2010 was the year were businesses entered the social web. And of course not everything was a good experience. Many just pumped their "message" into what they call "the new channel" hoping that somebody will pick it up. Others were a bit more innovative than that. Our latest experiment with a virtual exhibition and conference generated great results.

The Social Media Academy was exhibiting at Vue2010 this week. We didn't have a lot of time to chat with business friends and others prior of the event about what we are going to do. We also had only three people on the booth as we thought maybe 50 people will actually swing by. But after 5 hours on duty we counted 553 leads, over 200 conversations and 70 who picked up virtual gifts which we gave out.

A few things we learned on the spot.

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2010 marked an important milestone in the young social media industry. Mainly because businesses began to leverage social media to be closer to their customers, have a better and almost real time understanding of their markets and reduce marketing expenditure while growing brand reputation and market share.  

Businesses who are not leveraging social business technology to monitor, research, connect and collaborate socially with their clients will have a competitive disadvantage over those companies who do. 

* 60-80% of purchase decisions are based on recommendations
* Time in the social web exceeded time spend on TV
* 16 Million search results on "has anybody experience with…" indicates that product and brand exploration is no longer influenced by traditional advertising

Social business tools will become strategic in 2011.

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There are approximately 10,000 webinars going on at any given point in time. Virtual online exhibitions are the next big thing after the physical trade shows – but how do you get your customers and partners to attend?

What was true for your email shots is now true for your webinars. The mass marketing approach is no longer working. Not because you are not a cool company or you have a none attractive product – the reason lays somewhere else. The noise level of 500 Million individuals has finally overshadowed even the largest marketing booster of global enterprises.

So if you are attending or organizing an online event – like we do at Vue2010 you may consider very different measures than just 5 years ago.

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