“Social and Mobile are Eating the World” – Inbound Marketing Summit 2012

It was with that quote that Inbound Marketing Summit NYC began, on a crisp, clear February day.  Inbound Marketing Summit, or IMS, is a 2 day conference, combining digital, social, and mobile marketing, and it made its first foray into NYC with this year’s conference.  Unfortunately, I was only able to attend Day 1 of this incredible conference, but wanted to bring you my thoughts on it.

With speakers ranging from Chris Brogan, Laura Fitton, Trip Kucera, and Barry Libert, we were provided with cutting-edge content and real world case studies from some great companies, including Nike and Alure Home Improvements.

The morning began with a keynote speech from Barry Libert, Founder of OpenMatters, where he discussed how Nike has radically changed their marketing strategy, and is going where the customers are – social and mobile.  It was eye opening, when Libert spoke about degrees of separation, and how just one degree of separation could equal 11,000 people!

This led right into Trip Kucera’s talk about the hidden sales cycle, and how companies are using social media for demand generation.  Kucera is a senior research analyst with The Aberdeen Group, and discussed how the best-in-class companies are integrating social media with existing channels, and how they are much more likely to be listening to their customers than the average businesses.

In addition to case studies of some of the biggest companies, we learned the 7 Rules for Content Marketing from Allen Bonde, CMO of The Pulse Network (the IMS Sponsor).  These rules include:

1. Teach – Make content educational.  Think in episodes;
2. Tap experts – Use thought leaders, whether from your community or not;
3. Totally easy – make it dead simple to subscribe to the content, to share it, and to contribute to it;
4. Translate – Repurpose each piece of content;
5. Takeaway – make sure there is a clear message and clear call to action;
6. Track – analyze how users consume, and share your content, and encourage link building; and
7. Think Transmedia – bridge the on-line and off-line worlds.

There were also panels on Email Marketing, which included panelists from Constant Contact, Sprinklr, and The Pulse Network.  But the highlight for me was the appearance of Chris Brogan, whose afternoon keynote, Cultivating Visibility: How to Amplify the Human Digital Channel made every great speaker even better.

I will admit, Chris Brogan is an idol.  He is one of the idols I was talking about (although not mentioned by name) in my article, Our Idols are Only People.  I have read just about everything he has written, and am a long-time subscriber to his blog, and he brought that same brand of irreverence to the IMS.  We got to listen to him speak about how we need to make our customers the hero, and we do this by sharing their stories, since they really don’t care about us.  We learned that we need to cultivate visibility, since attention is currency in this new medium.  And by cultivating visibility, we earn leverage with our supporters.

Finally, he synthesized what had been said all day, that we must reach people where they are.

To me, IMS was a great success, and I look forward to next year, when they promise that it will be bigger and better!
Did you get an opportunity to visit the Inbound Marketing Summit?  What did you think?  Who were your favorites?  What could have been done better?

Author:

Craig E. Yaris is the owner of EsquireTech Solutions, which helps small business get found on the social web, whether through Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn, he can both teach you the effective use of any social network or act as your social media manager, enabling you to reach your clients where they are and when they want to hear from you.  He can teach your organization the social media best practices that can help you use the tools of today to cost-effectively increase your bottom line.  EsquireTech Solutions brings the social web to your business.  Visit EsquireTech Solutions or call 516-495-9107.

Resources:

• Inbound Marketing Summit
• Chris Brogan
• The Pulse Network
• The Aberdeen Group
• OpenMatters
• Constant Contact