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Mitch Joel kicked the morning off with his insights in social media, and the revolution by consumers. His take? Digital integration, and social marketing is here to stay.

• Experts matter: You shouldn’t put a 20 year old intern at the helm of your social marketing department just because they use Facebook a lot. That’s like hiring an electrician whose only experience is turning lights on and off all the time.
• Consumer’s buying habits are changing and impulse buys are happening online, thanks to services like Amazon Prime. New services are providing consumers with information in their hands from people they trust, which drastically effects the buying cycle.
• Don’t focus on how many fans, followers, ect. you have. Focus on who. Influencers and leaders will generate a stronger message.

Bill Taylor’s talk addressed strategy and change in fast moving times. He focused on the value of people and their passion. He focused on:

• We’re living in an age of disruption where originality and values should be used as advocacy. Do you stand for important ideas?
• Game changers think differently. They are the most disruptive — they care more than others. They won’t cut corners or compromise.
• Your brand is your culture.
• Stay interesting, passionate and emotional. Make it (whatever you are working for) more memorable.
• One brain is never as smart as everyone together. It’s the people and the talent that make your brand special.

Avinash Kaushik tackled metrics — what matters, and what doesn’t. He presented with humor and emotion.

• There is no one action that will increase your data, views, etc. by 1,000 per cent. But rather, taking 1,000 actions and increasing things by 1 per cent will make a difference.
• Avoid dumb metrics and measuring irrelevant data like the number of people touched.
• Think about bounce rates. Bounce rate is very important metric. If a bounce rate is high, this is what users are doing: coming, puking, leaving.
• Metrics should value include visitor loyalty, length of time on site, conversion rate, and task completion rate.
• Amplification: does your message cause a ripple? Measures the number of retweets.

Gary Vaynerchuk enthusiastically engaged the audience, running across the stage and hosting a question and answer period. He addressed using new tactics, but not forgetting traditional marketing stomping grounds. Keypoints?

• Content is king but marketing is the queen and she runs the house.
• Social is a left jab. It sets up everything else.
• You’ll never be fired for running a TV ad.
• Don’t fold. Stand up. Don’t play in the middle. Live in 2011.

Guy Kawasaki, founder of All Top, Guy Kawasaki offered 10 ways to enchant customers, employees and bosses. Here are my favourites.

• Achieve trustworthiness: gain knowledge and competence, trust others first and default to a yes attitude.
• Get ready to build the product or service.
• Invoke reciprocation. When you do something for someone, the person will thank you. The correct reply is: I know you would do the same for me.
• Use technology: remove the speed bumps (captia code)
• Enchant up: enchant your boss. Drop everything and get it done. Enchant down: enchant the people who work for you.

For those who were unable to attend be sure to check out tweets with hashtag #TAOM.

Social media is communication 2.0. Leverage your consumer base so that customers become your personal sales team — nothing sells more or increases customer loyalty and engagement better than the voice of other customers. Social media takes word of mouth marketing  into the digital sphere as customers peruse the Internet for twitpics of the best pulled pork sandwich or the latest blog post about an Italian restaurant from a favourite foodie.

If you’re thinking of taking that dive into the social media deep end, here are some reasons you should incorporate social media into your small business strategy.

Customers can be your friends
For years consumers have been fighting a battle against advertisers – we were sick of being sold to from a faceless corporation and want to be treated like humans. Social media allows businesses to do that. Like the corner store your grandpa visited as a little boy or the butcher who knows you by first name, social media allows businesses to invoke a sense of community. Engage your customers in a conversation. Let them see the human side of the business. Leverage the community to gauge interest about new products, keep them up-to-date about events and let them know about specials before the regular public. Talk with, not at.

It’s cheap
Forget about buying that ad space in the newspaper or sending your intern out on the street with a sandwich board. Social media allows businesses to gain exposure for little or no money at all. Create a Facebook page, sign up for a Twitter account, establish a WordPress blog – all free. The only real investment is time. Interacting with your customers on these platforms can put them to work for you. They can spread the word about your great product or service by engaging their own social networks through yours. Ultimately, they help you expand your reach far beyond what you could have done with traditional advertising.

Responsiveness
Take off those rose-coloured glasses. Not everything that your customers say will be positive. It’s up to you as the business owner to respond to everything, even the bad stuff. Be ready to deal constructively with any negative exposure. The key to this is to be participating in and guiding a two-way conversation. Hootsuite is a great way to easily monitor several accounts, as well as understand perceptions and sentiments about your organization or service. Customers appreciate accessibility, transparency, and openness.

Stake out the competition
Staying competitive is the key to success in any industry. Social media can help you improve your knowledge base about your industry and interact with other movers and shakers in your industry. Network with those on the cutting edge and stay ahead of trends by tracking all the buzz within the industry. Stalk Twitter feeds, blogs and Facebook pages. Compile a list of important Twitter users and bloggers in your industry or come up with a list of keywords to track in Google alerts and bring the info to you.

Expound your unique product
While some of us may employ an army of clones, not everyone has the time  to  speak to each and every individual customer that walks in through the door. If you have a unique product that you are passionate about, social media allows you to extend your voice across time and space. Share pictures, videos or behind-the-scene looks that regular consumers would not be able to access anywhere else. Allow your social media platforms to be that unique place to share exclusive content and encourage others to share their own.

Twitter has become one of the most popular and most powerful social media platforms. When used successfully, Twitter can expand the reach of your brand and your organization. By leveraging the social networks of others, companies are taking advantage of Twitter’s marketing potential. Generating a large network of followers is the key to reaching your target audience, but it isn’t as simple as following others and crossing your fingers and hoping that they follow you back.

Here are some tips about ways to get more Twitter followers:

Link it
Generate consistency throughout all your social media channels by providing links to your Twitter profile on LinkedIn, Facebook, your blog and your email signature. People have to know you exist on Twitter before they can even start following you.

Hash it
#Hashtagging keywords ensures other users who are searching up those terms can easily find you. Check out search.twitter.com for trending topics and jump into the conversation. If you attend conferences and events, find out in advance what the hashtag is — this is a great way to network with fellow attendees.

We <3 pix
People are very visual consumers and pictures are heavily retweeted and spread around. If you love eating out, other foodies love to see pictures of what you’re eating, for example. As with links, ow.ly provides a great way to track how many people viewed your photo and how often it was passed along.

Monkey see, monkey do
Follow the top Twitter users in your area and watch what and how they tweet. Pay close attention, not only to the content they send out, but also to the tone of their messages.

Know your niche
Knowing how and where you fit into specific interest groups ensures your tweets are reaching the most relevant target audience. Have a targeted audience in mind and tailor your messages towards its interests and ideas. The ultimate goal is to be an expert in your niche so that you become the go-to person.

Retweeting
Encourage existing followers to retweet your links. It expands your reach beyond your own social network, resulting in clicks back to your profile. Using a URL shortener, like ow.ly, provides a good way to track your success.

Tweet during peak hours
Just because you’re nocturnal doesn’t mean the rest of your Twitter followers are. Send tweets during peak hours to give you the best opportunity to be seen and read. While there haven’t been any studies yet, your best bet for peak traffic is around the time people are getting to work, taking breaks and getting off work — 9 a.m., noon, 3 p.m. and 6 p.m. If these hours don’t work for you, Hootsuite allows you to set scheduled tweets so you can share the latest Lonely Island video while you’re catching up on your life.

Ask, ask, and ask some more
Ask questions. Get people engaged in a conversation to encourage two-way communication. Be in the know  about hot news items and top headlines and poll your followers. Ask who is going to win American Idol? or what do you think about those sweater vests Harper wears. Would you vote for Donald Trump if he ran for president? Questions can generate hundreds of responses and each response is seen by anyone who follows the responder, thus expanding your reach.

No one likes a try-hard
Stop thinking of Twitter as purely a marketing tool. The idea of social media is just that — social. It’s about two-way communication. People like to know that there’s a human behind a computer screen and they don’t want to be sold to all the time. Have fun and engage in conversations and discussions. Your customers will join you because they want to connect to a person, not a brand.

Free stuff is great
Try putting together a contest or a giveaway. People love free stuff. Encourage people to follow and RT in order to be entered to win. Make sure you have a killer prize that your followers would be interested in winning (and not that sweater your grandma gave you for your birthday). While this strategy is short-term in scope, incorporating a few of the other tips we’ve listed above will ensure that your followers stay beyond the life of the contest.

Mo’ money, mo’ followers?
If you’re lazy, just buy them. But we don’t recommend it. Having an active, engaged community is more valuable than having a big list of followers that don’t care about you or your organization.

Here’s some to consider:

What: Interlink Conference
Where: Vancouver
When: June 2-4, 2011
Why: Any conference that ties in a dodgeball ice-breaker event and movie night is good in my books. The Interlink Conference is a small and carefully crafted three day web event for all web professionals. This international web design conference has put together a stellar list of industry veteran speakers and workshops ranging from topics about tapping into your on-demand creative inspiration to more hands-on work dealing with the latest and greatest from CSS, as well as the history of font usage online.
Follow the Interlink Conference on Twitter @interlinkconf

What: Internet Week
Where: New York
When: June 6-13, 2011
Why: Go big or go home. That is NYC’s motto. One conference wasn’t good enough. No. They had to do an entire week. Internet Week is a festival celebrating NYC’s thriving Internet industry and community. The festival incorporates various events held in different locations across the city. The result is a critical mass of web-focused events that raises the profile of NYC’s proliferating internet and digital media community. Some of these events include Story Worldwide’s Digital Archaeology, Interactive Advertising Bureau’s (IAB) The Future of Display, and Flavorpill’s Culture Hunt (think: scavenger hunt 2.0).
Follow Internet Week on Twitter @internetweek and don’t forget to hashtag #iwny

What: Conversational Marketing Summit
Where: New York
When: June 7-8, 2011
Why: Groupon? Twitter? Facebook? Foursquare? Where do you begin? Digital platforms present massive opportunities, but one significant challenge: finding the signal in an increasingly noisy ecosystem of sites, apps, and services. All this data is extremely overwhelming, especially for consumers. Consider Conversational Marketing Summit to be the philosophical compass in the burgeoning digital environment. The conference is two days of case studies and insightful conversations that will help marketers push aside the clutter for consumers. Federated Media, the organizer of the conference, caught our attention by bringing together Adam Bain, president of Global Revenue for Twitter, with Food Network personality Rachael Ray and music producer will.i.am in one event. You’ll have to see it to believe it.
Follow Federated Media on Twitter @federated_media

What: The Art of Marketing
Where: Vancouver
When: June 9, 2011
Why:  If you ever needed a crystal ball to answer all your marketing questions, The Art of Marketing would be it. Building on the success of the sold out 2010 Canadian national tour, the one day conference brings together five internationally renowned bestselling authors and leaders who will offer up their experience and knowledge on the most critical marketing issues we face today. Some of the speakers in this stellar lineup include Guy Kawasaki, who will be heading up a talk on creativity and innovation, and Mitch Joel, who will be discussing digital marketing and social media.
Follow The Art Of on Twitter @theartof and don’t forget to hashtag #TAOM

What: ReadWriteWeb 2WAY Summit
Where: Columbia University, New York
When: June 13-14, 2011
Why: One-way communication. One-way roads. Who ever liked those? Everything is better if it’s 2WAY. ReadWriteWeb is a summit gathering of the best tech, people and ideas the Web has to offer in two (not one) unique and fun ways. Day one features talks from some of the smartest folks in technology and media. The speakers include Baratunde Thurston from The Onion and Danah Boyd of Microsoft Research. Topics range from the creative exploitation of social media to teen sexting and its impact on tech companies. The highlight of day one is The Gentleman’s Throwdown between Jason Calacanis of Mahalo and Nick Denton of Gawker. Day two is all about learning and interaction through a variety of breakout talks. The topics covered include social gaming, community building, NFC (near field communication) technology, and a great debate over web apps vs. native apps. The highlight of day two is Speed Geeking!: think high-energy, short presentations from start-ups and established tech companies.
Follow ReadWriteWeb on Twitter @rww and don’t forget to hashtag #rww2way

What: The 140 Characters Conference
Where: New York
When: June 15-16, 2011
Why: Experiencing the state of now. Wise words to live by and the theme of this year’s 140 Characters Conference. This event from Jeff Pulver is expected to be the largest worldwide gathering of people interested in the effects of the real-time Internet on both business and “we” the people. This conference exposes the power the Internet has to disrupt businesses, change lives and create serendipity. The schedule is unique and fast paced with the intention of providing a platform for as many people as possible to share thoughts and engage in conversation with the delegates. The themes are global in scope and include topics such as the Use of Social Media to Overturn Entrenched Political Powers Around the World, Medicine and Social Media, and Online Philanthropy and Large Scale Social Change.
They don’t have a Twitter handle, but be sure to hashtag #140conf