SES Hong Kong, held over 21-22 September, is easily one of the best digital marketing conferences I have been at. Between many formal and informal meetings I managed to catch just three parallel tracks. So I’ve have missed out on some great presentations. Check out speaker line-up and pictures from the event.
Patrizio kicked things off on Day 1 and presented a case for creating premium content. He also spoke about how Yahoo! is focusing on creating premium content and positioning themselves as a media company. He spoke about the general flaw of treating all online activity the same as task oriented users. For instance, someone engaging in online banking, does not pay attention to advertisements. Good advertising being all about content was another point driven home, with the digital advertising landscape changing and new possibilities ushered in vis-a-vis TV. Patrizio also announced the upcoming LiveStand App for the iPad.
Damien presented Dell’s own case-study of sales revenue generated from social media: the Dell Swarm corporate group buying platform, which underscores Dell’s success in social media commercialisation and marketing. A key factor in this has been Dell’s efforts in developing and operationalizing actions from Dell’s “social media listening command centre”. In addition Dell is working toward turning all of it’s 100,000 employees into social media advocates with 9,000 already trained through it’s social media training and certification program.
Damien cautioned against ignoring detractors as one negative review in a social space costs 30 potential customers. To combat this Dell has set-up a social media listening command center in Austin. Dell also has a listening and content strategy as part of it’s social commerce strategy which revolves around its 5 social media pillars.
Some other interesting points raised included:
Google Instant and Bing’s intent-based results are creating a need for a new generation of keyword research, expansion and modeling techniques. This session guided attendees through ways to integrate data from search, social and traditional media to identify new opportunities and revenue streams.
TR spoke on SEO strategy and pointed out that it should start with observing and analyzing the user behaviour and measuring the media consumption and media spend gap of your target users.
On the design side TR had a few tips and pointers to make sites more SEO friendly:
George emphasized the importance of keyword research for SEO. Apart from the usual tools he advised brands to perform a social analysis to see what keywords are getting associated with your product categories by using a tool like Social Mention. For George the must have ingredients for a good SEO ranking are good content, back-links, and social signals.
The hype around social media marketing is unremitting and pervasive. Yet metrics and measurement of media in general, and specifically social media, remains at a nascent stage. My session discussed the setting-up of a goal-based metric system, using real case studies from Cisco systems, dimension data and the like. Using basic metrics parameters as a springboard, my presentation went into not-so-conventional but greatly useful parameters such as competitive buzz metrics benchmarking, and brand position vs perception gap measurement.
Current brand-building models and approaches were developed in an era when consumers were disconnected and information was difficult to get. Marketers needed repeat exposures and constant push to build brands. Social connectivity, conversations and content distribution have changed the way people consider and consume brands. So it is imperative that marketers change their approaches to brand building or run the risk of becoming irrelevant.
Key focus of the session was:
Excerpts From @B2Bento (Twitter)
Pushkar also spoke on the excessive focus on tried and tested formulas and KPIs by marketers which is not the best approach in this social landscape. Instead brand marketeers should listen first and then act on what is being said by the consumers. They also need to be mindful that marketing in the social media space eliminates geographical boundaries and it is vital to be genuine and authentic in their interactions. Pushkar’s advice is to ” Think of your brand as a host in a party in your social assets” and not to panic when something goes wrong but to listen first to the consumers and then address the issues.
As mentioned, there were many other great presentations that I missed out on due to lack of time.
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