By Coops (@ccoops)

Yesterday I attended a really interesting presentation about how to listen and engage in the social web.

The topics and speakers were:
The power of listening, analysing & measuring: Chris Ramsey, Radian6 USA
The power of engaging: Brian Giesen, Ogilvy 360 Digital Influence

Here are some of the highlights from Chris Ramsey:

Brand today is defined by the sum of what people say about you. This changes the way marketeers think and act. It’s no longer about the 4 p’s – place, promotion, price and product. It should now be the 4 c’s- content, community, conversation, connections and collaboration. When advising clients to start listening to conversations in the social web they need to understand that it isn't about measuring impressions and it certainly shouldn’t be thought of as a place to put ads. It’s about engagement, sentiment and share of voice. The key to success is through; transparency, authenticity and speed.

Brian Giesen then spoke about the power of engaging and these were his top ten tips:

#1 Drive smarter media planning (a soft drink company found loads of people were talking about their brand mid week – which then led to their hump day or Wednesday media strategy)

#2 Drive stronger creative and ROI (relevancy)

#3 Own search engine results (Recent deals between Google and social networks mean social conversations are more prevalent in search than ever before)

#4 Influencer love getting online (seek them out)

#5 Sharable content is king

#6 Offer talk-worthy experiences

#7 Great PR ideas drive engagement (KFC Free Cayan Chicken Burger example)

#8 Recruit brightest new talent (social media allows people to pinpoint great talent, Ernst & Young use Facebook as their main recruitment tool)

#9 Turn customer service into PR (responding to negative conversations to turn them into positive experiences can great a very powerful reaction that outweighs the original negative conversation. People are surprised and delighted that brands and listening to their conversations)

#10 Be relevant and respectful (engage bloggers but do it in the right way and always involve influencers- charterforcompassion.org is a good example of this)