Marketing Profs Digital Marketing Mixer : Day One

My brain is full of social media and marketing goodness from the Marketing Profs Digital Mixer, but I wanted to give you my takeaways and thoughts from Day One.

The day for me started with the Blog Hot Seat Lab, and in talking with the attendees, I think blogging companies should keep these points in mind:

1 - Assume every visitor to your blog arrived there by accident, has never heard of your blog, and has no idea what it's there for. The point is, you need to organize your blog so within 3-4 seconds, any visitor can see who you are, what you do, and why the blog is there. Make this info very easy to find.

2 - Think about how your blog is organized and how your content is positioned, and how this ties into what action you want your readers to take while they are on your blog. And that action should tie back into your blog's larger business goals.

3 - If you want your readers to interact on your blog, make sure the tone of your posts is conversational, not dry.

The first session I attended was the Twitter Success Stories session moderated by Paul Chaney, and it included case studies from Whole Foods, Dominoes, Razorfish and the CME Group. Some of the key takeaways:

"Automation is a relationship killer." - Marla Erwin, Whole Foods

Razorfish encourages ALL of their employees to tweet, and instead of worrying about what they might tweet, VP of Marketing David Deal explained that Razorfish considers '"what can we learn from what our employees are tweeting?"

"Be a part of the conversation, or start one." - Ramon De Leon, Operating Partner, Dominoes Pizza.

Also loved Ramon's story of how he's been using social media for over a decade, and using AOL IM to connect with customers.

The main feedback I've heard from attendees so far today is that there has been a wealth of case studies, which were very well received. I missed two of the most popular sessions, Amber Naslund's Social Media ROI session, and Mari Smith's session on Facebook for Business. I'll have to do better tomorrow!