This is Not Important
Photo Credit: Justin Levy
I want to start this with how Chris Brogan ended the Inbound Marketing Summit. This is not important. Social media tracking, measuring, planning, techniques is not the END goal. These are only tools for your greater communication strategy.
If your dream dream job is to be a social media expert then that is about the value of being a fax machine expert. This is going to be a pretty short recap of day number 2. Again, if you want my full thoughts and take-aways from both days email me and I’ll send you a one time newsletter with all the content I have.
This is not rocket surgery
A misspoken term turned into the phrase of the day – ‘this is not rocket surgery’ was repeated several times and I will not be shocked to see it become the new catch phrase of social media darlings.
The point being that using Inbound Marketing to reach your potential customers and remain connected with your current customers isn’t that hard. Yes, the technology can be confusing, overwhelming and at times too much but all you are trying to do is fulfill something that people need. People may need your products, knowledge or anything else you have to offer – with traditional marketing dying you just need new ways to reach out to them.
The Scene
Day Two was again jammed packed with speakers. We heard some great case studies (and not the same ones we have heard 100 times) and practical tips on how people are using Inbound Marketing and measuring their efforts.
Christopher Penn went through measuring your efforts and tracking your time on Inbound Marketing and he also took the crowd deep into the trenches of Google Analytics to set up specific goals and make customized reports.
The co founder of Hubspot, Dharmesh Shah rattled off so much information about optimizing your site for SEO and promised 6x the amount of traffic everyone is getting right now if they followed all the steps he laid out to us.
Dharmesh says the the page title of your home page is the most thing on your website. I think speakers like Dharmesh are really what made this two day event a success. Dharmesh isn’t a professional speaker and he was sure to tell the crowd this at the beginning. He is a guy who knows what he is talking about and has data, data and more data to document his success.
Miriam Kutcher was another example like Dharmesh. She is the Vice President from IDC. She is not a professional speaker who travels around spreading the good social media word. She is a business professional who has used the tools available to her successfully.
She took the crowd step-by-step-by-step on how the IDC uses Inbound Marketing, how to measure the amount of leads and the specific dollar amount they get out on each sales lead that comes in through social media channels. That is the type of information more people need to approach CEOs and bosses with about implementing these types of marketing strategies.
In the spirit of keeping this short – the event was a success and Justin Levy and Chris Brogan know how to pack a line up.
There were some who came and did their dog and pony show, some that gave you so much information you thought your head was going to explode and other who were sneak attacks and totally took you by surprise on the amount of knowledge they had and were willing to share. I came home with lots of notes and this may have been just the Defibrillation paddle to the brain I needed to get me through a long Maine winter.
Want more info? See my photos on Flickr or email me for a more in-depth write-up.