As we prepare for PR+MKTG Camp East in October, I wanted to shared the key takeaways from PR+MKTG Camp Chicago held in back in  June.

First up: From Definition to Impact

PR+MKTG Camp Chicago revealed that clients and management now have a better understanding of what social media is and a higher level of comfort with implementing it. The challenge, and of course the opportunity, now comes in formalizing its role, making that role operational and then measuring its impact.

In a sense social media along with new technological methods of communicating and creating engagement has entered adolescence.  Like any healthy teenager transitioning to adulthood, social media is trying to assert its identity and fit in.

Despite making considerable progress in understanding and managing social media, conflicts persist:

- We value integration, but cling to existing organizational structures.

- We have new job titles, but preserve traditional roles, responsibilities and chains of command.

- We have closer relationships to our customers, but internal mechanisms to help sales teams convert influence into transactions are not keeping pace.

- We stress ROI, but still rely on existing metrics and are unsure of which new tools to use to measure and forecast performance.

These issues are growing pains of the social media maturation process. While complicated, they present tremendous opportunities for PR and marketing to serve as thought leaders in making social media deliver measurable results.

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