Five things we learned at Connections 2011.
How do you maximize a limited number of conference attendees’ education?
While attending seminars and conferences are some of the greatest ways for employees to stay on top of industry trends and learn new things that can benefit your business, maximizing that education for the benefit of the organization as a whole can be a challenge.
Miller Brooks recently sent a handful of staffers to the ExactTarget® user conference, Connections 2011. Following the conference—filled to the brim with information and ideas—each person began completing three tasks in order to share the information with their teammates:
- Share key learnings in one combined presentation to the staff. Each attendee was tasked with distilling their impressions into five minutes of key takeaways worth sharing with the whole agency.
- Write one blog post to share on the MB blog. It didn’t need to be long nor comprehensive. But each attendee was asked to share an interesting thought, something that made an impression, or a new trick they learned, in a blog post. These help to educate not only our staff, but our clients and friends, as well.
- Create focused lunch-and-learn sessions on specific topics, to delve more deeply into the information. These are designed for specific audiences within the agency, rather than the group as a whole.
So, what did they learn? Check out these five blog posts to find out:
Connections 2011: ExactTarget’s user conference wows again. I thoroughly enjoyed everything, from the opening keynote speakers to the breakout sessions and the closing day “marketing burst” sessions. I left with a few “aha” moments and lots of key takeaways from the event, namely related to mobile marketing, measurement, and managing data. Read more…
The power of 9 quotes: most memorable quotes from Connections 2011. “The Power of One” was the theme of the Connections 2011 user conference, and that very message was clear. Here are nine powerful quotes—one each from nine speakers who left me pondering long after their presentations concluded. Read more…
Social media success: Southwest Airlines’ rapping flight attendant. Southwest Airlines, as a brand, has always fascinated me. It has no problem with employees expressing their personalities through their job, and the brand uses that to its advantage in the company’s social media strategy. Read more…
Lead nurturing: building relationships to qualify more leads. Have you been to a trade show lately? If so, you may have noticed that booth traffic is slower than in the past, and leads are down. With so many companies watching their bottom line, it is not surprising that they are sending fewer people to trade shows. So, as a marketer, what are you doing differently with those valuable leads? Read more…
Looking at social media as data: making measurement meaningful. While social media has become a valuable part of the marketing mix for many of today’s companies, many recent studies show most measurement is ad hoc and scattered. Of those attempting to measure, few are doing it in a meaningful way. Read more…