One of the things I love most about the new social landscape is how there constantly seem to be new ways to meet and connect, and present and share our varied learnings and experiences.
Last Wednesday I was lucky enough to attend the first evening of a new event – a social media open mic night. Now I have ruminated once or twice on whether blogging is the new rock n roll – was this to be proof that social media is the new stand-up comedy?
Not quite! What I experienced was a great concept and one that enabled networking, insight and a lot of fun.
Hosted by Radian6 and Salesforce, the Social Success #micup night gave the opportunity for 5 social media practitioners to each take the microphone for 5 minutes to share their social media success secret – with precious few slides and a clock counting down the 5 minutes behind them.
The fearless five were not chosen at random, but had been crowd sourced through Twitter, so their presence on the stage was not a surprise, and this led to a relaxed and engaging session. More storytelling amongst friends than a full presentation…though the crowd were ready and willing to heckle!
One presenter – Doug Kessler – has already summed up the five presentations in this excellent blog…I recommend you read it. I’ll just give you my take on the 5 Success Secrets:
- Serendipity…you never know where a single random tweet will lead. In the case of Gabrielle Peters it led to NASA, the Mars Mission and a meeting with Will.i.am.
- Agape…unconditional love is the key to community building. And great content needs to inform, inspire, educate or entertain – and preferably all 4!
- It isn’t all about the big networks and big communities…a platform like Path can help you build tiny groups of like-minded people
- Be social and engage creatively…it isn’t about shoving your message down your audience’s throats if you are a big brand
- Be unique and stick to your beliefs…it’s crowded and you don’t get much airtime so make sure you stand out and don’t lose faith if at first it doesn’t work
The evening moved on to drinks and chat, and quite a relaxed networking vibe.
The social success micup was a huge success…there’s another one planned for November and I recommend you sign up when as soon as its announced.
Not quite rock n roll, nor stand-up comedy…more of a fun cocktail bar and lounge evening, with new friends and interesting discussions.
Talent Trends & Insights 
Sounds like useful fun – Pecha Kucha stylee? I’ll keep my eye out for the next one and I hope we get to hear about what went wrong also – success is over rated (and often exaggerated too).