Highlights from Social Media Marketing & Monitoring 2011

The recent Social Media Marketing & Monitoring conferencet in London was yet another jam packed event full of new ideas, trends and case studies to take away and apply to our communities and client solutions here at Sift towers.

As always there was far too much for me to go through everything, there’s a full summary from event organiser and MD of our social times Luke Brynley Jones here .

Key highlights include:

Jon Morter’s story – How I beat the Xfactor

The absolute highlight of the day for me was Jon Morter, the man behind the Rage Against the Machine Facebook campaign which saw Simon Cowell kicked off the number one slot for Christmas No1 in 2009.  Not only was Jon charismatic, funny with an incredibly interesting story, he also had some really good tips for social media campaigns (and business in general!)

•    Learn from your mistakes – The RATM campaign was Jon’s second attempt, first time around he’s tried to get Rick Astley to No1 (thankfully this was unsuccessful). Jon reviewed his actions and improved to ensure success 2nd time around.

•    Pay attention to detail – Understand exactly what you can and can’t do and use the details to your advantage. It was through loopholes in Facebook and by reading the T&Cs of the charts that Jon reached No1 in such a spectacular fashion.

•    Be clear in your instructions – Jon TOLD fans when and what they needed to purchase.  All too often marketers deliver complicated messages lacking in clear instruction or call to actions.

Google +1’s DO impact rankings

Marcus Taylor of SEOptimise delved into the realms of social SEO, social search and personalised search. For me the most interesting part was looking at the impact Facebook 'likes' have on rankings, (according to Marcus’ research and to Google, not much impact at all). However, Google +1s are impacting rankings according to Google, and Marcus Taylor’s research and experiments prove this.

Google + was a hot topic throughout the day. Opinions from the keynote discussion on the future of social networking were that it’s only going to grow in importance over the coming months.

Publishers, advertisers and bloggers should all be making use of Google +1s. Yes, Google + still on a journey, the platform we see today is by no means a finished product and will undoubtedly change  in the future and may be unrecognisable from the Google+ we see in 6 months or a year.

Social Commerce

Finally, social commerce - turning Facebook 'likes' and 'follows' into real purchases. The final presentation from Play.com discussed how exclusivity was the key when it came to this. Early sale promotions, additional discounts and voucher codes all helped to keep their social media followers and fans engaged and active.

The keynote discussion which followed affirmed the points from Play.com that it’s all about exclusivity when it comes to social commerce success. The panel discussed the definition of social commerce – more than just Groupon (is an email voucher really social – the panel decided no) and more than just purchasing on Facebook.

Social Commerce is about driving people to purchase through social platforms, YouTube, Twitter, recommendations, reviews.  Jenny Chiu from BrandAlley shared that they have tracked over £30k revenue through Facebook driven sales on a separately tracked microsite – a staggering figure and proof that social media can and does provide real results. 

Another well rounded day with lots to think about at the end of it (my mind was buzzing with ideas on the train home from London to Bristol!). From advising clients on improving their ROI to improving our own eCommerce ventures and even search rankings to push out content out to even more potential members on search engines.

Videos are available on UStream here - http://www.ustream.tv/user/oursocialtimes/videos
Flickr Photos available here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/viadeo/
Twitter: @oursocialtimes