Influencer Project’s 60 Social Media Experts in 60 Minutes
Billed as the world’s shortest marketing conference ever, The Influencer Project presented sixty social media experts in sixty minutes. Using social media to spread the word, The Influencer Project participants each had sixty seconds to make their point.
7 Highlights from the Influencer Project
Many of these insights have appeared before on a variety of social media sites. But the act of listening to the spoken version makes a big difference since it forces the listener to focus on the words being heard and gives it more vivid context. Here are seven of the top highlights gleaned from the Influencer Project’s presenters, the list of whom reads like the who’s who of social media.
- David Meerman Scott (@dmscott): Stop talking about yourself and provide valuable information.
- Carol Roth (@caroljsroth): Social means creating relationships with other people via a variety of social media platforms. Give to the people with whom you want to interact. Remember that you’re judged by company you keep.
- Scott Ponad of the I Can Has Cheezburger Network: Make connections online and meet them offline to talk face-to-face.
- Joe Pulizzi (@juntajoe) of Junta 42: Create content that stands for something and is inspirational.
- Laurel Touby (@laureltouby) of Media Bistro: Look under the hood of new technologies to get your tech on.
- Ann Handley (@MarketingProfs) of MarketingProfs: Ground your content in who you are and give it wings to be dispersed.
- Lewis Howes (@LewisHowes) of LinkedIn Expert: Master one niche and to teach it to others.
5 Marketing lessons from the Influencer Project
From a marketing perspective, the Influencer Project highlighted five important lessons that can be applied to your next marketing plan.
- Create an attention getting title and/or tag line. The Influencer Project’s tag line was “World’s shortest marketing conference ever”. How will anyone be able to beat that?
- Let stars share their influence with you. The Influencer Project gained authority from the social media digerati associated with it. Each presenter had a strong sphere of influence.
- Simplify your message to meet time constraints. In sixty seconds, you can only present a few concise ideas. It’s necessary for them to be edited into memorable sound bites while leaving sufficient time for some form of branding. In this case, it was the name and tagline.
- Give people value in exchange for registering, participating and sharing your content. The Influence Project managed to make the event a win for everyone: participants attended for free and received useful business advice, speakers received additional credibility and authority. sponsors received visibility with their target audience in return for financial support, and the Influence Project garnered buzz and built a house file.
- Make the operation appear flawless to audience. As an audio only conference, the Influencer Project moved seamlessly from speaker to speaker with two short non-intrusive sponsor sound bites. Professionalism added to brand impression. By contrast, one presenter used a speakerphone garbling his message and leaving the impression he didn’t care.
As many of the speakers noted, in today’s social media environment, it’s critical to always be gathering information, organizing it to add value, and sharing your expertise with others. In doing so, be transparent and let others know what the results of your initiatives were so that collective whole can benefit from your actions. This enables the whole become greater than the sum of its parts.
Happy marketing,
Heidi Cohen
