4 valuable lessons learned at the Digital Media Summit 2013
By: Sourov De
March 22, 2013 | Reading Time: 2 mins
After attending the Digital Media Summit in Toronto this week, I definitely think the conference is worth attending if you work in marketing or in the media and entertainment industry. Here are four big things I learned while I was there:
1. If you want to be ahead of the curve and know about the newest coolest tools that will be available to marketers, spend more time on kickstarter.com
One of my favourite presentations of the conference was delivered by Nicola Smith, VP of Innovation at Engauge, a US-based digital and social marketing agency. Her presentation about “25 Big Ideas for Connecting the Physical and Digital” gave the audience a valuable glimpse into the future of marketing and showed everyone examples of marketers cleverly connecting our physical world with our digital world. For example, check out this cool magazine ad from Murat Paris. A consumer can interact with the ad by placing their iPhone over the woman’s wrist in the ad. They can use an app to change the bracelet she is wearing. Smith mentioned new cool ideas like this can be found on kickstarter.com.
2. The majority of pictures taken in our history have been taken in the last year
Jay Samit, the president of ooVoo, delivered some compelling ideas in his presentation, “Next Wave of Social Network Trends”. Samit enlightened the audience by saying “the majority of pictures taken in our history have been taken in the last year”.
Samit went on to say we’re living in the era of “disposable content”, meaning content can be created so easily and consumed quickly however content can be also put aside and disposed of just as easily and quickly.
Does this mean that content online is becoming less relevant? No, I don’t think so. See my next point about hyper-targeting.
3. Hyper targeting is the “new black” in marketing
Facebook and Google are racing to learn more about us so that content and ads can be hyper-targeted to us. If we’re crazy about purple shoes, for example, Google and Facebook will understand this not only from info found on our social media profiles but from the things we Like, share and comment on online as well. Therefore, in the future we’re going to see content and online ads that are most relevant to us and less of the content and ads that are not relevant to us.
4. There’s a very simple formula for creating engaging posts on Facebook
Facebook Canada’s Group Director of Marketing Solutions, Alfredo Tan, delivered some great tips about posting content on Facebook that truly engages Facebook fans. Tan said that you can find your fan’s “engagement sweet spot” by clearly knowing what your fans care about and what they share.
Tan emphasized that the formula for engaging posts on Facebook is as follows:
- Describe a Facebook post in about 10 words or less
- Use a picture
- Ask a question
Hope these takeaways from the Digital Media Summit help you in your marketing efforts in 2013.