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Three Things I Learned From Jay Baer’s Visit to St. Louis

By: Ashlyn Brewer | 04/25/2011

Since joining Standing Partnership last summer, I've looked forward to "Fridays with Jay," our regular training sessions with social media strategist Jay Baer. What I love about Jay is that he's completely no-nonsense. He doesn't rattle off ten tools that came out yesterday, he starts with strategy.

So, I was excited to finally meet Jay in person last Thursday when he made a whirlwind tour of St. Louis. My colleagues and I had the pleasure of attending three different sessions:

• A morning event Standing hosted for our clients and partners.
• An intensive afternoon training session for our internal team.
  
• Social Media Club St. Louis in the evening.

Each session had a different crowd, vibe and opportunity for learning.

Morning:
Five words: "Social media requires experiential learning." Don't just read about it (although you really should read Jay's book "The Now Revolution."), but also do it. Get online and learn the unwritten rules that govern the communities you want to be a part of. You'll be far more successful if you engage in the community before trying to write it into your marketing plan.

Afternoon:
Jay believes companies should use social media to communicate the "one thing" that sets them apart from the competition. But, whatever you do, don't tell him your "one thing" is customer service.  Are you Zappos? Are you willing to lose money to make a customer happy? If not, move on and find your true one thing.

Evening:
Jay's co-author, Amber Naslund, joined Jay for Social Media Club and brought an exciting energy to the room. The duo made a lot of interesting points, but one thing I learned just from witnessing their partnership is that social media success benefits from the buddy system. Amber and Jay clearly were able to learn from each other, and that partnership has created an excellent book. As business people, we should seek out others interested in this topic to learn from. Social media is still scary to some businesspeople, so finding allies will help you move your organization forward along the social media continuum.

Did you get to see Jay while he was in town? What did you learn at this supersized version of Fridays with Jay?

Posted in Digital Communications