I’m sitting in a hotel room on the 26th floor of the W in downtown Seattle slowly recovering from an action packed week at PubCon in Las Vegas.
PubCon is the annual conference set up by the folks at WebmasterWorld.com and attracts thousands of web marketers from all over the world to learn from the very best and then to have the very best time!
This year was my third outing and, although it seemed a little quieter, the content really was king.
My main take away from the event was the deluge of advice and emphasis around social media. There were six tracks to the conference and social media marketing occupied a whole one by itself!
One of the sessions I attended had a raft of experts keen to let folks know how to use the channel to its most effective.
Warren Whitlock, who wrote a book on the Twitter Revolution said there are three main phases people go through when thinking about getting set up on Twitter.
First there’s "denial" – you simply can’t understand why you’d want to read about someone standing in a queue at the bus stop or wondering what they’re going to eat for dinner.
Then there’s “reluctant acceptance” – this is the bit where you shrug your shoulders and take the plunge because everyone else seems to be raving about it. You still haven’t quite grasped it yet but will give it a stab.
The holy grail of “meaningful connections” hits shortly after that when you realise you can make real friends, barriers can be eased and you can learn a lot about other people, yourself and your industry from just 140 characters!
Warren’s big tip - be authentic and be yourself!
Brian Carter – a very funny and engaging presenter – said set goals, measure and let the results guide you. KPIs are important but there’s no doubt that if your blog establishes your authority then a bookmark is your social proof. Use Twitter to gain attention.
Kent Schoen from Facebook also waded in with some tips on how to maximise reach through social media.
He said to try and generate reach and engagement between evangelist and engagers as that’s where the organic effect increases buzz as people talk about your products or services. Measuring the buzz is crucial to understanding passive and active engagement – “there’s a difference between insight and metrics!”
There’s tonnes more content from the show out there! Rumours abounded that because so many of the delegates were using Twitter to communicate we caused it so have outages not seen from the platform in a while.
What is for certain is the platforms like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn etc have started to change the way we communicate and influence purchase decisions and be influenced.
Even though we’re in an economic slump, now’s the perfect time to be experimenting and getting into these channels because when the dark clouds disappear and the sun comes out, one if its permanent rays will be social media.
It’s a channel you have to take advantage of!
