I wish I could give you a synopsis of every session from Digital Atlanta this past week—alas, I was only able to attend two days of the conference. Still, I witnessed some truly thought-provoking, insightful panels, and I’ll share my major takeaways with you here.
The first session I attended was titled Leveraging Gaming Techniques and Intelligent Agents to Promote and Sustain Active Lifestyles, presented by Dan Popovic, founder of cMEcompete. I was particularly interested in this one, as we’re weaving gamification into the social strategies of several of our clients. Dan began by pointing out that gamification can be embraced by virtually any industry and used as a channel to boost engagement and interaction.
Further, by 2013, over 50% of social business initiatives will include an enterprise gamification component. Gamification is growing rapidly within sales and marketing teams and health and wellness programs. Dan continued to describe this paradigm by citing several case studies, including Aetna’s Mindbloom game that encourages members to get active, Recyclebank’s points system that inspires people to recycle more, and a cancer recovery program game that educates patients on their treatments.
Dan went on to describe the relevance of gamification in local communities, which is certainly his area of expertise. Dan organized the recent Atlanta Beltline Running Series Challenge, in which he incorporated gaming mechanisms such as an activity feed, social challenges, and team and individual accomplishments. These components increased engagement and boosted user activity.
Another noteworthy point: many corporations are utilizing gamification techniques, particularly to encourage healthier lifestyle choices for their employees. Companies pit employees against one another in friendly competition to determine who is maintaining the healthiest lifestyle.
Last, Dan pointed out the explosive popularity of fitness apps and gamification through mobile. (The average number of applications on smartphones is 22.)
I enjoyed Dan’s presentation because it validated our belief—and our usage—of gamification as a company, and fed me some new tidbits to chew on for existing and future initiatives.
Next up: James Andrews, one of my favorite Atlanta social media thought leaders, hosted a session on Creating Content that People Actually Care About. If you haven’t ever heard James present, you need to hunt him down and find out when his next speaking gig is. James is charismatic, witty, inspiring and just plain fun.
James is all about pushing his listeners to think outside the box, particularly when it comes to content. He’s a former record exec who loved creating content well before social media was ever fashionable. Now, he likes to point out that social media is the new main street. It’s always on, and you always have instant access. In his words, the power to define and control a brand is shifting away from corporations and institutions and moving to individuals and communities. What’s the lifeline to this social media ecosystem? Content. Today more than ever, brands are media companies.
James recounted a personal case study in which his company “hijacked the Olympics” by giving out free Dr. Dre headphones to the athletes. Although he and his team were eventually shut down, they caused quite a stir and increased sales by 110%. Publishing real time content coverage throughout the campaign, they drove all kinds of buzz and engagement.
A few other very salient points from James:
- start with a goal; define your universe
- always maintain an editorial calendar
- operationalize your content strategy; organize your team and define roles
- create and review your social media policy
- watch your “attention ecosystem”; know the 10 most important people having conversations about your brand
- find your “passionistas” and give them a voice
- never censor your Facebook page or blog; take clients behind the scenes
- if you mess up, admit and fix the problem
- create conversations
- measure results
Now onto another of my favorite sessions: the Coming Together of Search and Social, presented by my friend Stacy Williams, CEO of Prominent Placement, a full-service search engine marketing agency. Stacy packed the house with her presentation on how social media can positively affect SEO, and how search marketing affects social media.
Stacy opened by discussing rich snippets of content—they take up more room in SERPs, are eye-catching and they differentiate you, lending credibility to your brand. Additionally, fresh content is huge. If you can create quality content around breaking news or hot topics, it can easily outrank older authoritative content. Creating the right content can also effectively manage your online brand reputation.
Another solid tip: dominate the SERPs! Your best chance of accomplishing this is by having a presence on the major social networks—so when users google your company name, a stream of your website and networks pop up. Further, Google+ is feeding Google places—if you have a brick and mortar shop, this is certainly something to consider.
Additional key takeaways:
- links from social sites speed up indexing of new content
- social signals (votes, sharing mechanisms, tweets, etc.) impact search rankings—especially Google+ and Facebook shares
- keyword research is crucial; take advantage of the affordable (and free) listening tools out there, note trending keywords stemming from your industry, and build content around them
- pay per click via social channels can be very effective due to the ability to target specifically to interests, education, age, connections and location
- more than ever, social media sites are acting like search engines; Facebook is hinting that they’re quite serious about acting as a search engine
- consider the wisdom of crowds (search) vs. the wisdom of friends (social); the jury is still out as to who will win the war
You can find more tidbits and Stacy’s full presentation here.
The last session I’ll cover here was titled Building Sandboxes to Spur Innovation, delivered by Scott Henderson of CauseShift. I knew I was in for a treat when Scott greeted everyone who entered the room with enthusiastic high fives. Through his biological findings, Scott outlined the formula for summoning innovative, groundbreaking thinking.
He segmented his thinking into four major takeaways:
1. Collaboration is our competitive advantage.
2. Most organizations fail in a more complex, dynamic world.
3. Simple rules rule.
4. Frame + invite unusual partners + simple rules = emergent solutions.
Scott cleverly expanded on each of these tenants with case studies and biological truisms relating to anthills, swarms and flocks. Then he shook things up a bit. He instructed us to divide ourselves up into groups of five and tasked us with a mini project: using the guidelines he shared with us, come up with a plan to position Atlanta as a digital media hub. After each group completed their plan, a designated spokesperson would present the findings from each group.
Once we got over our initial hesitation and shyness, my group began to collaborate and brainstorm all kinds of fresh ideas about exactly how we could establish Atlanta as a digital media hub. I was struck by how much I liked the fact that Scott turned the tables on us—he gave us active roles and turned us into the presenters. He made us think, and he energized the room. When our time was up, he revealed his true interest in coming up with a tangible plan to further establish and brand Atlanta as a true digital media hub, and invited us to continue the conversation with him beyond the session.
Thank you Scott, for waking us up, converting us from passive listeners to active participants and thoroughly entertaining us. This was certainly one the most valuable experiences I’ve had at a conference.
So there you have it—the synopsis of my small piece of Digital Atlanta. I wish I could have seen more, yet I was inspired and informed and left the conference feeling smarter. How about you? Did you attend Digital Atlanta this year? If so, what were the standout moments for you?
The post Highlights From Digital Atlanta Week, 2012 appeared first on SolDesign Company.
