IMS 2009 Day 2: New Lingo and General Awesomeness

Day #2 of the Inbound Marketing Summit 2009 (IMS 09), Boston, brought another fully-loaded agenda of presentations, panels, and networking.

Some notables follow.

By the Numbers

Since a significant portion of today's sessions focused on metrics, I'll start this post with some data points from IMS 09:

- If Facebook was a country, it would be the world's 5th largest (thanks to Paul Gillin for this stat)
- Ranking algorithm for search according to Hubspot: F(n) = context + authority
- Number of Presentations with Susan Boyle References: 2
- Number of Presentations with Seinfeld References: 2
- Number of Presentations with World of Warcraft References: 2
- Number of Books Recommended: I lost count

Talk the Talk

Favorite New Social Media Buzzword: Twestimonial - a positive comment about your brand on Twitter.

Most overused, albeit accurate catch phrase: Content is King

Walk the Walk

With so many excellent speakers--representing companies such as Southwest Airlines, Weber Shandwick, CodeBaby, dna 13, Paul Gillen Communications, IDC, Awareness, Razorfish, and Edvisors, to name a few--learnings cannot be summarized in a single blog post alone. I encourage you to join the #IMS09 discussion on http://twitter.com/ to engage with presenters and participants.

- The two elements of successful search: recency and inbound links
- Listen first. Follow the discussion about your brand and about your competitors
- Loyalty is an emotional response. It is not made from satisfaction alone, but rather stems from willingness to recommend
- Advice from Greg Matthews, Humana, for getting started on Social Media: Be a vacuum, be a padawan, try stuff, and be 2.0
- Employees who love your brand can make excellent public representatives. An example of this is Jim Long, NBC News cameraman who became the unlikely brand ambassador
- Vary your content objects (such as video, documents, podcasts, etc). Mix it up
- Customer service is marketing
- Own the process

The most resonating theme of the day was passion for community. And the vendor sponsors and exhibitors didn't disappoint. Most memorable was the PerkettPR booth at which visitors took a quick quiz that identified the Social Media Gurus they most resemble (social media behavior, not necessarily appearance). As it turns out, I'm a CC.

Keep Your PR Firm

Since my last post, Spend? During a Recession?, several of you have asked me to comment further on my recommendation that companies keep their public relations activities—and their PR practitioners—going strong during tough economic times.

Gone are the days when public relations was limited to creating and sustaining media relationships, pitching news stories, and issuing press releases. Sure, these activities continue to add value. But today, as interactivity is a requirement for relating with the public, PR professionals maintain a much broader repertoire of capabilities, which help you stay close to customers as their needs grow and change throughout a fluctuating economy.

Consider your customer communications objectives (which are likely to be different from what they were at the time you first engaged your PR firm) and connect with your PR agency and/or internal marketing communications team to discuss how their capabilities can address these objectives. Many firms can add expertise in areas of social media, corporate communications, event management, customer community building, etc. These firms also understand the need to measure ROI, not by counts of leads or media hits, but by real, actionable metrics.

When assessing an agency, become acquainted with the people who will be directly involved with your account. Evaluate fit as if you are interviewing people to work on your staff. After all, they will be extended members of your marketing team.

Do not look for a PR practitioner to serve as your sole customer relationship manager or to replace your subject matter experts. Customer interaction is not one-size-fits-all, so avoid boilerplate PR and social media plans.

Not sure where to start? Check out 12 Things I Need From a Communications Agency from Engage in PR, and get ready to start seeing valuable returns from your marketing communications professionals.