Internet Marketing Conference Through A Community Lens
Posted by Jeffrey Henning on Wed, Sep 17, 2008
Some of my impressions of the 2008 Internet Marketing Conference, as seen through my community-colored glasses.
Patrick Schwerdtfeger of Tactical Execution defined "social media" as "platforms that facilitate communication between users". He discussed five types of platforms:
- Social networks - MySpace, Facebook, LinkedIn
- Social bookmarking - Digg
- Microblogging - Twitter, Utterz
- Sharing communities - Flickr, YouTube
- Group platforms - Yahoo! Groups
I would imagine that Vovici Community Builder and its like would be included under the "group platforms" segment.
One presenter said "Social media-It's not about the media". Patrick doesn't like either word of the label: he said that calling it "Web 2.0" is passé, and calling it "Social Media" as we now do is also passé, because it really is "Community Engagement".
Beyond Site Analytics
I heard a few times that when it comes to understanding your web visitors, site analytics are not enough, behavioral data is not enough: you must include attitudinal data - survey data - as well. This was mentioned by Jason Burby of ZAAZ in the Web Monetization presentation and by John Hossack of VKI in his presentation on site-visit intent (which I hope to blog about soon; update: see Mapping Visitor Intent Data to Your Clickstream Data).
Tips for Writing Survey Invitations
Monique has some good tactical advice for writing email newsletters, advice which I thought was also useful to keep in mind when writing survey invitations. Here they are, as blogged by Miss 604:
- Avoid computer-generated/anonymous return email addresses.
- Have a catchy subject line, keep it short, less than 50 characters (ideally 25). Be descriptive and never leave it blank - that just makes it spam filter bait.
- Have flow between your subject line and your headings within the email.
- Scanability - people don't have a lot of time to read a long email so make sure they can "scan" the newsletter and pick out the content. Make it look appealing, have headers, catchy lines etc.
Blogs
Blogs weren't as popular as I expected. One panelist on the social media panel even admitted to not yet having a blog. And, at the Thursday lunch, a "Birds of a Feather" event where tables were organized by interest, I was shocked to be one of only two people to sit at the "Bloggers" table.
That made for a short conversation, and I decided to spend the rest of the lunch period walking along the sea wall at Stanley Park, which was absolutely beautiful. It was just minutes from the hotel and offered scenic views of islands, forests, boulders, cityscapes and monuments. I couldn't help but wonder if the totem poles at Brockton Point weren't the social media platforms of their day...