ad:tech University is an intensive course designed to provide content and networking opportunities for those who are new to digital media & marketing. In just one day you will traverse the most important topics in the digital space, upskilling and enhancing your capabilities in the market. We’re very pleased to welcome our first guest speakers to the program, industry practitioners who are experts in their space:

Search Marketing

Kate Conroy, Ads Product Specialist, Google Australia
Kate specialises in SEM strategy particularly with assisting small and medium sized businesses on how to make the most of a limited advertising budget using Search Advertising. Kate was the highest rated Guest Speaker from ad:tech University in 2010 and her session promises to be very hands-on as she takes you through how Search fits into the overall strategy and how it integrates with other media & advertising channels.

Social Media

Peter Applebaum, Managing Director, Tick Yes
Peter has worked with and for more than 90 companies across 35 industries helping to market and sell $100,000,000s of his client’s products and services. In his session Peter will explain how to make social media work for you from better understanding your consumers’ behaviour to the different actions that you can execute through social media channels and the KPIs that you can expect to meet.
You can follow Tick yes on Twitter: @TickYes

ad:tech University will be held 3 June (8.30am-5.45pm) at Vibe Hotel, Sydney. You can see full details on the website www.ad-tech.com/uni including further information about the course topics, course leader Patty Keegan, more about who the event is for and what you can expect from the day.

Last year’s event SOLD OUT so don’t delay in booking places for you and your team. The early bird pricing also expires next Monday 16 May.

We look forward to seeing you there.

I’ve just had a sneak preview of the Tate presentation for ad:tech Melbourne next week.

As an English girl I’m biased because I grew up with Tate and have always enjoyed the brand and their work. Tate modern is one of my favourite spaces in London, it’s a beautiful building and a great Thames-side location. However, groupie-bias aside, this is an excellent presentation. It’s going to be really interesting hearing Jesse’s experiences of bringing these campaigns and strategies alive.

He’s talking specifically about how to use social media effectively when you have so many other active channels and platforms. Some of the numbers in the presentation are really impressive. Especially when you consider the not-for-profit structure and the market Tate are pitching to in terms of demographic and transience.

Jesse is focusing a lot on how to make systems and platforms work for you when you’re managing marketing across different media, he’ll also speak about the resourcing, content and input aspects of being successful in this space.

Jesse is speaking on the second day of ad:tech Melbourne.

Conference program

There are other sessions on the conference that relate closely to what Jesse is discussing, including:

NFP Showcase: What Can Digital Marketers Learn From NFP Organisations? with insightful contributions from Movember, YMCA Victoria and Victoria Police – a really different collection of very successful NFP organisations.
How Do You Ensure Innovation Is Integral To Your Marketing Operation? featuring perspectives from some real forward thinkers, see list here.
How To Really Harness The Power Of Social Media a joint case study between the Head of Digital Marketing and Community Manager for Lonely Planet – a thorough review of their plans and tactics.

Here are some other sessions I’m looking forward to as well.

If you want more details about ad:tech Melbourne you can email me: lucy@ad-tech.com.
Thanks and see you there.

This year’s ad:tech Sydney program is packed full of discussions and presentations on the important and interesting issues that are affecting our industry. There are three streams of content so you have to choose your session carefully! Here’s some of the highlights that I’m looking foward to:

This opening session on day two, “How Is The Digital Media Environment Morphing?”, will be fascinating. In just 45 minutes the panellists will look at the key technology, business and creative shifts that are taking place in the market, and specifically what they mean for digital advertisers. It’ll be great hearing Starcom, comScore, The Project Factory and IAB Australia tackle this big question.

We all know that social media changes every day and we constantly have to react to those changes so I’m looking forward to knowing how the speakers on “Next Generation Social Media Strategy” think we should deal with that. Reading Room, Community Engine and TickYes will be talking around some key points including KPIs, ROI, tools and resourcing, so that we can all take away some specific learning points.

There have been some really good examples and campaigns using location based marketing in the last twelve months but I’m keen to hear more and to know how location marketing can be really valuable for consumers and advertisers. In “What Are The Real Opportunities Within Mobile Location Marketing?” Navteq, Insqribe, Powerhouse Museum will be sharing their experiences, vision for what’s coming and details of specific platforms and services that they think are valuable.

Registration

Book your ad:tech Sydney CONFERENCE pass to gain access to all event features.
Book a free ad:tech Sydney EXHIBITION pass to gain access to the Keynote Presentations, Breakfast Briefing, Expo Seminar Theatre, Networking Party and of course the EXHIBITION.

ad:tech Sydney
9-10 March 2011
Sydney Convention & Exhibition Centre
Register for ad:tech Sydney here.

The Social Media Strategy advisory council for ad:tech Sydney 2011 met to discuss the issues that are affecting the market and the content that should be on the ad:tech programme. Here is a summary of the key areas discussed:

Resource
• When social media goes well how do you scale up? Not necessarily with more people but with better skills, so upskill who you have. And need to change internal culture because social media has to be taken out of marketing and applied throughout the whole company
• External talent is a minefield, there is not a lot of availability
• The limiting factor in social media is resource so you have to focus on platforms / channels that are most effective: figure out where your audience is and use that platform
• At board level there is a reluctance for marketing spend to increase because social media is now an option; ‘we can do it for free now’. But in fact it should be used to enhance existing spend.
• The speed and growth of change in social media is an overall challenge
• Products change according to consumer adoption

Content
• You need a strategy around what the content of a group is going to be – how does it add value?
• Engagement, content, creative – what’s the plan to keep the community ‘with us’
• Think of yourself / brand as a publisher / broadcaster and then you have content
• Consistency and tailoring of content is important – you can make use of the flexibility that social media allows
• All content also has to be adapted for the medium or channel
• How to use social as a research tool
• Responding is the main thing in social media, if someone asks a question, respond etc
• When you promote social channels / platforms through core digital media you have to change the content so that it is accessible and share-able
• ‘Conversation marketing’
• For success you should decided what your brand voice is

Control
• How do you to take responsibility for what people are saying? And this includes the issue of providing a consistent message
• What is being said publicly and privately, there will always be a lot you don’t know and how do you stay on top of the changes
• Sometimes companies / brands try to control too much
• There should be guidelines for strategy but not execution – you need to give people some freedom

Strategy
• How much time do you spend strategising before implementing? Or, do you go beta?
• It is better to invest time initially in the project – so get your strategy right
• Know why you’re doing something is the start
• It’s important to strategise around contingency plans

Amplification
• Developing an amplification strategy (growing your following / friends / connections etc)
• If you’re driving membership strategy then you need analytics, data and measurement in place first
• Don’t forget you can still use off line to drive membership
• If your plan is to grow then part of your strategy has to be around how you will resource in the future it because you are going to grow…
• Incentives, rewards work well to drive growth – they need to be action driven; tangible-ness is key

Data / measurement / analytics
• Knowing what to measure is important first
• What’s in the strategy has changed, it’s now analytics and contingency, not content
• What’s the reach of your social media message?
• You must know the tools – what there is and the best way to use them
• At present everyone is using lots of separate analytics – there’s nothing holistic
• Numbers are one thing but tone is another. Looking at the volume of when your brand etc is spoken about is one thing but really you need to understand it plus or minus sentiment. At the moment people are working this out manually
• Do research before, during and after campaigns

Integration
• What are the strategies / steps towards social media integration?
• How do you have a successful social media strategy?
o Senior buy in
o Stakeholder involvement ‘globally’
o Training
o Technology

Have your say

This is a summary of the points that were made in the meeting. We’ll be working on this and integrating these topics and themes into the ad:tech Sydney 2011 conference programme. If you have feedback on these points or want to make suggestions about additional topics or speakers for the programme then please leave comments or get in touch with me here.

Notes from the other advisory council meetings

Data & Analytics
Digital Strategy
e-Commerce / Online Retail advisory
Monetising Digital
Unwired Media
Creative & Brand
Entertainment & Experience
Core Digital Media

Who’s on the other advisory councils:

Data & Analytics
Unwired Media
Digital Strategy
e-Commerce / Online Retail advisory
Monetising Digital
Brand & Creative
Core Digital Media
Entertainment & Experience
ad:tech Sydney advisory council groups named

Once again we have an ad:tech advisory council for Social Media Strategy. In the last year Facebook hit 500 million users and is frequently referred to as ‘China’. Meanwhile Twitter success stories continue to trickle through, YouTube is now a ‘must have’ in all marketing plans and blogs & forums provide engagement that email can only dream of. So, what is the best approach to take for your brand, your product, your organisation? What are the key hurdles to overcome and errors to avoid? As ever, it’s a minefield, but those who test and experiement will likely succeed… so, also, what’s around the corner, what do you need to know about next?

The ad:tech 2011 CONFERENCE program will feature presentations on Social Media Strategy and we’re delighted to be working with this group of local industry executives to shape and guide the content:

Stuart Bartram, Sales Director, Marketing Solutions, AU & NZ, LinkedIn Corporation
Aisha Hillary, Senior Marketing and New Media Specialist, SBS – Special Broadcasting Service
Brenton Jones, Marketing Communications – Digital Communications Manager, Carnival Australia
Dae Levine, Head of Media and Mobilisation, Greenpeace

Have your say on the ad:tech program. Use the comments box to suggest topics and speakers that you think would add value to the program. We look forward to hearing from you.

Read about the other advisory councils:

Monetising Digital
Unwired Media
Digital Strategy
eCommerce / Online Retailing
Data & Analytics
Brand & Creative
Core Digital Media
Entertainment & Experience
ad:tech Sydney advisory council groups named

I spoke with Magda Walczak, Head of eCommerce for Real Insurance about some of the challenges that she faces in her organisation and how they manage them. Here’s a video of my chat with her.

The interesting thing about social media is the breadth of areas within an organisation that it can touch. Unlike some marketing initiatives, which are all about a campaign, social media tends to be more about the relationship and the dialogue that customers (and potential customers) have with a company and each other in relation to a company.
These touch points might be in the corporate communications department, the call centre, sales, customer support, the list goes on. Social media is a two way channel of communication … like the phone. It requires both a proactive approach and the ability to respond rapidly to events as they unfold. It requires the ability to listen to conversations that you might not previously been aware of and it involves empowering but managing the voice of your employees in the social media space.
For many organisations this is scary and the last thing that they want is to engage in a conversation with a customer who might say something bad about them. In many cases, it seems easier to do nothing at all rather than navigate their way through a series of complex decisions that make the legal department turn blue. The truth is however, whether you are part of the conversation or not, people are talking. Whether you want to participate is really about just how deeply you want to bury your head in the sand.
Assuming you are ready to start the conversation, the next step is to figure out a strategy and what tools you should use to do it. This can be extremely confusing and frequently, the ROI is difficult or impossible to directly measure.

The financial services and insurance industries are amongst the most sophisticated digital marketers in the industry however they also face some of the greatest challenges in social media. First because they are the big targets for complaints and secondly because they are traditionally some of the most conservative in terms of risk aversion.

Magda will be leading a really practical session at ad:tech on how to use all the tools that social media has to offer. It promises to be a really interesting session.

Consumer recommendations are one of the most credible forms of advertising because people trust people. Peer to peer recommendations and word of mouth have long been recognised as powerful marketing tools. While online, most companies rely heavily on search ranking to drive traffic and awareness, social content in e-commerce is the merger of these two ideas and represents an incredibly important area for any online retailer to consider.

According to a Forrester study, 71% of online shoppers read reviews, (http://www.ratepoint.com/resources/industrystats.html) making it the most widely read form of consumer-generated content. Additionally, a separate study by Coremetrics (http://www.bazaarvoice.com/resources/stats) found that people who read a review were 30% more likely to purchase a product and visitors who wrote a review were 80% more likely to convert.

Likewise, recommendation engines like Amazon (‘people who bought this product also bought that product’) go a long way to mirroring the retail experience and assisting in driving cross sell and upsell behaviour. When recommendation engines go social however, like LastFM (‘people who like similar things to you also like this’) it really starts to feel even more relevant and personalised bringing an offline experience truly online.

When Google announced their transition to real-time search this catapulted the importance of social media in the search game too. Real-time data is now placed above traditional web search results and as a result, it makes it even easier for a consumer who is purchasing a product to review social content that they may previously have had to work a lot harder to find.

The impact of the social content on sales is undeniable.

Social media has rapidly become one of the most powerful ways to raise awareness, build brands, drive customer loyalty and attract audiences to sites. Building a loyal community who are engaged and willing to contribute social content is potentially one of the most critical components of sales conversion in e-commerce and essential to the digital strategy of any marketer or retailer who is trying to sell their products online.

This is an area that any online retailer should be looking into seriously, and we’ll be discussing the key issues in the session at ad:tech ‘What Is The Impact Of Social Content On e-Commerce?’. The panellists will be reviewing the key issues. They are:

• Mike Hickinbotham, Social Media Senior Advisor, Telstra
• Tim O’Neill, Joint Managing Director, Reactive
• Dan Ferguson, Online Channel Manager, General Pants
• Michael Gorman, Vice President for Strategy, Acxiom Global Multichannel Marketing Services
• Tim Hughes, Vice President, Commercial, HotelClub.com, Orbitz Worldwide

Myself and the ad:tech panel would welcome your comments and thoughts here.

And you can see the video of Tim Hughes sharing his thoughts on the subject here:

I’ve had a few conversations with marketers recently when I’ve been told that there is still a need for ‘social media 101′ information in the market place. It seems that there is still a gap in understanding exactly where social media fits into the big picture of the digital media plan and the marketing strategy as a whole. And also, that actual execution – and predominantly resourcing and accountability – is a big challenge too. I can understand this because when you start working on social media from a business point of view it immediately takes a lot more time than you had anticipated and suddenly it seems a whole lot more complicated.

What do you think? Is this something that marketers in Australia still need to learn about? Are there particular elements of this that are more pressing?

Jenny Williams met Jye Smith to get a preview from his session at ad:tech – The Relevance of Twitter. Jye shared some of his thoughts on the market, the role of Twitter and what to expect from his panel discussion.

Jye

Social media has emerged as a powerful force for brands, both from the perspective of engaging consumers and in the ability for brands to conduct a two way dialogue .

One of the cornerstones of any social media strategy is the use of communities to bring people together either to share ideas or to generate content.

When thinking about a social network though, the question is often asked, should a brand build their own community or take part in an existing community like facebook or myspace…or both

Creating your own social network can help with branding, drive incremental repeat visitation to a brand site, provide a direct channel for customer feedback, and will provide a valuable source of insights into your customer base.

There are a number of white label social networks around that help brands get up and running fairly easily without the need to complex technical builds however, building a community is far from straight forward and requires a clear insight into why you are doing it, the different segments that exist in a community and how and why they would engage. It also requires dedicated resources to support the community, consistent focus and a certain degree of critical mass in order to be successful.

The mainstream social networks (myspace, facebook etc.) also represent viable alternatives to building your own. They are becoming more like media properties in that their main power is the number of eyeballs that they attract, the length of time those eyeballs stay on the site and the level of data that the network has on the individual enabling greater levels of targeting to build community rapidly.

While it would seem that most social media strategies need to incorporate a component of both, I am interested in hearing from brands and agencies that have been involved in attempts to build a community around a brand, either in a third party site or in their own environment to understand what the key learning’s and pitfalls are.