UGCX: It’s a 2-Way Conversation

What happens when marketing meets social media? Done right, it engages customers, repositions brands and provides valuable insights into customers, according to speakers at Mediabistro’s UGCX conference Tuesday.

During a session titled “It’s a 2-Way Conversation,” Jessica Amason, viral media editor at BuzzFeed.com explained how her company used real-time analytics first to tweak the site’s content, and then to help marketers fine-tune their messages on the fly.

Broadway producer Ken Davenport described to the audience his efforts to market a musical last year using social media. The show, “13″, presented “marketing challenges because it had no stars, an unknown author, the title, it had a cast of teens, it had a band of teens, and it was a story about teens.”

No problem, except only 12% of Broadway audiences are teens and children. The solution? So Davenport came up with what he called “Operation Tug Mom’s Coat.”

“I wanted to create our own social network for the show,” he said. The site, <a href="“>13fans.com, allowed fans to interact with the stars of the musical, who all were young teens. Even better, Davenport said, the show’s stars would rush home after a performance to get on the site and talk to fans. The result? More than 8,000 new fans in four weeks.

Join Baratunde Thurston (left), The Onion’s Director of Digital and author of How to Be Black, for an entertaining look at creative social media campaigns in our Social Media Marketing Boot Camp starting February 16. Other speakers include Morin Oluwole (Facebook), Tim Devane (bitly), and SocialTimes' writer Devon Glenn.   Register now.