I spent today at the Aloft Dallas Downtown hotel attending the Social Business Boot Camp, where a set of engaging and interesting speakers shared their knowledge and expertise in various social media disciplines with an enthusiastic audience of approximately 120 people.
The two event headliners – Rick Burnes, Inbound Marketing Manager at Hubspot and Shama Hyder Kabani, President of Marketing Zen Group – really rocked the house.
This was my first opportunity to ever see Shama speak, and I was duly impressed. Wise beyond her years, she is passionate, smart, and simply owns the room when she talks. Seeing her dynamic presentation on The Zen of Social Media Marketing was itself worth the price of admission.
Rick closed the day with a terrific talk on Inbound Marketing, covering all the bases from the use of social media for lead generation to techniques for improving your SEO results to measuring the effectiveness of a social media campaign. I knew a little about most of what he discussed, but I left the presentation genuinely enriched with a better understanding of the big picture.
Attendees were also educated by Cynthia Smoot of Gangway Advertising’s informative discussion on personal branding (related post here), an entertaining talk on the effectiveness of video in social media by Chris Yates and Cynthia Nichols (I got to hold one of their eight Emmy Awards!) of Huddle Productions, and a local all-star panel (including my Social Media Club of Dallas friend and Sticviews marketing manager Kat Farmer) sharing their business-related social media experiences – both good and bad.
And of course, there was ample opportunity to network, during which I made some new virtual and IRL friends, including the delightful Elaine Liner (seriously, follow her) of the Dallas Observer and Theater Jones.
Thanks to everyone involved in assembling and sponsoring this event, and I hope that this is the first of many such boot camps to come.
David Swinney helps businesses implement social media strategies and plans in order to identify customers and their influencers, engage them in conversation, and leverage those connections to improve the bottom line.
As a technologist with a background in social media, corporate communications, technical and customer support, vendor relationship and project management, he is able to comfortably discuss various social media topics with managers, individual contributors, and just plain folks.
Contact David if you're looking for someone to create, build, and enhance your customer relationships using social media tools and technologies. 