Yesterday while attending Richmond Event’s Digital Symposium for a speaking engagement (see express vs. operationalize), I had the opportunity to hear some other great speakers.  This is the first of at least a couple of downloads from those other presentations.

First up, John Moore from Brand Autopsy — his talk, Thriving Outside the Marketing Matrix, contained great encouragement to companies to choose the “red pill” (as Neo in the Matrix movie did) and unleash the potential of social media.

Among his advice were 10 ideals for “how any business can embrace and enliven the consumer-driven online conversation that is happening today and tomorrow”:

1.  be everywhere customers expect us to be

2.  only confident brands should swallow the red pill — confident, meaning you believe you deliver better value so you shouldn’t be afraid to invite customers’ comments

3.  what happens online remains online (great soundbite:  Google never forgets)

4.  if you hide the truth, someone is going to find it

5.  social media helps smaller companies look bigger and bigger companies get smaller — John talked the “paradox of growth” — the smaller you are, the bigger you must look; the bigger you are, the smaller you must get — social media helps do both

6.  earned opinions trump bought impressions

7.  participating in the online conversation is a company’s best recruiting tool

8.  blog or be blogged

9.  blog stands for Better Listings On Google (I guess John borrowed this one from Rick Bruner)

10.  it’s about progress, not perfection

Some real gems, huh?!  I found his talk a great way to start off a day of learning about how to use new Internet technologies and what to use them for.