I was lucky enough to be invited to keynote yesterday’s IDI Marketers Forum International Conference at the Marriott Marquis in Times Square. The conference is intended to provide valuable, up-to-date information from top internationally recognized experts to the direct marketing community. With an experience working mostly in online marketing, one might think that a direct marketing approach needed an entirely new perspective on social media.

But, when you think about it, there’s a basic theme every industry needs to think about when entering this space— just get in it. Get in it now and learn quickly, you’re already behind.

Speaking to an audience, as I said “full of suits and ties and not really social media savvy” I approached it with the “Don’t be afraid tactic—get on it. Everyone else is.” (I also approached it with the–let’s have a conversation, I may (and did) add some curse words Gary Vaynerchuck style. I just hope my mother never comes!)  This seemed to resonate well before the storm of questions that always come at the end of these panels. What about privacy issues? Why would people want to keep putting their information out there?

It’s a very good question, but people are continuing to put information about themselves. Minor information about their favorite food or sports team turns into data that marketers have been dreaming of for years. Accept the fact that people are comfortable exposing themselves online and we can capitalize on this for our own purposes. Yes, we can be a bit selfish as marketers now and do this.

As always at these events you have some great conversations and I did with our good friend Simon Burrell from Newsweek, and Doug Sacks from Focus Worldwide. Keith Messer at Data Services is also doing some pretty amazing stuff that I look forward to hearing about more. Plus, I made some new friends from National Geographic and the Harvard Business Publishing.