Thanks to everyone who came to see me speaking on the social media panel at the Northern conference in Leeds last week.

It was a larger audience than I’m used to but it seemed to go OK and people had lots of comments and questions.

Thanks also to the other speakers Jo Newbould from Asda and Alex Abbotts at Bromford who I really enjoyed listening to, as well as the excellent Helen Standing who chaired.

Away from our panel it was a really useful event and I particularly enjoyed hearing from Nicola Green from o2 who gave some excellent leadership advice on steering a big corporaton and delivering some truly strategic comms.

There was also a really interesting session on digital futures which provided a bit of inspiration and a few laughs.

Sarah Hall live blogged the whole event which you can see on her blog here.

I won’t get into the whole Max Clifford debace here (maybe one for another day) because aside from the specticle of it I’m not sure I learned anything.

I thought it might be useful to post the final learning points from my presentation:

• Think customer not corporate
• Use the right language and tone
• Do it well and your corporate reputation will increase
• Make life easier for people
• Once engaged you have a captive market
• It’ not an add on and should be central to what you do
• Separate out the channels
• Work with partners and online community – save yourself work
• Vital tool in an emergency
• Take the bad with the good!

For a bit of a fuller exlaination see my previous post here and if you were there in Leeds I hope you enjoyed the day.