The World According to Mitch Fanning

SXSW Interactive (tag #sxswi) officially came to an end earlier this week.

For those of you who don’t know, SXSW Interactive is an annual event that takes place in Austin, Texas.  The conference features five days of presentations from various thought-leaders in emerging technology and business as well as plenty of networking opportunities hosted by industry leaders.

Here are some of the highlights and insights from the conference (as I experienced it).

Content Rules
tag: #contentrules

During their session, CC Chapman and Ann Handley (authors of Content Rules – affiliate link) held an informal Q & A with a few hundred people on the topic of content marketing.

Highlights

• Content production: Write content like you’re writing a letter to a friend.  Try to have an opinion.  Don’t be vanilla.  Do something unexpected.  Create your own brand voice (It’s okay to be different).
• Content distribution:  The best way to distribute content is not through “influencers.”  Just find people who are already talking about your topics and engage with them directly.  This point was emphasized a lot during the conference.  It seems people are still under-utilizing the real-time search capabilities of both Twitter and Facebook.
• Content strategy: Start small (blog, video blog, etc.).  Start with one tool and build from there.  Then start to slowly “re-imagine” your content in other forms (converting blog posts into videos, videos into tweets, etc.).
• Trust your employees: employees who say potentially harmful things online is an HR problem, not a marketing problem.  Hire right and you minimize the risk of this happening in the first place.

Stop thinking in terms of ROI, this medium (social media) is so different.  Social media is not a “campaign,” its an ongoing activity that involves giving first, gaining trust, and then working your ass off to keep it (i.e. loyalty).  Lastly, remember this – content marketing is like sex.  Tons of people are doing it, but very few get it right (Handley).

Q&A with Google & Bing on Website Ranking
tag: #qagb

This session featured Duane Forrester, Senior Product Manager with Bing and Matt Cutts of Google.  The two search experts answered questions from the audience about how their respective search engines list and rank websites.  The session was moderated by Danny Sullivan, editor of SearchEngineLand.com.

Highlights

• “Show me the content love and I’m much more likely to rank you.” (Forrester)
• If you’re not happy with your ranking ask yourself, “what original content have I produced in the last 30 days?”  If your answer is little or none, don’t be surprised if your ranking is low (Matt Cutts on Link-building strategies)
• Often it only takes a few high authoritative links to increase ranking (i.e. social networking sites) (Duane Forrester)
• Relevant and/or contextual anchor texts is often under-utilized, yet a great strategy for building effective links that can quickly increase your ranking.
• “What matters most is conversion.” (Cutts)
• “Page ranking reports are guesses.  Page ranking does not help make better business decisions.  Unique visits, time on site, etc. are much more important.” (Sullivan),

Social Media Club House
tag: #smch6

The Social Media Club House, hosted by Chris Heuer, Kristie Wells, and Jessica Murray, was the place to be for bloggers, social media enthusiasts, web entrepreneurs, and other really cool people during the SXSWi conference.  It was a place to create media, crash, and meet interesting people like @MolsonFerg.  They also had some amazing programming from March 11-14, which streamed live via UStream.

Lastly, we can’t forget singing karaoke on the #smcbus.

Keynote by Gary Vaynerchuk – The Thank You Economy
tag: #thankyouecon

During his keynote, The Thank You Economy (affiliate link), Gary tackled the ROI of social media and the humanization of business as he sees it.  As always he was entertaining, inspiring, and did not beat around the bush.

Here’s just a quick sample of Gary’s keynote:

Highlights

• be practical – don’t be afraid to make money
• context is king (not content).
• whoever can create real context with the end user will win
• have a grasp of the problem you want to solve
• do you actually care about the end user?
• have a thank you department for your business
• find out what your customers love (if basketball, buy them tickets — not a coupon code)
• to succeed in social media, brands must act “human” at the POS (the humanization of business)
• out care your competition
• there’s no such thing as a social media campaign (it’s not a one night stand)
• editorial calendars is like having a script at a cocktail party
• When using social media, big businesses need to act more like small “mom-and-pop” businesses

The City of Austin (tag line – let’s keep Austin weird)
Website: http://www.austintexas.org

Last, but definitely not least, I must give a big ol’ Texan shout out to the city of Austin.  This city seems to have it all – good economy, great food, amazing vibe, outstanding quality of life, and of course, friendly people.

Highlights

• 6th Street
• SoCo (South Congress)
• Amaya’s Taco Village
• Maria Maria Restaurant
• Little City Coffee Shop
• Surf n’ Turf Po Boy Food Cart
• Allen’s Boots
• Sheplers
• Austin Convention Center

So there you have it, a quick overview of the conference as I saw it.  How about you?  If you were in Austin, what was your experience?  I’d love to hear about it.  If you didn’t get the chance to go, my friends at Social Media Club wrote this post called, 5 Ways to Enjoy SXSW From The Comfort of Your Couch.  Enjoy!

About the Author

Mitch Fanning is VP of Strategy & Business Development for Fruition Interactive (Toronto, Canada). He’s spent 11 years working with businesses of all sizes, from global brands to some of Canada’s fastest growing web start-ups ranked in the PROFIT 100.

I often meet with business people who want the following:

• more leads
• more customers/clients
• more sales

Really, if you’re in business, who wouldn’t want those things.  Chances are, if they’re taking to me, they want to get these things using some form of online marketing, search marketing, and/or social media.

At the same time, however, most don’t want to create ongoing useful content in any form via the web.  I find this rather interesting considering that content is the “seed” for search engines and the “outcome” of social media.

Think about it…

When people “consider” purchasing something where do they look for some of their information?

Search engines?

Simple Example

Customer: I need a widget (Search Google)

Search Result from Company X: “10 Widgets That Will Save You Money.” [the seed]

Customer: Are these widgets any good?

Company X: Read our reviews.  Show customer’s friends who has used and/or “liked” these widgets (via Facebook social plug-ins).

Customer: (after doing their own research) I’ll take one.  Customer response on Twitter: “I just bought a widget from Company X and saved X%!” [the outcome]

Customer Loyalty: via blog, email, newsletter, etc. (all content marketing initiatives)

Today’s customer & client want more.

Gone are the days, where a customer or client will call your business, talk to you, and purchase on the spot.  Today, people use search engines to check and compare facts, read reviews, ask friends via social networks, purchase, then share their experiences online.

Content powers your search and social media marketing results.

Today, businesses need to develop and optimize content with their target audience in mind.  They need to develop editorial plans and think like publishers.  They need to develop channels of distribution and social links.  They need to both leverage and understand social media and web analytics to improve results.

What do you think?

About the Author:

Mitch Fanning is VP of Strategy & Business Development for Fruition Interactive (Toronto, Canada), a professional member of Social Media Club, and founding member of Social Media Club Niagara. He’s spent 10 plus years working with businesses of all sizes, from global brands to mid-sized b2b companies to some of Canada’s fastest growing Internet start-ups ranked in the PROFIT 100.

photo credit: 10ch

As a rule, when someone “mentions” my name online or on a social network I want to know about it so I can comment.  However, I actually find “listening” more valuable when observing what my target audience or thought-leaders say about topics that are important to “them”.

For example, by monitoring the term “content marketing”, I gain insight into how people use the term in general.  It also introduced me to thought leaders like Joe Pulizzi, who is an advocate of content marketing.  This information helps me shape my own content because I’ve been “listening” first.

How To Listen: 9 Tools I Use for Listening & Observation

A number of tools exist ranging in cost from free to very expensive. For example, you can employ a “do-it-yourself” approach using the following tools to track keywords, basic sentiment, and trending topics.

Free Tools

Google Alerts: Alerts are the steady rock in the sometimes white-water world of monitoring. You can easily target keywords that are important to your brand and receive streaming or batched reports.  You can receive these alerts as emails or via RSS, which can be dumped into a Reader (see next).

Google Reader: I use Google Reader as my home base for collecting and reading all the various sources of information (i.e. alerts). It’s web-based, fast, and easy to use. It allows me to blaze through content in 5-10 minutes without thinking much about it.

Technorati: Billing itself as “the leading blog search engine”.  Go to Technorati, put your company (product, brand, etc.) name into the search bar, and see what people are saying about you. Dump into Google Reader as one of your listening searches. Repeat this for your competitor’s name, brand, individuals, and some industry terms.

Google Blog Search: Go to Google Blogsearch and do the same thing. Sure there will be some overlap, but it’s important to capture both. The subscription to searches link is on the left hand side of the page.

Twitter Search or Professional Twitter Client (i.e. TweetDeck or Hootsuite): If you’re seriously thinking about using social networks and social media, it’s likely that some of your customers are using Twitter. If so, go to Twitter Search and put in your search terms there as well.  If you’re a “lifehacker” like me, I’d recommend using a free Twitter Client such as TweetDeck or Hootsuite, which allows you to track multiple accounts, keywords, and groups.

SocialMention: Real-time social media search and analysis.  Socialmention is billed as the Google Alerts for social media.  Again, there might be some overlap with Google Alerts.

The following tools are more for “observation” and “analytics” to determine what content resonated with my audience as well as to decide on what type of content to create in the future.

Crazy Egg: If you want to see how people are looking at your website when they’re not commenting and talking about you, try out Crazy Egg. The tool is full of visualization data, including heat maps, that show you how people are interacting with your website. Sometimes, people aren’t saying something on your blog posts because they’re being distracted by something else. Here’s your chance to figure that out (Note: this tool will run you $8-$10 per month).

Google Analytics: Like crazy egg, I like to know what content resonates with my audience and what didn’t.  In addition, I also look at the number of times a blog post was shared via a social network from my blog.

URL Shortener (bit.ly, owl.ly, etc.): These tools allow you to track your links to determine overall “sentiment” of the content you’re sharing (based on click-throughs and re-tweets)  As time goes on, this information will give you insight on how to shape your content to meet the needs of your audience.

Paid Solutions

Listening to online chatter is both art and science.  Much like SEO, listening can require skill and in-depth knowledge of technology and linguistics.  If you want something more advanced, you might try Radian6, tmSocialBuzz™ (disclosure:  I’m affiliated with tmSocialBuzz™), or Trackur (they’re all listening, so I’m sure others can swarm here and give links in the comments section).

Take Action

The web provides the ultimate focus group.  The data you get from using these tools is authentic because people are expressing themselves without being solicited or fed bad pizza for their opinion.  Sure it takes time to set up and use these tools, but people are having online conversations whether you’re listening or not.

Remember, a successful content marketing and social media strategy is dependent on how well you know your customer’s needs and wants.  Listening is necessary to achieve this.

Happy listening!