The 2013 Dallas Digital Summit was a two day event that presented professional digital marketers information and presentations that help educate and promote the latest strategies for online marketing such as social media, PPC, SEO, multimedia, video, content strategies, etc. It was a a very good turnout, especially for those who wanted to see some very well known celebrities within the tech world such as Steve Wozniak, co-founder of Apple, and Randi Zuckerberg, CEO of Zuckerberg Media.

Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to attend but I was able to collect some very informative tweets from those that attended, so I was really appreciate those tweets so I can share with others. I also added some links to presentations. I hope you can use this information for your own research and strategies.

Slideshare presentations: Identifying the Right Web Analytics Tools to Your Business, Instagram for Brands, How I solved (Not Povided)

Day 1

• ContentMarketing = Provides useful information that keeps ppl more informed while helping them solve problems.
• Companies that blog 15+ times per month gain 5x more site traffic than companies that do not.
• Only 5-10% of people click on paid ads via Google & more than 90% click organic search queries.
• 72% of users online are searching for quick answers and/or in-depth information. Search phrases are getting longer.
• You can lose yourself by chasing “best practices” for Facebook, Twitter. Etc. Your best practices will evolve.
• The fundamentals of .coms don’t change . . . integrated content is the anchor of a successful social media strategy.
• Research = 1) Understand the questions that are frequently being asked about your biz 2) know your keywords!
• One 2500 word ebook can generate press releases, byline articles, blog posts, etc. Fully leverage your ideas.
• Deeper customer engagement=actual relationships. Don’t hide behind your brand.
• Benefits of a Blog = A vehicle to post new content, Allows for internal linking (SEO), 55% more site traffic
• Auto, Media & Luxury brand do the best on Instagram.
• Search engines find webpages by scanning embedded links. Optimize Elements = Title, H1 Tag, Meta description, H2 tag, text content.
• Know where you are going before you get started when measuring.
• Competitive benchmarks are valuable in understanding your stance compared to competitors.
• Social media is the avenue to provide people content when THEY want to see it.
• 47% of emails are opened on a mobile device. Make sure your emails look good on mobile.
• Podcast vs hangouts? Hangouts on Air will beat them hands down.
• Novice mistake in SEO: equating correlation with causation.
• Personal expression is the newest form of entertainment. And it’s all about transparency.
• We are no longer curators of content, we are curators of conversations.
• Your brand is no longer a closed brand and you don’t curate the content. All brands are living in an open source world.
• People only recommend 5-9 brands a year.
• People make emotional decisions and the rationalize them.
• Content consumed in these types: evergreen, seasonal, one-off, breaking, newsjacking.
• Sixth leading cause of stress: media overload.
• Mindshare = Marketshare: Put your content in smart places.
• Digital behaviors= brands should entertain, inform, engage.
• Your smartphone is your “first screen”. No one walks around with their TV.
• Experimentation is a requirement, mobile is not in infancy, thinking it’s optional is wrong.
• The average number of apps on a smart phone is 41 and mobile is about delight and surprise.
• “Brand utility” is can your brand be USEFUL. Can’t just interrupt anymore.
• Mobile can build advocacy and is major; keep it simple – it provides significant context.
• 68% of mobile minutes are consumed at home.
• Point of sale attention is completely lost. People are “checked out” on their phones in the check out lane.
• Men top women in mobile shopping.
• As a brand, you’ve only got 5-9 shots to make it with your customers.
• 16% of holiday shopping was done on a mobile device.
• Digital advertising are about context; don’t have to be judged by the click.
• Brands need to move from Traditional Marketing to Influence Marketing = The power of social.
• Optimized ads for mobile generate 3x more ROI.
• Web to mobile retargeting optimization could show 3 times the return.
• 300,000,000 images shared on Snapchat a day. Get your brand into it!
• Creatives, you’ll soon be creating 6-second videos for Snapchat and Poke instead of 30-second tv spots.
• Being reactive, relevant and remarkable is the challenge for a brand.
• Social is not a place you go, but rather a thing that you do.
• Participation is WAY beyond comments – video audio photos in real-time.
• Rent everything, own nothing – People want access vs. acquisition.
• The only way users will brag about your brand is if you allow them to participate in your social activities.
• Why is curation important? Discovery. Helps strip out what’s not important and helps people discover.
• Brands already collaborating with influencers, will bring collaborate to fan experiences – but subtle versus blatant.
• By 2015, we will not just be downloading games. It will move to a great video experience.
• Doesn’t matter if it’s a blatant brand set up or an unintentional viral success, if the content is good, it’ll get out to people.
• Focus on the first 15 percent of early adopters and the rest will come!
• Primary colors of digital creation: Technology, Content, Distribution.
• Technology, content, distribution: the primary colors of social.
• You’re not fighting competitors, your fighting attentions.
• Our competitor in social media isn’t the next brand… It is the attention span of the consumer.
• Find the right people, get awareness in pre-existing communities, get consumer ownership, embrace platforms, co-create, fail forward.
• 70% of brand engagement on Pinterest is user-generated.
• Understanding the significance of Pinterest: We are in a visual state of the web.
• Instagram users have higher incomes than Snapchat users.
• Use local influencers who are relative to your content to gain mass exposure on Instagram.
• 16% of women are active on Instagram. 10% of men are active.
• 31% of active Twitter accounts are from North America. 70% of all users use Twitter on their phone.
• Twitter is live, public, and conversational.
• 86% of companies are using LinkedIn for a hiring decision this year.

Day 2

• 92% of consumers trust word of mouth recommendations, but only 24% trust online ads, according to Neilson.
• Don’t start by designing campaigns. Start in a customer’s shoes & solve a problem. Enhance their experience.
• 83% of 18-24 yr olds seek validation on social media for fashion purchases.
• Every single hire you make is either going to enhance or demean the company culture.
• 260 Million Registered users on LinkedIn.
• 80% of companies are using Linkedin when considering candidates for jobs.
• Create demographic profiles for those who are most likely to purchase your product.
• Big Data and Marketing Automation are two terms you will hear more and more in the digital realm.
• People drop out of watching your video after 15% of it regardless of video’s length.
• Data provided is historic not predictive – this is a problem in measurement.
• Auto, Media & Luxury brand do the best on Instagram.
• If you don’t care enough to react to someone’s messaging, do not get into it.
• The mobile web doesn’t exist anymore. The web is mobile, mobile is the web.
• ATT has 5-yr plan to get rid of internal email, and replace with enterprise social.
• “Community Manager” is one of the fastest growing job titles.
• People don’t care what it’s made of or how it works. People care what job it can do.
• 50% of women would prefer to lose their engagement ring rather than their phone.
• 25% to 40% of all traffic and lead generation come from earned media.
• Using multi channel digital strategy can help drive conversions more quickly.
• 90% of us have phone in arm’s reach 24hrs a day.
• 47% of teens say that a moment gone undocumented is a moment wasted.
• Google is a search engine that ‘replaces’ the brain, but it wasn’t the intent – at the beginning.
• 64% of time on smart phones will be spent on videos by 2015.
• None of the chips, buttons, pieces in the computer matter. What matters is what you can do with it.
• “Smarketing” can give sales more time to be personal with the prospect or client.
• Everything you create won’t be viral. But craft good content so when that one piece does go viral, your other content is on par.
• Before creating content, and before asking is it engaging, ask yourself: is it a useful piece of content?
• The enterprise has radically changed from forcing people to use software, to making them WANT to use software.
• Talk to your customers and ask them what they need!
• Good Content Marketing = Don’t force it. Implement a regular content cadence & focus on 1-2 content priorities.
• Duplicating content across social platforms makes you look lazy as a brand. The content might not be relevant for the channel.
• Serve the customer where they are: Using location data can greatly improve the customer experience.
• Google rumored to study floor plans and correlate ad exposure while in store and its impact.
• Keep email marketing optimized through real time info, urgency, and geo info.
• Online to indoor tracking becoming more prevalent.
• Retailers can currently use LED lights to ping phones.
• Multi channel integration can help reach people in different and more creative ways.
• Create demographic profiles for those who are most likely to purchase your product.
• Location data provides great information on consumer intent.
• As marketers it’s our job to explain what isn’t an ideal strategy/platform. Don’t just execute a tactic because your client wants it.
• 40% would rather go to jail than give up social media accounts.
• Designers will dominate the tech industry as development becomes a commodity.
• Mobile + social has put the customer in charge.
• Location data is highly underutilized by national advertisers.
• Things that go viral are things that evoke an emotion you couldn’t predict.
• 3D printing is predicted to be a $8 Billion business within the next 5 years.
• Aggregated data: multi-channel campaigns can drive in-store sales lift by 15% and lower total media cost by 60%
• Adding video and tablet plus display increased conversation rates significantly.
• Frequent shoppers do research on Pinterest.
• Superb Social Advertising: Tells a story, conjures a memory/feeling and sparks a conversation.
• As a corporation, you have to understand that your people are social. Get on board. Encourage sharing and leverage their networks.
• Everyone at your company is now in marketing. Dangerous, but that’s reality now.
• Digital attribution helps brands make better use of limited budget. And it doesn’t work without clear goals.
• Earned media is the most trusted and credible form of content for a brand.
• 25% to 40% of all traffic and lead generation come from earned media.
• Budgets are shifting to content creation. Hearing that at #DDSum13. Great content engages our targets, creates curiosity.
• Return on content = Total sales – total content cost / total costs of content.
• Can’t stress enough – Content needs to be relevant. It’s about hitting the right person, at the right time, on the right platform.
• Peak hours to share content…9:30 am, 75% content shared in one day.
• Narrow down your social sharing options on site to where you think your audience is.
• Traffic from search has the most relevance and the highest conversion.
• Target audience: What do they want? Why do they care? What will make them want to share your content?
• News give you a short spike in traffic. Generally news isn’t highly relevant for long.
• Designers, not engineers, will become the new rockstars in tech industry.
• Digital Flow and Customer task are two key components of Google Analytics.
• Every company is struggling to stay relevant for teens and young adults.
• Brand experience is unique/own-able, elicits emotional response, spawns community, encourages self expression.
• Our most passionate customers would do so much more for us if we gave them the opportunity.
• SEO Tip: Repeat relevant content displayed in images as web copy to allow Google to see it.
• Find passionate employees to be your brand advocates and assist them as needed in guest blogging copy.
• Managing your site’s SEO is a FULL TIME JOB. Someone should be monitoring it and tending to it 24/7.
• Start with the customer. Not the campaign. What’s in it for them? Put yourself in the consumer’s shoes.
• Before you dive into analytics, ask: what data do you need? And what will it be used for?
• Get over Google not provided keywords there is plenty of other data to analyze.
• Analytics help you determine whether you’re providing your audience w/ valuable info. Watch visitors, bounce rate, page views, etc.
• SEO’s need to think more like marketers because we now have more data on our users.
• Google has given us so much more data that’s better than keywords.
• If you can get an email address, you can use tools like RapLeaf or FullContact to get more demographic information.
• Twitter has its own language, respect the platform & its rules. Dont force your image onto social, create a social image.
• Google Authorship + social signals: powerful one-two punch for SEO.
• Interview influencers in your space and put it on your site. They will share it.
• Use the real-time power of the front lines (social media) for crises management.
• Want quality links for better SEO? Sponsor local clubs & events.
• Mobile is quickly becoming the hub of brand experiences (65% of online searches started on a smartphone!)
• Personal devices assume personal experience. Brands, pay attention and foster this!
• A personal device assumes a personal experience: 1st thing people do with a new phone? Add a photo they took to home screen.
• Good brand experience encourages self-expression, your apps should enable this.
• A shared video increases purchase intent up to 50x via Word of Mouth.

Related articles

• The Future of Content: Upcoming Trends in 2014 (moz.com)
• 20 of the Most Important SEO Blogs Online (business2community.com)
• Personify Your Brand to Create Genuine Content (redbricksmedia.com)
• Dallas Digital Summit 2013 (myexploreusa.wordpress.com)