Last week I attended the Integrated Marketing Summit in St. Louis. It’s a new series of one-day events in the Midwest meant to bring some of the same idea sharing and best practices that you’d get at a large social media or marketing event on one of the coasts. It was a great value at just $189 (actually $159 if you’re a member of any of the supporting organizations like IABC St. Louis). You can check out some of the presentations that are available on the resource center of IMS’ website and their top-notch lineup of speakers.
Below are some of my tweets, takeaways and resources from the event. Not sure if I mentioned this before but I find Twitter a great note-taker at events.
Learning in 60 Seconds: Jamie Turner, director of Consumer Insights at BKV, provided the keynote. He was entertaining and noted that the #1 flaw in business is execution. He said that you can often get 10 things done in the time it takes to get one perfect. Jamie is in the BKV’s 60 Second Marketer video series, which focuses on providing practical, quick tips on marketing. I reviewed the social media series. Some of them are pretty basic but there are good tips throughout. Check out “The Five Best Ways to Measure a Social Media campaign.” I also found some good tips and search terminology explanations under the paid and organic search category.
The Future of Search: Part of me was wanting to hear more about the effect the recent announcements on social search and integrated real-time search in search engines will have. But to be fair, that is all brand new. Outrider/GroupM Search did share some research on the interplay of search marketing and social media. It was interesting to hear how social media was becoming the consideration vehicle. Here is their white paper on The Influenced: Social Media, Search & the Interplay of consideration & Consumption. They shared more stats in the presentation that are not in the white paper such as an 800% lift in general product attributes, 94% lift in click-through-rates for social combined with paid search and a 65% lift in search volume.
In the white paper you’ll see the figure consumers using social media are 1.7x more likely to search for products to consider purchasing vs. the average Internet user. It also notes consumers exposed to social and paid search show “223% heavier search behavior than consumers exposed to paid alone.” For organic search, they noted if consumers were exposed to a brand’s social campaign they were 2.4x more likely to click. New term they mentioned was KCI – key conversation indicators. Their research was based on B2C.
Search Engine Optimization: There was a panel on SEO that had a good variety of high-level insights and some in-the-trenches tips. Not many in the audience do actual web page edits but we all work with those that do so it is good to have a common language/understanding. You can find the slides on the slides on the IMS resource center. Bill Hunt, CEO of Back Azimuth, noted that with all the personalized searches available now within different browsers or search engines, you need to turn off that feature to see what the real results are for your search term. But I wonder if those results are really “real” anymore. I wonder what percent of folks have personalized search enabled. He shared how a company reduced what they were paying for paid search by $24k/month by optimizing organic content. I want to learn more about digital asset optimization. Bill noted that it will enable companies to leverage video and social media sites more effectively.
Digital Body Language: Steve Woods, CTO/Cofounder of Eloqua and author of the book by this name gave a lunchtime keynote. He noted one of the “most terrifying” numbers is the CMO tenure, the shortest of all C-level execs. he spoke to how the distribution, journalism and advertising models have changed and how they intertwine now.
Social Media Best Practices: This panel had a great line up of speakers, including Ekaterina Walter, social media strategist at Intel, Leslie Bradshaw, director of engagement at New Media Strategies, Aaron Kahlow, chair and founder of Online Marketing Summit and Allison Collinger, president of AHC Consulting. There wasn’t a lot of time for Q&A after all the intro ppts by the speakers. I was most interested in talking more with Ekaterina since we have similar roles at our companies. Luckily, I caught up with her in the ladies room and we chatted (outside the ladies room). To me this was probably the most valuable part of the conference. I met someone (in person) facing some of the same challenges I face - who I will stay connected to online and share best practices going forward. Here are Leslie’s slides on How Social Media Agency Service has Shifted in 2009.
If you want a little more on this panel, see Chris Miller’s Understanding Social Media & Best Practices blog post.
Inbound Marketing & Corporate Blogging: I attend quite a few of Hubspot’s webinars and I’m quite amazed at their ability to pump great unique content out. Jonah Lopin, their VP of customer operations, presented and had some great info. He noted that if you’re choosing between Digg and StumbleUpon to realize that while you’ll have great reach if you get on the first page of Digg, that it his very hard to get there. Over the long haul, it may be smarter to reach your target audience via StumbleUpon where it suggests new content for them to check out based on what they already find valuable. I know about the new ability to tweet within LinkedIn but I didn’t realize until Jonah said it that you can tweet with the hashtag #IN and it will post it on your LinkedIn profile.
Forget what you think you know about PR – it’s a whole new world - Here’s a presentation I missed while attending the SEO panel by Michael Pranikoff of PR Newswire. I like slide 17: “Customer Relations is Public Relations.” Great quote by Josh Bernoff on slide 18. Slide 47 covers the three I’s of Engagement: interaction, intimacy and influence. He noted that we all need to become data lovers. Interesting brain picture on slide 66 – the PR professional’s brain.
Plug the Leaks! 4 Steps to Improve Your Channel ROI. I sat in part of this Alterian/Razor case study. It was a very specific example but if you’re in channel marketing, you might find some useful frameworks. Slide 22 presents the integrated approach with social media included.
IMS packed a lot into one day of content. Thanks to Shawn and company for good content and connections.
8 Responses
December 17th, 2009 at 5:24 am
Dora,
great summary of the day. I think you did an excellent job of capturing the key nuggets from each session. I picked up a few from your recap of the sessions I did not manage to attend.
Thanks!
December 17th, 2009 at 6:17 am
Thanks for the comment Steve - and the book. I am reading it now!
Dora
December 17th, 2009 at 6:29 am
Dora — I am loving your re-cap style (those tweet graphics look super smart). It goes neck-and-neck with my appreciation of your live-tweeting during the day itself. Thank you and well done!
December 17th, 2009 at 7:12 am
Thanks for the comment Leslie. I finally get to put my journalism education in practice ;-). It was great to hear your insights and thanks for sharing your slides!
December 17th, 2009 at 3:27 pm
Dora,
Thanks for this very concise post and for participating in the IMS St. Louis event. The caliber of our speakers and their content - as well as the caliber of our attendees - made the event a success.
And as your recap shows, the content keeps getting richer with the insights of participants like you. Thanks for being there and for participating in the ongoing IMS dialogue.
Simcerely,
Elizabeth
December 18th, 2009 at 6:35 am
Thanks Elizabeth for your comment and for organizing the event. It promises to be a great series. I look forward to the next one.
December 27th, 2009 at 7:04 pm
Dora, great summary and takeaways! Agreed on Twitter as great notetaker and the value of the content and contacts, Ekaterina is so bright and knowlegeable!
January 14th, 2010 at 4:31 pm
Dora, great summary and takeaways! Agreed on Twitter as great notetaker and the value of the content and contacts, Ekaterina is so bright and knowlegeable!
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