Welcome to episode 155, I’m sorry I wasn’t able to deliver an episode last week, the conference was so ‘full on’ I had no opportunity to put together the full episode although I did manage to record a few short snippets.

Now that I’m back, albeit somewhat jet lagged, I thought I would share with you my experiences last week in San Diego

But first……

Interesting Stuff I Saw This Week.

LinkedIn revamps timeline with Trending Storylines: curated, algorithmic news clusters

This seems like a good move on the face of it, note that the trends are personalised so not everyone will see the same posts. It’s currently only available in the US (desktop & mobile) so I haven’t had a play with it yet and I will reserve judgment until then.

LinkedIn could be moving firm’s IP to Ireland after Microsoft’s €24bn takeover

So, not happy with making more money from its members, LinkedIn want to pay less tax!!

Social Media Marketing World (#SMMW17)

So last week I made the trip to San Diego, a trip I had thought about making every year since this conference started. It was a big commitment both financially and in terms of time….so was it worth it?

The conference was held at the massive convention centre in downtown San Diego. SMMW had c3000 delegates but we barely took up ⅓rd of the convention centre!!

The conference began officially on Thursday but they ran a series of practical workshops on Wednesday so my first experience was a practical session led by David H. Lawrence 17th and it couldn’t have been a better start!

How to create videos that build authority at a moments notice. David H. Lawrence XVII

I made more notes in this session than in any other. Very impressive speaker with a background as a Hollywood actor!

I met up with listener Gary Stockton afterwards to get his feedback

 

Key points;

• Good lighting is important (2 in front, 1 behind)
• Use the rule of ⅔rds to position yourself. Stand slightly side on and turn your head towards the camera. Look through the camera, not at the end of the lens and look away occasionally.
• Never use your RBF (resting Bitch face!) instead always use your BFF!
• To correctly position your hands hold your left hand finger with your right hand and position then at the bottom of the shot.
• A good lavalier mic is the Audio Technica ATR335015 (I already use this)
• A good camera to use is the Canon LEGRIA HF R706
• If you are interviewing someone, position yourself on the right of the shot.
• Never tell an interviewee what you are going to ask them.
• Never explain a question, keep it short “tell me about…” and let the guest shine.

How to create highly shareable social media images -Rebekah Radice

I am a big believer in the importance of images in our posts and articles on LinkedIn so I had high hopes for this workshop……it wasn’t as insightful as I hoped but I still picked up a few tips;

• Understand what images do well in your market.
• When using text in an image, use 2-3 different fonts
• Infographics are still popular
• Carefully name your images with keywords
• Great quote “Learn rules carefully so you can break them properly”!
• Check out relaythat.com for producing LinkedIn images - some great templates and 10 free downloads a month.

Day two keynote - Michael Stelzner

• Rather than try to second guess the algorithm, focus on understanding the company’s objectives. If you know what LinkedIn are trying to achieve then you can be sure the algorithm will be programmed in line with that.
• Facebook posts are not related to the time they are posted so scheduling at specific times does not have an impact anymore….this is definitely not true for LinkedIn though, not yet anyway.
• Great quote - “Become known as being helpful”

 

Artificial Intelligence - Christopher Penn

This was a very fascinating but complicated topic and I think I understood, at best about 20% of what Christopher covered! He was clearly a very competent, technical guy and as a result he communicated as you would expect from a ‘techie’! The main highlights were as follows;

• Machines are very capable of understanding sentiment (in comments for instance)
• Google have developed AI that is more capable at lip reading than humans which sounds pretty scary from a privacy point of view!
• Machines will be able to write better content than humans within 2 years (Really?!!)
• In the future there will be 4 jobs in the workplace;
  • Those that tell a computer what to do (subject matter experts)
  • Those that are told what to do by a computer.
  • Sales
  • Entertainment
• Chatbots are this years big deal in the social media world. Try out Mitsuko and Growthbot

 

How to become an evangelist - Guy Kawasaki

Guy was one of the real ‘Superstar’ presenters at the conference and he didn’t disappoint! He can be pretty controversial at times but also very entertaining. He was talking about being an evangelist and the things I learned were as follows;

• People make decisions very quickly, think Tinder not e-harmony! First impressions are critical in social media.
• Be open and authentic with what you post. He used to think he should be conservative on LinkedIn but he then posted about surfing and he got more views and followers!
• He now posts political stuff and he is still gaining 1000 new followers a day! I’m not sure this is great advice though, it’s OK to take this risk when you have over 2 million followers!

Keynote: Turning customers into life-long advocates - Joey Coleman

This guy was the best speaker I saw at the conference. I really enjoyed watching him present, a real inspiration.

• The first 100 days of a new client are critical in retaining their business….go the extra mile in this time.
• Great question: “How big would your business is you retained every customer?”

 

How to turn LinkedIn into a funnel for new leads - Koka Sexton

Koka is an ex LinkedIn guy who helped to get Sales Navigator off the ground and now works for Hootsuite.

I enjoyed this talk but it was a tough gig for Koka because the majority of the delegates are marketing people. Viveka Von Rosen covered company pages and AJ Wilcox was covering LinkedIn ads which are the two main subjects Marketers are interested in.

One line he quoted that was used a lot at LinkedIn was “next play” which I think sums up the problem with LinkedIn, they are too focussed on the ‘next play’ in my opinion and would be better concentrating on getting their ‘current play’ right before moving on!

He came up with a great tip for LinkedIn emails, create folders based on the subject line in your email client so that you can focus on the important emails from LinkedIn such as search alerts.

He advocated 30 LinkedIn shares/posts a day…that seems a bit OTT to me but I guess he would have a better idea of what affects the algorithm.

Great Quote “Visibility creates opportunity”

Mastering LinkedIn Ads - AJ Wilcox

The final session was with AJ who has been a previous guest on the show, it was great to meet AJ in person and I have to say he is one of the nicest guys in the LinkedIn world…..very generous, welcoming and fantastically knowledgable.

• B2B markets are some of the best to be in. 72% of fortune top 1000 are in B2B
• LinkedIn advertising is worth considering ion your product or average lifetime value of a customer is greater than £12,000 ($15,000)
• Ads in the right hand column are a waste of money as get a 0.3% click through rate
• Sponsored posts are much more successful mainly due to showing up in mobile
• Sponsored InMail can be very effective and targeted, they can also include links to landing pages but LinkedIn have a rule which means that if a member receives a sponsored InMail, they can’t receive another for 2 months! This could work for or against you. The InMail can be sent from anyone you designate from your business.
• Lead generation ads are coming soon meaning that you can get people to sign up to your list from within LinkedIn

The Verdict.

There is no doubt that this is a superbly well-run conference with some great speakers.

I had a great time and have no regrets going.

Would I go again?

Probably not, unless I get asked to speak (Which I’m working on!).

The main issue I had was that this conference is mainly designed for marketing professionals. That meant the content was heavily biased towards Facebook followed by Instagram. It also meant that the networking wasn’t quite as useful as I had hoped for. That said I met some great people and I do have some interesting follow-up conversations planned.

No time for AFQ this week so I will save the question for next week.

That’s it for this week, don’t forget to leave a voicemail or email me with any questions or suggestions, till next time.

Have a great week everyone.

PS New Service. I am now providing one to one coaching sessions. Click ‘Schedule a call’ above and arrange a time to speak directly with me.

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