What We Learned at Houston Interactive Marketing Association: Pros of Con
If you didn’t get a chance to attend the conference, needn’t you worry our dear friends! We took notes, tweeted tweets and soaked it all in. Here is a recap of the panels we were able to attend—from us to you.
1. Keynote: Jason Stirman from Medium
Jason Stirman is a good friend of Black Sheep. This Texas-raised guy has a story like none other. After jumping between industries, and even owning an auto repair shop at one point, Jason landed a gig as one of the first employees of Twitter. Now, he’s in a leadership position over at Medium, building the future of digital publishing.
To be in touch with others, start with you. What are you feeling? What do you do with that now? – @stirman #ProsOfCon
— Raissa Evans (@raissaevans) October 17, 2014
What we learned: Jason kicked off Pros of Con with a message centered on empathy and how that relates to connecting with an audience when working in a creative field. You have to know how your audience will feel about a project, he said. And that comes from practicing mindfulness and looking inward first.
2. Content Marketing Works? Prove it. Leslie Farnsworth from FrogDog, a marketing communications and business strategy agency, spoke to attendees about the art of measuring how effective marketing efforts are. What we learned: We learned that the best way to measure effectiveness of a digital marketing piece is to measure how long someone is consuming an asset. People like to measure what pages get the most page views, but this is a mistake, Leslie tells us. They might be visiting, but if they aren’t staying to consume the content—that measurement tells you nothing.
3. Breaking Destructive Habits in Online Marketing Michelle LeBlanc of Blue Sky Marketing gave us some tips on how to avoid “shiny object syndrome” and think strategically about our marketing and social media efforts. What we learned: Just because a competitor is doing something doesn’t mean it is right for you or your client’s business. Michelle encourages marketers to “start with a blank slate” and not rely on what has been done in the past or what others are doing. Decisions should be based on data and what makes sense for your brand—avoid the shiny objects! 4. Breaking Away from Traditional Content Structures Roby Fitzhenry, our friend and confidant from Always Creative, talked about responsive web design and how to incorporate new elements to break up the traditional narrative of home/about/contact/blog on a website.
“People are curious. You can shake things up a bit with web design…you can dance a little more.” @robyfitzhenry #IS14 #ProsOfCon
— houstonima (@houstonima) October 17, 2014
What we learned: People are genuinely curious and are tiring of the traditional buckets they are placed in when visiting a website. Good website designers find ways to add delight and curiosity into their web design. Also, a logo is NOT a brand or identity. An identity is created with everything that surrounds a logo.
5. Turning your Cons into Pros: Getting your online promotion approved by the boss; or worse yet, legal
For our final panel of the day, we went to law school. Travis Crabtree, an Internet law expert, gave us the dos and don’ts of how to run an online promotion while staying within the law.
What we learned: For the most part, contests that collect user-generated content are protected under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. This means that a website or platform is not generally held accountable for content that might be considered defamatory if users submit it—think Facebook contest where users submit a photo. BUT there are exceptions (and we aren’t attorneys) so make sure you investigate those few exceptions.
Check out Travis’ blog for more insight into these issues.
They say content is king, and we certainly learned the ins and outs of the monarchy today! For more information on the other panels, check out the conversations on Twitter at #ProsofCon and #IS14.