When I was in London attending and speaking at Monitoring Social Media Bootcamp two weeks ago, I met Trey Pennington who I had heard a lot about him via LikeMinds, The BrandBuilder and the whole Bovey Castle social media case studies thing (all of which, I missed).

When I met Trey and knew he’d be in New York (to meet with Seth Godin) I asked him if he’d speak out our NY DataStories Meetup and am honored Trey Pennington did – we had a large turn out – about 34 attended – and it wasn’t a large room that we had at Hive 55, in lower Manhattan.

Trey Pennington at NY DataStories Meetup

Except for a 10 minute gap, when I went to get the Pizza that was ordered for the group, everything Trey Pennington said is captured and on YouTube tonight (in one Playlist), below.

There’s well over an hour of footage here if you decide to view all the videos in this playlist – I think Trey has given some gems – he’s not really as much into metrics as listening and learning.   In fact, Social Media Monitoring, which Trey has said is one of the next big things (and now he’s working with Synthesio – he’s deep into representing a monitoring platform) he expressed how we should be using these platforms to listen and gather insights for product development.

Trey mentioned Scott Monty of Ford Motors and said that as much as Ford is utilizing Social Media, they aren’t yet using Social for finding out what features the next cars Ford designs are going to have – and it’s a pity they don’t use SM that way, but they don’t.

That got me thinking of how we’d use Synthesio, or Radian6, or BrandWatch, or Sysomos – or anything else that can monitor online conversations – to better listen and learn what customers really want.  I have to admit that most projects I have worked on have been “directed” and circumscribed by what people asked for.  It’s rare that someone allows the space to monitor conversations with no set objective but to listen and learn – and yet Trey thinks the latter is the most valuable activity in the monitoring space, such as it is, today.

Another person asked how to answer Social Media ROI questions – to which Trey Pennington said there are no baselines for this, as yet.  Trey quoted Richard Edelman – who hired Rick Murray to run Edelman PR back in 2004 – at first Rick traveled to Edelman offices to take a pulse and collect information – but it actually took 4 years to finally get much in the way of results for Edelman’s Social Media work.

In this context, Trey Pennington illustrated how return on investment in Social Media, or Social Media ROI, was usually a waste of time, and businesses that need to see return on investment within the next quarter probably will be frustrated with what can be obtained, today, with Social Media.  Trey mentions a cultural change or shift away from expecting ROI metrics and focusing instead on listening and learning.  Trey mentioned that The BrandBuilder has whole series on his blog exposing the reality of Social Media ROI.

Much as Trey Pennington put it – there’s no real competition, as he sees it, just businesses learning to listen better – if they are helping and spreading the good work – business thrives and grows.  Trey mentioned a business in South Carolina that designs Bandannas  and how it thrived via User Generated photos which ended up becoming a catalog driving much more business.

There was more on the videos I have uploaded than what I’m able to write about from memory – Trey Pennington wrapped up his talk by saying Social Media allowed 3 fundamental messages to go forth to anyone who wanted it:

1. We all need to be heard
2. We all need to be acknowledged
3. We all need to know that our lives matter

…. and the Pizza was good – actually, better than good.

By the way – here’s a video of Trey Pennington being introduced as the new Biz Development person for Synthesio.