Social media will never replace real-life, human interaction. This was the surprising, but reassuring theme of Social Media Week 2011 in NYC (there were also events in nine other cities). Both big events I attended at Red Bull Space on the first day kept coming back to that idea; that social media is a wonderful tool, but at the end of the day, success is determined by the quality of your relationships with other human beings. Shocking, right?

Social Media and Entertainment News

The first panel of the morning was The Dissemination of Entertainment News in Social Media and featured a knowledgeable panel from all over the entertainment industry spectrum: James Smith (Flixter.com), Mike Lazerow (Buddy Media), Marcelo Guerra (Showtime Networks), Monique Ware (BET Networks), Jordan Hoffman (UGO.com), Ed Douglas (ComingSoon.net), Steven Horn (Metacafe.com), and moderated by Don Buckley (THA.i, the Interactive Division of Terry Hines & Associates).

It was clear early on that the favorite social media platform for people involved in the film and television industry is Facebook, and a quick show of hands from the audience showed the same result amongst fans of film and TV. Surprising, considering the speed of Twitter and how quickly it’s permeated the national dialogue. According to the panel, however, speed isn’t conducive to the long-term building of fan communities that’s critical to TV and film properties.

Lazerow believes that “dominating Facebook means more than everything else.” Twitter drives traffic to your site, but you can’t program Twitter the way you can Facebook. You can also interact more easily with fans, and they can interact with each other on Facebook, which isn’t as possible on Twitter. Twitter sends things out to all your followers indiscriminately, making it difficult for people to separate signal from noise. With Facebook, it’s easier to target people who are actually interested in your message.

Hoffman brought up the fact that Facebook keeps things in your feed forever. So, once someone “likes” a movie, for example, even after it leaves theaters and goes away from your feed for a while, it always comes back as promo for a DVD release, followed by news of the sequel(s), followed by an anniversary re-release… And as it’s rare that people “unlike” something they’ve already liked, that fan will be in your Facebook community for as long as they have a profile.

This isn’t to say that anyone favors a Facebook-only approach. However, it’s also a matter of numbers. There are simply more people on Facebook than on Twitter, and as they’re more likely there to interact with personal friends rather than anonymous followers, it makes “word of mouth” more likely.

Regardless of preferred platform, all of the panelists agree that figuring out a social media strategy is critical to survival in the entertainment industry. As fans become more social, it forces “marketing” to become “interaction.” Ware discussed BET’s successful show, The Game, which is the #1 scripted show on network cable, and how it owes its success entirely to social media. Rather than condemn a fan-run Facebook page that had amassed a huge fanbase when the show was in danger, BET gave their blessing and looked for ways to support them in their efforts to promote the show. With fans doing a lot more on their own via social media, content producers are forced to think like fans and either help fans in their efforts or provide better alternatives.

Which brings the social media train back around to basic human relationships. Social media works best when it allows for person-to-person relationships and interaction. Guerra discussed Showtime’s fan-focused social media efforts saying that, rather than have an impersonal “social media team,” networks should be sure that anyone they hire is social media-savvy and interacts online in his/her own voice. People want to be talked to, not talked at. Guerra cited efforts like Showtime writers handling Twitter feeds for characters from their shows to demonstrate that it isn’t just about the marketing department anymore.

Music and Social Media Re-Define a Continent

The most inspiring examples of the power of social media were found at an evening event called This Is Africa… How Music and Social Media Are Re-defining A Continent, which put together a panel whose passion for African music was infectious: Ben Herson (Nomadic Wax), Blitz The Ambassador (Musician/Artist/Filmmaker), Delphine Fawundu-Buford (Photographer/Educator/ Filmmaker), Larry Ossei-Mensah (MyGlobalHustle.com), and moderated by Ngozi Odita (Society Hae).

But first, there was passion for African food – from me. Good food provided by the lovely folks at Panla. Seriously, folks at Social Media Week, Panla should cater everything you do. Not just the African events. But I digress…

110 million people in Africa are online, and there are more mobile phone users in Africa than in North and South America combined. Surprising? It shouldn’t be. Africa is an enormous, diverse continent that is about more than just poverty and war, and right now the youth of Africa are using social media and music to change the way people see them and their home, empowering their continent by cutting out the middleman and promoting the music and art they love themselves. Top African musicians may not be known worldwide, but their Twitter followers and Facebook friends trump those of any U.S. celebrity. Those friends/followers are mostly from the continent, but there are also many from other parts of the world, and it’s all because Africans are online all the time. Blitz, the only musician on the panel, brought up the fact that, before the internet, it took a big label like EMI to come in and promote artists like Fela Kuti. Now, the musicians are doing it themselves, pretty much exclusively on Twitter and Facebook, and they sell out large venues.

Fawundu-Buford, a photographer, emphasized that hip-hop artists in Africa aren’t simply parroting the U.S, they are dealing with their own cultures, and in the photos she takes, she tries to create an image of Africa that people don’t see; the culturally-aware, tech-savvy, youth dominated cultures that often get overlooked as Westerners look at pictures of starving, HIV-infected children. Blitz, who also makes films, said of the typical images of Africa in film, “[they're] mad grainy! It’s like, ‘What happened to the HD?’ The reds, the fabrics…how do you miss?”

Odita asked the panel how musicians function as cultural ambassadors. Blitz remarked that “artists who aren’t American become ambassadors by default. Some do a good job of it, some don’t,” and he cites hip-hop artist, K’naan, as one of the ones who does it right. I’d argue that Blitz is another, as his intelligence, humor, and insight not only made me interested in hearing his music, but it got me interested in hearing other African artists.

Ossei-Mensah discussed the fact that on his blog, MyGlobalHustle.com, he spotlights many first-generation African artists in other parts of the world, reminding us that the diaspora is important in considering what’s going on in African music; that Africans are also making great music in Europe and the U.S.

Each of the panelists proceeded to name their “Top 3” artists that Americans should know and why, and they threw out so many intriguing names that I’ll be doing a separate piece about African music using their recommendations! After a lively discussion about favorite artists, Herson reminded us that “we have the tools to make [the African music scene] what we want!”

The evening concluded with a lovely performance by a young singer from Rwanda (who has since lived in Belgium and now NYC) named Iyadede, whom I hope to hear play live again, soon! Her sweet voice was accompanied by a drummer, Osiris (whom she recruited as he was playing buckets in the NYC subway!), and guitarist Rodman Castillo, and her songs were light, and airy, and full of joy. The second in her 3-song set, “When I Was a Kid,” was my favorite. She doesn’t have a website, but she will soon, as well as gigs all over New York City. Expect an interview with her in this space, soon!

Whew! That was a lot crammed into only two events. And this was just Day One! Stay tuned for more reports from Social Media Week 2011!

Words and Pictures by Teresa Jusino.