Session #1: Small Voices, Big Impact: Social Media for the Little Guy
Session Speakers/Panelists:
Stoney deGeyter, Jennifer Evans Laycock, Ron Jones, Billie Jo Waara
Live Summary:
Jennifer Evans Laycock starts off the session with a great presentation about Social Media Conversations (Not Marketing). She goes into saying that Social Media is not a channel to push products and for companies to stop running towards the bleeding edge. There are good tools and properties that survive and other that do not and that is why you should not always run to the next shiny object. Social Media is also essential in our recession.
Consumers are hunting for information –> Social Media Conversation <– Companies hunt Feedback
- Flickr: All visual. Deeper than just pictures, it's a community. We are visual people. There's a different emotional connection with the consumer who views a photo. It's an engaged community that has a continuous conversation. Drives good traffic. Flickr has a No-follow rule, but does a great job to drive direct traffic. (Share your work, entice viewers, engage audience, invite or reward…..)
- Twitter: Some companies struggling to how best to use it. Create your listening board. Twitter is best used to listen to conversation and get to know a blogger. starting point to connect with people. Benefits of "re-tweeting". Great place to get feedback.
- Broadcast: news and info, advisories, sales, events
- Listening: consumer intent, target insight
- Initial contact, networking, personal insight
- Value Triangle (context vs. competition for attention)
- Blogs and article
- social reviews
- discussion forums
- search results
- social news
- micro blogging
In the next presentation, Billie Jo Waara talks about measurement and show value in social media and give ideas on free tools to help identify what is working.
- Step #1: Define your goal (brand awareness) + (sentiment) + (engagement) + (conversions) + (relationships)
- Step #2: Set the Bar (social popularity) + (branded keyword search volume) + (viral reach) + (digital reputation) + (increase website traffic) +(two-way communication)
- Step #3: Execute the plan
- Step #4: Evaluation
Here are some Free sites to take a look at:
Live Analysis:
This was a great session on the basics of social media. I was impressed by the presentation by Lennifer Evans Laycock as it connected to the audience. She provided some great resources such as reviews and books for the audience to read. The presentation from Billie Joe was also constructive and provided some great free tools to help measure your social media initiatives. The last presentation by Ron Jones was helpful because it provided some "everyday" examples of using social media especially with iPhones and smartphones
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Session #2: Landing Page Testing and Tuning
Session Speakers/Panelists:
Sage Lewis, Tim Ash
Live Summary:
Sage Lewis gives a terrific introduction to Tim Ash to the "tired" audience. Tim starts off talking about how your landing page is like "Your Baby is Ugly". The economic of conversions. Fix the landing page to lower costs. CPA = CPC/CR. Who should design your website? (ad agency, marketing, I.T., webmaster, your boss). The website visitor should design your landing page. The real conversion experts are your visitors. He then goes into a few case studies where A/B testing was done and +40% increase as achieved by making very small differences to the LP.
The 7 Deadly Sins of Landing Page Design:
- Unclear Call-To-Action
- Too many choices
- Asking to much information
- Too much text
- Not keeping your promises
- Visual Distractions
- Lack of Trust
Live Analysis:
This was an entertaining and well constructed session where Tim engaged the audience and made them a part of the presentation. He provided a personable touch which makes him a very knowledgeable and a good communicator. He talked about his 7 deadly sins of landing page design. Highly recommended session for anyone interested in taking your PPC campaign to the next level.
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Session #3: Social Media: Managing Conversations and Reputations When the User Is In Control
Session Speakers/Panelists:
Anna Maria Virzi, Dave Evans, Liana Evans, Brian Kalma, Mike Volpe
Live Summary:
Anna Maria starts off the session by introducing all of the speakers.
Dave Evans is the first presentation in which he discusses "the new marketing cycle" (word of mouth, awareness, purchase, social media) He also goes on to say there is more trust in people, than in advertising.
- Method #1: Write a check (Coke.i9blogging, HP- Youtube, Cisco-Wikipedia)
- Method #2: Trick the Audience
- Method #3: Listen and learn
Liana Evans discusses "How'd we get here?" The emergence and rise for Mass Social Media andnot the message that is important, but what the consumer (end user) cares about your products or services. Social Media provides new signals to the search engines. It's not just generation Y, but actually the older generations who are making up the social media demographic. 3 out of 4 Americans use social technology. There many forms of social media outlets (message boards, video galleries, etc….) Monitoring and Measuring all of your social media efforts. (radian6, melt-water, etc…) Social media is different. It's not the purchase, but the influence to make a purchase. Interaction can be a double edge sword. Re-evaluate and tweak your goals and DO NOT fall in love.
Mike Volpe discusses social media and lead generation. He talks about the different brands from P&G, McDonalds and Pfizer in 1950 – 2000 and now we have Google, Amazon and Facebook. Inbound marketing. Yesterday search was KING, now it's Social Media that matters. Traffic for most companies are equally the same amongst search and social media. Social media is now a staple. He also says to make sharing easy. Content and social drive SEO, identify leads by channel.
Brian Kalma discusses his role with Zappos and talks about how to not wait for your customers to call you. Let your customers see the "real you"
- Zappos get 6,000 phone calls per day
- 400 live chats per day
Live Analysis:
This session provides a higher level understanding on my Social Media matters. The speakers mention some great online services that help track measurement and traffic attribution. Also, there was alot of emphasis that Social Media is catching up to SEO and PPC as the main drivers of website traffic. The advantage of social media is to not rely on it to make a sale, but to persuade and allow the consumer to make a better decision.
