Insights&Inspiration

Tag Cloud from my event notes, created using Wordle.net

I had the honor of attending the first ever AppNation conference at Moscone Center in San Francisco this past Monday and Tuesday, September 13th and 14th, and wow!  This is the first industry conference that I went into not having a great deal of specialized knowledge on the topic and boy did I learn a lot!

My only disappointment was the large percentage of attendees that were developers and investors versus agency folk, but I suppose in hindsight, when an industry is still so fledgling it makes sense for an event like this to also serve as a matchmaking opportunity for investors and developers to find one another to help spark further innovation.  Just would have been nice for there to be a little more of an agency perspective represented.  But overall a great conference, and I expect that it will be one that grows significantly more each year.

After reviewing my 30 pages of notes in an attempt to extract the most poignant information, here is the quick summary I came up with.

Where are the Real Opportunities in the App World? (more…)

My Tweets Over Time (via TweetStats)

Now that I have been using Twitter for some time – from jumping on the bandwagon, to experiencing the learning curve, to really beginning to understand the value – I thought I would share my experience in hopes that I can educate some of those who are still misinformed about usefulness of Twitter and as such have not yet given it a shot.  Though Twitter may not be for everyone, not giving it a shot due to being misinformed is just a shame.

So heres a summary of my experience with Twitter, in all honesty, in hopes that it will enlighten those who are still struggling to understand the platform and its usefulness.

• Stage 1: Twitter, Shmitter!
  Why would I want to listen to people Tweet that they are “on the porch”??  Come on..

(more…)

I owe the inspiration of this post to the following quotes:

“To leverage Twitter to its strengths for maintaining more personal dialogs, well-educated personnel need not just monitor the Twitter presence, but actively engage. Getting value out of the free Twitter service is an investment in itself.” from Bryce Marshall at imediaconnection.com:

And “How many participants you have on your social media properties is far less important than how you interact with them.” from Larry Weintraub at imediaconnection.com. (more…)

“As an industry, digital marketing has historically had a bias toward thinking about execution first — to such an extent that much of what passes for advertising and marketing online has no idea in it whatsoever.” Quote from Jim Nichols @ IMediaConnection.com.

“Focusing on platforms versus execution could cause you to miss the entire opportunity in front of you” Quote from Michael Burke @ IMediaConnection.com.

Strategy First, Technology Last: This has become a bit of a mantra here at JStokes in the digital back office. (more…)

SMX West Social Track

My agency, JStokes, graciously approved me to attend SMX West in order to enhance our knowledge and capabilities around the buzz that is Social Media.  We have been pretty active in educating ourselves and staying up on the trends, but this was a great opportunity to get on the cutting edge of where this marketing medium is headed and how it is being used today.

There were a number of “Tracks” to choose from – the one I took focused specifically on social media and included four courses, each with a panel of industry professionals who have been active in utilizing social media as a marketing medium. (more…)