We’re here at the Indiana Welcome Center for the South Shore Convention and Visitors Authority's 2013 Tech Summit, featuring several tech-minded speakers from organizations like the SSCVA, Social Media Development Group, Best Buy, McShane’s, Family Express, and of course our own Chris Mahlmann, who will be talking about digital marketing.
Check back for updates as we continue to update this blog with updates and key points from speakers, or you know, come on down to Hammond and listen to some interesting points of view from some of Northwest Indiana’s best and brightest. Oh, and we’ll be tweeting along all day on the @NWIndianaLife Twitter feed. But you already follow that, right?
AND SO IT BEGINS...
8:45: Speros Batistatos gives us at Ideas in Motion Media a very warm welcome along with today’s other participants. He also thanks Luke Weinman, CTO of the SSCVA and one of the coordinators of today’s event, for putting everything together and gives him kudos on a job well done on their recent growth in the online real estate market.
One nice line of Speros’ introduction was about the South Shore CVA’s expansion in their target market. To paraphrase: “We don't see county lines because our customers don’t see county lines. No one cares whether you’re on one side of the line between Newton County and Jasper County.” This dovetails nicely into the Summit’s first presentation, Fair Oaks Farms.
Jed Stockton from Fair Oaks Farms:
Jed Stockton is here to talk about Fair Oaks' strategy in social media. “Come at your core audience with something they’re interested in,” said Jed. He brings up using trial and error to find out what his audience responds to on social media. One character he created was “Cowfucious” and he brings up that trying something like that could get 5,000 hits vs. 1 if he didn’t. Be creative, folks.
He then goes into social media etiquette. “You never know who you're going to offend - don't give people a preconceived notion of your business before they get there.” Also don’t be afraid to delete someone’s comments if they’re offensive or truly negative.
He explained why Fair Oaks Farms uses HTML5 in the development of their new website - it is important because it shows up on every platform, so nobody is left out. “You can now buy cheese from your phone,” he said. Mmmmm… cheese.
9:15: Jed brings up Scott from Cinevid to talk about all of the technology behind the interactive Pig Adventure at Fair Oaks Farms. It’s really kind of crazy with the amount of technology that goes into the exhibit.
I am unable to type as fast as Scott is explaining all of the technology and features at the FOF. “Augmented reality”, “video boards” “pig scales” are all mentioned. “We have to have something throughout that meets the little kids through the 80-year-olds,” he explained. Go see it all for yourself!
Frankie Lemer from Simpleview Inc.
9:45: I decided to stay in the auditorium to listen to Frankie Lemer from Simpleview, Inc. to learn me some SEO instead of learning about unified messages/collaboration from Michelle for Morgan Birge. No offense, Michelle!
Frankie is dropping some knowledge on the audience. “Content is king,” she says. Remove low or update low quality content (at or under 300 words). Use keywords in your link titles. Have a sitemap. All good things to remember.
Creating incentives for your fans to share your content is a great idea, and she shared that Oscar Meyer will give a $.25 coupon for customers who share a “taste-a-monial.” Another great idea is to donate $1 for each Like on Facebook to an organization, which would be a great way to tie your organization in with a positive organization. (Shoutout to BucherTech!)
Frankie explains that consistency is the key - if you post a blog every Tuesday, post the blog every Tuesday. Readers will begin to expect a certain piece of content if its delivered on a consistent basis.
Some great audience questions for Frankie on Google Authorship, trademarks on keywords, and word count requirements in blog posts. Great audience participation!
11:00: OH! I get it.. the TABLES are ROUND!
Okay! So after an extended break, we’re on to the Business Roundtable portion of the summit. The SSCVA broke down the experts into a dozen or so tables, with each expert getting about eight minutes to talk about a specific subject with a particular group of interested audience members.
Subjects like “Media Mindset”, “Facebook Advertising” and “SEO Basics’ are among the topics being discussed. Great job on the SSCVA in doing this, which breaks up the sit-in-a-lecture-hall discussions that gave me flashbacks to COM254 at Purdue.
Not that it has been boring or anything, just... you know what I'm saying.
12:15: ...and we’re back! After a delicious healthy lunch (thanks Lucrezia!) we’re back with a presentation on augmented reality from Brooke Kubath from Foster Printing Service.
Augmented reality is coming into the media landscape as we speak, with 1 in 3 smartphones coming pre-installed with technology that recognizes the images, QR codes or whatever else you use to get people to recognize your products.
They utilize a technology called “Layar” that helps you do all this. “Its basically 300 times better than a QR code,” she explained. Very interesting piece of marketing technology!
12:45: And now we’re on to cover Ideas in Motion Media Publisher Chris Mahlmann’s presentation, “Let’s Do Business”, because if I didn’t, I’d be fired.
After some fun technical issues, we’re rollin’. He starts by talking about the worry of many small business owners that social media may be too much of an undertaking for their business. “Don’t assume you have to do everything, but pick what works best for your business,” is one of the key points of Chris’ opening section.
Chris asks the audience a bunch of questions and then answers them immediately. Solid presentation strategy!
I wasn’t aware of the subject of Chris’ presentation ahead of time, but I think his main point is finding your business’ intent in social media, and then making sure you stick to that intent. That is sort of a pre-Social Media 101 thought. I think that’s a solid mindset *before* you go to learn how to do it, you should learn how you should be using it. Not many people think like that before jumping in the pool, but they should.
Lots of shout-outs to the #nwindiana Twitter and Facebook community, with Cathy Brown of Valpo Velvet, Allyn Hane, and the NWITweetup crew all setting the example of how to do social media well in the region. Way to go, y’all.
“Does your boss not want to do social media? Just tell them, ‘Suck it up, buttercup.’” I wonder if Chris would mind if we started calling him “Buttercup.”
1:30: Sherwin Slutsky and Michael Devlin are next up with McShane’s Business Products and Solutions with “Controlling the Paper Tiger”. The duo kicks things off with the notice that we’re missing Best Buy’s tech toy presentation. But hey, paper!
Interesting fact - no matter the size of the company, businesses spend about $1,000 on paper per employee, each year. The McShane’s team has a couple of very informative videos that explain how many companies could used managed printing service to reduce these costs by about 30%. I can speak on that - If we use an MPS and we’re an all-online business, I can only imagine what less-technology-based businesses use.
Pretty interesting story from Michael about how he brought a college in Illinois down 75% or so in terms of the number of printer/copier/fax machines. It’s really a hidden cost that I think goes overlooked by many managers.
2:20: After a few raffle giveaways, we’re on to the day’s final speaker, Gus Olympidis, CEO and owner of Family Express. He’s talking about his realization of the importance of social media: "It’s about community and “word of mouth on steroids”.
He is talking about literally having to force himself to get into the social space because culturally he just hadn’t been there. “The social media culture is not like the Chamber of Commerce,” he said.
Gus’ two exceptions to avoiding advocacy on social media: Patriotism and Charity. Can’t disagree with that statement.
I'm paraphrasing here, but he had a good line here: "The bad news is that [social media strategy] is going to take a long time. But the good news is it's going to take a long time. So you may as well get going."
Gus brings up some examples of his organization’s social media posts, like the #GasPriceForcast, which is a great idea and something I look at everyday. He also begins to talk about his company’s decision to focus on the people who work at and shop at Family Express and how they reward employees who buy in to their social media strategy. It’s a smart strategy when you have so many locations: When you can’t have your social media person be at all your stores all the time, empower everyone your to be your social media person.
“Any time you mandate “fun”, good things happen,” Gus said.
One question in the question and answer session after the presentation: an audience member asked Gus whether or not their investment in social media has paid off, return-on-investment-wise. He made it clear that Family Express is in it for the long haul because that's where customers just expect you to be, so that's a non-issue for his organization.
Great job by the South Shore Convention & Visitors Authority on putting together their third Tech Summit! We had a great time being a part of it, and it was certainly a day of learning how many different types of businesses use different types of technology, online media and social media to help their companies grow.