Coming off the supercharged sun, surf and sand themed social media extravaganza of SMMW17 in San Diego last week, I am now literally sitting on a beach.
Here on the West coast of Costa Rica, with the waves crashing, birds singing their songs in the trees and the distant sounds of kids laughing as they play in the sand, it’s a great time to reflect and look forward.
Before I completely check out of the digital world for the week, except for an occasional photo on Instagram of course, I wanted to share some of the things I’m looking forward to most at my next conference April 4-5: Digital Summit Los Angeles.
Last month was my first Digital Summit experience in Phoenix. DSPHX was an event of firsts for me: meeting the force of nature that is Beverly Jackson plus the legend and co-founder of Apple Steve Wozniak. I also had a chance to see several really impressive speakers for the first time including Mack Fogelson and Eric Yale. I was impressed!
I can imagine Digital Summit Los Angeles being a great experience too.
The speaker list for DSLA is an amazing collection of thought leaders including Woz and Beverly, industry experts like Michael King, Jim Boykin and Michael Barber and a huge group brand and publisher speakers from companies that include: Facebook, Google, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Adobe, Forbes, IBM, The Economist, BET Network, Inc Magazine, Wells Fargo, GE Digital, BMC Software, BusinessWire and MIT.
Over more than 40 sessions, the topics covered include everything from data informed marketing to visual storytelling and purpose driven marketing to content marketing with influencers.
Of course, I’m a fan of that last topic since it is what the focus of my closing keynote presentation will be about: How to Supercharge Your Content with Influencer Marketing.
Confluence rules. Content Marketing with Influencers is an area of deep focus for me that I’ve been experimenting with for many years and that our agency has been implementing for clients that range from a $180Bn Fortune 5 company to mid-market companies like ClickSoftware to small companies like Pandora Mall of America.
The fundamental message of my keynote presentation is that marketing with content is harder than ever and if your company doesn’t do something to break through information overload and distrust of brand content, you’ll lose the ability to attract and engage customers.
The solution is a content marketing framework for strategically engaging with influencers to increase content quality, quantity, reach and engagement across the customer journey. At the same time, I’ll talk about how to build relationships with internal, industry and community influencers to increase advocacy.
To back up the best practices, I’ll share trends and insights our influencer marketing research that we partnered with Influencer Relationships Marketing platform, Traackr, on. Brian Solis of Altimeter analyzed the findings and wrote up an impressive research report, Influence 2.0: The Future of Influencer Marketing that attendees will be able to see.
The Influence 2.0 report delivers crucial findings and covers important insights about the maturity of influencer marketing within large enterprise companies, budgets, top goals and areas within the organization that are most impacted. Brian also shares the intersection of influencer relations with customer experience and digital transformation. If that wasn’t enough, he includes a 10 step framework for implementing an influence 2.0 approach.
My keynotes are “inspractical” = Inspiration + Tactical. Overall, I’ll touch on the best parts of the research report, include trends, best practices and share successful B2B and B2C examples of influencer driven programs to inspire attendees going forward.
If you’re a marketer in Southern California, this is a can’t miss event!
Event Details:
Digital Summit Los Angeles
April 4-5, 2017
Skirball Cultural Center
Registration, Agenda, Speakers and full conference information here.