Business networking at its best

Be it online or offline, you need to build contacts for your business. The key is to attend relevant digital marketing conferences and start networking. Digital marketing conferences have evolved remarkably over the past couple of years. It's not just what you learn from these digital marketing conferences but it's who you get to know. If you have never attended a digital marketing conference, I recommend it strongly. Chances are, once you attend a single conference, you will be addicted to it ( in a positive way) like the rest of us and mark the days in your calendar.

At each of these conferences, you'll get ample opportunities to hear from few of the best digital marketing experts, speaking about Web analytic, paid search advertising, social media, search engine optimization, mobile search and the like. Generally, there's huge networking possibilities during various sessions or tea-breaks at these places. You'll be surprised to get the amount of knowledge that you can buy at the cost of few drinks.

Here are five key advantages of attending a digital marketing conference:

1. Implementing innovative ideas: Often, at various networking events, there are large number of popular speakers and industry experts who usually give valuable speeches worth considering. During such instances, it's great if you could take down important notes and points which are relevant to your business.
2. Ample opportunities: In a digital marketing conference, you are likely to come across a mix of CEOs, CFOs, Managing Directors and top executives of various companies with whom you can interact, socialize and connect for your business purposes. There will be plentiful opportunities to meet several business leads and speakers for future online marketing event. Always, ensure that you end up having a face-to-face conversation with them. You can also connect to them via social media platforms.
3. One-on-one sessions: If the event allows, try to organize a small private meeting with company hot-shots, before the event starts. This can be really beneficial for your business and add immense value to you. Additionally, don't forget to utilize lunch and conference breaks for networking with company executives. This could be a valuable time to understand their business acumen and strategies. So do keep your ears and eyes open.
4. A large collection of business cards: It's highly important that you collect business cards from the business honchos. This will ensure you of successful networking. These contacts will take you far.

So igniting conversations and building up relationships with various event attendees will help you gain bountiful business knowledge.

Next time you attend an online marketing conference, here are few pointers that you should keep in mind for better business deals:

1. Captivate audience with dynamic conversations
2. Activate social networking for fostering brand affinity
3. Penetrate customer psyche
4. Raise brand profile

Sure, marketers and business leaders in these events are primarily looking for business, however, you, as an event speaker should do a good job in delivering a speech that imparts sales-pitch-free information.

Attending a marketing conference or online marketing event establishes a great platform for daily marketing decisions back in your business or at the store. So try to make the most of such opportunities whenever possible. 

Social Media Blunders – How You Can Stay Away From Them

The year 2013 has almost come to an end. The holiday shopping season is here and online retailers are looking forward to a great time. With every passing day, more and more brands are going digital than ever before. When the world around us revolves pretty much around the Internet, it's time to focus on what should not be done if you want to make profit online. Avoiding the blunders some brands make on social media is the best way to prepare your company for the new year. When used properly and appropriately, social media can help companies achieve great success. However, behind every social account there are humans, and humans make mistakes. Here are five common mistakes brands are making on social media and what you can do to avoid them:

Everything is not on the Internet

While it's true that we can learn a lot of things from the Internet, but not everything. Many people have no idea why they should visit digital marketing conferences on a regular basis. Why attend a conference when you can learn about online marketing with a simple Google search? You can read a few blogs or websites and learn certain things about digital marketing, but remember many other companies and brands are reading the same articles online and going to apply those for their businesses. Your business is unique, and it should have its customized marketing campaign. You can get to know customized marketing strategies by attending an online marketing conference. Google can help you a lot, but there's nothing like sitting in front of digital marketing experts, great entrepreneurs, and marketing giants and hearing them sharing their knowledge with you. Also, networking is another major benefit of attending a digital marketing conference. You can also find great digital marketers, SEO experts, and designers who can help your company grow.

Failing to understand what your customers want

Social media helps you to talk to your customers in real time. It's definitely one of the easiest ways to know what your customers want and what they don't want. You need to be a good listener first. Many brands fail with their digital marketing campaigns for this reason. They don't understand what their customers want from them. There's no way to can have an one-way-conversation on social media. Ask them what want and how you can serve them better. The more your understand your customers the better your chances are to win their heart.

Have a unique voice (and maintain it)

You need to maintain a tone of voice and a specific personality on social media that will help your audience to relate to the brand. A lot of successful pages on Facebook has admitted that the secret is maintaining a voice that is unique and remains the same. You need to get it right, none of us like to talk to a robot, neither we like to talk to multiple people about our product issues. So, it's you who have to figure out what works for your company and most importantly, be authentic!

 By avoiding these common mistakes, your business can grow on social media. Most importantly, attend a digital marketing conference and you will get to know more about these things, what to do do to prevent a crisis, how to stay prepared for one, how to respond to your customers if anything goes wrong, and so on. Attending an online marketing conference is one of the best investments you can make for your business.

Why You Cannot Say NO to A Digital Marketing Conference

Planning to attend a digital marketing conference? Whether you are a digital marketer or a business owner, you have taken the right step towards achieving your marketing goals. In such an event, you will rub shoulders with the biggest names and brands in social media marketing, soak up uncountable tips and strategies, and reap the benefits of extensive networking opportunities. Do a quick search on Google and you will come to know that business owners are taking these events as an opportunity to connect face-to-face with the best digital marketing experts while breaking bread with like-minded peers from all corners of the globe.

Whether your company is a start-up or a large organization, you will get to know customized marketing tips with relevant case study examples, interactive workshops, and engaging sessions. All these together will help you boost your digital marketing efforts and reach your business goals. In addition to that, you will also come to know the emerging strategies, latest trends, the best social tools, and insights that will help you run successful social media campaigns. In hardly 3-4 days of an event, you will have all the elements you need to achieve social media success.

There are plenty of digital marketing conferences or mobile marketing events out there, but not all of them can provide you equal benefits. So you need to be careful about finding and attending the right one. When you have done that, try to book your seat in advance because the best conferences offer a limited number of seats. Moreover, you can also take advantage of their early bird registration deals if there's any. Some of them also provide great group discounts, so you can plan to bring your marketing team or partners with you.

Like many other business owners, you may have taken social media casually, but as a marketer you need to have a deeper understand of what works, what does not, and who the best players are. You need to know about the subtle differences between paid, earned, and owned social media platforms. Moreover, social media channels can be a great platform for branding and marketing, also it can be an effective platform for PR, customer service, and community building. By attending a digital marketing event, you will get to know the core fundamentals of using social media platforms in ways that suit you the best.

Ask anyone around – Facebook and Twitter are easy things. Just sign up, upload a profile picture, and post whatever inspiration strikes. That's true for individual users, but using Facebook and Twitter for your business need a lot more thought and special care. You need to know the answers of the following questions. Why are you using Twitter, for customer service? To stay in touch with people? For branding? Sales? Also, what kind of corporate image are you trying to present and maintain? You will get to know all the answers in a digital marketing event.

Not just these, there are many other benefits of attending a social media marketing conference. You will learn tricks and tips that will help you to engage with your customers via social media and harness the power of marketing, right away.

Online Marketing Event – Why Cannot Afford To Miss One

According to a recent survey done globally, it has been found that more than 70% of all people questioned prefer to browse the web on their mobiles, tablets, and laptops rather than through traditional desktop computers. A lot of businesses have realized the fact that digital marketing is interactive and cost effective. To grow a business and make profits, it is crucial to have a positive and effective online presence. Yet it is alarming that some brands and organizations have not added digital marketing to their priority list. Many of them don't even realize that their own business websites represent their brands on the Internet. Who does not read a review page before purchasing something from a website?

Search Engine Optimization : More than 90% of buying decisions on the web start with a Google search. This has led many big and small brands use search engine marketing strategies for their businesses. At an online marketing event, you will come to know from the marketing experts how you can get to the top of the search engine rank pages (SERPS), find out the importance of 'social' in search, and learn which are the most preferred search engines by marketers and customers. Moreover, you will get to know how big brands are integrating search engine marketing into their marketing campaigns.

Here are 10 good reasons why you should attend an online marketing conference:

1. Learn from experts and practitioners about content marketing.
2. Expect a dynamic learning environment. People who are attending these events are experts or entrepreneurs like you who want to learn.
3. You don't need to have technical knowledge. Just ask the questions you want answered.
4. Create new connections! Meet the speakers, digital marketers, and fellow delegates. You never know who may come to help you in the long run.
5. Get customized marketing strategies that will actually work for your business.
6. Bring your marketing head or the full marketing team. Remember, 'digital' is too important to ignore.
7. If you're a marketer, you cannot afford to miss the opportunities to learn from an event right from the best minds in the industry.
8. Expand your professional contacts. Remember, talking them face-to-face is a lot better than mailing them.
9. Find experts whom you can hire for your own company. There will be plenty of them in an event, talk to multiple digital marketers to select the best one for your business.

One more very good reason is, you would love to see your business grow! Times are changing faster than we can imagine. Information is available throughout the Internet and your customers make decisions based on peer recommendations on social media websites and online reviews. Another study has found that a large number of people do not event think of doing business or availing services from companies that have out of date or hard to navigate website. 

Another large number have agreed that they don't buy products from a company with poor online presence. If you are one of those business owners or marketers struggling hard to build a solid web presence, here's a good news. Attend an online marketing conference and come back with a new world of knowledge in your brain.

3 Major Questions Answered About Why You Should Attend an Online Marketing Event!

Many of us come across websites on the Internet poorly designed, crammed full with ads, and keep opening new pop up windows that distract us from the information we are looking for. We all hate this! Why would a business have a website like this anyway? What's wrong with their marketing department? We're coming to the point slowly. Small and medium sized business owners spend time, effort, and most importantly, their hard earned money only to be eluded by the results they want to see from their online marketing campaigns. What the big brands and companies have realized is that having a bit of online marketing knowledge will actually help you guide a poorly performing campaign to the right direction. So if you can learn from digital marketing gurus and other entrepreneurs who have been there, done that... there's nothing better! Don't take my words for it, do a quick search on Google and see by yourself how many small and medium sized companies are attending online marketing events these days.

Why would you attend an event when you can learn about digital marketing on the Internet?

True that. Internet is a great place to learn new things. But there's no match for sitting right in front of the industry experts and hearing them speak about what you can do to grow your business. Moreover, you will get to meet many reputed and expert designers and digital marketers by attending a digital marketing conference. They can help you understand what's wrong with your business website and what are the things you need to do to get on the right track. Also, you will get to know other entrepreneurs like you and extend your network which can be beneficial for both the sides.

What are the things you will come to know by attending an online marketing event?

Well it starts with your website, then to your blog (if you have one or if you don't have one, you will find enough reasons why you should start one immediately). These will be followed by search engine optimization and marketing (by which people find your website on search engines when they are looking for products and services similar to yours). Next comes social media marketing. Your customers are on Facebook, Twitter, Google Plus, Pinterest and various other social networking sites, you will get to hear how you can reach new people and maintain a good relationship with your loyal customers on these social platforms.

Do you really have to learn about all these?

Not really. If you are happy with what you have and have no plan to grow your business, you can stop reading this article right now. But if you are planning to extend your business and reach more and more potential customers than you do now, then Internet is the best platform. Like every other things, Internet has its own set of rules too. So you will get to know the rules and the tips to stay ahead in the competition from an online marketing event. It's like going to a university and listening to the best professors of the world sharing their knowledge to help you grow.