The Digital Summit is the largest event of its kind in the Southeast.
Only a handful of seats remain available for the largest digital conference in the Southeast, the Digital Summit, Georgia World Congress Center in Atlanta, tomorrow, May 13 and Wednesday, May 14.
This year, in addition to the more than 100 leading digital thought leaders set to present the latest digital strategies and trends at the summit, you’ll get the inside story on two hot topics: the Internet currency Bitcoin and the company disrupting cable and satellite TV delivery models, Aereo.
Chet Kanojia, CEO and founder of Aereo, which grabs over-the-air TV broadcasts and offers them to consumers via Internet connected devices, will talk about his starup’s disruptive technology.
Stephen Pair, co-founder and CTO of BitPay, the leading processor for bitcoin, will provide an overview of the somewhat controversial Internet currency. He talked to the TechJournal about What will make bitcoin succeed or fail,” in advance of his appearance at the Summit.
Speakers will also share the latest best practices and strategies in topics such as social media, email marketing, search, mobile, e-commerce, usability, analytics & measurement, online video, social TV and digital advertising/branding among many others.
A capacity crowd of 1,500 digital marketers, Internet executives, web strategists, entrepreneurs and other digital professionals will connect in Atlanta for two full days of content and networking.
Speakers represent leading brands such as Google, Twitter, reddit, Mashable, Porsche, Turner, TMZ, Coca-Cola, HootSuite, NASCAR, The Weather Channel, Aereo, Dell, Rovi, HGTV, Forrester, StumbleUpon, Salesforce and Adobe to name a few.
The Digital Summit conference features a keynote from the co-founder of reddit, Alexis Ohanian, and over 80 strategy presentations and discussions, musical acts, the Startup Showcase, preconference workshops, leading digital vendors and hours of attendee networking.
Here at the TechJournal we’ve interviewed a handful of the digital gurus who will participate. It’s only a sample:
Chaitanya ‘Chet’ Kanojia, CEO, founder of AERO, will participate in the upcoming Digital Summit in Atlanta.
One of the factors influencing change in the digital and media worlds over the last decade has been bandwidth. “That’s a huge factor,” says Chet Kanojia, founder and CEO of the online TV platform Aereo.
The company has faced some court challenges to its platform, which allows consumers to watch live or recorded HD broadcast television on virtually any type of Internet-connected device, including smart TVs, smartphones, tablets and computers.
All the publicity surrounding Aereo “Is something of a mixed blessing,” says Kanojia. That’s because it can overshadow the company’s mission, he adds.
“The consumer proposition is the key mission here,” he says. The venture-backed company was comfortable with its legal position, so it wasn’t surprised to find that position validated by initial court decisions. “It’s nice to be validated, but wasn’t a surprise,” Kanojia says.
Previously, Kanojia was the founder and CEO of Navic Networks, the industry leader in advanced television advertising. Navic Networks was subsequently acquired by Microsoft in 2008.
Participating at the Digital Summit
The holder of more than 14 patents in fields ranging from robotics to data communications systems, Kanojia is an innovative leader known for pushing beyond the conventional and developing breakthrough solutions. He’ll join more than 100 other digital media and marketing thought-leaders at the Digital Summit in Atlanta next week (May 14-15, 2013).
Kanojia founded Aereo after selling Navic Networks when he noticed too things: broadband penetration and bandwidth had made it easier for people to consumer media on the Internet. And there is a great imbalance between what people watch on TV and what they’re paying cable and satellite companies to receive.
“Most people watch seven or eight channels,” he notes. But they’re paying for 500. ”Any time you see that imbalance, you wonder how consumers may respond to a different choice.”
So far, they’ve responded very favorably, and Aereo, which has raised about $65 million so far and expects to need more as it builds out its infrastructure city by city, expects to have its service available in the first 15 of 22 cities by summer.
It will change everything
Back to his point about bandwidth, Kanojia, who will address the topic more fully at the Digital Summit, points to the way bandwidth changed the music industry as it increased to ten times what was needed to move music around digitally. “We no longer have a Tower Records,” he says.
As a similar bandwidth increase approaches, he sees it affecting the delivery of HD streaming video the way it did the music industry, especially along with the high resolution screens on devices such as iPads. But it won’t just affect the TV industry, he says.
“It will force a massive change that affects everything when everyone has high quality bandwidth at their fingertips.
For Aereo, that means it can offer consumers a great value proposition: a smart way of getting TV at about ten percent of the price from cable and satellite providers.
Aaron Schildkrout of dating site How About We will speak at the Digital Summit in Atlanta May 14-15 (2013).
By Allan Maurer
How about we have champagne with strawberries and cream at the movies on the lawn event tonight? That’s the way you go about asking for a date on the How About We site.
You post a date idea and wait for someone to take you up on it.
Brian Schechter and Aaron Schildkrout, both 32, launched HowAboutWe in April 2010 in New York. In December of that year, HowAboutWe opened up to a national audience. The goal was to create a dating site they’d actually want to use themselves. Here’s how it works
Say “How about we…” and fill in the blank with a date you want to go on.
Receive Date Proposals in your inbox from people who share your interests.
Find a date you like, check out their profile, message and go out.
Since then, the site has added a popular free concierge service in which it makes all the arranges for special, often deeply discounted dating experiences. “We curate amazing dates,” says Schildkrout.
Participating in the Digital Summit in Atlanta
Schildkrout will discuss how the site uses data to optimize its product and marketing experience and ROI at the Digital Summit in Atlanta next week (May 14-15). He’ll join more than 100 other digital thought-leaders at the event, which is near a sell-out crowd of 1,500.
“We’re an incredibly data-driven company,” Schildkrout says. “Data informs everything we do here.”
The company releases each of its new features in multiple variant test versions and analyzes the outcome based on hundreds of different metrics “To understand the impact of what we’ve done,” he says.
It also uses data in the way it approaches how it serves ads. “We have a data-driven approach to where we place them, how to optimize them, and their relationship to what users see and experience on the site.”
Mind-blowingly rapid tech change
Schildkrout says we’re in a time of “Mind-blowingly rapid technological progress. We’re living in radical times, more so than the general public tends to acknowledge and the Internet is at the very center of it.”
People are spending more than half their time on the Internet, “Living in this other space we’ve built for ourselves,” he says.
In the next five years, Schildkrout sees a couple of big things headed down the digital highways. “Mobile become the single most important access point for Internet use,” he says. “At the same time, Google Glasses and other innovations mean the Internet will become even more pervasive.”
That, he says, means we’ll continue to see “Mass disruption of traditional business models.” Some analysts predict the death of in-store retail coming in the next decade, for instance.
Working much smarter
Also, he says, “We’re going to start working much smarter. And the world is going to be designed better. We’re seeing a major emphasis on design right now in every industry, based on how things actually function, what they look like, how they feel, and how humans actually use them.”
He also sees people using more quantitative self evaluation – people using the Internet for feedback loops to measure and record habits, drink water or exercise more frequently, track sleep patterns and diet.”
Overall, Schildkrout says, “People will be living more designed lives with better designed products.”
Stephen Pair will provide an overview of the Internet payment system bitcoin at the Atlanta Digital Summit May 14-15.
If you have been wondering what all the buzz about the Internet currency bitcoin might mean to your business, you can get up to speed at the Digital Summit in Atlanta next week. Stephen Pair, co-founder and CTO of BitPay, the leading processor for bitcoin, will provide an overview at the event, which is nearing a sell-out.
BitPay has processed over $5.2 million in bitcoin transactions for its merchants during the month of March, with over 5,100 completed invoices during the month. BitPay has also approved over 1,300 new merchant applications during the month of March, bringing their total number of approved merchants to over 4,500.
Pair has 20 years of experience building software systems in the financial and telecommunications industries.
Before founding BitPay, Mr. Pair held various roles including entrepreneur, architect, manager, team lead and developer. He started programming at a young age and spent much of his early career focused on languages, compilers, operating systems and virtual machines.
He’ll join more than 100 other digital thought-leaders and speakers from top brands such as Google, Twitter, AOL, Adobe, and many others at the Digital Summit May 14-15 in Atlanta.
Newer and better
Pair says of bitcoin, “Fundamentally it is newer and better software for conducting transactions.” It doesn’t require providing any personal or financial information that’s so attractive to thieves online. “There is no other method of payment over the Internet that doesn’t involve a bank, credit card or PayPal,” Pair notes.
Twelve-employee BitPay was founded in 2011 and the venture-backed firm raised a $700,000 seed round. “Our customers are merchants who want to accept bitcoin as payment,” Pair explains. BitPay charges a 1 percent transaction fee, lower than merchants pay for credit card transactions, where some pay more than 3 percent.
Customers are now even able to buy mobile gift cards using bitcoins and redeem them at over 50,000 physical retail locations across the USA including GAP, Lowes, Sephora, GameStop, American Eagle, Sports Authority, Nike, Marriott, Burger King, Fandango, Brookstone, and many more household brands.
Bitcoin also allows merchants and consumers to do business online in countries where it is impossible or difficult to do so via credit card transactions.
Money is information
Bitcoins
Pair says to understand bitcoin, we need to step back and think about money in general. “Money is information,” he says. “Like other forms, it’s possible to send that information anywhere over the Internet.”
Unlike more traditional forms of currency, however, no central bank controls the supply of bitcoin and it’s not linked to gold, debt or other forms of backing.
“Bitcoin is backed only by its utility in conducting transactions,” Pair says. “It isn’t linked to a commodity, debt or anything else.”
Pair says many people critical of bitcoin may be looking at it from the wrong perspective. “They’re looking at it as a currency, but ignoring the utility it adds. That’s what will make it succeed or fail – how useful it is for things people need to do, such as international payments.”
You can get a fuller perspective when Pair discusses bitcoin at the Digital Summit next week.
Mike Perla will discuss how to show ROI from usability testing at the upcoming Digital Summit in Atlanta.
If you want to show a return on investment from user testing your digital marketing, you need to get your client involved and on board from the beginning. So says Mike Perla, director of conversion optimization and creative at Fathom.
Perla knows his stuff.
He joined Fathom in 2006 and has over 10 years of experience as a designer, developer and marketer. He regularly presents on the topics of CRO and UX for organization like the Conversion Conference and UXPA. He also frequently hosts webinars with an international cast of CRO experts through the Conversion Rate Optimization Professional Association (CROPA).
His testing case studies are often published by WhichTestWon (WTW), and in early 2013, he won a gold ribbon in the WTW 2013 Online Testing Awards, where his case study was inducted into the WTW Hall of Fame.
He’ll refer to some of those case studies when discussing how to show ROI from usability testing at the Digital Summit in Atlanta next week (May 14-15) where he’ll join more than 100 other digital thought-leaders from brands that include Google, Twitter, AOL, Adobe, the Wall Street Journal and many others.
Usability testing a difficult sell
Usability testing can be “a difficult sell,” Perla notes. “Even if your marketing budget increases, you also always see an increase in the digital channels you can spend the money on. To show ROI, you need, first, to make sure the client believes in the numbers you’re showing him.”
To do that, he suggests, do your user testing on your payment process, implement fixes based on the results, then split traffic between the original process and the new one to see which performs better.
With something like the payment process, “You can tie it right into revenue,” Perla says.
With lead generation clients, you need to develop a simple calculation to get a basic lead value, he adds.
Userlytics tool recommended
He also says that unless you have a background in user testing, you should “Start out small. No one will hand you a bunch of money to do user testing if you haven’t done it in the past.” Since user testing can be fairly expensive, he recommends trying a tool such as Userlytics. It lets you show a video of a user trying your product or process so you can see any place the consumer has trouble.
“You can jump to sections of the annotated video and say, “Hey, here’s someone frustrated with the process. They’ll see that. Once you get the main stakeholder on board by showing them the results of user testing, others will fall in line.”
“Do a test and show it to the client,” he says. “Get them involved so they feel ownership of the project and they’re more likely to participate and help you overcome any hurdles that happen. You might also want to get the IT department, designers and developers of the existing site on board.”
Even if they’re initially reluctant, once you get that, says Perla, “you’re in a much better position.”
As startups go, Shinola has a story that’s right on time. The company, founded in 2011, is making watches in a 35,000 square-foot facility in Detroit. No one has manufactured watches in the U.S. in 50 years,” notes Jacques Panis, director of strategic partnerships for the firm.
Shinola also diversified and now makes bicycles (in Wisconsin) and stationary products. But in an era when many people use smartphones or other digital devices to keep track of the time, we asked Panis, why watches?
“People are starting to wear watches more and more. It’s a trend,” says Panis. “People look at watches as part of their style or persona. A watch is a fashion piece in a lot of cases. People make a statement with a watch, especially in urban environments and among fashion forward trend-setters.”
Experience spans marketing, branding and sales
Panis has over 10 years of experience spanning marketing, branding and sales. He founded Webosaurs in 2007, an online brand created to educate children globally on the history and diversity of our planet. He collaborated with animation studio Reel FX to expand the Webosaurs project while running the Reel FX interactive division. Panis joinedShinola in 2010 to oversee product development and strategic direction for the company.
He’s among more than 100 digital and marketing thought-leaders participating in the Atlanta Digital Summit next week (May 14-15). The event includes speakers from brands such as Google, Twitter, AOL, Adobe, the Wall Street Journal, AT&T, and many others. Fewer than 100 seats remained for the event, the largest in the Southeast, as of Wednesday (May 8). About 1,500 people are expected to attend.
We’re story-tellers
Panis, who is on an engagement panel, tells the TechJournal, “We’re story tellers at the end of the day and digital channels and social are a big part of our marketing effort.” Shinola tells its story on product specific blogs (dedicated to bikes or watches, for instance) and others. It sold a 2,500 limited edition watches online supported by traditional ads in major newspapers.
So far, however, most of the company’s marketing has been “organic,” Panis says. It does have a good story – bringing manufacturing and jobs back to the United States.
The Digital Summit is the largest event of its kind in the Southeast.
People who attend TechMedia’s events such as the Digital Summit often go not only for the programming – whether as participants or audience – but also to find partners, customers, and scope the lay of the digital landscape.
“We’ll be at the show (the Digital Summit) looking for a digital marketers who can help us drive traffic to our site and help us move watches,” he says.
The company isn’t looking for just anyone, though.
“We want a Triple A kind of guy or gal,” Panis says. “We want to shake up how people shop for watches and driving people to our site is critical to how we’re going to run this business. If we can find people to help us drive traffic and refine our funnel, it will be fascinating to see how the rest of the watch industry responds.”
Panis says he’s also looking forward to hearing more about what marketers are up to and how consumers are shopping online.
Fewer than 100 seats remain for the Digital Summit in Atlanta which is only a week away. One of the largest digital marketing events in the Southeast, the Digital Summit features more than 80 presentations from marketing and technology thought-leaders.
Speakers from brands including Twitter, Google, Mashable, Porsche, Reddit, Adobe, TMZ, Bing, Nascar, Coca-Cola, Salesforce, AOL and many more will discuss the latest trends and insights into all things digital.
More than 1,500 are expected to attend.
Hours of networking
People networking at a previous TechMedia event.
In addition to learning the latest digital trends and best practices with actionable takeaways from over 100 world class speakers, you’ll get hours of networking opportunities at two open bar receptions, day one’s gala reception with heavy appetizers, breakfast & lunch on day two, cool giveaways, opportunities to check out the latest digital technologies and startups, a concert from a grammy nominated artist and a lasting experience.
Digital Summit will take place at the Georgia World Congress Center in downtown Atlanta. The conference is readily accessible with a direct flight from most major US cities. The World Congress Center is a just short hop on Atlanta’s mass transit system from the airport.
Chaitanya ‘Chet’ Kanojia, CEO, founder of AEReO, will participate in the upcoming Digital Summit in Atlanta.
AEREO CEO participating
Among other top speakers, the CEO and found of AEREO, which has been much in the news lately with its technology for capturing over-the-air broadcasts and delivering them to customers via Internet connected devices, will be on hand.
Chaitanya ‘Chet’ Kanojia, CEO, founder of AEREO, will participate in the upcoming Digital Summit in Atlanta.
AEREO has stirred up a hornet’s nest of contention in the television space, offering a cloud-based antenna and DVR technology that lets consumers watch live or recorded TV broadcasts on Internet connected devices.
With cable-cutting a real threat to satellite and cable TV providers, this is just one more wrinkle threatening their business models.
It’s not often you see a startup immediately threatening the major players of an industry, but AEREO has managed it. The company, which launched in February 2012, is venture-backed by IAC, FirstMark Capital, First Round Capital, Highland Capital Partners, High Line Venture Partenrs, Lauder Partners, and SV Angel.
Broadcasters, satellite and cable companies lost a battle in court to stop AEREO with an injunction, however. The Second Circuit Court of Appeals said a U.S. District Judge was correct in refusing the injunction.
The suit was brought by Fox Television Stations Inc, Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation, Wpix Inc., Univision Television Group Inc, the Univision Network Limited Partnership, WNET, Thirteen, and Public Broadcasting Service. They have vowed to continue the fight.
Time Warner Cable, on the other hand, has said it might emulate AEREO’s business model and grab over the air broadcasts and deliver them to customers via Internet connections.
It’s all an ongoing controversy. You can hear from AEREO CEO and founder Chaitanya “Chet” Kanojia at the TechMedia’s Digital Summit in Atlanta next week (May 14-15), where he’ll join more than 100 other digital thought-leaders participating in the event.
TechMedia events have had controversial guest before (such as the Winklevoss twins, who challenged Mark Zuckerberg over Facebook’s creation).
Previously, Kanojia was the founder and CEO of Navic Networks, the industry leader in advanced television advertising. Navic Networks was subsequently acquired by Microsoft in 2008. Chet holds more than 14 patents in fields ranging from robotics to data communications systems, is an innovative leader known for pushing beyond the conventional and developing breakthrough solutions.
TechJournal plans an interview with Kanojia ahead of the Summit if possible.
Matt Wallaert, a behavioral scientist with Microsoft’s Bing search engine and a serial entrepreneur, is among more than 100 speakers participating in the Atlanta Digital Summit May 14-15.
We’re going to see much better products in the future based on how we actually use them as technology embraces human engineering and behavioral science, says Matt Wallaert.
A behavioral scientist working with Microsoft and BING and a serial entrepreneur, Wallaert says he believes the goal of technology is to “Get to that Gene Roddenberry (Star Trek) future in which we’ve solved many of the world’s problems.”
After two successful tech startup exits, he joined Microsoft’s Bing to focus on adapting technologies to work naturally with existing paradigms of behavior to aid in both decision making and task completion, and to broaden how search removes obstacles and enables people to take action on their ideas, questions, and desires.
As an academic at Cornell University, Wallaert wrote a number of papers on financial behavior that drew the attention of Thrive, which invited him first to sit on its board and later made him head of product.
Built a behavioral change engine
“We built a behavioral change engine,” he says. And it worked. “We could see we were changing behavior.” People using Thrive raised their credit scores and paid down their debt. The company eventually sold to Charlotte-based Lending Tree.
Then Wallaert started a second firm, Churnless, which focused on helping startups build products people actually want and don’t leave because they find them so useful.
He co-founded several startups (OneADayForCharity, HotelDecoder, and FlexibleFlow), and has acted as an adviser and angel investor to others. One of his current side projects is Getraised.com, a free service to help close the gender wage gap. It has helped thousands of women earn millions of dollars over the past two years; 70 percent of women who submit a raise request get a raise, and the average raise is around $7K.
Speaking at the Atlanta Digital Summit
Wallaert is among more than 100 digital thought-leaders and executives from top brands participating in the upcoming Digital Summit in Atlanta. In addition to Microsoft, brands represented include Google, AOL, Twitter, Adobe, and many others.
Wallaert says that one reason he joined Microsoft is that “I want to do things that are practical, but in startups, even if you’re successful, you may not be talking to that many people. But no one on earth has a bigger audience than Microsoft.”
He admits that a company as big as Microsoft it can be difficult to institute change. “But if you can, it affects so many people,” he adds.
Should technology’s goal be the future where it has solved many of society’s basic problems, such as in Gene Roddenberry’s Star Trek universe?
People tend to underestimate how much Microsoft has already contributed to that Star Trek-like future in which many of the world’s problems are solved. Microsoft technology powers everything from many tools we use in our daily lives to those operating cars and hospitals.
If you get hit by a bus, he notes, the ambulance that takes you to the hospital may have been built by a factory powered by Microsoft. The hospital itself is also likely using Microsoft technology, and the doctors treating you are probably using Microsoft powered tools.
The science of social
At Bing, Wallaert and Microsoft are trying to make the search engine – Google’s only real rival – to work with natural speech.
On a panel dealing with social search at the Digital Summit, Wallaert says he’ll “Talk about some of the science of social. There is tendency to approach search with old school marketing techniques, such as pushing out a message to a bunch of influencers.”
Aston Kucher
Ashton Kutcher, for instance, has millions of followers on Twitter. “But who ever did anything because he said to?,” asks Wallaert.
Actually, though, that’s not how social recommendations work their viral magic. “Why do social recommendations work?” he asks. “Because people tend to group up in patterns with other people who are like them.”
“Imagine that if instead of Ashton, a friend sends you a personal note saying ‘Hey I’m using this thing and you might like it.’ Those are the types of messages that have a huge impact. A tweet might reach a million eyeballs, but that’s different from getting 100 people to tell 10 others they’re using something and you should try it.”
He’ll talk about the kind of social outreach that actually produce sticky results and long term product users. “Think about Game of Thrones,” he suggests. The HBO show has racked up impressive viewing numbers in its third season, largely “Because people are watching it because their friends are watching it.”
“You need to look at the raw science of why social recommendations are important, how people actually make decisions and how you can use that,” Wallaert says.
More than 100 leading digital thought leaders are set to present the latest digital strategies and trends at the Digital Summit, Georgia World Congress Center in Atlanta, May 14th – 15th, 2013.
Speakers will share the latest best practices and strategies in topics such as social media, email marketing, search, mobile, e-commerce, usability, analytics & measurement, online video, social TV and digital advertising/branding among many others.
A capacity crowd of 1,500 digital marketers, Internet executives, web strategists, entrepreneurs and other digital professionals will connect in Atlanta for two full days of content and networking.
Speakers represent leading brands such as Google, Twitter, reddit, Mashable, Porsche, Turner, TMZ, Coca-Cola, HootSuite, NASCAR, The Weather Channel, Aereo, Dell, Rovi, HGTV, Forrester, StumbleUpon, Salesforce and Adobe to name a few.
The Digital Summit conference features a keynote from the co-founder of reddit, Alexis Ohanian, and over 80 strategy presentations and discussions, musical acts, the Startup Showcase, preconference workshops, leading digital vendors and hours of attendee networking.
Here at the TechJournal we’ve interviewed a handful of the digital gurus who will participate, with more to come.
It is amazing how little digital marketing is actually data driven. So says Brian DAmato, senior vice president of analytics at Moxie. “Marketing organizations have evolved, but not rapidly: 60 percent of CMOs have stopped holding their reps responsible for ROI because they just are not collecting the data needed.”
DAmato is a veteran in the digital space – working with technology, businesses, user experience and analytics to help transform teams into continuous learning organizations. He uses data, research, and insights to craft solutions and push the envelope in the spaces of Big Data and omni-channel user experience.
DAmato has worked with Fortune 500 companies like Intel, General Electric, Delta Air Lines, and The Home Depot, and has launched two startups. Brian aligns business objectives and customer needs, with appropriate KPIs and available technologies to enable intelligent risk-taking for organizations.
Speaking at the Atlanta Digital Summit
He’s among the more than 100 digital thought-leaders who will share the latest best practices and strategies in topics such as social media, email marketing, search, mobile, e-commerce, usability, analytics & measurement, online video, social TV and digital advertising/branding at the Digital Summit in Atlanta in just two weeks.
DAmato will talk about increasing ROI with data driven decisions at the event.
“What are the approaches organizations should take toward measurement?” is a question he plans to address.
It’s more than measurement
“It’s not just measurement, but also comparison against a baseline,” DAmato says. You also have to consider which tools you’ll need and the whole set of infrastructure needed to make things come about. “Tools can do amazing things, but they’re expensive,” he notes. So you need to decide which are right for your marketplace and customers.
He offers these three tips on getting started:
“The first and biggest,” he says, “is experiment. You need to understand your baseline – where you are – and aggressively try new things.” You need to set up your experiments properly, though, he warns.
Next, “You need to be risk tolerant. Tweaks and subtlties aren’t going to be where you really make the money. You have to find out if you’re climbing the right mountain.”
Big mountain models
DAmato adds, “We used to call them big mountain models. The last thing you want to do is to look out over the top of your current mountain and say, ‘Gosh, we should be over there because it’s three times the size of my mountain.’ So you have to address how to do big mountain experiments.”
Ask, he suggests, “Should I be doing something radically different? If you’re risk tolerant, you can be aggressive in trying new things.That’s a key to driving ROI.”
Finally, you also need to make sure your organization has the right skill sets to do this, he adds. “You need the right talent. The way business leverages tools and technology is changing. Now marketers need technology skills.
“If you have the right people and do the right experiments, you’ll see ROI from your platforms because you will continually push them.”
DAmato says he’ll discuss all of this in more depth and with specifics at the Digital Summit.
Getting up to speed with digital engagement of your brand’s fans? You may want to take a few hints from the way NASCAR races to success with its mobile apps, fantasy game, and social media.
NASCAR re-launched its digital platforms in January, taking the job in house from Turner Sports, which previously managed them. “They were very helpful in letting us hit the ground running,” says Tim Clark, director of optimization for NASCAR.
Clark leads all efforts to optimize NASCAR.com for all internal marketing/branding initiatives, external partnerships, licensing opportunities and industry services. Previously, he was with True Action digital agency, where he managed all of the online retail marketing for various sports leagues including the NFL, NBA and MLB and helped launch the social and mobile presence for the NFL, NHL and NASCAR online stores as group marketing director. Clark has more than twelve years of marketing experience including B2C and B2B, print, broadcast and interactive.
Participating at the Digital Summit
Screen shot of one of NASCAR’s new mobile apps – NASCAR RaceView Mobile ’13.
He’s one of more than 100 digital thought-leaders and tech gurus participating in the Digital Summit in Atlanta May 14-15. Execs from top digital brands such as Google, AOL, Twitter, Adobe, and many others are on the agenda. Fair warning: TechMedia’s last event closed registrations a week before the event and had a waiting list of hundreds, so it’s a good idea to register now if you plan on attending.
Clark tells the TechJournal that the first thing NASCAR did when Turner Sports turned over the digital platforms in January was to use its social media networks to get feedback. “It was incredibly helpful,” he says. “In the first five days post-relaunch, we made three big changes to our site based on feedback from social media.”
That speaks to NASCAR’s philosophy in dealing with its digital platforms. “We don’t think we dictate success,” Clark says. “The fans dictate success and you have to listen to them and react quickly based on what they’re missing and what we can do better.”
Listening Post
Clark notes that NASCAR has a Center created in partnerships with HP that uses a variety of tools for listing to its social buzz, chatter, topics, tone and what fans are engaging with and talking about.
NASCAR’s Mobile apps have been particularly successful this year, Clark says. There are two: NASCAR Mobile 13 and NASCAR Race Mobile. The first is designed to be a second screen compliment to the dot com site with news and video content.
The NASCAR Race Mobile app for race days includes in car audio, the radio broadcast, the live leader board, and its raceview product, offering 3D virtualizaiton of cars on the track with changeable camera angles.
“We’re impressed with the engagement we’ve had both at the track and via the TV broadcasts,” Clark says.
NASCAR’s Gen 6 cars have been a popular topic of conversation on its digital platforms.
Fantasy game popular
One of NASCAR’s most popular digital products is its fantasy game. “Fantasy sports are wildly popular and NASCAR fans are among the most passionate in sports, so it’s a good combination,” Clark says.
NASCAR looks at engagement closely. “We have real time reports that let us see what’s being discussed, what’s popular, what’s trending, how long conversations last, and gauge sentiment during live events,” he notes.
“If something happens in real time, we can tell how fans are reacting to it. It may be something that flew under the radar, but if fans are talking about it, we know that instantly.”
What are they talking about?
“The Gen 6 car has been extremely popular,” Clark says. “Also, the popular and up and coming drivers. It’s a good time for our sport. The Digital platforms let us be aware of what the fans want to hear, so we can provide more of what they want to hear about.”
The more business acquaintances you have, the merrier you might be. But the quality of those contacts has a bigger impact on your career success, a new Robert Half Technology survey of information technology (IT) professionals suggests.
Sixty-three percent of IT workers polled recently rated the quality of their professional network as “very important” to their overall career success, compared to 46 percent who felt the same way about the size of their network. When it comes to making new connections, (44 percent) of IT professionals surveyed prefer to network online and 22 percent favor doing it in person.
The survey was developed by Robert Half Technology, a leading provider of information technology (IT) professionals on a project and full-time basis. The responses are from over 7,500 IT workers to a Web survey conducted by Robert Half Technology inFebruary 2013.
IT professionals were asked, “How important is the quality of your professional network to your overall career success?” Their responses:
Very important………………………………..63%
Somewhat important……………………………. 33%
Not important…………………………………………….. 4%
100%
IT professionals also were asked, “How important is the size of your professional network to your overall career success?” Their responses:
Very important………………………………..46%
Somewhat important……………………………. 47%
Not important…………………………………………….. 7%
100%
“Knowing someone professionally and being willing to go to bat for that person are two different things,” said John Reed , senior executive director of Robert Half Technology. “You may have hundreds of LinkedIn connections, but if the relationships are superficial, your contacts may not be very helpful when you’re seeking professional advice or assistance with a job search.”
Reed added, “Quality connections take time to establish, but they are a valuable career safety net, whether someone is just starting out or has many years of experience.”
One place you’ll find quality networking opportunities is at TechMedia’s Digital Summit in Atlanta May 14-15. As a TechMedia division, The TechJournal attends many of these events and the networking is unparalleled.
Robert Half Technology provides five pitfalls to avoid when networking:
Losing touch. Keep the lines of communication open by offering a note of congratulations to a contact who was recently promoted or asking to meet for lunch. Set aside time each week for these types of networking activities.
Exhausting your resources. Most people are happy to help on occasion, but avoid overburdening one contact with repeated requests. Broaden your efforts and tap others in your network if you have trouble overcoming a particular career challenge.
Forgetting your p’s and q’s. A little gratitude can go a long way toward maintaining positive relationships. Always show appreciation to those who act on your behalf, even if their efforts don’t result in the desired outcome.
Taking a generalist approach. Instead of sending a mass email to everyone in your network asking for assistance, try customized, targeted messages to specific contacts.
Failing to return the favor. Networking is a two-way street: Look for opportunities to help your contacts whenever possible, and you’ll find that others are happy to do the same for you.
So, how do you get 195,000 followers on Twitter? Buy them? Bribe them? Offer them ice cream cones?
“Honestly, I worked my tail off,” says Jeff Sheehan, a marketing and social media consultant at Sheehan Marketing Strategies, who is recognized as one of the Top 100 Marketers to Follow on Twitter, who now has more than 199,000 followers.
Sheehan, who has 30 years of high-tech global sales, marketing, and advertising experience marketing to Intel, Cisco, Apple, HP, and IBM, is a well known speaker in the Atlanta area on the use of Linkedin, Personal Branding, Social Media, and Marketing.
He’ll be talking about Linkedin at the Atlanta Digital Summit May 14-15, joining dozens of other digital media, marketing, advertising, and technology thought-leaders from brands such as Google, Twitter, AOL, Adobe, and many others.
“The power of social media is incredible,” Sheehan tells the TechJournal. “It levels the playing field and gives you the ability to position yourself regardless of your background. So anybody can be a somebody if they’re good at branding themselves online.”
Tips on using Linkedin
An expert at using Linkedin, Sheehan offers these tips on using the social network:
First, he says, “Be credible. Put up the best profile you can.” That means also including appropriate keywords – although he rails against people who overdo it the way sites used to overuse keywords for SEO. On his blog for instance, he cites one unnamed job hunter who was in social media less than a year but includes a whole long paragraph with nothing but the phrase “Social media marketing.”
You should, though, include a professional photo and a complete picture of what you’ve done.
Next, Sheehan suggests, you have to build your network. “Find people with common interests and ask to join their network,” he says.
Once you’ve acquired endorsements and recommendations on LinkedIn, it adds to your credibility, he says, although we’ve heard some dissenting voices regarding the value of endorsements.
Like your own billboard
After you establish your identity, Sheehan notes, Linkedin is “Like your own billboard with a potential audience of 200 million people. You can display your work and provide your network with material you think is relevant, articles, news.”
He warns, however, “Don’t spam people.” One person in his network “Puts out post after post after post,” he says, so Sheehan used the Linkedin “hide” feature. That keeps the person in his network, but he’s not longer bothered by all those superfluous posts.
“You want to keep people in your network,” he says. “The more people you are connected to, the easier you can be found. So it’s important to retain the size and integrity of your network.”
Longer shelf life
On the other hand, used judiciously, you can “Get a lot of visibility via Linkedin updates,” which have a shelf life a bit longer than the rapidly moving Twitter stream.
Just call me Larry.
Sheehan, who has called himself a “Twitteraholic,” says he also sees great potential in Google+. “Google is going to continue to invest in it,” he says.
Facebook, he says, “Is mostly for friends and family.”
Pinterest, which had quite a buzz last year, “Is not as universal” as the other social networks, he adds. “It’s audience is 85 percent female. But it has benefited a lot of businesses.”
There are so many social networking tools, with new ones such as Instagram and Vine popping up all the time, that no one has time to manage them all.
“Pick your poison and figure out where you’re going to focus,” he says.
Search engine optimization now has to deal with up to 500 updates to search engine algorithms every year. “It used to be easy to position key words in the past, but no more,” says SEO expert Josh McCoy.
Lead stratagist at Vizion Interactive, McCoy is a monthly columnist for the leading search engine marketing news site Search Engine Watch, a speaking contributor for the Search Engine Strategies conference series and the ClickZ Training Academy and manages the Kansas City Search Engine Marketing Association.
He’s one of dozens of digital thought-leaders, top executives from digital brands such as Google, Twitter, AOL, About.com, AT&T, Adobe, MailOnline, Porche, and the Wall Street Journal, among many others, participating in the Atlanta Digital Summit May 14-15.
With a major update to the Google Penguin algorithm scheduled to hit soon, McCoy notes that Google rolled out an update in March that he’s still examining.
Rankings go all over the place
“Every time they update rankings go all over the place, then they ease up a bit,” he says. Sites that took a hit because of the March update may have seen some traffic coming back by April.
“I’m still tracking what they actually did with the algorithm,” McCoy says. But he did pinpoint two parts of it.
First, it hits “Over optimization of key words on pages, title elements, and headings or copy.”
Second, it looks at the bounce rate of key words on landing pages. “They’re cleaning up the algorithm so that if people are bouncing out when coming to the site through search, those pages perhaps should not be ranking,” he explains.
What content works?
The changes in the way the search engines rank sites mean content now needs to “Be enticing,useful, and informative.” That means that aggregation and curated content do not rank so well any longer. “They rely more on the quality of back links and the social buzz you get,” McCoy notes.
At the Digital Summit, McCoy will discuss using competitive analysis for organic search optimization. Competitive analysis, he says, “Is a foundational starting point you have to reivsit every quarter. It’s not a one and done kind of thing.”
You start, he says, with key word research, which terms are important to your site and the mission of your company. “Look at the where, the who and the how,” he says.
Look at your competitive landscape
Begin by addressing your competitive landscape, he suggests. “A mistake some companies make is that if they have physical locations they may think the store across the street is the competition – but it may not be online.”
Identify who your competitors really are. “I go after two or three,” McCoy says. “It’s best done with a few. You have to find your true direct competitors and then your key word competitors.”
To find out who your competitors really are, you examine the key word landscape. “Who is ranking for which key words? Who’s doing paid search for them? What types of universal results show up (video? images?).”
You have to write content for those key words and you may need to include video and/or images.
McCoy recommends using a number of tools to discover what the value of specific key words are to your competitors. Those tools can provide informations such as the search volume, the estimated number of clicks they get, the traffic and how much it would cost to buy that traffic.
After who and the where, you look at how your competitors do things: how they build their site, the type of content they have allowing them to rank.
Also, says McCoy, “Look at other things offsite: what types of links are they getting, do they have high trust for their domain?”
Then, look at social. “Look at what your competitors are doing socially. Look at their audience. What types of content are people grabbing onto? See what works for them socially.”
Erica McClenny, SVP, Expion, is participating in the upcoming Atlanta Digital Summit.
What’s the biggest change in digital marketing since the beginning of the year? “Social media has gone far beyond just being a marketing source,” says Erica McClenny, vice president of client services with Expion.
“That’s a huge shift since the beginning of the year,” McClenny says. “A lot of companies are breaking down walls to integrate and overlay what social is doing on the whole picture rather than looking at it on its own as a social bubble.”
What companies want now, she says, is to know what its social media users are saying on a real time basis. They say, “Give me something I can do something about and take action on.”
Expion is a social software company. Its centralized platform empowers global brands, agencies, and retailers to localize and manage their social marketing efforts to listen, content plan, publish, moderate, analyze, govern and share content on Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Instagram and other social channels across thousands of users.
It has 20,000 pages managed by its software, including those of many high profile brands that have mounted hugely successful digital marketing campaigns via the platform (Expion does not do the creative end, it’s platform executes the campaigns).
The system produces real-time community intelligence giving brands and retailers the power to optimize consumer engagement, service, and ad performance. Its Marketing Insights Technology allows companies to integrate multiple social activity streams in real-time creating highly visual analytics to discover patterns, breakouts and trends.
Participating in the Atlanta Digital Summit
McClenny’s input into the development of a simple local interface for the local user has been a crucial piece to Expion’s success. She is a firm believer in collaboration between the agency of record, corporate marketing teams, and the integration local employees to gain valuable insight and best practices for a successful local expansion.
McClenny is one of dozens of digital thought-leaders, top brand executives from Google, Twitter, AOL, AT&T, The Wall Street Journal, Adobe, Apple, MailOnline and others participating in the Atlanta Digital Summit May 14-15.
Oreo created this Mars Rover cookie, complete with Rover tracks, for one of its digital marketing campaigns that inspired much social media sharing.
McClenny says another major shift she sees this year is a greater emphasis on “contextual listening.” One of Expion’s clients is Oreo, which has had enviable success with several social media and digital marketing campaigns. So, a brand such as Oreo might start listening not just for mention of its own cookie, but for conversations about cookies.
Smart companies do this
“Smart companies are becoming category aware, not just brand aware,” McClenny says. They listen for words associated with their product. “Then they can jump into the conversation in a matter of seconds when it makes sense, not days later when it’s irrelevant.”
She notes that more social channels are rising to the top with Vine the current “hot one.” But she also sees a “huge advantage” possible in using Google+. “Google dominates search and Google+ is a way to make search richer,” she points out. “It can show you everything you and your friends touch. I think it will be amazing. The business part needs some backend tools but it will be a huge powerhouse.”
She likes a new feature called Google Ripples that allows you to track the sharing and impact of a link you post on the Google+ site. “You can drill all the way down to how many plus 1s – it’s really rich,” she says.
Pinterest needs an API
Pinterest, on the other hand, still has limitations. “It’s too broad. It doesn’t have any geographic capabilities and brands using software to help with all their data don’t want to go to a native channel for one thing when they’re aggregating everything else. I think Pinterest will have a lot more legs in the business world when they have an API. (the interface that lets programmers create applications to make it more useful).
As something of a rule of thumb for social media marketing, McClenny says to focus on what you want to happen, avoiding fluffy terms such as “engagement.” “Be focused,” she says. “We want X number of things to happen: drive people to my website, increase the number of shares. You don’t just want lots of activity. You need to know what kind of activity you want and what result you want from that.”
Don’t overthink the process
It’s not just sales that produces ROI. You might instead increase product awareness by 25 percent over a quarter. “You can’t focus just on the bottom line first or you’ll never get there,” she says.
She warns, as many experts in social media marketing do, that brands can’t be overly promotional, using a “radio voice” with no interaction or reason for it.
She also suggests that some companies “overthink” the whole process, taking days to approve a social media post. Also, every post does not have to be professionally slick with high resolution images.
“Sometimes a behind the scenes, outtake type of thing can have more reach than a commercial you spend a lot of money on,” she suggests.
SEO expert Michael Marshall is among the digital thought-leaders participating in the Atlanta Digital Summit May 14-14.
By Allan Maurer
Back before Google launched it SEO-changing Penguin algorithm, certain “spamtastic” backlink building methods worked for quite a while, which is why they became so prevalent.
When that Penguin algorithm hit, even many legitimate sites were adversely affected. “They were lured into spamtastics because they worked for so long,” says Michael Marshall, CEO of Internet Marketing Analysts, who helped craft advanced SEO strategies for many top Internet brands, including AOL, 1800Flowers, and Alcatel-Lucent among others.
Marshall, who writes about SEO for many media outlets, from Forbes, Investor’s Business daily, PRWeek, SearchNewz and SEOToday.com, is among the plethora of digital thought-leaders, tech gurus, and execs from top brands participating in the Digital Summit in Atlanta May 14-15.
In two separate sessions, Marshall, who is also a lead instructor at Search Engine Academy, will discuss understanding Google’s search algorithm and link-building.
Fixing bad backlinks
Marshall says that if past practices hurt your site when Google’s Penguin hit, there are two ways to fix the problem.
First, he says, “Make the structure of your backlinks look more natural. Search engines have a specific way of determining that.”
He suggests using Google Web Master tools or Majestic SEO to monitor your backlinks.
Then, Marshall says, “You have to get rid of backlinks and/or add more good ones to such a degree that it minimizes the effect of the bad ones. “It’s a percentage game, although no one know the exact percentages,” he adds.
If you can’t remove some backlinks for any of a variety of reasons, you can use the Google and Bing disavowal tools so they don’t harm your rank. But before doing that, Marshall warns, “Get your ducks in a row, because they won’t just look at the backlinks, they’ll look at everything.”
Adding good links
How do you go about getting good links to outweigh the bad?
“Get links from organizations in your industry,” Marshall says. “Your partners, vendors, suppliers. Those are the types of sites you want links from.”
If you’re a local company, he suggests, “Anything like the Chamber of Commerce or industry guilds – organizations that have a good reputation in your space locally.”
Another standard approach is to identify your top competitors going after the same traffic you do. “Look at your top five competitors. What 20 backlinks do they have in common? They’re a good place to start.”
Don’t buy links for SEO
What about buying links?
That’s a no-no in today’s SEO world – although you can buy them if you don’t use them for SEO purposes. “Google says it knows that buying links are a regular part of doing business, but it doesn’t want you to use them for SEO,” notes Marshall.
Google plans a new major Penguin release Marshall says he expects may shake things up as much as the original one did.
He recommends that the way to stay on top of the SEO world is to “find reliable sources online.”
Early Bird rates for the Atlanta Digital Summit, one of the largest digital marketing events in the Southeast, expire this Friday. The event, which draws 1,500 attendees tends to sell out, so it’s a good idea to register early.
You can meet execs from Twitter, Google, Mashable, Bing, reddit, YouTube, StumbleUpon, TMZ, Dell, Home Depot, HGTV, Salesforce, CNN, AOL, Forester, Urban Daddy and The Weather Channel?
They’re all represented at the upcoming Digital Summit 2013 May 14-15.
The event draws digital marketers, web strategists, senior Internet executives, thought-leaders, and entrepreneurs to Atlanta, so the networking is nonstop.
When you’re Wong, you’re right
We’ll be interviewing some of the featured speakers and panel participants as we head toward the event (TechJournal is a TechMedia division).
We spoke to Kiip CEO and founder Brian Wong, who is among the dozens of digital thought leaders participating.
Wong, the youngest person who ever received venture funding, describes how connecting mobile ads to “moments of achievement and delight” can make those ads welcome rather than an annoyance. See: Mobile ad secret sauce.
Look for many more interviews with participants at the TechJournal leading up to the event.
Register now to reserve your seat. TechMedia’s last event in Charlotte, NC, had to close registration a week ahead of the event and had a long waiting list, so do it early.
Digital advertising revenues climbed to a milestone high of $36.6 billion in 2012, according to theIAB Internet Advertising Revenue Report for the full-year of 2012.
That historic number marks a 15 percent rise over 2011’s full-year number, which itself had been the highest on record, at $31.7 billion.
The news suggests, along with other reports, that marketers and companies realize that digital advertising offers numerous advantages over traditional channels. That doesn’t necessarily mean advertisers should abandon those channels, however, says BrandSprout Principal Joellyn “Joey” Sargent.
Sargent, who is among the dozens of speakers headed to Atlanta next month for TechMedia’s Digital Summit, says that while digital is increasingly important, it works best in an integrated campaign that includes traditional and offline marketing.
The report, released today by the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) and prepared by PwC U.S., additionally reveals that 2012’s fourth quarter numbers, at $10.3 billion, rose by 14.9 percent from $9 billion in the final quarter of 2011.
These 2012 Q4 figures represent an uptick of 11.6 percent over Q3 2012, which came in at $9.2 billion.
“As Smartphones get smarter, cellular networks get faster and user penetration of smart mobile devices increases, the combination of personalization and location will have tremendous appeal to marketers”
Other highlights include:
For the second year in a row, mobile achieved triple-digit growth year-over-year. The past year saw the mobile category surge 111 percent to $3.4 billion, pivoting off of 2011’s record-breaking 149 percent year-over-year rise to $1.6 billion. Mobile accounted for 9 percent of total internet ad revenue in 2012.
Digital video, a component of display-related advertising, brought in $2.3 billion, marking a significant year-over-year increase of 29 percent in 2012, compared to $1.8 billion in 2011.
Search revenues in 2012 totaled $16.9 billion or 46 percent of 2012 revenues, up 14.5 percent from $14.8 billion in 2011.
Display-related advertising revenues in 2012 totaled $12 billion or 33 percent of 2012 revenues, up almost 9 percent from $11 billion in 2011.
Retail advertisers continue to represent the largest category of internet ad spending, accounting for 20 percent in 2012, followed by financial services, which is responsible for 13 percent of the year’s revenues.
Mobile soared
“These record-breaking numbers represent a paradigm shift when it comes to marketers recognizing the role a multiplicity of screens plays in effectively reaching today’s consumers,” said Randall Rothenberg, President and CEO, IAB.
“Mobile, in particular, soared due to its ubiquity and intrinsic ability to serve as a powerful digital dashboard that travels with you from morning commute to nighttime video viewing and beyond. The significant increase in digital video also underscores the importance of the upcoming Digital Content NewFronts and the vitality that sight, sound and motion play for both consumers and advertisers in the digital era.”
“As Smartphones get smarter, cellular networks get faster and user penetration of smart mobile devices increases, the combination of personalization and location will have tremendous appeal to marketers,” said David Silverman, Partner, PwC U.S. “We are just at the tip of the iceberg.”
“For the third consecutive year, digital media ad revenue has racked up double-digit growth, demonstrating the strength of interactive advertising and marketers’ commitment to be where consumers are,” said Sherrill Mane, Senior Vice President, Research, Analytics, and Measurement, IAB.
Here are the results from the full year in comparison with last year’s numbers:
Full Year 2011
Full Year 2012
%
$
%
$
Revenue (Ad Formats)
Search
46.5%
$14,768
46.3%
$16,916
Classifieds and Directories
8.1%
$2,580
6.6%
$2,430
Lead Generation
4.8%
$1,522
4.6%
$1,689
E-mail
0.7%
$213
0.4%
$156
Mobile
5.0%
$1,596
9.2%
$3,370
Display-related
-Digital Video Commercials
5.7%
$1,809
6.4%
$2,330
-Ad banners / display ads
21.5%
$6,811
21.1%
$7,721
-Sponsorships
3.5%
$1,121
2.3%
$845
-Rich media
4.1%
$1,315
3.0%
$1,113
Total display-related
34.8%
$11,056
32.8%
$12,009
Revenue (Pricing Models)
Impression-based
31.3%
$9,926
32.0%
$11,709
Performance-based
64.6%
$20,491
65.9%
$24,093
Hybrid
4.2%
$1,318
2.1%
$768
IAB sponsors the IAB Internet Advertising Revenue Report, which is conducted independently by the New Media Group of PwC. The results are considered the most accurate measurement of interactive advertising revenues because the data is compiled directly from information supplied by companies selling advertisements on the internet.
The survey includes data concerning online advertising revenues from Web sites, commercial online services, free email providers, and all other companies selling online advertising. The full report is issued twice yearly for full and half-year data, and top-line quarterly estimates are issued for the first and third quarters. PwC does not audit the information and provides no opinion or other form of assurance with respect to the information.
One mistake brands sometimes make today is that with digital and social media so prevalent, they sometimes think “We don’t need print, TV or traditional marketing anymore.”
That’s usually not the case, says Joellyn “Joey” Sargent, a principal at strategic marketing and management consulting firm BrandSprout. “People don’t live in their computers,” she says. “They drive, watch TV. Looking at your customers’ lifestyles and figuring out how to reach them in all kinds of places is critical.”
An avid fan of technology and innovation, Sargent’s approach merges new media with traditional marketing. Before founding BrandSprout, she spent 20 years leading marketing strategy for businesses ranging from start-ups to the Fortune 500, including UPS and BellSouth (now AT&T).
As a senior marketing executive, she had global responsibility for branding, marketing strategy, communications and product management functions. Sargent has been quoted in Fox Business, Huffington Post and Social Media Today. She holds an MBA from Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University. Read her blog at www.Fresh-Sprouts.com.
Participating in the Atlanta Digital Summit
Sargent is among the digital marketers, web strategists, senior Internet executives, thought-leaders, and entrepreneurs participating in the upcoming Digital Summit in Atlanta May 14-15. She also appeared at the event last year and you can read our interview preceding her presentation, “In the Age of Social Media, Companies don’t fully control the brand” here.
“It doesn’t make sense to try to reach customers from only one angle,” Sargent says. “You should start with a strong understanding of your target market and what they enjoy doing, what’s appropriate for them, where they are hanging out, what they’re reading and where they’re interacting.”
Sargent notes that while you could spend a lot of money on hard core research, you could also find out much of this information by “Talking to your customers in the field. Observe their behavior. Drill down on how they found out about you, who else they looked at, options they considered, and why they chose you. You’ll find good ways to get in front of them.”
Look for the most effective approaches
You will really want to look at the most effective approaches, she adds. “You might get in front of them 10 ways, but some are going to be better than others.”
Just as a quick example she says, “Someone waiting in a bus shelter will see a sign there, but if you’re in traffic, you might not notice a sign on a bus going by.”
You have to think about not only where you’ll get their attention, but also, where can they potentially take action?
Don’t do too much
One mistake marketers make, she says, “Is trying to do too much and cover the waterfront, be on every social network. That’s not productive because you spread yourself too thinly. Find the right places to connect with your customers.”
Even then, you have to think about what is appropriate for each social network. Photos of a company bowling team might work well on Facebook, but not on LinkedIn.
On a website your customers frequent, you might choose to have a pop up offer a newsletter if it offers a gateway to content they are interested in, she suggests.
“At the same time,” she warns, “You don’t want to jump in front of them if it’s not relevant to them. Find those opportunities where it is appropriate to get in front of them and they can make mental connections as to why you are there.”
Merge online and offline efforts
One thing that is particularly important – which she will discuss in more detail and with examples at the Digital Summit, is the need to merge offline and online marketing efforts.
“You have to be careful not to seem creepy,” she says, “such as when you download a brochure and the next thing you know your phone is ringing.”
Instead, she says, “If someone is engaged on a website, take it further. Can we give you something in hard copy? An invitation to an event we’re hosting? A workshop? Those are great for the more complex sale.”
For retail, offer a coupon, get them in the store. “For someone without a history with the brand, getting them to come in is a big deal.”
It’s a time-consuming process, but it’s not the kind of thing you can do and say you’re done, she notes.
A continuum, not set it and forget it
“It’s a continuum. The market changes. There are new opportunities for connecting with your customers. You need to be more nimble than ever.”
Once upon a time companies could do an annual marketing plan and that was it. “Now you have to do it every month,” she says. “People who go through the set it and forget it process end up spending more money than they need to by not optimizing their program.”
Finally, Sargent says, “Make sure you know how your digital marketing affects your overall corporate goals. It’s not about having 10,000 leads, it’s about having leads that bring you customers to help you grow over time.”
Speakers represent leading brands such as Google, Twitter, reddit, Mashable, Porsche, Turner, TMZ, Coca-Cola, HootSuite, NASCAR, The Weather Channel, Aereo, Dell, Rovi, HGTV, Forrester, StumbleUpon, Salesforce and Adobe to name a few.
Schildkrout will discuss how the site uses data to optimize its product and marketing experience and ROI at the 
In the next five years, Schildkrout sees a couple of big things headed down the digital highways. “Mobile become the single most important access point for Internet use,” he says. “At the same time, Google Glasses and other innovations mean the Internet will become even more pervasive.”
Bitcoin has come under some scrutiny by potential regulars. Bart Chilton, one of five commissioners at the 
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Tim Clark, director of optimization for NASCAR, talks about how 
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One place you’ll find quality networking opportunities is at TechMedia’s 
An expert at using Linkedin, Sheehan offers these tips on using the social network:
Expion is a social software company. Its centralized platform empowers global brands, agencies, and retailers to localize and manage their social marketing efforts to listen, content plan, publish, moderate, analyze, govern and share content on Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Instagram and other social channels across thousands of users.
Pinterest, on the other hand, still has limitations. “It’s too broad. It doesn’t have any geographic capabilities and brands using software to help with all their data don’t want to go to a native channel for one thing when they’re aggregating everything else. I think Pinterest will have a lot more legs in the business world when they have an API. (the interface that lets programmers create applications to make it more useful).
Digital advertising revenues climbed to a milestone high of $36.6 billion in 2012, according to the
