SXSW Interactive 2011 Highlights

SXSW Interactive (tag #sxswi) officially came to an end earlier this week.

For those of you who don’t know, SXSW Interactive is an annual event that takes place in Austin, Texas.  The conference features five days of presentations from various thought-leaders in emerging technology and business as well as plenty of networking opportunities hosted by industry leaders.

Here are some of the highlights and insights from the conference (as I experienced it).

Content Rules
tag: #contentrules

During their session, CC Chapman and Ann Handley (authors of Content Rules) held an informal Q & A with a few hundred people on the topic of content marketing.

Highlights

• Content production: Write content like you’re writing a letter to a friend.  Try to have an opinion.  Don’t be vanilla.  Do something unexpected.  Create your own brand voice (It’s okay to be different).
• Content distribution:  The best way to distribute content is not through “influencers.”  Just find people who are already talking about your topics and engage with them directly.  This point was emphasized a lot during the conference.  It seems people are still under-utilizing the real-time search capabilities of both Twitter and Facebook.
• Content strategy: Start small (blog, video blog, etc.).  Start with one tool and build from there.  Then start to slowly “re-imagine” your content in other forms (converting blog posts into videos, videos into tweets, etc.).
• Trust your employees: employees who say potentially harmful things online is an HR problem, not a marketing problem.  Hire right and you minimize the risk of this happening in the first place.

Stop thinking in terms of ROI, this medium (social media) is so different.  Social media is not a “campaign,” its an ongoing activity that involves giving first, gaining trust, and then working your ass off to keep it (i.e. loyalty).  Lastly, remember this - content marketing is like sex.  Tons of people are doing it, but very few get it right (Handley).

Q&A with Google & Bing on Website Ranking
tag: #qagb

This session featured Duane Forrester, Senior Product Manager with Bing and Matt Cutts of Google.  The two search experts answered questions from the audience about how their respective search engines list and rank websites.  The session was moderated by Danny Sullivan, editor of SearchEngineLand.com.

Highlights

• “Show me the content love and I’m much more likely to rank you.” (Forrester)
• If you’re not happy with your ranking ask yourself, “what original content have I produced in the last 30 days?”  If your answer is little or none, don’t be surprised if your ranking is low (Matt Cutts on Link-building strategies)
• Often it only takes a few high authoritative links to increase ranking (i.e. social networking sites) (Duane Forrester)
• Relevant and/or contextual anchor texts is often under-utilized, yet a great strategy for building effective links that can quickly increase your ranking.
• “What matters most is conversion.” (Cutts)
• “Page ranking reports are guesses.  Page ranking does not help make better business decisions.  Unique visits, time on site, etc. are much more important.” (Sullivan),

Social Media Club House
tag: #smch6

The Social Media Club House, hosted by Chris Heuer, Kristie Wells, and Jessica Murray, was the place to be for bloggers, social media enthusiasts, web entrepreneurs, and other really cool people during the SXSWi conference.  It was a place to create media, crash, and meet interesting people like @MolsonFerg.  They also had some amazing programming from March 11-14, which streamed live via UStream.

Lastly, we can’t forget singing karaoke on the #smcbus.

Keynote by Gary Vaynerchuk - The Thank You Economy
tag: #thankyouecon

During his keynote, The Thank You Economy, Gary tackled the ROI of social media and the humanization of business as he sees it.  As always he was entertaining, inspiring, and did not beat around the bush.

Here’s just a quick sample of Gary’s keynote:

Highlights

• be practical - don’t be afraid to make money
• context is king (not content).
• whoever can create real context with the end user will win
• have a grasp of the problem you want to solve
• do you actually care about the end user?
• have a thank you department for your business
• find out what your customers love (if basketball, buy them tickets to a game — not a coupon code)
• to succeed in social media, brands must act “human” at the POS (the humanization of business)
• out care your competition
• there’s no such thing as a social media campaign (it’s not a one night stand)
• editorial calendars is like having a script at a cocktail party
• When using social media, big businesses need to act more like small “mom-and-pop” businesses

So there you have it, a quick overview of the conference as I saw it.  How about you?  If you were in Austin, what was your experience?  I’d love to hear about it.  If you didn’t get the chance to go, my friends at Social Media Club wrote this post called, 5 Ways to Enjoy SXSW From The Comfort of Your Couch.  Enjoy!

About the Author

Mitch Fanning is VP of Strategy & Business Development for Fruition Interactive (Toronto, Canada). He’s spent 11 years working with businesses of all sizes, from global brands to some of Canada’s fastest growing web start-ups ranked in the PROFIT 100.