Converge South 2012

Friday was an excellent and exciting day in the iMedia world! Class was cancelled and instead we attended Converge South 2012 a media and web conference, held at Elon Law School in Greensboro. The day was filled with interesting and interactive talks from experts in our field. We were able interact with other participants, talk to the speakers and the best part…live tweet the entire day!

Keynote Speaker Tracy Myers

We started the day with the keynote speaker, Tracy Myers! Tracy is a car salesman in North Carolina, which seems silly to have speaking at a conference about media, however he knows what he is talking about. Tracy spoke of his marketing strategy and how he uses marketing, advertising and of course social media to engage the audience and promote his business. Obviously this strategy is working for him because he has won several national awards and is considered one of the best businessmen in the nation.  He gave great tips about websites design, how to entice the audience, how to incorporate testimonials and media plus much more.

There were several sessions throughout the day that we had the option of attending. The first session I went to was SEO, AdWords, and Analytics with Phil Buckley. Phil was great at explaining how Google SEO and AdWords work and can play into driving traffic to your website. He also spoke extensively about Google Analytics which really brought out my inner geek! I have been wanting to get certified in Google Analytics for a while now so to hear someone talk about it was great. I enjoyed hearing someone who knows all the in’s and out’s of the process, explain how it works and how each piece works with each other. The search algorithms for search engines are constantly changing and evolving, as programmers we need to stay on top of the ball with these changes and be able to adapt what we do to the changes that way our sites can be found. One of the last things we spoke about in this session was how the product itself isn’t working, but how companies need the content to back it up. Content management and development is where the focus also needs to be in order to sell your product and keep your audience’s attention. A few of us had the chance to speak with Phil after the presentation. He was friendly and interested in our program and what we do. We are hoping to have him stop by the iMedia program and speak to us about these topics more, since these are areas we do not get to cover in detail through our program.

Five and Dine was probably the most creative presentation and my favorite part of the day. Instead of having a simple lunch, the conference was arranged for us to receive lunch and then listen to speakers while we ate.  Each speaker only had 10 minutes and talked about simple topics such as blogging, LinkedIn, Instagram and Pinterest, and of course Facebook. It was great to get a crash course in each area of social media, and to hear the experts talk about the most important and influential areas of each piece of media.

Alan is excited about everything he is learning at Converge South

After lunch I attended two sessions back to back, Google+ with Mark Traphagen and Facebook for your business. Originally, the Google+ talk was not on my radar, but after speaking with Phil in the morning he highly recommended it so a few of us stopped by. I am very glad I did. Most people see Google+ as the new Facebook, but in fact it isn’t anything like it. Google+ works to keep your authored and published pieces together, so when others search for a specific topic, they can find your related works easily. In a nutshell, “Google+ isn’t suppose to connect you to who you know, it is suppose to connect you to complete strangers”. In a sense, it is more of a professional networking and sharing site, rather than a social media website for friends to keep in touch.

Working directly with social media for marketing and promotion is something I have always been curious about, but never had the opportunity to pursue.  The Facebook session, with Kelley O’Brien, was great because it laid a solid foundation for how to start your business on social media and how to incorporate different features as well as how the audience views your advertisements.  We even discussed promotional methods, and how to promote new items or events through the Facebook without overwhelming your audience and making them annoyed by the number of advertisements you are producing.

The last session I attended was another great social media experience with Rebecca Subbiah. Rebecca has her own blog “Chow and Chatter” which is very popular in both the US and UK. Rebecca took the time to talk about branding and identity with your business as well as several types of social media such as Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Google+ and more. She was also great with throwing out new names of people she admires in the business, who do a particular area of media very well, that way we could look them up and have more ideas and opinions on the topic, rather than just one point of view.

Overall the day was a great experience. We got to meet some amazing and insightful people, listen to great talks and hang out with our iMedia family in the process. Hopefully, we get the chance to participate in more conferences like this.