9 Things Taught About Social Media at Harvard

Larry Chiang does not fully get social media. It confuses him. He is grounded in the hard/fast world of clear ROIs and direct marketing. He is further confused that a third of the power points on Slide Share are about Twitter and related social media. Significant, but simultaneously confusing. Anyway, he could not fly to crash a conference at Harvard called Gravity Summit so he Tom Sawyered the conference producers to guest post. Snark and sarcasm is liberally sprinked in italics.
Edited By Larry Chiang

By Beverly Macy and Rodney Rumford

On August 31st, celebrities, self-made Twitter stars, household brands and Boston’s social media elite convened at the Harvard Faculty Club to educate and inform the business community on the rapidly changing social media landscape. Here are the nuggets of knowledge…

-1- Hammer Time.

Hip hop legend MC Hammer is so passionate about social media that he used it to reinvigorate his own brand.  With more than one million followers on Twitter, an active blog, a branded channel on UStream and updated pages on MySpace and Facebook, Hammer has this advice to attendees: “With social media, you no longer have to holler at the news, you can change the news.”

-2- Make Them Drink the Wine

Wine Library TV’s Gary Vaynerchuk, who amassed more than 850,000 followers on Twitter and landed a seven figure book deal, likes to offer free advice to advertisers. “People who are buying bus signs and billboards in places like Harvard Square are obviously not watching the crowd. Everyone is looking down at their phone.”

-3- Advertising 3.0

Arnold, Boston’s biggest advertising agency, has seen the evolution of Advertising from 2.0 to 3.0, and defined Advertising 3.0 as a “Not just a dialogue between the brand and its customer, but a “tri-alogue” between the brand, its customer, and everyone that customer interacts with.”

-4- Peer-to-Peer Mentorship

Sometimes conference highlights don’t come from a specific presentation, but rather the sharing of information and great content amongst like-minded people.  Social media then allows those conversations to go viral and results in #gravsum becoming a Top 10 Twitter Trending topic with over 5000 conversational mentions in less than eight hours.

-5- Cuss a Little Less When You’re Crushin’

You may be able to swear and swagger when you’re streaming to 627 interested geeks.  Swear when CNN is streaming to 400,000 viewers and you’re in danger of getting shut down.  Luckily for Gary Vaynerchuk, author of the upcoming book Crush It! And a New England favorite, his compelling style saved him and all agreed he gave a great talk.

-6- Old School Org, Meet Social Media

Red Cross, who originally viewed social media as a quandary for how to deal with bloggers, have seen the power of this platform and now use more than 150 personas on Twitter to manager disaster relief communications on a both a national and regional level.

-7- Picture = 1000 words (still).

Photo and video sharing and documentation are only going to increase via social media. The opportunity to use photos for extending peoples experiences (good/bad) & customer evangelism are happening with or without you.

-8- Premature Delegation

Turn your brand over to an intern? NO! You spent more than $100 million dollars building your brand.  You are NOT going to give the social media efforts over to an “intern” and do this on the cheap.  You’ve got be strategic about how you execute.

-9- 140 Characters Only Please.

Speakers should bring nuggets, not tons of slides.  We’re in the midst of the Twitter-ization of everything – presentations included.  Get to the point.  If people want more, they’ll find it later.

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This post was edited by Larry Chiang. To submit guest posts, email larry @larrychiang dot com



Larry Chiang keynotes a wide array of audiences that range from Gamma Phi Beta at University of Arizona to the World Bank.  He is CEO of a credit card company.