Last month I headed to Nashville for the first Murmuration social technology conference hosted by Industry Collective. What drew me to Murmuration was its content and targeted attendee type. I have attended traditional blog & social media conferences and webinar series in the past, but this conference was specifically focused on bringing together marketers who use social technology in the workplace.

I loved the fresh topics, hearing data on consumers’ social usage and getting a “back stage pass” to many of the most popular (and pricey) social media management tools on the market. Overall, I felt the conference was of great value to me and provided me with a new kind of insight.

With the exception of one presenter.

My issue with this particular presenter was the fact that he oozed statistics on the amount and types of rich consumer data a business could glean by using his company’s social plugin as its sole website registration method.

But never once did he mention any kind of information about those consumers who are aware of the amount and type of data they’d be “giving up” through something like a Facebook login system, and choose to click away instead of registering with that website. Couldn’t one argue that those web savvy consumers are some of your most valuable?

Unfortunately, this consumer group and its needs were not addressed by this presenter.

Having worked in consumer research and with data, I know full well that you can pretty much always find a way to extract numbers from your studies that will reinforce your theories, campaigns, effectiveness or worth. Since his presentation should have been about sharing information with fellow social marketers, and *not* a sales pitch, I was disappointed that he didn’t present a balanced look at the pros and cons of using only a data-rich social plugin like Facebook on your business site.

Businesses who are eager to incorporate social media into their CRM efforts need to be careful when choosing which tools to implement so as not to misrepresent their customer data nor discourage some of their core customers from taking more of an active part in their online community. Learning more about your targeted customer types should be a driving force; however, doing so in a way that only presents a partial view of your total customer base is not beneficial for your business in the long run.