Tag : marketing and community

What do game designers, neurobiologists, and filmmakers know about creating passionate users? How can we take better advantage of how the brain works to reach our users at a deep emotional level that inspires their enthusiasm and participation?

The latest research in cognitive science, brain chemistry, and psychology can help you figure out how to get attention and keep it.

We'll look at how to work around the brain's natural filters that keep your message from getting in. We'll explore the techniques game developers use to keep users engaged and wanting more, and how these techniques can be applied to virtually any kind of communication. Most importantly, we'll look at the lessons learned from the organizations and individuals who've succeeded at turning on the hearts and brains of their users. Whether you're looking to drive up the hits on your web site, increase membership and involvement, or build a passionate "fan" base around your product, service, or cause, the answer lies in reverse engineering the things for which people are passionate, and finding ways to implement those same attributes in what we offer.

Businesses are spending vast sums on Google AdWords and other pay-per-click engines every month, but don't spend equivalent energy optimizing their site for Google and the other search engines.

SEO won´t work instantly (as long as you´re playing by the rules given by the engines), but in the long term it can get you a lot of free traffic, if you can achieve great organic rankings.

When it comes to SEO, there are many myths floating around. The search engines tend to tell you what NOT to do, but won´t tell you what you really need to do in order to rank well in their search result-pages.

So what are the latest trends in Search Engine Optimization, and how will it develop in the next couple of years? Which strategies are black, grey and/or white hat, and can guarantee better rankings on a long term basis? What are the key success factors in developing a Search Engine Marketing Strategy? And how can you interweave all different forms of Search Engine Marketing to one complete strategy?

Analytics for Web 1.0 focused on translating metrics from print and television (such reach) to online (unique users). These measures did not capture the effect the material had on the audience – they could not, since the audience had no way of expressing interest and engagement.

Traditional page view counts and time spent on the site were notable efforts in approximating engagement but it is now clear that the duration a user spends at a page is far more important than just mere page view counts.

In contrast, Web 2.0 is defined by user participation and interaction, both with the site (saving, rating, tagging, annotating), and with other users (forwarding, commenting, responding).

These clearly observable and notable interactive behaviors gave rise to a rich set of Web2.0 metrics that can far more accurately measure active user engagement and the effect the page has on the user.

Besides providing accurate representations of user behavior, these metrics would serve as building blocks for useful user-centric tools.

For example, Flickr's "interestingness" ranking is an example of how these newer metrics on engagement (favorites, comments) can also be used to bubble up outstanding and unique photos amongst millions of mundane ones. While specific sites such as Amazon.com were central to Web 1.0, the notion of a standalone site is disappearing in Web 2.0. Companies are now being represented on widgets and mini-applications on user's sites and Facebook profiles, and being reported on blogs across the web.

There has also been a strong trend towards opening up datasets via APIs and RSS feeds, and encouraging developers to build 3rd party services on top of them. Given these decentralization trends, highly relevant opinions and content are now distributed across the World Wide Web. Analytics measuring metrics on a site alone has become only one half of what needs to be tracked.

Given all these changes, how can you measure these metrics of "active engagement" in both qualitative and quantitative measures, and what are the actions that can be taken based on them? Given new usability technologies like AJAX, how should these affect the ways you measure your analytics? What instruments do you need to develop to collect relevant activities that are happening across the web, both around the data you provide and opinions about you in all the various user networks, blogs and forums?

Web 2.0 has brought about profound changes in user engagement and decentralization of sites. At the heart of companies will be their ability to identify new key metrics that reflect these changes, and develop highly actionable plans that allows for quick and effective response to short-term issues, as well as factoring in a long-term strategy.

Speakers :
-- Andreas Weigend
-- Bill Tancer

Analysts tell us that the market for in-game and virtual world advertising is expected to grow by a factor of ten in the next five years. But this is still a new frontier and marketers are confused about what's required to reach audiences in these worlds and what they can expect from investing in this area.

We'll look at the most common and the most creative approaches to reaching these cyber-citizens, highlight common pitfalls, and discuss how to measure the effectiveness of these programs.

Behavioral targeting is more than just a trend. It's a fundamental shift in the advertising world. Where once the focus lay on booking printed paper, timeslots on television, or websites with the hope of reaching the right target group, it's now possible to speak to people directly.

Advertising is no longer oriented toward edited content but rather directly toward the behavior and affinities of the user.

People instead of pages, precision instead of scattershot, for edited or user generated content alike—that is behavioral targeting, which is the future of advertising using electronic media!

Leading minds in the fields of technology, media planning and marketing will come together in this forum to discuss their insights into the development of advertising in digital media and the significance of targeting technologies.

A glance at the list of participants suggests that controversial opinions should be expected. Yet even if there remains a lack of unified understanding of the possibilities and limits of the different approaches, the market is just beginning to sort itself out.

This is the perfect forum to learn why you should be putting your bets on behavioral targeting. Form your own opinion, and help shape the field's development as well.

Speakers :
-- Frank Wagner
-- Mark Pohlmann
-- Martin Radelfinger

The idea of building communities around products and brands is not new, but the rise of social networks and the advent of Web 2.0 have changed your customers' expectations of online communities.

At the same time, marketers have new tools for building connections not only with the brand but also among members of the community, and for fostering and engaging in the market conversation.

What are the key success factors in developing and cultivating communities? What tools are available? How can marketers understand brand management in the context of active online communities?

Speakers :
-- Konstantin Sixt
-- Bjoern Negelmann
-- Christian Clawien
-- Nils Andres

We know that social networks and other participatory sites are new online gathering places for consumers, and that these consumers are highly involved and keen interacting, not just consuming content.

Because of their high traffic and intense involvement, these sites are very interesting for advertisers… but are Web 2.0 consumers receptive to advertising? What kind of impact does a banner insertion have in a social network?

This panel will discuss the effectiveness of advertising on social networks and other user-generated sites, as well as corporate willingness to devote advertising budgets given the various unknowns.

Speakers :
-- Axel Schmiegelow
-- Nate Elliott

After some initial high-profile successes, consumer-generated advertising campaigns have proven more difficult to get right than they seemed. Context, community, and control (or lack thereof) are hard tricky to balance, and it's easy to get burned or simply miss the target. While companies seem eager to tap the creative potential of their customer communities, marketers must understand what works and what to watch out for.

This panel explores case studies demonstrating different approaches to this potentially powerful advertising strategy.

Speakers :
-- Benjamin Long
-- Dieter Rappold

Social commerce is so 2.0, it almost sounds like a buzzword mashup. But the idea is really the natural evolution of the principle that your best customers are your best sales people, and it is redefining the affiliate business.

From involving the community in product wikis to providing customers with shopping widgets so they can promote and sell your products, social commerce can be powerful in the right mix. Come hear best practices in this latest take on community practice and commerce.

Speakers :
-- Hagen Fisbeck
-- Jochen Krisch
-- Jeremie Berrebi
-- Mattias Miksche

There may be dozens of tools and technologies associated with Web 2.0 marketing, but underpinning all of them is a shift in philosophy, and one that requires a rethinking of many of the cornerstones of traditional marketing. Up for discussion are such basic principles as message control, data collection, and customer segmentation.

How do we benefit when we start to think of markets as conversations and reconsider transparency, customer loyalty, and access? How do we integrate conversational marketing with existing marketing programs and infrastructure? What does this mean in practice to Get Conversational?

Speakers :
-- Kathy Sierra
-- Ayelet Noff
-- Wolfgang Luenenbuerger
-- Darryl Feldman

The new wave of sophisticated, community and/or location aware, mobile services, have the potential to radically alter the mobile marketing landscape: providing more targeted and more relevant mobile marketing, as well as expanding the number and type of advertisers.

This panel will discuss the potentials and pitfalls of this new environment for consumers, carriers, agencies and brands.

Speakers :
-- Simon Davis
-- Marko Ahtisaari
-- Helen Keegan
-- Justin Davies

Today's successful corporate communications and PR efforts are moving faster and faster towards the Web 2.0 channels of the day. Even some of the largest companies are using blogs, podcasts, videos - even Twitter and Jaiku - to reach customers, employees, and shareholders.

Many of these efforts have had excellent results, others not so much. How does PR and corporate communications operate today, in a world full of direct communication with customers via web sites, email, blogs, and video?

In order to use update your corporate communications plan, you need to consider corporate blogging practices that fit your company and situation, understand the variety of channel and tools available, and learn to blend the old with the new.

Through a variety of corporate case studies, find out how businesses can use blogs and other forms of online communication to reach out and inform their customers, connect with their employees and their community, and create conversations and relationships that last.