Not at SXSW? How I attended Virtually Day #1

I was not able to get to Austin, TX for SXSW but I have been following the events through the Twitter hashtags that are associated with each presentation. Below are the three events I watched people discuss on Twitter and the ideas that were discussed at each.

Important tip on attending these panel discussions - Get there early. There are massive lines and people are already missing out on some popular panels.

Social Media Marketing for Your Business (#socialmediamarketing)

Presenters:

Chris Weingield, President of 10e20 - @chriswinfield

Tony Adam, Director of Search Marketing for BillShrink - @tonyadam

Getting Involved:

-Locate your audience by using sites liked compete.com to see traffic and engagement metrics

-Make sure you place yourself where your audience is - You can focus on blogs, myspace, niche forums as well as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. No need to be on everything - just find out who you want to reach and where that demographic is based

-Track your company through setting up Google alerts for your company, individuals at your company, your brands/products

-Understand your ROI - Set goals and stay on track to achieve those goals

Results of Getting Involved:

-Achieve a wider audience and engage with clients and people in your industry

-Monitor your reputation

-Inbound marketing/link building

Take-away message from this presentation: Be Human

Photo from @Chriswinfield of the audience

How Your Brand Can Succeed in the New Web (#engagebrandbiz)

Presenter:
Brian Solis - @briansolis
Special Guest Panel:

Brian Solis,  Principal of FutureWorks and an established new media blogger, headed this discussion about succeeded in the new web. He started off the presentation by actually giving out mimosas to the first 70 or so people in the audience. This also served as a book signing and discussion about his new book, Engage: The Complete Guide for Brands and Businesses to Build, Cultivate and Measure Success in the New Web. The book is about understanding authenticity and keeping your audience engaged.  The presentation was a packed house according to some Twitterers. Here are some of tha main points he brought up:

-How you contribute to the web defines who you are - this is a good lesson for people looking for employment

-Social media is in the "summer of love" phase

- It's not what you say online as a brand, it's what people say about you

Time + Social + Location. What's Next in Mobile Experiences (#timesociallocation)

Some of the Presenters:

Naveen Selvadurai, Foursquare - @naveen

Josh Banetski, MapQuest, Inc - @quixado

Greg Cypes, AIM - @GregCypes

This presentation was about learning different ways to leverage new technology for mobile experiences and how geosocial applications have changed the way people interact and do business.

Discussion points:

Nature of Sharing - Our culture now is more about sharing than ever and anyone can provude their location for free with friends

Motivation for location based apps -  Driving a sense of achievement makes people strive to interact further on social apps. The key with location apps is to make the game play interesting if you expect users to give up their information. Foursquare does this with earning badges.

Privacy concerns - Privacy concerns with were discussed as they brought up the site Pleaserobme.com. The panelists' answer to this issue is that people have been reliably been away from their houses forever - it's called a job.

Who should be in your location network - Naveen put it simple by saying "If I'm not going to sit down to dinner with you, you shouldn't be in my geosocial network."

Augmented Reality (AR) - Augmented reality will allow people to literally turn their entire life into a socially enhanced mobile platform. Chevrolet has launched the Chevy iReveal that allows you to see virtual vehicles on streets. I also recently saw a t-shirt from Swedish magazine T-post where you can wear the shirt and play an AR version of rock paper scissors. The criticism of AR was that although AR is cool, it has a long way to go since people want lists and ease of use. In general - AR received a lukeworm reception by the panel with the key problem mentioned being mediated reality=socially awkward.

Ownership of placed data - Naveen said that place data should not be owned by anyone in order to eliminate friction from the geosocial system. It should be an open domain and everyone should be able to give feedback.

Universal Check-In - The future of universal check-in is GUID's (Globally Unique Identifiers) for places.

This presentation was by far the most intense conversation going on of the three hashtags I followed today. I hope this gave you some insight on what happened today at SXSW.

Leave comments with your thoughts on the topics discussed. If I missed any topics (which is entirely possible given the depth of topics covered), please add them in the comments as well.