UPDATED: Real-Time Marketing and PR – #Vocus and @DMScott Webcast: A Recap

Update: If you are interested in listening to David’s webinar, please follow this link. You must register before you can watch the webinar and it will only be available for a limited time. Thanks to Vocus for allow me to share this. An even bigger thanks to David for his thoughts and leadership on these important issues.

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Last week, I had the honor of listening to one of my personal social media heros, David Meerman Scott, live on a webcast that Vocus produced. It was a great experience and I must say that David lived up to everything I expected him to be.

The focus of the webinar was on real-time marketing and pr. David shared a number of valuable insights about how and why you should be doing real-time marketing and pr for your business. He also shared a number of test cases where companies have succeeded and failed in this effort.

What is real-time marketing and pr? Before I can answer that, you have to look at this from David’s perspective. He has been arguing for years that the Web has empowered consumers and they now have the ability to make or break your business in real-time on blogs, twitter, facebook and all sorts of other online media. He’s absolutely right. Real-time marketing and pr then becomes your tool to turn these situations into opportunities for your business.

There are a ton of ways to do this. First, you must be listening. Have your “social-ears” open and hear what consumers are saying about your business online. Second, talk to them. When you find customers that care enough to talk about you, don’t ignore them. Foster a relationship by telling them what you are up to. Third, engage them. Go beyond the “talking to” stage by developing a deeper dialogue. Ask them for their advice and ideas about your business. Find out what their needs are. Look for things you could be doing better that would turn them into insanely loyal customers. Fourth, do what you can to get them to act. This is a tough one, but it should also be you ultimate goal when it comes to social media.

It was a one of the most helpful and content-rich webinars I have ever participated in. You can find some of the key tweets from the seminar by searching for the #vocus tag on Twitter.

For those of you that are struggling with how to develop a social media policy for your business, David addresses this with a simple rule:

If you use “I” you are fine. If you use “we” that is when your communications team should be involved.