Ok, I am not really sure if it is reason #436 or not but
Debbie Weil's latest post on ROI of
Social Media is worth a read. And ROI is not Return on Investment... It is Return on Influence.
The article goes on to talk about how the new forms of social media (which includes blogging) can boost marketing and more importantly your relationship with your customers and members. This has been our experience since 'taking the plunge' into blogging and Web 2.0 over a year ago. And yes were were totally inspired coming from the
DigitalNow conference.
Let me give you two examples of how this works...

1. Our blog (
http://www.cpaisland.com/) caught the attention of
Linden Lab's CFO, John
Zdanowski. We then connected to John when he was visiting our "island" in
Second Life. One thing leads to another and then we end up hosting him in Second Life doing a "mixed reality" session with him "live" from the real world conference in Orlando and a live "virtual" session in our
BLI conference Center on CPA Island. Then
CFO magazine's blog picks up our work on Second Life and the amazing viral connections of the Web 2.o world are unleashed...
Next is
Youtube and what I like to call the Long Tail effect...

We produced a video with our friends at the
AICPA, promoting the CPA profession in Maryland. We loaded the video to
Youtube and have since had 2,271 views without any marketing at all! Check it out here:
Defining America's CPA - Maryland. Then in an interview with a local business paper, they love the
Youtube idea and we get some great press. Another one of the trails that results from playing around with the Web 2.0 stuff...
How about you? what has been your experience with Social Media?
Labels: blogging, cfo, cpa, cpaisland, debbieweil, DigitalNow, macpa, secondlife, sl, socialmedia, tomhood