What's in my head today?

I’ve spent the past two days at Fearless Media’s Social Media Summit here in Melbourne, and on the whole, it was time well spent. Speakers included Julie Posetti (one of Australia’s premier academics in the field of journalism), Gerry McCusker (PR guru and author of PR Disasters), Philip Jones of Schmooze and Gene Stark (marketing and branding expert and principle of Stark Reality).

Stark and McCusker were stand-out performers in a field of presenters who really knew their stuff. We had the good fortune to attend two sessions from Stark (one on branding and the other on making best use of LinkedIn) and I doubt there was anyone in the room who didn’t leave buzzing with new ideas for how they promote their organisations and themselves.

McCusker addressed the critical area of online reputation management (the PowerPoint deck from his excellent presentation can be found on Slideshare) and how to deal with negative stories in the digital world before they become massive issues. His 10-step model for assessing and addressing these situations is something that many businesses would be better off for having read and absorbed.

These two presenters stood out for me because they addressed two important areas where I think my organisation, TSAEP, has room for improvement - to wit branding and reputation. The Salvation Army is one of the world’s most recognisable and strongest brands, and the red shield is among the most recognised corporate symbols (right up there behind the likes of Coke, Apple and McDonalds) in the world.

Our Marketing department conducted an enlightening piece of market research about 18 months ago, however, that suggested less than 20% of employers in Australia knew The Salvation Army had an employment services arm. This is obviously a problem for TSAEP - after all, it’s no use preparing unemployed people for work if you don’t have a variety of jobs to send them on to afterwards. The period since this research was conducted has seen definite improvement in the awareness of the TSAEP brand, but there is still work to be done, and one of the areas we have neglected to this point is the digital world. Thanks to both Gene and Gerry, the eight attendees we’ve sent to the summit sessions in Sydney, Melbourne and Canberra (to be run Thursday and Friday this week) will have a lot to discuss when we catch up after the Canberra session.

Thanks to Fearless, and particularly to Craig and Sharnee (Sharnee, in particular, saved us no small amount of money in putting us onto the right package to get value for money) for all the hard work arranging and hosting the summit.