Eileen's book - and Tonia wins it! She didn't even know about Amplified Leicester and social media till lunchtime today when I told her! Still, probably means I can borrow it.

I get the Flip video camera into action again at the end of the evening and do seven talking heads about Amplified Leicester - including a beaming Tonia. You can watch these videos here:
http://www.youtube.com/user/counciloffaiths?feature=mhum#g/c/A80FC7342EA6EA8A

Find out more about Amplified Leicester (and sign up!):
http://ampleic.ning.com/